Dear cc001,
Thank you very much for your response and feedback. I will try to answer it going from the general idea and implications for the proposed `minFeePerByte` constant to finish with comments specific to your proposal.
First, let’s put the numbers of this proposal into perspective: Let’s take the current market situation (the price of 1LSK is approx 1.25$) and assume the LIP is implemented with the constants defined in it. This means that, for the two most common transaction types, the minimum price for a transaction is:
* Balance transfer minimum fee = 0.00125LSK = 0.0015$
* Vote minimum fee = 0.02262LSK = 0.02825$
As you can see, the LSK token price would need to be more than 100x higher for the minimum fee per byte defined in the current proposal to be a concern (which is more or less the case you considered in your reply).
I totally see that in the future, when the Blockchain Application Platform is completely enabled and a full ecosystem of sidechains is running, several protocol constants will be adjusted. That is why there is a note in this proposal commenting this possibility. But it is not going to be only a question of decreasing `minFeePerByte` but other critical constants that for now we want to keep comprehensively modest. I expect that with the incoming protocol improvements (block transmission and verification efficiency, dencetralized re-genesis, etc) we will be able to introduce more ambitious constants. For example, the block size limit (that we proposed to set to 15 KB in https://github.com/LiskHQ/lips/blob/master/proposals/lip-0002.md) is an important parameter to consider in order to have a scalable and trust-less bond/communication between the Lisk mainchain and sidechains. However, I do not see the fact that these changes will introduce a hard-fork as such a big problem, at least not before Blockchain Application Platform is completely released. Bear in mind that the incoming roadmap milestones will imply hard-forks by themselves and they may also implement constants changes if there is a necessity.
Summarizing, I would say that the proposed value for the minimum fee per byte constant (`minFeePerByte`= 10^-5LSK) is an upper bound and it may/should lower down with the maturity and growth (in usage) of the network.
Let’s now focus on the proposal of your reply:
Definitely the idea of having a dynamic `minFeePerByte` value is interesting and in general desirable. I think it is complex enough to deserve a separate proposal with its complete research (define a new transaction type, define the voting process for the new value of `minFeePerByte`, etc), and if accepted, it could be implemented together with this proposal or for a later milestone in the roadmap (it only impacts `minFeePerByte` concept so they would not conflict). However, before any of that, I would like to get some ideas clear from your proposal:
In your response, it seems you did not consider the fact that in this LIP, the proposal is to burn the minimum part of the fee in every transaction (`trs.minFee` in the document). This means that delegates only get fees for transactions paying a fee over `trs.minFee`. If `minFeePerByte` is adjustable, in general, delegates would not have much incentive in changing its value, whatever it is: If blocks are not full, users can get their transaction confirmed without problem paying the minimum fee. Then delegates do not get any transaction fees so they do not care about `minFeePerByte` value. If the network is actively used (blocks are usually full), users are going to pay fees over the `trs.minFee` for their transaction to get it confirmed (faster). But the extra fee they pay (to the delegates) is not going to be (directly) correlated to `minFeePerByte`. It is going to be mainly correlated to the block space available and block space demand (see Bitcoin case where in theory their `minFeePerByte` = 0). By the way, I said “mainly correlated” because one can argue that delegates are incentivised to set a high `minFeePerByte` since it implies less inflation and hence a small profit for every token holder. But that also implies lowering down the demand for block space from the users (less transactions).
So I can conclude that in general, if `minFeePerByte` is adjustable, delegates will offer lowest possible minimum fees in exchange of votes from the community (they do not have any special incentive to do the opposite), something that can harm the network if it is not mature enough to cope with the load.
Also, you did not mention anything about `delegateFee` and `dappFee`. Would you propose the same idea for these two constants too? I suspect it may be problematic to let the delegates to agree on what (minimum) fee one needs to pay to register as a delegate. In the same way, `dappFee` parameter will in the future define the first entry level to start with a sidechain project so it may make sense to have this one set to a value to increase adoption and accessibility to the Lisk environment for Dapp developers.
I am looking forward to your reply, specially if you think I made a wrong assumption from your ideas.
