How was the dust limit of 546 satoshis was chosen? Why not 550 satoshis? Planned maintenance scheduled April 23, 2019 at 23:30 UTC (7:30pm US/Eastern) Announcing the arrival of Valued Associate #679: Cesar Manara Unicorn Meta Zoo #1: Why another podcast?What is meant by Bitcoin dust?Why is a transaction with outputs of less than ฿0.00005460 rejected?Could Bitcoin dust spam be effectively combatted by actually including it in the block-chain?Should there be a minimum transaction limit to prevent dust spam?Wallet design: What to do with dust amounts in change?Since Bitcoin Core 0.14.0, how does a node with default settings compute the dust limit?What is the dust limit on Bitcoin Cash transactions?In bitcoin core, how to avoid the dust exception?Electrum 3.3.2 the transaction was rejected by network rules dust error… Tried different nodes, Doesnt WorkDoes bitcoin dust fee rule or policy activate in bitcoin testnet?Does Bitcoin dust limit include miner fee as well?

Lagrange four-squares theorem --- deterministic complexity

What is the meaning of 'breadth' in breadth first search?

How did Fremen produce and carry enough thumpers to use Sandworms as de facto Ubers?

Co-worker has annoying ringtone

Amount of permutations on an NxNxN Rubik's Cube

How to report t statistic from R

What to do with repeated rejections for phd position

How does the math work when buying airline miles?

An adverb for when you're not exaggerating

Intuitive explanation of the rank-nullity theorem

What does 丫 mean? 丫是什么意思?

One-one communication

How long can equipment go unused before powering up runs the risk of damage?

How often does castling occur in grandmaster games?

What does this say in Elvish?

What's the point of the test set?

What's the meaning of "fortified infraction restraint"?

How much damage would a cupful of neutron star matter do to the Earth?

preposition before coffee

How does light 'choose' between wave and particle behaviour?

What is the chair depicted in Cesare Maccari's 1889 painting "Cicerone denuncia Catilina"?

AppleTVs create a chatty alternate WiFi network

What's the difference between the capability remove_users and delete_users?

Karn the great creator - 'card from outside the game' in sealed



How was the dust limit of 546 satoshis was chosen? Why not 550 satoshis?



Planned maintenance scheduled April 23, 2019 at 23:30 UTC (7:30pm US/Eastern)
Announcing the arrival of Valued Associate #679: Cesar Manara
Unicorn Meta Zoo #1: Why another podcast?What is meant by Bitcoin dust?Why is a transaction with outputs of less than ฿0.00005460 rejected?Could Bitcoin dust spam be effectively combatted by actually including it in the block-chain?Should there be a minimum transaction limit to prevent dust spam?Wallet design: What to do with dust amounts in change?Since Bitcoin Core 0.14.0, how does a node with default settings compute the dust limit?What is the dust limit on Bitcoin Cash transactions?In bitcoin core, how to avoid the dust exception?Electrum 3.3.2 the transaction was rejected by network rules dust error… Tried different nodes, Doesnt WorkDoes bitcoin dust fee rule or policy activate in bitcoin testnet?Does Bitcoin dust limit include miner fee as well?










3















Is there a reason why 546 satoshis was chosen as dust limit instead of 547 or even 550 satoshis, historically?










share|improve this question


























    3















    Is there a reason why 546 satoshis was chosen as dust limit instead of 547 or even 550 satoshis, historically?










    share|improve this question
























      3












      3








      3








      Is there a reason why 546 satoshis was chosen as dust limit instead of 547 or even 550 satoshis, historically?










      share|improve this question














      Is there a reason why 546 satoshis was chosen as dust limit instead of 547 or even 550 satoshis, historically?







      history dust






      share|improve this question













      share|improve this question











      share|improve this question




      share|improve this question










      asked Apr 15 at 15:00









      MCCCSMCCCS

      4,98431444




      4,98431444




















          2 Answers
          2






          active

          oldest

          votes


















          3














          The dust limit is not actually fixed, technically - it varies based on the type of output. 546 satoshis is simply the most commonly known one, for a p2pkh output. Being the longest-lived output type, I suspect some wallets/blog posts/literature might treat it as a hard coded dust limit.



          As to how to arrive at 546 satoshis, we must first know what "dust" means. A dust output is an output which costs more to spend, than it is worth. In other words, an X BTC output that costs >X to spend, is a dust output. This is directly proportional to the amount of data required to spend an output, since fees in bitcoin are commonly denoted "per-byte". The more bytes you must add to your tx to spend an output, the higher its dust threshold.



