Do transactions with null data take longer to confirm?

2

I was under the impression that null-data transactions were standard, but whenever I try to broadcast one it takes a while for it to appear in a block.

I tested this by broadcasting 2 transactions with same fees and same priority. The standard one got picked up in the next block, while the null-data one has yet to appear in a block (there's been 3 non-full blocks mined so far).

example tx: https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/tx/c0b0de8662054cadd461b488676a374f8f962c91612070e8e23b95d108d36217/

Am I doing anything wrong to make this transaction non-standard?

Mike

Posted 2015-06-08T12:52:42.350

Reputation: 23

Answers

4

  1. Not all miners accept transactions with null-data (OP_RETURN) outputs
  2. Not all nodes relay such transactions
  3. Are you sure that your null-data transaction is standard (for clients 0.9.x+) ?

UPD: your output is 6a74686973206973206120746573740d0a and decoded to:

OP_RETURN // 6a
OP_DEPTH  // 74
OP_ENDIF  // 68 ... oups!

This is non-standard output. Because null-data output should contain only one OP_PUSH operation, not an arbitrary bytes

amaclin

Posted 2015-06-08T12:52:42.350

Reputation: 5 763

Got it, thanks! I was just doing OP_RETURN [data] instead of OP_RETURN [num bytes of data][data]. Tested a new transaction and it got picked up by many more mem pools (not in a block yet).

It does seem that 1. and 2. on your list are also correct, since in some older examples that had standard scripts (I created those with a library instead of manually) also took longer to go into a block.

Additionally, some services like blockchain.info will refuse to broadcast them (They say the script is non standard even though it is) – Mike – 2015-06-09T10:54:37.537

Asked: 2015-06-08T12:52:42.350

Viewed: 327 times

Active: 2015-06-08T13:08:24.727