| On the contrary, the network worked as expected. A somewhat costly stress test resulting in a backlog of transactions that were prioritized by fee, just as predicted. The backlog has since been drastically reduced and high priority fees are back in the 50,000 satoshi per kb range [0]... the average Bitcoin transaction is about 250 bytes, so 12,000 satoshi per transaction, or roughly 3 cents. Low priority transactions of < 1 cent are still somewhat easily confirmed [1]. Even during the stress test I saw high priority fees hovering around the 85,000 satoshi/byte range, and never in the 1,000,000+ satoshi/byte range that you're talking about. What's impressive is that the price [2] of Bitcoin was completely unaffected by a bit of weather [3] on the network and in fact gained in value during the entire ordeal. Public data storage like the ledger maintained by the Bitcoin blockchain has a definite cost and it makes sense that prices would rise as demand increased. The blockchain is a scarce resource. It might make sense for transactions fees to end up around the price of a postage stamp at some point. It's hard to predict how this economic system will continue to evolve. What's most important is that the ledger continues to be maintained, eventually consistent, secured by lots of hashing power, 100% verifiable and has an open and equal access to read and write as it ever did. Not every transaction between two parties needs to be recorded on the blockchain. The blockchain is for clearing and settlement. Between lightning networks [4], private federated offchain networks for batch transactions, and possibly public sidechains (if they every materialize), there's a number of approaches that can help facilitate micropayments and other situations that require very low fees. [0] https://api.blockcypher.com/v1/btc/main [1] https://blockchain.info/tx/417d1c3ada3744910503d58b464070531... [2] https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?timespan=30days&... [3] https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30day... [4] http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=477 |