WEBVTT 00:00.660 --> 00:05.520 So I would like to introduce Francisco Cabanas, otherwise known as ArcticMine. 00:05.520 --> 00:07.020 He is on the Monero core team. 00:07.020 --> 00:13.820 He's going to be speaking with us about the economic impact of COVID-19 and transaction capacity and fees in Monero. 00:13.820 --> 00:16.280 So I'm going to go ahead and pass that on over to him. 00:16.340 --> 00:17.720 ArcticMine, go ahead and take it away. 00:18.260 --> 00:19.160 Thank you. 00:19.160 --> 00:20.740 Thank you for the great introduction. 00:21.020 --> 00:33.920 So the topic that I'm going to be speaking today is about drastic external impacts on the Monero network, high response, and what kind of impacts they would have. 00:34.160 --> 00:42.140 Now, the initial scenario that I'm looking at, we're going to have a scenario, and then we're looking at the aftermath, what happens. 00:42.140 --> 00:51.380 So you throw a disruption, aftermath, what happens if you don't change the protocol, have a proposal, implications of the proposal, and then some questions and discussion. 00:52.880 --> 01:04.620 So what actually started the scenario was an issue raised by user Yukoi HB, and actually a very important issue. 01:04.620 --> 01:08.920 And I'm going to quote what he said, and this is quoting straight from the GitHub issue. 01:08.920 --> 01:16.540 Imagine adoption humming along and the long-term median gets really high, say 100 times the current default penalty-free zone. 01:16.740 --> 01:23.200 Suddenly, catastrophe hits, and several major sources of transaction volume are taken offline. 01:23.200 --> 01:32.260 Short-term transaction volume collapses to five times the default penalty-free zone, and nominal fees are practically 20 times higher. 01:32.260 --> 01:39.780 Now, the scenario we're talking about is about 1,000 times of the transaction activity in Monero. 01:39.800 --> 01:46.740 This came up in February, just before the awareness of COVID-19. 01:47.120 --> 01:55.580 And then within a few days after the issue came, the start of the awareness of COVID-19, which is actually a perfect example for the issue. 01:56.180 --> 02:10.180 Pandemics was not referred in the particular issue, and I have a link below to GitHub for the research project issue, and I would suggest that there we could do a lot of also discussion on some of the technical solutions. 02:12.100 --> 02:22.920 Now, Monero has a long-term median, and it changes every... it's 100,000 blocks, so it changes up to 50,000 blocks, and that's around 69 days. 02:22.920 --> 02:25.540 It's about a couple of months and a week. 02:26.300 --> 02:39.740 And this is an important time frame to consider, because what's happening here is that at that point in time, it changes, and it's a scenario, and it has very significant impacts. 02:39.880 --> 02:43.960 And we're going to look at possible causes of an external disruption. 02:43.960 --> 02:50.620 Now, for example, one of the measures is a disruption of various Monero markets that believe in the issue. 02:50.620 --> 03:01.660 One of the issues that was mentioned was, for example, a closure of a very big DNN market, and what impact that would have on transactions. 03:02.560 --> 03:10.340 And then this category, I would say, is an impact that doesn't impact the traditional finance system. 03:10.740 --> 03:20.440 The second group that I'm including, which impacts on the international finance system, would be things like COVID-19, and the awareness that you have of the issue. 03:20.440 --> 03:29.080 The issue I should discuss, the possibility was of a limited nuclear war, and the kind of consequences of that, national disaster, major economic disruption. 03:29.080 --> 03:49.780 What we're talking about here is events, external events, that cause major economic disruption, and how that will impact the Monero network, and also, in particular, how will it impact the fee structure, and how we can respond to it, and some changes that are needed to do that. 03:51.220 --> 04:02.440 Now, the next slide is really interesting, because we are considering a very sizable series of scenarios. 04:02.440 --> 04:11.920 One thing I should mention in the previous slide, the numbers we're talking about will have a very high fee, sorry, a very high price on Monero. 