Proposal “should_we_lower_the_transaction_fee“ (Completed)Back

Title:When the minimum price of an average transaction rises above 1 cent, should we lower the transaction fee?
Owner:plateglassarmour
One-time payment: 5 DASH (180 USD)
Completed payments: 1 totaling in 5 DASH (0 month remaining)
Payment start/end: 2018-01-17 / 2018-02-16 (added on 2018-01-10)
Final voting deadline: in passed
Votes: 35 Yes / 1 No / 17 Abstain

Proposal description

When the minimum price of an average transaction rises above 1 cent, should we lower the transaction fee?

Pre-proposal here: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/the-cost-of-a-transaction-should-be-lowered-again.21292/
Updated pre-proposal here: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/updated-when-the-minimum-price-of-a-transaction-rises-above-1-cent-should-we-lower-the-the-fee.24759/

YES: (I think that we should attempt to keep transaction fees below 1 cent.)
NO: (I would not support lowering the transaction fee.)
ABSTAIN: (I do not have an opinion on the matter)/ (YES and NO are poorly phrased.)

It was only recently that we lowered the minimum transaction fee, but with our huge price appreciation, the minimum fee of an average sized (about 500 bytes) transaction is approaching 1 cent again. As of the writing of this proposal, it costs about 0.6 cents to send an average transaction using the minimum fees.

If we decide to keep fees below 1 cent, it would not mean immediate action is required on behalf of Core, it simply indicates that the network has expressed it's commitment to keeping fees low.

Based on the sentiments I've gathered from discussions on Dash Central, Slack, the forum, and Discord, it appears the community feels strongly about its commitment to low transaction fees so that low value transactions remain viable. This proposal is to poll the masternode community to determine the accuracy of that sentiment. The goal is to help prevent a recurrence of the ongoing division in the Bitcoin community, where some people make the accusation that the community wants higher fees, and there is nothing that anyone can point to that proves that idea wrong.

To those worried about “spam attacks” filling up the blocks I would point to the rough calculations I did in my first pre-proposal that show that any such attack could more than pay for the hosting of all the masternodes on the network, even using minimum fees (which would not be an effective attack at any rate.)

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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?

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1 point,6 years ago
Yes .... with the following caveats:

- It's the median transaction fee sent from a Dash core (non-exchange) wallet.
- It's less than 1 cent in inflation adjusted dollars. So that be $100 in 3 years if they start the printing presses up!!
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1 point,7 years ago
Business hates uncertain terms. This proposal will assist all Business development interactions. Dash Aero team is greatly thankful. This will ensure our discussions are solid and concise when approaching new business opportunities.

We've had to state, "currently we have less than 1 cent" which prompts the response of "well then what happens"

This proposal closes that loop into... "we have functions in place to keep the transaction cost less than 1 cent".

Thanks again for submitting this,

Scott @DashRacer
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0 points,7 years ago
MNO here. Sydney, Australia. For businesses to have a more reliable working model to build on, they need to know that fees are not going to 10x or 20x on them. This is an easy YES vote. Just as long as the mechanism of 'minimum price' is fair.