          A very basic tx consisting of 1 p2pkh input (~148 bytes), and 1 p2pkh output (~34 bytes) comes out to 182 bytes. The dust limit is 3 times this number (assuming a relay fee of 1 satoshi), or 182*3 = 546 sats.



          For more complex txs, such as p2sh, this number is larger. For less space-intensive ones such as the newer segwit options, this number would be lower.



          The code used in Bitcoin core to determine the dust threshold can be found here.






          share|improve this answer

























          • I think this answer could be clarified a bit. It seems to boil down to the statement that "the dust limit is fixed at 3 satoshis per byte", which raises the question as to how this figure was selected. Also, referring to this as a "relay fee" seems misleading because no fees are collected by nodes who merely relay transactions.

            – Nate Eldredge
            Apr 15 at 15:31











          • @NateEldredge Absolutely - I'm trying to look up some sources I read ages ago on why 3*relay fee was selected. As for the relay fee bit, I believe it comes from the minrelaytxfee flag for bitcoind, which lets you control which transactions your node relays based on fee

            – Raghav Sood
            Apr 15 at 15:36











          • Wasn't it the case that dust limit was introduced to prevent creation of UTXOs whose value is lower than the cost of scriptSig to spend it? For a 148 byte input, scriptSig would be 107 bytes. That is ~34*3.

            – Ugam Kamat
            Apr 15 at 16:29











          • I think Ugam is right according to this.

            – MCCCS
            Apr 15 at 16:48


















          1














          Bitcoin core sets the dust limit to a value where spending an output would exceed 1/3 of its value. This calculation is based on the node's setting for the minimum relay transaction fee (see option -minrelaytxfee) whose default is 0.00001 BTC/KB. Any transaction with a fee less than that does not get relayed by the node i.e. is dropped from its mempool.



          For a node that uses the default -minrelaytxfee of 0.00001 BTC/KB (1000 satoshis/KB) and given that for P2PKH an input is 148 bytes and an output is 34 bytes, it follows that an output less than or equal to 546 satoshis is considered dust according to Bicoin core.



          Reference: What is meant by Bitcoin dust?






          share|improve this answer























            Your Answer








            StackExchange.ready(function()
            var channelOptions =
            tags: "".split(" "),
            id: "308"
            ;
            initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

            StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function()
            // Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
            if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled)
            StackExchange.using("snippets", function()
            createEditor();
            );

            else
            createEditor();

            );

            function createEditor()
            StackExchange.prepareEditor(
            heartbeatType: 'answer',
            autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
            convertImagesToLinks: false,
            noModals: true,
            showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
            reputationToPostImages: null,
            bindNavPrevention: true,
            postfix: "",
            imageUploader:
            brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
            contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
            allowUrls: true
            ,
            noCode: true, onDemand: true,
            discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
            ,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
            );



            );













            draft saved

            draft discarded


















            StackExchange.ready(
            function ()
            StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fbitcoin.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f86068%2fhow-was-the-dust-limit-of-546-satoshis-was-chosen-why-not-550-satoshis%23new-answer', 'question_page');

            );

            Post as a guest















            Required, but never shown

























            2 Answers
            2






            active

            oldest

            votes








            2 Answers
            2






            active

            oldest

            votes









            active

            oldest

            votes






            active

            oldest

            votes









            3














            The dust limit is not actually fixed, technically - it varies based on the type of output. 546 satoshis is simply the most commonly known one, for a p2pkh output. Being the longest-lived output type, I suspect some wallets/blog posts/literature might treat it as a hard coded dust limit.



            As to how to arrive at 546 satoshis, we must first know what "dust" means. A dust output is an output which costs more to spend, than it is worth. In other words, an X BTC output that costs >X to spend, is a dust output. This is directly proportional to the amount of data required to spend an output, since fees in bitcoin are commonly denoted "per-byte". The more bytes you must add to your tx to spend an output, the higher its dust threshold.



            A very basic tx consisting of 1 p2pkh input (~148 bytes), and 1 p2pkh output (~34 bytes) comes out to 182 bytes. The dust limit is 3 times this number (assuming a relay fee of 1 satoshi), or 182*3 = 546 sats.



            For more complex txs, such as p2sh, this number is larger. For less space-intensive ones such as the newer segwit options, this number would be lower.



