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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @OT 10h \ parent \ on: What is the 'purpose' of this transaction? mempool
No idea... That's was just my guess. If they're doing it 1000's of times a day then that's wrong.
Maybe a bot gone rogue or someone simply being regarded.
Thousands of times a day. Tinfoil hat: it's some kind of 'probing' attack or prelude to an attack maybe.
There are 3 'scenarios' for a 'government attack' utilizing miners
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governments pay miners not to mine. No transactions no blocks... until the difficulty adjusts and smaller non-paid miners can compete.
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governments pay miners to mine empty blocks. No transactions but blocks are regular... so difficulty stays high. But there are no transactions. At least until fee pressure rises to the point that, desiring to earn the fees, smaller miners increase their hashrate to compete.
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(and most serious) governments pay miners to mine... but mine junk. Arbitrary transactions just at random or random transactions with no meaning/purpose. Blocks are full... but only full of junk so nodes have to store all of it. Difficulty stays high and blocks are completely full but full of spam...
Either honest miners demand higher and higher fees to 'offset' not being paid to get their transactions in... or there's some kind of change in the hashing algorithm (the nuclear option)
repetitive transactions en mass with no economic purpose... makes me think about this
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if i were a government that wanted to attack bitcoin... i would look for ways to attack the nodes themselves. For example paying for transactions ie "transacting" in transactions that are repetitive that either bloat the UTXO set... or discourage economic transactions through higher fees.
Spam basically. That 'outbids' everything else (this would be especially evident at higher fee rates) or at least fills blocks with junk at low fee rates 1 or < 1 sat/vbtye etc that slowly harms nodes over a long time period.
Then depending on how users respond, how pools respond, and how nodes are effected (or not) come up with plans to weaken the network if desired.
I don't think the US is smart enough to do this (plus the president is invested) but the Chinese are.
Just my 2 tinfoil sats.
Anytime I see economic activity that doesn't make sense I ask myself 'what's going on here, what explains it?'
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For example paying for transactions ie "transacting" in transactions that are repetitive that either bloat the UTXO set
These wouldn't be bloating the UTXO set as they're being spent again and again.
I don't think the US is smart enough to do this (plus the president is invested) but the Chinese are.
All China would need to do is take control of mining unit production. It still might take a few years to get enough hash power to attack the network due to the vast amount of hash already distributed.
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