👉 Bitcoin Optech #252

Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #252

  • describes zero-knowledge validity proof research
  • includes ‘Waiting for confirmation #2: Incentives’ from our policies for tx relay and mempool series

Last week’s post discussed mempool as a cache of unconfirmed transactions that provides a decentralized method for users to send transactions to miners. However, miners are not obligated to confirm those transactions; a block with just a coinbase transaction is valid by consensus rules. Users can incentivize miners to include their transactions by increasing total input value without changing total output value, allowing miners to claim the difference as transaction fees.