The Mysterious Case of 1 Satoshi Transactions Clogging Up Bitcoin Wallets
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Many Bitcoin users have been reporting mysterious 1 satoshi 0. The transactions are being sent from vanity Bitcoin addresses beginning with "1Enjoy" and "1Sochi," and theories behind the transactions range from it being a new kind of spam, to an attempt to bloat the blockchain, to an effort to attack Bitcoin addresses to people, to collect bitcoin dust merely being a test. The earliest reference to such transactions I've been able to find date back to October,but collect bitcoin dust has been a sharp escalation in the last several days.
I've personally received a score or more of them, including collect bitcoin dust three recent transactions to a wallet on Blockchain. Note that all three transactions are unconfirmed. This means that the blockchain i. Bitcoin miners are ignoring these transactions.
This is because of their size—0. Currently, the minimum transaction that is likely to collect bitcoin dust confirmed is 5, satoshis, or 0. That's why many of the Collect bitcoin dust faucets I've been testing have minimum cashouts of satoshis or more. What I've experienced, and what many other Bitcoin users on various forums have reported is that these transactions "fail" after a few days and disappear from your wallet. The question is, collect bitcoin dust, why were they sent in the collect bitcoin dust place?
The first theory is that these transactions are intended as spam. This goes collect bitcoin dust to some of the earliest reports, where the Bitcoin address used to send the satoshi collect bitcoin dust back to one gambling site or another.
The thought is that the spammers are counting on some recipients being gamblers who will then follow the trail, discover a gambling site, and deposit Bitcoins on that site.
That's pretty reasonable for addresses that trace back to a known site. It's essentially free advertising because the transactions will never go through and the spammers get their Bitcoins back. The problem is that this theory only covers collect bitcoin dust that trace back to a known site, service, or something, anythingidentifiable. In the case of the three address above, what exactly are they spamming? Is it Coca Cola with a super stealth campaign to Enjoy [Coke]?
I doubt either, to say the least. Another theory is that this is an attempt to bloat the blockchain and slow down the network. If so, it's a terrible idea, at least on the scale that it is being done now.
The network can handle these transactions, and in fact, it largely ignores them. A far more intriguing idea is that these transactions are designed to map out who owns what address. Under this scenario, nerdspooks harvest addresses from the blockchain remember that any address that has received Bitcoin is known publicly on the blockchainsend out these transactions and then look to see who complains about it on BitcoinTalk. A tiny corner of the map gets filled in. It's a fiendish plan that might have been designed by this guy:.
The theory that I like the most is that we're seeing some kind of test from either a commercial spamming organization or one of the world's intelligence organizations. I have no idea what exactly is being tested, but in that no other idea makes any sense, I'll settle for this one. It's important to note that receiving one of these transactions means little or nothing. There is nothing that he sender can get from you, including information, by sending you a satoshi.
As noted above, every Bitcoin wallet address that has ever received or sent Bitcoins is already publicly known, and they had to already have harvested even that from the blockchain before they sent you the satoshi. That's part of collect bitcoin dust point of Bitcoin.
The anonymity of the cryptocurrency comes from the fact that while the transactions are public, the collect bitcoin dust of an address are not. Collect bitcoin dust reality is that the transaction will simply go away, and collect bitcoin dust is no discernible threat in receiving one.
I spoke to a collect bitcoin dust operator about this, and he was utterly unconcerned about this issue. I recommend the same attitude for normal users, too. There was a clever piece of open source software released in December called dust-b-gone.
As of this writing, it's Windows only, but what it does is collect all the dust out collect bitcoin dust a Bitcoin-QT wallet a client-side walletand then bundle them into one transaction that is essentially sent to miners in the form of transaction fees. I don't run a wallet on Windows, or I'd try out dust-b-gone.
If these transactions persist, I'm hoping a Mac developer ports the software or develops something similar for Mac users. It would also be nice if online wallets like Blockchain. Image made with help from Shutterstock.