04:12.180 --> 04:16.420 So there's no recovery, or a very long, slow recovery. 04:16.420 --> 04:26.560 So this is where you see the collapse in transaction rates, and it just sort of dies there, and nothing happens, and maybe a few years down the road starts to recover again. 04:26.560 --> 04:29.020 And the DNM market is a good example of that. 04:29.820 --> 04:38.380 And so in that case, you basically have, in that scenario, relatively little impact on the network, you do have the fee impact. 04:39.080 --> 04:50.060 The next one is a recovery within the long-term median, and that means that you drop, and then you come back up again within the 69-day time frame. 04:50.060 --> 04:57.240 And that means that the recovery level for transactions within the Monero network is really only five times, could be as high as five times. 04:57.480 --> 05:10.640 And then the third example is we start a long-term median, and it collapses completely, and then we are going back, we have to recover the full 20 times in the example, plus, say, an additional five times. 05:10.680 --> 05:16.940 The key to understand is this, an impact of the event on traditional finance. 05:16.940 --> 05:25.620 So if it impacts the banking system, if it impacts financial, can also have a significant impact on transaction demand, and this is going to show up in the recovery phase. 05:26.360 --> 05:33.220 So when we're trying to come out of this, all of a sudden everybody wants to use Monero because there's problems in the banking system. 05:33.300 --> 05:42.620 So not only do we have to deal how we get the median back up again to where we were, but now we have all this additional demand because the other guys are having problems. 05:45.270 --> 05:47.030 So let's look at the examples. 05:49.170 --> 05:52.730 Let's say that there's no impact on traditional finance. 05:52.730 --> 05:59.990 So in this example, this interruption of the Monero markets, the likely result is no recovery. 06:01.150 --> 06:03.970 So it's a long process. 06:04.230 --> 06:08.850 So basically, you have replacing markets come up, even a possible negative impact. 06:09.370 --> 06:19.910 You basically have a long recovery, and nothing particularly happens in this scenario that really requires a lot of impact on the protocol, except for the fee question. 06:22.010 --> 06:24.570 Let's look at the COVID-19 example. 06:24.570 --> 06:27.690 This is a great example of the external scenario. 06:27.690 --> 06:29.110 So what are we looking at here? 06:30.090 --> 06:43.950 Well, either it's going to recover right within the two months to 69 time frame, in which case, and then you get the demand, or maybe it's a bit delayed. 06:44.750 --> 06:51.050 And then you have the full collapse in the long-term medium, and this is critical. 06:51.830 --> 06:56.650 And then you have to make up not just 20 times the transaction, but maybe 100 times. 06:56.670 --> 06:59.890 So you really have a big upswing afterwards. 06:59.890 --> 07:07.810 You suddenly have to ramp up the whole network, not just because of the impact, but now because everybody else wants to use Monero because there's a problem somewhere else. 07:07.890 --> 07:11.690 And that's the key distinction when you're impacting traditional finance. 07:12.250 --> 07:33.010 So the other two examples, the limited nuclear war or the... do parallel this in a similar way, or can parallel it, as it will be, say, a very disruptive volcanic eruption, this kind of things, can actually have a similar impact economically, and the parameters are comparable. 07:33.010 --> 07:36.790 I will focus primarily on COVID-19 simply because we're living right through it. 07:36.790 --> 07:39.930 This is a perfect example of the type of scenario. 07:41.930 --> 07:48.330 So we step back for a moment and ask the question, what exactly did COVID-19 do to the Monero network? 07:48.870 --> 07:52.930 Well, what did it have... did the standard Monero stop functioning? 07:53.230 --> 07:54.030 Well, no. 07:54.070 --> 07:56.670 Did the blocks stop being mined? 07:56.670 --> 07:57.730 No, the miners shut down. 07:57.730 --> 07:58.390 No. 07:59.290 --> 08:00.610 Did the developers shut down? 08:00.610 --> 08:03.170 Did the functionality of the community shut down? 08:03.170 --> 08:04.230 To most extent, no. 08:04.230 --> 08:10.110 The only thing, basically, we're seeing a significant impact is the fact that we're delivering these stocks virtually. 