            The code used in Bitcoin core to determine the dust threshold can be found here.






            share|improve this answer

























            • I think this answer could be clarified a bit. It seems to boil down to the statement that "the dust limit is fixed at 3 satoshis per byte", which raises the question as to how this figure was selected. Also, referring to this as a "relay fee" seems misleading because no fees are collected by nodes who merely relay transactions.

              – Nate Eldredge
              Apr 15 at 15:31











            • @NateEldredge Absolutely - I'm trying to look up some sources I read ages ago on why 3*relay fee was selected. As for the relay fee bit, I believe it comes from the minrelaytxfee flag for bitcoind, which lets you control which transactions your node relays based on fee

              – Raghav Sood
              Apr 15 at 15:36











            • Wasn't it the case that dust limit was introduced to prevent creation of UTXOs whose value is lower than the cost of scriptSig to spend it? For a 148 byte input, scriptSig would be 107 bytes. That is ~34*3.

              – Ugam Kamat
              Apr 15 at 16:29











            • I think Ugam is right according to this.

              – MCCCS
              Apr 15 at 16:48















            3














            The dust limit is not actually fixed, technically - it varies based on the type of output. 546 satoshis is simply the most commonly known one, for a p2pkh output. Being the longest-lived output type, I suspect some wallets/blog posts/literature might treat it as a hard coded dust limit.



            As to how to arrive at 546 satoshis, we must first know what "dust" means. A dust output is an output which costs more to spend, than it is worth. In other words, an X BTC output that costs >X to spend, is a dust output. This is directly proportional to the amount of data required to spend an output, since fees in bitcoin are commonly denoted "per-byte". The more bytes you must add to your tx to spend an output, the higher its dust threshold.



            A very basic tx consisting of 1 p2pkh input (~148 bytes), and 1 p2pkh output (~34 bytes) comes out to 182 bytes. The dust limit is 3 times this number (assuming a relay fee of 1 satoshi), or 182*3 = 546 sats.



            For more complex txs, such as p2sh, this number is larger. For less space-intensive ones such as the newer segwit options, this number would be lower.



            The code used in Bitcoin core to determine the dust threshold can be found here.






            share|improve this answer

























            • I think this answer could be clarified a bit. It seems to boil down to the statement that "the dust limit is fixed at 3 satoshis per byte", which raises the question as to how this figure was selected. Also, referring to this as a "relay fee" seems misleading because no fees are collected by nodes who merely relay transactions.

              – Nate Eldredge
              Apr 15 at 15:31











            • @NateEldredge Absolutely - I'm trying to look up some sources I read ages ago on why 3*relay fee was selected. As for the relay fee bit, I believe it comes from the minrelaytxfee flag for bitcoind, which lets you control which transactions your node relays based on fee

              – Raghav Sood
              Apr 15 at 15:36











            • Wasn't it the case that dust limit was introduced to prevent creation of UTXOs whose value is lower than the cost of scriptSig to spend it? For a 148 byte input, scriptSig would be 107 bytes. That is ~34*3.

              – Ugam Kamat
              Apr 15 at 16:29











            • I think Ugam is right according to this.

              – MCCCS
              Apr 15 at 16:48













            3












            3








            3







            The dust limit is not actually fixed, technically - it varies based on the type of output. 546 satoshis is simply the most commonly known one, for a p2pkh output. Being the longest-lived output type, I suspect some wallets/blog posts/literature might treat it as a hard coded dust limit.



            As to how to arrive at 546 satoshis, we must first know what "dust" means. A dust output is an output which costs more to spend, than it is worth. In other words, an X BTC output that costs >X to spend, is a dust output. This is directly proportional to the amount of data required to spend an output, since fees in bitcoin are commonly denoted "per-byte". The more bytes you must add to your tx to spend an output, the higher its dust threshold.



            A very basic tx consisting of 1 p2pkh input (~148 bytes), and 1 p2pkh output (~34 bytes) comes out to 182 bytes. The dust limit is 3 times this number (assuming a relay fee of 1 satoshi), or 182*3 = 546 sats.



            For more complex txs, such as p2sh, this number is larger. For less space-intensive ones such as the newer segwit options, this number would be lower.



            The code used in Bitcoin core to determine the dust threshold can be found here.






            share|improve this answer















            The dust limit is not actually fixed, technically - it varies based on the type of output. 546 satoshis is simply the most commonly known one, for a p2pkh output. Being the longest-lived output type, I suspect some wallets/blog posts/literature might treat it as a hard coded dust limit.



