protocol allows unlimited splitting on stake

[dooglus]

See this transaction: http://khashier.com/tx/71f60ecbb97a69ead2722efb973aa3f8aaa4d22618ecccd2824de762f29c358a

I staked a 5 CLAM output into 6 separate 1 CLAM outputs and 4 0 CLAM outputs. There's no transaction fee for doing so. This could be abused to make arbitrarily large transactions up to the block size limit.

We'll need a hard fork to fix this.

I propose disallowing any output less than 1 CLAM in the staking transaction. So I can split a 5 CLAM input into 6 separate 1 CLAM outputs, but no more than that. Since the block reward is 1 CLAM, the total output will always be greater than 1 CLAM, since the input is always greater than 0.

This will prevent people from staking a 0.1 input into two 0.55 outputs, but I think that's fine.

Aside: maybe we should have a 'hardfork' label to collect all the hardforking issues together, so we can easily find them all when it comes to fork time.

[creativecuriosity]

Considering that the coinbase transaction adds to blocksize, and thus has a marginal cost on the network, might it make sense to allow arbitrary splits but enforce the same byte-based enforced fee as other transactions?

EDIT: Of course, allowing zero sized outputs makes no sense whatsoever and needs some type of sanity check.

[dooglus]

The problem with enforcing a fee for large coinbase transactions is that the fee is paid to the person creating the coinbase - ie. themself. In other words there's no way of charging a fee for coinbase creation. Although I guess you could charge a fee for spending coinbases.

[creativecuriosity]

Well, the thought was that in the near future fees might be incremented onto a fee pool, and then a portion of those fees awarded. That would eliminate the problem with any change in fee structure which would allow for stakers to avoid the fees via staking their own transactions.

[creativecuriosity]

It would also provide stability to the subsidy.

Unfortunately (fortunately?), a portion still needs to go directly to the block staker - to prevent the loss of incentive to include transactions in the first place. Otherwise, stakers would stake empty blocks for the propagation advantage, much the same as BTC is experiencing.