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Users who confirm or validate others' transactions are performing a public service on the Bitcoin network.
Is there any way to reward such users, perhaps by giving them priority for confirmation of their own transactions?
Is there a way of rewarding users who confirm others' transactions?
Answers
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This is the purpose of transaction fees. By mining a block, all transactions hashed in the block are confirmed, and the corresponding transaction fees go to the block discoverer (along with the block reward). Right now the block reward dwarfs the transaction fee reward... but there is no downside to including other transactions while mining, so all of the nodes will do it.
Addresses are not confirmed. Individual transactions are. Addresses do not exist from the point of view of the protocol. – Pieter Wuille – 2014-04-22T05:55:44.787
Yes, that was a typo, I meant transactions. Edited. – hedgedandlevered – 2014-04-22T18:08:15.187
The ones that confirm the transactions do get a reward of 25BTC per block – John L. Jegutanis – 2014-04-21T22:12:21.327
@GiannisDzegoutanis: 25BTC per block. How much would that work out to in US dollars (or Euros)? – Tom Au – 2014-04-22T18:56:27.550
25 BTC * the current exchange rate (which BTW fluctuates minute to minute) – Mark S. – 2014-04-22T19:05:09.513
@Mark S.: 25*$493= $12,325. Is that right, or did I invert (e.g. reverse the order of the numerator and denominator). – Tom Au – 2014-04-22T19:09:08.697
1multiplication is transitive (meaning order does not matter) so yes that's correct based upon the price you stated) – Mark S. – 2014-04-22T19:23:02.563