            As to how to arrive at 546 satoshis, we must first know what "dust" means. A dust output is an output which costs more to spend, than it is worth. In other words, an X BTC output that costs >X to spend, is a dust output. This is directly proportional to the amount of data required to spend an output, since fees in bitcoin are commonly denoted "per-byte". The more bytes you must add to your tx to spend an output, the higher its dust threshold.



            A very basic tx consisting of 1 p2pkh input (~148 bytes), and 1 p2pkh output (~34 bytes) comes out to 182 bytes. The dust limit is 3 times this number (assuming a relay fee of 1 satoshi), or 182*3 = 546 sats.



            For more complex txs, such as p2sh, this number is larger. For less space-intensive ones such as the newer segwit options, this number would be lower.



            The code used in Bitcoin core to determine the dust threshold can be found here.







            share|improve this answer














            share|improve this answer



            share|improve this answer








            edited Apr 16 at 2:58









            KappaDev

            5951419




            5951419










            answered Apr 15 at 15:15









            Raghav SoodRaghav Sood

            7,77621127




            7,77621127












            • I think this answer could be clarified a bit. It seems to boil down to the statement that "the dust limit is fixed at 3 satoshis per byte", which raises the question as to how this figure was selected. Also, referring to this as a "relay fee" seems misleading because no fees are collected by nodes who merely relay transactions.

              – Nate Eldredge
              Apr 15 at 15:31











            • @NateEldredge Absolutely - I'm trying to look up some sources I read ages ago on why 3*relay fee was selected. As for the relay fee bit, I believe it comes from the minrelaytxfee flag for bitcoind, which lets you control which transactions your node relays based on fee

              – Raghav Sood
              Apr 15 at 15:36











            • Wasn't it the case that dust limit was introduced to prevent creation of UTXOs whose value is lower than the cost of scriptSig to spend it? For a 148 byte input, scriptSig would be 107 bytes. That is ~34*3.

              – Ugam Kamat
              Apr 15 at 16:29











            • I think Ugam is right according to this.

              – MCCCS
              Apr 15 at 16:48

















            • I think this answer could be clarified a bit. It seems to boil down to the statement that "the dust limit is fixed at 3 satoshis per byte", which raises the question as to how this figure was selected. Also, referring to this as a "relay fee" seems misleading because no fees are collected by nodes who merely relay transactions.

              – Nate Eldredge
              Apr 15 at 15:31











            • @NateEldredge Absolutely - I'm trying to look up some sources I read ages ago on why 3*relay fee was selected. As for the relay fee bit, I believe it comes from the minrelaytxfee flag for bitcoind, which lets you control which transactions your node relays based on fee

              – Raghav Sood
              Apr 15 at 15:36











            • Wasn't it the case that dust limit was introduced to prevent creation of UTXOs whose value is lower than the cost of scriptSig to spend it? For a 148 byte input, scriptSig would be 107 bytes. That is ~34*3.

              – Ugam Kamat
              Apr 15 at 16:29











            • I think Ugam is right according to this.

              – MCCCS
              Apr 15 at 16:48
















            I think this answer could be clarified a bit. It seems to boil down to the statement that "the dust limit is fixed at 3 satoshis per byte", which raises the question as to how this figure was selected. Also, referring to this as a "relay fee" seems misleading because no fees are collected by nodes who merely relay transactions.

            – Nate Eldredge
            Apr 15 at 15:31





            I think this answer could be clarified a bit. It seems to boil down to the statement that "the dust limit is fixed at 3 satoshis per byte", which raises the question as to how this figure was selected. Also, referring to this as a "relay fee" seems misleading because no fees are collected by nodes who merely relay transactions.

            – Nate Eldredge
            Apr 15 at 15:31













            @NateEldredge Absolutely - I'm trying to look up some sources I read ages ago on why 3*relay fee was selected. As for the relay fee bit, I believe it comes from the minrelaytxfee flag for bitcoind, which lets you control which transactions your node relays based on fee

            – Raghav Sood
            Apr 15 at 15:36





            @NateEldredge Absolutely - I'm trying to look up some sources I read ages ago on why 3*relay fee was selected. As for the relay fee bit, I believe it comes from the minrelaytxfee flag for bitcoind, which lets you control which transactions your node relays based on fee

            – Raghav Sood
            Apr 15 at 15:36













            Wasn't it the case that dust limit was introduced to prevent creation of UTXOs whose value is lower than the cost of scriptSig to spend it? For a 148 byte input, scriptSig would be 107 bytes. That is ~34*3.

