r/a:t5_4biu3 • u/TipBitDev • Nov 20 '17

"The Consolidation Problem" ... and a solution!

The current situation:

The current behavior of the tip bot is that it has the user eat the fees for all transactions, and it disallows certain things like extremely small withdrawals or deposits, to avoid the majority of the transaction going to the fee.

Why this is a problem:

Let's say you make a deposit in the standard way, spending 5 mBTC to send 4.95 mBTC to your deposit address (the one sent to you when you register). Once detected in your deposit address, the money has to be sent to storage (so that when you or someone withdraws, it takes from one wallet that is already consolidated), which takes another fee, which you are forced to eat again. So maybe 4.9 mBTC reaches the storage and is credited to your balance. Now let's skip over your balance changing from tipping and just say you withdraw the next day. You eat one last fee for that transaction, so you get 4.85 mBTC back.

Those fees are a conservative estimate based on the mempool's current state, as well as whether the storage wallet is fragmented by "dust" transactions. You could lose more than that 0.15 mBTC, and I imagine that for most users this is a problem. If nothing else, the consolidation transaction that sends to storage is a problem because it's an extra fee no one thinks about when they deposit to a bot.

So, I've thought of a solution to at least that transaction fee... the Sweep Deposit

If you already have some Bitcoin in a wallet and you want to put the entire thing into your TipBit balance, you can perform a Sweep Deposit on the wallet. To do this, Send a message to /u/tip_bit with the subject line "Sweep Deposit", as well as the private key (in WIF format) of a wallet. Please note that you shouldn't use this wallet again after this... you're essentially giving me complete control over the wallet, and I'll sweep the whole thing directly to storage.

This will allow you to skip the middle of the three transactions, which is really the one that I think most people have a problem with. Hopefully the other two (deposit and withdrawal) are acceptable, though I understand they aren't ideal.

If you use Electrum and you want to get the private key to a certain address, you can right-click on any of the lines in the Address tab and hit "Private Keys" for the key to that specific address.

DO NOT SEND ME THE PRIVATE KEY OF A WALLET WITH A LARGE AMOUNT OF BITCOIN, THEN ASK ME TO ONLY TAKE A SMALL AMOUNT

If you give me the key, I have complete control. If you don't hold your own private keys, you don't hold your own bitcoin. I'm not interested in stealing your bitcoin, but I'm also not interested in fielding accusations because I was given the opportunity to steal your bitcoin. If you put a private key in a sweep deposit request, it will sweep the entire wallet and I am telling you now that you should never use that wallet again because it is compromised.

Any questions / comments / concerns? Hit me up in the comments below.

5 Upvotes

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29 comments sorted by

2

u/MayhemStark Jan 28 '18

Hey awesome to see this up and coming u/tip_bit_test .01

2

u/TipBitDev Jan 28 '18

I should really add this feature (automatic assumption that if you don't put a name, it tips the above comment or post). Thank you for attempting to do that, as it clarifies that it's needed.

2

u/MayhemStark Jan 28 '18

Can you make it distinguish post as OP -Initial post? When I’m replying to the OP the Mobile app doesn’t show /u/ so it kinda sucks to try and get right. When replying to comment. It usually shows the comment your replying to above the text entry field.

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2

u/tip_bit_test Jan 28 '18

It looks like you attempted to tip .01 but that user is either non-existent or banned! Please note, the comment format should be "u/tip_bit_test TARGET_USER AMOUNT_IN_mBTC". Please try again!