<p>Perhaps only for other dust sized transactions with minimal fees. Dust transactions with small fees are low priority and are NOT guaranteed to be confirmed in the order the transaction was placed but rather by the priority. So lets say there is a backlog of 1 million dust transactions, I could create a transaction using 1 output for 0.01 and include a fee of 0.0002 and it should be included in the next few blocks, well before any of those 1 million dust transactions. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-07-16T16:17:58.617Z
2015-07-16T16:17:58.617Z
m1xolyd1an
<p>Miners can also choose to not confirm these dust transactions, esepcially since they opt to choose the highest transactions first.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-10-26T16:22:04.297Z
2016-10-26T16:22:04.297Z
user2716556
<p>My concern isn't with individual bitcoin users but governments, what if a government spammed the network with say $1 Billion dollars worth of tiny dust transactions, including fees? The backlog of unconfirmed transactions would seem to effectively render the blockchain useless at that point and people would no longer have trust in or want to wait for transactions to confirm. This seems like it could be a major issue for the protocol...are their any defenses in place currently for some type of attack like this?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-07-17T05:41:15.987Z
It would take significantly less than a billion dollars to render Bitcoin completely inoperable.
Claris
<dust><blockspace-market><spam>
bitcoin dust spamming - could the blockchain be rendered useless?
mvanzyl
# bitcoin dust spamming - could the blockchain be rendered useless?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-07-16)

My concern isn't with individual bitcoin users but governments, what if a government spammed the network with say $1 Billion dollars worth of tiny dust transactions, including fees? The backlog of unconfirmed transactions would seem to effectively render the blockchain useless at that point and people would no longer have trust in or want to wait for transactions to confirm. This seems like it could be a major issue for the protocol...are their any defenses in place currently for some type of attack like this?

**Tags:** dust, blockspace-market, spam

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: It would take significantly less than a billion dollars to render Bitcoin completely inoperable.  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2015-07-16. Score: 4

Perhaps only for other dust sized transactions with minimal fees. Dust transactions with small fees are low priority and are NOT guaranteed to be confirmed in the order the transaction was placed but rather by the priority. So lets say there is a backlog of 1 million dust transactions, I could create a transaction using 1 output for 0.01 and include a fee of 0.0002 and it should be included in the next few blocks, well before any of those 1 million dust transactions.


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### Answer by username_3 on 2016-10-26. Score: 0

Miners can also choose to not confirm these dust transactions, esepcially since they opt to choose the highest transactions first.


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