            – Ugam Kamat
            Apr 15 at 16:29





            Wasn't it the case that dust limit was introduced to prevent creation of UTXOs whose value is lower than the cost of scriptSig to spend it? For a 148 byte input, scriptSig would be 107 bytes. That is ~34*3.

            – Ugam Kamat
            Apr 15 at 16:29













            I think Ugam is right according to this.

            – MCCCS
            Apr 15 at 16:48





            I think Ugam is right according to this.

            – MCCCS
            Apr 15 at 16:48











            1














            Bitcoin core sets the dust limit to a value where spending an output would exceed 1/3 of its value. This calculation is based on the node's setting for the minimum relay transaction fee (see option -minrelaytxfee) whose default is 0.00001 BTC/KB. Any transaction with a fee less than that does not get relayed by the node i.e. is dropped from its mempool.



            For a node that uses the default -minrelaytxfee of 0.00001 BTC/KB (1000 satoshis/KB) and given that for P2PKH an input is 148 bytes and an output is 34 bytes, it follows that an output less than or equal to 546 satoshis is considered dust according to Bicoin core.



            Reference: What is meant by Bitcoin dust?






            share|improve this answer



























              1














              Bitcoin core sets the dust limit to a value where spending an output would exceed 1/3 of its value. This calculation is based on the node's setting for the minimum relay transaction fee (see option -minrelaytxfee) whose default is 0.00001 BTC/KB. Any transaction with a fee less than that does not get relayed by the node i.e. is dropped from its mempool.



              For a node that uses the default -minrelaytxfee of 0.00001 BTC/KB (1000 satoshis/KB) and given that for P2PKH an input is 148 bytes and an output is 34 bytes, it follows that an output less than or equal to 546 satoshis is considered dust according to Bicoin core.



              Reference: What is meant by Bitcoin dust?






              share|improve this answer

























                1












                1








                1







                Bitcoin core sets the dust limit to a value where spending an output would exceed 1/3 of its value. This calculation is based on the node's setting for the minimum relay transaction fee (see option -minrelaytxfee) whose default is 0.00001 BTC/KB. Any transaction with a fee less than that does not get relayed by the node i.e. is dropped from its mempool.



                For a node that uses the default -minrelaytxfee of 0.00001 BTC/KB (1000 satoshis/KB) and given that for P2PKH an input is 148 bytes and an output is 34 bytes, it follows that an output less than or equal to 546 satoshis is considered dust according to Bicoin core.



                Reference: What is meant by Bitcoin dust?






                share|improve this answer













                Bitcoin core sets the dust limit to a value where spending an output would exceed 1/3 of its value. This calculation is based on the node's setting for the minimum relay transaction fee (see option -minrelaytxfee) whose default is 0.00001 BTC/KB. Any transaction with a fee less than that does not get relayed by the node i.e. is dropped from its mempool.



                For a node that uses the default -minrelaytxfee of 0.00001 BTC/KB (1000 satoshis/KB) and given that for P2PKH an input is 148 bytes and an output is 34 bytes, it follows that an output less than or equal to 546 satoshis is considered dust according to Bicoin core.



                Reference: What is meant by Bitcoin dust?







                share|improve this answer












                share|improve this answer



                share|improve this answer










                answered Apr 15 at 16:55









                Thalis K.Thalis K.

                1967




                1967



























                    draft saved

                    draft discarded
















































                    Thanks for contributing an answer to Bitcoin Stack Exchange!


                    • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

                    But avoid


                    • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.

                    • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.

                    To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.




                    draft saved


                    draft discarded














                    StackExchange.ready(
                    function ()
                    StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fbitcoin.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f86068%2fhow-was-the-dust-limit-of-546-satoshis-was-chosen-why-not-550-satoshis%23new-answer', 'question_page');

                    );

                    Post as a guest















                    Required, but never shown





















































                    Required, but never shown














                    Required, but never shown












                    Required, but never shown







                    Required, but never shown

































                    Required, but never shown














                    Required, but never shown












                    Required, but never shown







                    Required, but never shown







                    Popular posts from this blog

                    Sum ergo cogito? 1 nng

                    三茅街道4182Guuntc Dn precexpngmageondP