Re: [bitcoin-dev] Making OP_TRUE standard?

[Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>]

Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> writes:
> AFAICT the optimal DoS is where:
>
> 1.  Attacker sends a 100,000 vbyte tx @1sat/vbyte.
> 2.  Replaces it with a 108 vbyte tx @2sat/vbyte which spends one of
>     those inputs.
> 3.  Replaces that spent input in the 100k tx and does it again.
>
> It takes 3.5 seconds to propagate to 50% of network[1] (probably much worse
> given 100k txs), so they can only do this about 86 times per block.
>
> That means they send 86 * (100000 + 108) = 8609288 vbytes for a cost of
> 86 * 2 * 108 + 100000 / 2 = 68576 satoshi (assuming 50% chance 100k tx
> gets mined).

This 50% chance assumption is wrong; it's almost 0% for a low enough
fee.  Thus the cost is only 18576, making the cost for the transactions
463x lower than just sending 1sat/vbyte txs under optimal conditions.
That's a bit ouch.[1]

I think a better solution is to address the DoS potential directly:
if a replacement doesn't meet #3 or #4, but *does* increase the feerate
by at least minrelayfee, processing should be delayed by 30-60 seconds.

That means that eventually you will RBF a larger tx, but it'll take
much longer.  Should be easy to implement, too, since similar timers
will be needed for dandelion.

Cheers,
Rusty.
[1] Christian grabbed some more detailed propagation stats for me: larger
    txs do propagate slower, but only by a factor of 2.5 or so.