Side note: I am concerned about 0 fee transactions spamming the network.
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0 points,7 years ago
This a big YES. One silent feature of Dash that encourages more adoption is the transaction fee. In Africa the rampant adoption of Dash is due to the transaction fee and other features. Thanks for this proposal, I think k Dash need this.
Cheers!
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1 point,7 years ago
Yes. Let's form consensus on this. Keep fees as low as possible without that interrupting or giving an opportunity for attackers to flood the network with spam.
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0 points,7 years ago
totally agree - digital cash with low fees.
which can avoid spam attacks!
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1 point,7 years ago
OK, this is not a technical directive, as I understand it. It's just wanting to know if we, as MNOs are committed to low fees. I will say yes, It is imperative that we have low fees, or we will not be able to compete against existing systems. Also, FYI, Core has a plan to make fees free up to a point. When users receive more than a certain number of deposits, they are assumed to be merchants and will be required to pay a fee. This makes the fee payment in line with existing systems such as Visa (Merchant pays the fee) but the plan is to continue keeping it under 1% I hope well under 1%. So though the above statement is not in line with current plans, I will affirm my commitment to low fees :)
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0 points,7 years ago
good proposal, low fees can make Dash on the top!
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-9 points,7 years ago
Fees are determined by the number of inputs, noob.
Nobody has pennies anymore.
Higher fees are best.
Monero rules!
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1 point,7 years ago
MNO troll account. Quality.
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2 points,7 years ago
Please, average is a really bad metric. It can be skewed by one service creating really big transaction. This should be basic on a specific size. I agree a transaction with 1 input and 2 outputs should be less than 1 cent, but we can't predict what an average transaction will look like.
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2 points,7 years ago
I was not referring to average in the mathematical sense (i.e. mean), I was referring to it in the colloquial sense (i.e. normal). I was just indicating that whatever a normal sized transaction for the network is (which will often be 1 or 2 inputs and 2 outputs, as you mentioned) should be kept below 1 cent.
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0 points,7 years ago
Please don't be vague. These are important decisions.
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0 points,7 years ago
I think that would be roughly 225 to 373 bytes. I think you should more accurately specify what you mean because currently it's kind of confusing. For example specify that 500 bytes should be less than $0.01 or that mean or average sized transaction should be less than a $0.01. If using mean or average then also specify a time frame e.g. 1 year.
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0 points,7 years ago
I meant to say median or average. I think using median could make sense because it more accurately represents a typical value.
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1 point,7 years ago
I was keeping it non technical on purpose. The needs of the network can change. If more small transactions are the norm, then transactions with greater numbers of smaller inputs could be relatively commonplace. Right now, many transactions are 1 input and 2 outputs, but if that changes, I don't want to be bogged down by the specific details. I just used average as a term to sum up the idea of whatever is commonplace for transactions at the time. I picked 500 bytes for the current size to err on the side of caution, since many transactions are considerably larger than 1 input and 2 outputs.
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0 points,7 years ago
This will be very hard to do when 1 duff is more than 1 penny ;)
Voting yes for you to get your 5 dash back.
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0 points,7 years ago
Pennies won't exist by that time but there is no reason why Dash couldn't become more divisible than it is today.
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6 points,7 years ago
Keeping the fees low is very important. I support this completely..
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1 point,7 years ago
I think that has always pretty much been the plan from everything I have heard Ryan say lately. I don't think it is an issue. I will vote yes just so you get your Dash back.
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4 points,7 years ago
The concept of low fees has my support, but basing the cost of dash transactions in term of USD or cents seems odd.
I will vote yes but the day will come when we need to have another look at this.
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4 points,7 years ago
You're not wrong. And I look forward to the day when we cut the dollar out of the loop entirely such that the Merchants, the customers and the system never have to think about what a dollar is. But at the moment, we find ourselves in the strange position of seeing the value of Dash zoom up approximately 100x in USD in one year. And the consequence of that is making transaction costs -appear- expensive, since we still have to deal with fiat currencies. That phenomenon is what broke the back of Bitcoin as a functional currency. We don't want that to happen to Dash.

solarguy
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2 points,7 years ago
There is actually a limit on how low fees can be. If fees are too low miners would have a greater incentive not to include those transactions in blocks. So basically we can only lower fees by about 7% per year in Dash.
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2 points,7 years ago
I think the spirit of the proposal is not to set a specific hard cap in USD for what a transactions should cost. The goal is to make a big public commitment to maintain fees low enough that people could realistically buy groceries, or a coffee, or a microtransaction to send 20 cents to a content creator, today and tomorrow and forever.

solarguy
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1 point,7 years ago
I think this is best left in the decision making hands of core than the community for now, as the implications of lowering fees is a software/hardware/incentive issue that isn't well understood by each individual MNO. Dash core will never allow what is happening to Bitcoin to happen to Dash in regards to high fees, as is obvious by us increasing the blocksize and lowering the fees.
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2 points,7 years ago
I share your commitment to low fees, but the big offenders here are the third party wallet providers like Jaxx and Exodus, not the Dash network. If the fee goes above 1 cent for the *Dash Core* wallet then sure. In the long run, when the blocks are full, the fees are not something that you can just "lower", and IMO there will need to be a different solution (using Evolution) than simply lowering the default fee.

