Can a Miner or Mining pool have exclusive access to a transaction and its fees?

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Edit: This is a dumb question. I was new to Bitcoin when I asked it. Feel free to ignore or delete this Q:

Is it possible for a miner or mining pool to receive and not retransmit to peers information about a pending transaction?

Here is the scenario:

Several "normal" transactions are transmitted P2P with a transaction fee ranging from zero to 0.20 BTC. One client wants to have priority processing with a miner either because they have a special business agreement, are a frequent user, or pays a fee.

Likewise the miner wants to have "first dibs" on high value transactions + fees, sometimes at the exclusion of other miners who aren't part of that "fee collective".

Question:

Is it possible for a miner to get "first dibs" access to a transaction, before the rest of the network sees the pending transaction? How would this work, and can the current codebase support this?

goodguys_activate

Posted 2012-11-13T08:34:08.033

Reputation: 11 898

I agree with @DavidSchwartz: this doesn't make any sense. – o0'. – 2013-03-20T09:57:52.117

@Lohoris - I asked this question in November '12 ... when I just learned about Bitcoin about one month earlier. Yep it's a dumb question. – goodguys_activate – 2013-03-20T12:08:54.073

1You're paying extra for a transaction and in exchange you're getting a delay in having it processed? I can't see anyone opting for such an arrangement. If any other miner or pool mines the next block, you just paid for a delay of roughly 10 minutes. – David Schwartz – 2012-11-14T11:30:07.793

Answers

2

A non-standard client could choose to send his transactions only to a specific miner. One example might be for a client to negotiate a "monthly package" (off the blockchain), and then send all his tx directly to the pool, without any specific tx fees.

There is nothing in the protocol that prohibits or enables it - it is a possible extension that is outside of the protocol. To my knowledge, no such schemes have been reported in the real world.

ripper234

Posted 2012-11-13T08:34:08.033

Reputation: 25 192

Asked: 2012-11-13T08:34:08.033

Viewed: 251 times

Active: 2016-03-16T07:44:49.433