08:10.110 --> 08:12.510 We did have to cancel Confranco in Berlin. 08:12.690 --> 08:17.370 So we had some impact, but relatively minor. 08:17.370 --> 08:26.190 The core components of the community, of the network, the clearance of transactions, all this happened, no problems. 08:26.870 --> 08:29.990 Now, compare that with the banking system. 08:30.790 --> 08:38.470 Bank hours were changed, bank branches were closed, lineups outside, people wearing masks, plexiglass screens on the tellers. 08:38.770 --> 08:42.310 When you look at the impact, they're way more significant. 08:42.570 --> 08:45.430 We take a look at payments. 08:45.430 --> 08:55.090 Well, the biggest one, actually, is that we've been in card payments, an increase from in card type and a drastic fall in chip and PIN. 08:55.090 --> 08:59.110 So there's been this movement in the type of credit card transaction. 08:59.110 --> 09:01.010 There's been some drop in cash. 09:01.230 --> 09:07.330 Part of the idea being is that certain types of payments are perceived to be propagating the COVID-19. 09:07.330 --> 09:23.730 And obviously, if you're sitting on a pin pad and inserting a card and fiddling with the terminal and touching all the absolute tips of your fingers, your chances of spreading the virus are much higher than if you just bring the card to the terminal and don't touch anything. 09:24.650 --> 09:26.990 And this is a so-called contactless card tap. 09:26.990 --> 09:31.310 The reality, however, is in a lot of card taps, there's still a lot of fiddling. 09:31.750 --> 09:33.550 And merchants expect you to touch buttons. 09:33.550 --> 09:34.930 And I have actually refused to do that. 09:34.930 --> 09:36.010 It's quite interesting. 09:37.230 --> 09:39.150 And so that's one element. 09:39.150 --> 09:48.490 Then there's cash, which is kind of in between, obviously better, worse than a totally contactless card tap, but far better than chip and PIN. 09:49.250 --> 09:52.510 And in this picture, you consider a cryptocurrency payment. 09:52.510 --> 09:58.990 Now cryptocurrency payment, in order to use it, you have to be contactless, because basically what you're doing is you're aligning QR codes. 09:59.070 --> 10:01.850 So you've got your phone, you're going to align the QR code, you're going to do it at a distance. 10:01.850 --> 10:03.610 It does not work if you touch it. 10:04.430 --> 10:05.770 So this is really interesting. 10:05.770 --> 10:09.330 If you want to pay with Monero, you can't propagate the virus. 10:09.330 --> 10:10.870 You have to go out of your way to do it. 10:10.890 --> 10:12.990 With the other payments, you can't. 10:15.460 --> 10:17.100 Well, the other ultimate best. 10:17.100 --> 10:20.680 Well, major unemployment, business failures. 10:20.700 --> 10:23.420 You walk around the city, all these businesses are closing. 10:23.940 --> 10:25.620 Massive increase in government debt. 10:25.620 --> 10:30.760 Governments have responded to the problem by going into debt and trying to mitigate the impacts. 10:31.980 --> 10:38.360 And a massive intervention by the central banks on increasing the money, the fiat money supply. 10:39.060 --> 10:40.500 This is mitigated. 10:40.500 --> 10:41.000 It's fine. 10:41.000 --> 10:44.660 It's mitigated to some degree, but it also has long-term implications. 10:45.300 --> 10:51.880 One major impact, obviously, is if you increase the number of unemployed people, you're going to disrupt car payments. 10:51.880 --> 11:01.980 And the reason you're going to do that is because people are going to suddenly lose their credit scores, and they're not going to be able to have credit cards, or they're going to be afraid that their debit account in the bank is going to be seized. 11:01.980 --> 11:05.380 So there's going to be a push towards cryptocurrencies just from this element. 11:06.020 --> 11:13.480 I don't even want to consider what could possibly happen if it's a major disruption of the banking system, and we still haven't got to that stage. 11:14.720 --> 11:17.520 Everything is kind of okay, maybe. 