All in all, I guess this means a yes vote. Didn't think this proposal was necessary though because it seems obvious to me that the dash core team, the masternodes, and the dash users all put a high priority on low fees.
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1 point,7 years ago
Yeah, the 3rd party wallets are an issue that will need to be tackled in the future. I'm still percolating ideas for what we can even do to effect the 3rd party wallets at all. Letter writing campaign? Either way, that issue is separate from the (vary narrow) scope of this proposal.
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2 points,7 years ago
I would love to see the Masternode community make a very public commitment to maintain low fees, since that is a non-negotiable characteristic if we want to be Digital Cash. When Bitcoin allowed average transaction costs to go above 5 dollars (and currently more than 20 dollars, https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m ) they gave up on being money and handed that use case to us on a silver platter. Let us graciously accept their offer and publicly commit to low fees.

Might be the most effective 5 Dash we ever spend....

Carry on, have fun, win!

solarguy
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1 point,7 years ago
Just a side note, I created an article on using the zero-fee option because when 0.12.2.0 came out it was easy and almost certain that a user would get a zero fee. Not any more. The zero fee transactions now almost always cost 2260 duffs. I am not sure what changed. I support low fees and I always will. I am glad to see this effort.
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1 point,7 years ago
I think that sending zero fee tx is possible only when the outputs being spent are old enough (i'm not sure how old). Otherwise anyone could spam the network with 0 cost.
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1 point,7 years ago
In my understanding, if a wallet decides to give users extremely high unnecessary fees then the normal average fee rises.

If I’m correct on that statement, should we just base the adjustment around the average number of transactions every block? For example, in multiples of 400 transactions in a block should we double the block size. Or am I getting to technical here haha
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2 points,7 years ago
Based on the pre-proposal discussion, this commitment or public statement only applies to the fees required by the Dash system proper. The silly 3rd party wallets that charge ridiculously high fees because they think Dash works like Bitcoin, that's a useful but separate discussion. Neither does this proposal really concern itself with technical means of exactly how and when we would take action to lower fees. It's just a very public commitment that we intend to make digital money work, and that can't happen without very inexpensive fees.

solarguy
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1 point,7 years ago
Yes, Dash should have sub-cent fees, always. If we do not vote for this, we will be out competed by another cryptocurrency that promises low transaction fees forever.
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1 point,7 years ago
Works for me. Digital Cash means low fees.
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-1 point,7 years ago
Will be watching how this proposal plays out-it really encompasses a lot of what makes Dash unique.
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1 point,7 years ago
You spent 5 dash to get mno opinion ???
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11 points,7 years ago
Yes. I fully believe my investment will do better with this proposal in existence, even if it fails, and I do not receive my Dash back. Since I own a masternode, the value of Dash is far more valuable to me than the 5 Dash i risk, and I want to avoid the split that happened in the BTC community at all costs.
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0 points,7 years ago
I am very happy to see a proposal that discusses aspects of Dash, in which we can decide its future.
 
It is very noble on your part, that you invest 5 dash to discuss something that differentiates Dash from others and are: low rates. You have my regards.

All MNOs have ideas to improve Dash in all areas, marketing, technical, etc. and we should all think that investing 5 dash, to expose them can make a difference in the future of our project.

I think that we should have a commitment with: low fee, that's why I'm going to vote yes. (The technical aspect is what should be seen at all times).
Since right now ripple is contracting a lot with this aspect.

Thank you for your proposal.
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0 points,7 years ago
This is not just an MNO opinion. It's an instruction for Dash Core to implement a lower fee if the condition will be met.
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1 point,7 years ago
What is the purpose of a "distributed governance by blockchain"?
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