How to test bitcoin distribution mechanism

Now I'm developing a bitcoin distribution mechanism (according to users' submitted shares count). The complete workflow is: Users submitted shares to my pool, then my pool submitted these shares to another famous pool (e.g. btcguild). When my pool received bitcoins from the remote pool, it will distribute these received coins to users (according to their submitted shares count)

The problem is that everytime I test this mechanism, I will create many transactions, but each transaction will take 0.005 btc as transaction fee for bitcoin network. Then after paying 200 users, I will pay 1 btc to bitcoin network, The cost is high. Is there any way to simulate the bitcoin network, so I can create transaction without paying transaction fee?

Mark Ma

Posted 2013-11-08T14:20:30.210

Reputation: 385

Do you know about Testnet? Though if it needs to interact with an existing pool, this might get harder.

– Nate Eldredge – 2013-11-08T16:08:58.513

Answers

As Nate Eldredge suggest, you could use the Bitcoin Testnet. This is a separate Bitcoin fork that exists especially for testing purposes. You can easily get some testnet coins from testnet faucets.

Besides that, do you know that it is possible to create a transaction with multiple inputs and multiple outputs? So instead of creating many transactions, you could combine them into one transaction and only pay the fee once.

Steven Roose

Posted 2013-11-08T14:20:30.210

Reputation: 10 855

hi, how to create a transaction with combined payments? thanks – Mark Ma – 2013-11-18T02:16:37.520

-1

If you grab a copy of the Bitcoin-qt wallet from the Coin Control fork, you can get some very good information about how the transaction fees work. The transaction fees are explained in the post in that link, and the compiled Coin Control fork is also linked so you can play around with it too.

Once downloaded and installed, open settings -> options, then under the display tab enable the "Display Coin Control Features (experts only!)" option.

Now, when you go to send funds, you have the option of exactly where the funds will come from, what priority they will have in entering blocks, what fees will be required (if any), and the option of adding multiple recipients in the transaction.

This extra functionality will be standard in the coming 0.9 release of Bitcoin-qt and bitcoind.

As has already been said, it would be best to trial it out on the Bitcoin Testnet, currently Testnet3 - simply run the wallet with the command:

bitcoin-qt -testnet

which will enter the wallet onto Testnet3 rather than the main network. You can get some free testnet bitcoins from some faucets (check the links at the bottom of the Bitcoin Testnet wiki article), and play around with sending bitcoins in one transaction from multiple wallet addresses to multiple other wallet addresses. This should give you a fair idea of how to structure a payment without incurring any transaction fees.

ReeKorl

Posted 2013-11-08T14:20:30.210

Reputation: 1