11:17.740 --> 11:29.520 The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, they're trying a very delicate job between hyperinflation on one side and collapse of financial institutions on the other. 11:29.520 --> 11:30.740 It's a delicate position. 11:30.740 --> 11:34.880 I honestly would not want to be in their shoes for what they're doing. 11:34.880 --> 11:37.820 It's a lot easier dealing with the Monero side of this. 11:39.660 --> 11:45.540 So one possible impact is a significant shift towards the use of cryptocurrency in payments. 11:46.260 --> 11:51.280 And this would be way greater in the original scenario, but could even occur in the current situation. 11:51.280 --> 11:57.820 So what you can see is that there's a demand on the Monero network, even as it is right now. 11:58.280 --> 12:01.220 And in many ways, this is a bit of a warning. 12:01.220 --> 12:12.200 And if something were to happen with the Federal Reserve and the banking system, something were to happen, even in a smaller country, we could suddenly face ourselves with significant demand on transaction. 12:13.180 --> 12:16.640 The story is not being ended on this. 12:16.640 --> 12:20.400 So we still have the possibility of the risk of having to deal. 12:20.400 --> 12:21.420 And that means at every level. 12:21.420 --> 12:31.420 Everything from helping newbies on how to set up their wallets, to making sure your notes are up to snuff, to cleaning, upgrading your internet connection. 12:31.900 --> 12:37.820 I mean, the reality is we could find ourselves having to roll up our sleeves at every level in the community. 12:38.120 --> 12:43.360 Just as the result is just because of these disruptions, there's suddenly a big demand on the network. 12:45.340 --> 12:47.440 So now let's take a look at what happens. 12:48.140 --> 12:49.220 No changes to the protocol. 12:49.220 --> 12:50.320 So we look at the protocol right now. 12:50.320 --> 13:04.460 First of all, in this scenario, and it's very important, we're doing a thousand times increase in the Monero transaction volume, because basically we are running right now about a tenth of the penalty free zone. 13:04.480 --> 13:13.170 So we're talking about basically 30 megabytes versus 30 kilobytes that we have today in transaction volume. 13:14.300 --> 13:34.990 One of the implications of this is if you look at the equation of exchange and you make some reasonable assumptions, and no change in velocity, and a constant, then we're talking about a potential price for Monero of around 100,000 US dollars. 13:34.990 --> 13:54.010 This sounds significant, but if you're going to increase the transaction capacity demand of the Monero network by a factor of a thousand, and it's fair to realize that assuming the velocity doesn't change and it hasn't come from somewhere, and the distribution doesn't change, 13:54.010 --> 13:57.350 so obviously the only thing you can move is the price. 13:58.270 --> 14:04.370 So now if you increase Q by a factor of a thousand, you've got a decreased P by a factor of a thousand, which is the inverse. 14:04.370 --> 14:07.130 So effectively what we say instead of $100, it's $100,000. 14:07.310 --> 14:08.770 Now there's variability. 14:08.770 --> 14:13.430 It could be $10,000, it could be a million, but there is definitely a factor here. 14:13.750 --> 14:27.070 And quite honestly, I mean, if a whole bunch of people are transacting the Monero network to that level, then there's also be a lot of investors are suddenly going to be interested in this cryptocurrency that's actually working and that you can actually use. 14:27.210 --> 14:32.550 To put it in another way, you have a practical use scenario in place. 14:32.550 --> 14:36.890 The thing to understand is the fee in current terms will not change significantly. 14:37.230 --> 14:49.910 So our fees would be roughly a bit higher, and this is mainly due to the fact that we still have the ten-fold increase until we get to the penalty-free zone, which has an impact on fees. 14:50.170 --> 14:55.190 And it's counterbalanced by things such as a drop in the emission-cum-to-tail emission. 14:55.510 --> 15:01.790 And we're going down to also some of the improvements such as CLSAG and so on. 15:02.330 --> 15:10.390 So that's kind of what... so we're talking about $0.04 USD for two-in-two-out transaction, even though the price has gone up by a factor of a thousand. 