“Instead of using hard-coded rules for what fees to pay,
the [new] code observes how long transactions are taking to confirm and
then uses that data to estimate the right fee to pay so the transaction
confirms quickly – or decides that the transaction has a high enough
priority to be sent for free but still confirm quickly.”
“The current situation is even worse for free,
high-priority transactions: the hard-coded ‘high-priority’ constant is
much too low, so transactions sent for free can take a very long time to
confirm.”
“I expect to see transaction fees rise until a good
solution for optimizing the propagation of blocks across the network is
deployed, because I expect transaction volume to increase and I don’t
think miners will include more transactions in their blocks until
somebody fixes the ‘bigger blocks take longer to broadcast’ problem.”
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(CoinDesk) Blockchain.info has reached the biggest milestone in its history – it now boasts over a million wallets. A year ago it had fewer than 100,000 users and by late October the company announced that it had created 500,000 wallets, so it is evident that things are picking up.
A Blockchain representative told CoinDesk that the company plans to celebrate the latest milestone with some big prizes. Back in October, the lucky
user who created the 500,000th wallet was rewarded with 10 BTC, so the stakes are high. Blockchain acknowledged that reaching the one million mark is a major accomplishment for any service, especially in the bitcoin space. A company spokesman said:
“The year 2013 has been an unforgettable one for Blockchain. As the number of wallets has doubled from 500,000 since November, the world’s most popular bitcoin website is proud to announce reaching 1,000,000 wallets for their wallet service.”
Blockchain started 2013 with around 100,000 users. By contrast, 2014 is kicking off with more than a million users. The company said: “The growth seen over the past year has happened during a pivotal time for bitcoin. Blockchain plans to build this milestone into an outreach opportunity for bitcoin newbies and enthusiasts.”
Blockchain.info added that its leadership role in the bitcoin economy is “only just beginning,” so we can expect a lot more over the next few months.
It is also keen to emphasise that it is nearly a “100% bitcoin” business, as it pays its employees and most of its services in bitcoin. It also closes its business deals in bitcoins, including the recent acquisition of ZeroBlock, the most popular iOS/Android app for bitcoin.
If, by chance, you did open a Blockchain account over the last few hours, it might be a good idea to check whether you were the lucky one-millionth user.
Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.