Re: [bitcoindev] Re: [bitcoin-dev] [Opt-in full-RBF] Zero-conf apps in immediate danger

[Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>]

On Fri, May 02, 2025 at 08:06:18PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> So the mempoolfullrbf default changed from false to true in 28.0 released
> in October last year, which is advertised as being run by maybe 30%-40%
> of the network now, and fullrbf transactions have been reportedly been mined
> reliably since well before that.
>
> Any chance of an update on how that change has affected bitcoin/lightning
> payment volume for you guys, or customer satisfaction (if payment
> acceptance is delayed more often), or how much engineering/support time
> was needed to adapt, or any other impact?

There was a related thread on X late last year that offers some relevant
information for these questions:

  https://x.com/MattAhlborg/status/1828436316930912364

Some key points from that thread, IMO:

 * The "relative volume" metric shows a drop in bitcoin/lightning volume
   from 30%-40% in 2022 to 25%-30% in late 2024

 * The "monthly active users" metric shows a drop in bitcoin/lightning
   volume from about 50% to about 40% in a similar timeframe, as well as
   a large switch from on-chain to lightning

 * The "average payment size" metric shows distinctly different behaviours
   between on-chain bitcoin users and lightning users -- individual
   on-chain payments are about 4x greater in value than individual
   lightning payments

 * Bitrefill stopped accepting zeroconf transactions in Aug/Sep 2023; they
   didn't indicate if this was due to seeing a rise in (attempted?) fraud,
   or a purely preventative measure.

 * The charts show definite correlations between the decrease in on-chain
   activity with fee spikes

 * The charts don't show obvious correlations between on-chain activity
   and when bitrefill stopped accepting zeroconf transactions. At best
   you could argue this shows up as volume not returning to on-chain
   bitcoin after the fee spikes eased.

 * This may also be due to a rise in use of bitrefill accounts -- ie,
   you send a bunch of money to top up your bitrefill account, and
   then later spend small amounts from that. Doing that provides some
   insulation from the impact of both on-chain fees and confirmation
   delays. The thread doesn't give details on how that has changed over
   time, so there's no indication if there's any correlation with either
   dropping support for zeroconf or with fee spikes.

 * Much of the lightning monthly active users (>50%) is due to a business
   partnership, where the users don't end up using lightning directly. The
   author speculates that as little as 12.5% (or as much as 25%) of the
   lightning payments they see are from users who control their own keys.

That's not super positive for bitcoin (as a payments system) overall --
lightning growth seems to be almost entirely in the B2B zone, rather
than the P2P zone, in particular.

It doesn't seem to indicate huge problems resulting from how
mempoolfullrbf was handled; though if "just custody funds with bitrefill"
was a significant mitigating factor, perhaps that's not terribly positive
either from a P2P, be-your-own-bank perspective.

IMO, anyway. Thanks to John Carvalho for the pointer to the thread.

Cheers,
aj

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