15:10.390 --> 15:12.490 That's one of the beauties of the Monero protocol. 15:13.470 --> 15:17.250 As you increase the block size, the fee for transaction goes down. 15:17.670 --> 15:22.310 So if you have this assumption, you have essentially a constant fee, close to a constant fee, in terms of 15:25.690 --> 15:27.210 a sort of fixed USD. 15:27.210 --> 15:32.970 By the way, I'm talking about USD as of today, so you sort of factor in any changes in the inflation rate. 15:34.510 --> 15:36.270 So what happens if you don't change the protocol? 15:36.270 --> 15:41.550 Well, okay, so the 20% increase in fee, this really goes from, say, $0.04 or $0.80, you'll see. 15:42.190 --> 15:53.670 And the interesting thing there is, the issue can be really disruptive if you have multi-signature transactions that are created ahead of broadcast. 15:53.670 --> 16:06.910 So for example, you create a transaction, you have multiple signatures, you engage in some business arrangements, and then like three weeks later or five weeks later or something, you want to broadcast that transaction, and now the fees have changed on you. 16:06.910 --> 16:09.690 And that was one of the main factors in the protocol question. 16:09.690 --> 16:11.370 I mean, you know, how do we deal with these situations? 16:11.370 --> 16:12.950 And that's the fee impact question. 16:13.650 --> 16:17.650 So there's a real need for minimum fee predictability for a given period of time. 16:17.850 --> 16:21.330 And as I said, the free impact applies to all three recovery scenarios. 16:23.270 --> 16:30.450 So the white economy, where you have first number one, no recovery, very slow recovery, the recovery is fine. 16:30.450 --> 16:34.430 I mean, there's no real stress on the protocol, but the fee issue remains. 16:35.490 --> 16:39.450 We're just dropping it and we're not really suddenly putting more demands on the network. 16:40.650 --> 16:50.230 Now, in the second case, it starts to get a bit more interesting, because what happens there is you suddenly have a five times increase in demand scenario. 16:52.090 --> 16:54.250 So you're pushing your protocol. 16:54.250 --> 16:58.090 So you can kind of manage it, but it's far from ideal. 16:58.090 --> 17:02.690 You're pushing the limits of the growth rate of the long-term median, depending on the rate. 17:02.970 --> 17:06.430 So that's a bit tight, and you still have the fee issue. 17:06.930 --> 17:10.410 It's kind of possible, not ideal, but manageable. 17:12.530 --> 17:15.430 But the part serious problem is this one. 17:16.170 --> 17:18.690 What happens with the third example? 17:18.690 --> 17:22.910 Now you drop the long-term median by a factor of 20. 17:23.610 --> 17:37.230 So you drop down, and now to recover back again, you have to go into this two to three year period just to get back to where you were, and then also to then allow for the addition. 17:37.410 --> 17:38.990 It's just too slow to recover. 17:38.990 --> 17:41.290 So you don't have a recovery protocol. 17:41.290 --> 17:50.230 You drop, you can think of it as a big bang attack in reverse, where you actually suddenly drop the transaction, and it has real consequences. 17:50.330 --> 17:57.370 And this is actually a real serious problem that was identified in this issue indirectly, but definitely very good. 17:59.050 --> 18:01.190 So what are we going to do in the proposal? 18:01.210 --> 18:05.590 Well, number one, we increase the growth of the long-term median of 1.2x to 2x. 18:05.630 --> 18:10.410 That alone will address these kind of recovery issues to a significant degree. 18:10.490 --> 18:13.530 It's about 30 times versus five times in a year. 18:13.530 --> 18:17.530 So there's a real increase in the rate of growth, and that's important. 18:18.310 --> 18:21.310 It gives you that flexibility, that ability. 18:21.310 --> 18:26.350 Now there is a 50 plus factor in there for searching, but that's okay. 18:26.830 --> 18:30.990 B, and this is the critical part, you limit the decay of the long-term median to half. 18:30.990 --> 18:40.290 So what we say is, at the end of that 20-time drop, we don't drop the whole thing all down to 24, we just drop it to four. 18:40.290 --> 18:44.150 And then we wait another 69 days and drop it to four again, and so on. 18:44.750 --> 18:59.990 And then the third proposal was to set the penalty-free zone to the maximum, sorry, minimum to the maximum of the current 300,000 bytes and a quarter of the long-term median. 