| json_metadata | "{"app":"musing/1.1","appTags":["bitcoin"],"appCategory":"bitcoin","appTitle":"Is it possible to send BTC without a transaction fee theoretically or practically?","appBody":"<p>It is not possible to send bitcoins from one address to another without a transaction fee in practice nor in theory. It is a different matter that the transaction fee can be low when there is little traffic on the network. Why is this the case? That's because Bitcoin is a Proof-of-Work blockchain where getting to be the creator of a block requires that a node that does it first try to guess the input of a hash function. Guessing the input of a double SHA-256 (The input is made up of the header of the new block to be mined including a hash of the transactions in the block + a random number called a <em>nonce</em> that you're trying to guess. With the right nonce you'll get the right amount of zeros in the front of the hash of the new block.) takes a lot of trial and error (billions of times on average) but once it is discovered, it is easy and fast for all the other nodes to verify. The purpose of making all the nodes to do the laborious hashing is to create incentives for them to stay honest and only mine blocks with correct transactions. Producing an incorrect block will lead to a loss of mining rewards and working for nothing. There is always a cost to having a transaction you send to the network mined into a block by design and there is no way to avoid paying a transaction fee because if you set the fee at zero, no miner will accept it.</p>\n<p>The Lightning Network is a second-tier network on top of the Bitcoin network that enables two-way channels to be opened between Bitcoin addresses where double spending is not possible. In the LN, funds can be moved around without committing a transaction on the Bitcoin main net. But when you open a Lightning channel between two addresses, you need to make a transaction to deposit an amount of BTC as collateral. Then you can (tentatively) move BTC between the addresses. When you're done transacting on the LN and want to cash out, you must transfer the final balance in a transaction between the two Bitcoin addresses. So, you can't avoid transactions on the LN, either. </p>","appDepth":2,"appParentPermlink":"f3uklf3aq","appParentAuthor":"milaan","musingAppId":"aU2p3C3a8N","musingAppVersion":"1.1","musingPostType":"answer"}" |
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