Best,
Iker
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2019 21:34:06 +0100
From: cc001 <cc001.bct@gmail.com <mailto:cc001.bct@gmail.com>>
To: lips@lists.lisk.io <mailto:lips@lists.lisk.io>
Subject: [LIPS] Replace static fee system by dynamic fee system
Message-ID: <7f42eb69-5ddc-7be3-1be5-e0e280785e51@gmail.com <mailto:7f42eb69-5ddc-7be3-1be5-e0e280785e51@gmail.com>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
I like the idea of dynamic fees very much and I think the proposed
system is dynamic in the sense of that it can adapt to different network
situations/congestion. But I see with it the same issue as we have with
the current system: The final cost of a transaction in fiat (for example
USD) is in a fix relation to the price of LSK and not dynamic at all.
This means that when the LSK price increases in the future (let's say to
$100 per LSK, to be on the conservative side), transactions will cost
100 times more than they do now, also with the proposed dynamic fees
system. We then will be in the exact same situation as we are now with
our current fee system. We will need an additional hard fork to lower
the fees again. We should try to avoid that and make the fee system not
only dynamic in relation to the network situation but also in relation
to the LSK price.
The issue with the proposed system is that minFeePerByte is set to a
more or less arbitrary value. The resulting minimum fee for the
transactions might be good in the current situation, with current LSK
prices. Spam might be prevented in the current situation. But as soon as
the price of LSK goes up or down, transactions will cost (much) more or
less (measured in fiat), which is not desirable, in my opinion. Even if
it still costs very low fees, why should the same transaction cost 100
times more in the future?
How to fix that issue? My proposal is to make minFeePerByte adjustable
every round, instead of using a fixed value. This would allow to adapt
minFeePerByte to different market situations to keep transactions at a
similar and reasonable price level.
But how to adapt minFeePerByte? In a decentralized system you can't peg
such a variable directly to values which are offered by centralized
third parties. This means we can't just peg minFeePerByte to the LSK
price. Where to get that LSK price? Is it correct? What if that system
is down or manipulated? We need a decentralized way to do this.
My proposal how to make the fee system truly dynamic, also in relation
to fiat values looks as follows:
minFeePerByte should be adjustable and not just a more or less arbitrary
defined value. It will be set in a decentralized way by the forging
delegates, using a kind of a voting mechanism. The exact functionality
of this voting mechanism is still to be defined, I would suggest
something similar to the following:
We add a new transaction type, called 'feeVote', which is valid only
from an active delegate account. This transaction contains the value of
minFeePerByte the sending delegate would like to have from now on. When
the market situation changes, delegates can transmit such feeVote
transactions and propose with them a new value for minFeePerByte. Every
round, the system takes the newest 57 feeVote transactions (only the
newest one if a delegate sent multiple), removes the highest 3 and the
lowest 3 (because they might be outliers), calculates the average of the
resulting 51 feeVote transactions and takes this value as the new
minFeePerByte. This is basically a floating moving average of the last
51 votes.
How to prevent that delegates set artificially high fee values to earn
more from fees?
? top and bottom 3 values are excluded from calculation, that prevents
that a few delegates can push the calculated fee up or down.
? we could say that only feeVote values are valid that are within 20% of
the last value. This would allow only small changes, no big jumps.
? we could even penalize delegates who send too high/low feeVote
transactions.
? delegates have an economic interest that Lisk is perceived as a top
blockchain, which increases the value of LSK. Delegates won't hurt Lisk
deliberately. This lowers the incentive to manipulate fee prices.
? delegates earn much more from block rewards than from fees, even if
fees would be very high. This lowers the incentive to set artificially
high fees.
? finally, the proposed feeVote transactions from the delegates are
public, this means that voters can unvote delegates who propose fake fee
values. This increases the incentive to act honestly.
TLDR: delegates vote in a decentralized way on the value of
minFeePerByte. This allows the system to adapt to changing market
situations (increasing/decreasing LSK price) in a truly decentralized
dpos-style way, to keep fees at reasonable levels.
cc001