<p>I'm reading Franco's book "Understanding Bitcoin" and greatly enjoying it.  Simultaneously I'm tailing a node log file.  I notice the plethora of "nonstandard transaction: non-final"s.  Franco says these are usually written by miners on bespoke node code bases.  What are the main purposes of such transactions? </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-04-16T13:09:17.583Z
That message means that you're seeing a transaction on the network being relayed which is not yet valid in a block. They are nonstandard because we don't want them to fill up the mempool awaiting acceptance into a block. These are not transactions in blocks, they are not produced by miners. The most common cause is that your node is a bit behind in synchronization, so it's mistaken about what is acceptable. This corrects itself when it's synchronized.
Pieter Wuille
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-04-16T23:07:38.677Z
HI thanks for taking the time Pieter.  I think this response may not be right.  My understanding is that all unconfirmed (non-block) transactions which are not double spends will enter the mempool until such times as they become embodied in a block.  Most are of course pay-to-address.  Some are pay-to-pubkey.  Some are multisig and P2SH and some OP_RETURN. The last of the types of transaction is the UNKNOWN tx, which is often called **non-standard**.  It is said that one needs to write non-reference node code and run a miner which codes for unknowns.  What do miners use this for?
Kimbrough Software
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-04-16T23:25:53.730Z
The type of transaction you're seeing is not really non-standard; they're just not being accepted due to being nonfinal, which means they have locktime that's set in the future.
Pieter Wuille
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-04-17T01:56:17.570Z
thanks again Pieter.  http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9165/whats-are-non-final-transactions Gives more colour on the uses for transactions with dates set in the future.  So I now know what those non-final transactions are about.   However I still believe that there are such things as non-standard transactions which aren't non-final.  These only ever get into blocks when blocks are created in nodes which have special modifications made to them to accept these non-standard transactions.  I guess the headline question still remains: does anyone know typical uses for these in reality.
Kimbrough Software
<transactions><mempool><non-standard-transaction>
To what end do miners typically put "nonstandard" transactions
Kimbrough Software
# To what end do miners typically put "nonstandard" transactions

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-04-16)

I'm reading Franco's book "Understanding Bitcoin" and greatly enjoying it. Simultaneously I'm tailing a node log file. I notice the plethora of "nonstandard transaction: non-final"s. Franco says these are usually written by miners on bespoke node code bases. What are the main purposes of such transactions?

**Tags:** transactions, mempool, non-standard-transaction

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: That message means that you're seeing a transaction on the network being relayed which is not yet valid in a block. They are nonstandard because we don't want them to fill up the mempool awaiting acceptance into a block. These are not transactions in blocks, they are not produced by miners. The most common cause is that your node is a bit behind in synchronization, so it's mistaken about what is acceptable. This corrects itself when it's synchronized.  
> **username_0**: HI thanks for taking the time Pieter.  I think this response may not be right.  My understanding is that all unconfirmed (non-block) transactions which are not double spends will enter the mempool until such times as they become embodied in a block.  Most are of course pay-to-address.  Some are pay-to-pubkey.  Some are multisig and P2SH and some OP_RETURN. The last of the types of transaction is the UNKNOWN tx, which is often called **non-standard**.  It is said that one needs to write non-reference node code and run a miner which codes for unknowns.  What do miners use this for?  
> **username_1**: The type of transaction you're seeing is not really non-standard; they're just not being accepted due to being nonfinal, which means they have locktime that's set in the future.  
> **username_0**: thanks again Pieter.  http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9165/whats-are-non-final-transactions Gives more colour on the uses for transactions with dates set in the future.  So I now know what those non-final transactions are about.   However I still believe that there are such things as non-standard transactions which aren't non-final.  These only ever get into blocks when blocks are created in nodes which have special modifications made to them to accept these non-standard transactions.  I guess the headline question still remains: does anyone know typical uses for these in reality.  

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## 0 answers

