Quote from: SomeWhere on March 11, 2013, 04:14:55 PM

Quote from: asherp on March 11, 2013, 04:11:38 PM

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on March 11, 2013, 04:04:15 PM

Quote from: asherp on March 11, 2013, 04:02:30 PM

This is wrong. It makes no sense to take the highest fees if you know you have no chance of getting them, since faster miners will always get there first.

I think you don't understand how mining works-- there is no such thing as a "faster" miner, just miners with more or less chance of creating the next block.

Please correct me, but doesn't it take longer to solve a given block if one has a slower computer? If so, wouldn't the transactions in the block just be older? Hence, confirmation times would scale inversely with tx fees.

wot?

Please explain if this doesn't make sense. Miner Bob is the fastest miner on earth and the blocksize limit has been reached. He collects as many txs sorted from highest to lowest and tries to solve his block. Miner Alice is twice as slow as miner bob. She collects txs with fees sorted from highest to lowest, but she tries not to include fees so high that Bob will be likely to have included them in his block. She begins mining. Bob finishes his block before Alice finishes hers. Bob's block has higher fees in it and they were confirmed faster than Alice's. Hence, those sending tx's with lower fees know that people like Alice are more likely to get them and can expect slightly longer wait times. Again this only happens if Bob has a reason not to include low fees - the blocksize limit forces him to choose only the highest fees. Does that make sense?