18:59.990 --> 19:05.230 Now, I have seen discussion of proposals that go higher than that, and they're quite interesting. 19:05.450 --> 19:09.710 In fact, one of the proposals, I think, has a similar implication to that. 19:09.890 --> 19:12.450 This should be discussed and looked at, because they're quite interesting. 19:12.530 --> 19:17.030 But this proposal basically involves a quarter of the long-term median. 19:19.540 --> 19:23.340 The next thing we do is we change the median and fee-for-no-relay. 19:23.340 --> 19:25.400 This is more of an anti-spam measure. 19:25.400 --> 19:38.060 The thing to bear in mind here is that if you have a series of transactions that are not minable, you can literally launch a DDoS attack against the network. 19:38.060 --> 19:47.180 So basically what you do is you flood the network with a mass of transactions which are under the not-going-to-get mind. 19:47.180 --> 19:49.740 And this is one of the reasons why you have a minimum fee. 19:49.740 --> 19:51.240 So that's the danger there. 19:51.240 --> 19:55.900 There is a potential attack in that, and that's the reason why you do that. 19:56.940 --> 20:04.080 You basically want to set that relay fee for the node so that there's a really good chance the transaction gets mined. 20:04.080 --> 20:17.000 Now, obviously, if you're sitting at one-tenth of the penalty-free zone, which we are right now, well, a fee of 20% of the reference transaction is going to get mined. 20:17.340 --> 20:19.740 So the attacker has a big risk. 20:19.740 --> 20:26.380 Once you go above it, it starts to get dicey, and you could get scenarios where this could actually happen. 20:26.440 --> 20:30.280 I should point out these attacks have actually occurred on Bitcoin. 20:30.740 --> 20:43.460 And if you run a full Bitcoin node, which I do, with the port open, and you suddenly see this massive surge in bandwidth , well, wait a minute, Bitcoin protocol is running at capacity. 20:43.460 --> 20:44.860 So why is this happening? 20:44.860 --> 20:52.320 These massive transactions that are being transmitted and distributed by the nodes which are not being mined because the fees are too small. 20:52.980 --> 20:58.000 And this type of attack could be done in Bitcoin to actually push up the fees. 20:58.000 --> 21:00.480 But it's exactly a similar kind of problem. 21:00.480 --> 21:02.900 So you do have, and it really has an impact on the node. 21:02.900 --> 21:08.840 Suddenly your bandwidth could increase by a factor of 10 or something just as a result of these type of attacks. 21:08.980 --> 21:14.920 And I have seen, I've experienced it myself, I wash my bandwidth, I have unlimited bandwidth and it can get away. 21:14.920 --> 21:17.340 But still, I mean, this is not true. 21:17.900 --> 21:21.760 So that's one of the reasons for this type of protection. 21:23.380 --> 21:26.520 A few technical changes with respect to the wallet fees. 21:27.560 --> 21:37.500 One of the things that's not well known about the wallet fees in Monero is that there is an adjustment where we try to shift the median by 10 blocks. 21:37.500 --> 21:49.560 And the idea is to assume the worst possible scenario so that if you create a transaction, it doesn't change fast enough that you can't send it because the structure of the median has changed and the fees have gone up. 21:49.560 --> 21:51.260 And so this is one of the ideas. 21:52.180 --> 22:01.880 And basically we have a series of fee schedules in there where we would have each level of fee is protected against changing the median. 22:01.880 --> 22:06.440 So the principle here is you keep paying a higher fee, you get more blocks. 22:06.440 --> 22:12.120 If you go all the way, you get like 200,000 blocks of protection, essentially by paying a higher fee. 22:12.860 --> 22:23.740 And the concept is that, for example, you simply say, okay, if I want just to send my transaction right away within 10 minutes, okay, fine, I go with a normal fee, the lowest possible fee. 22:24.260 --> 22:33.580 And if on the other hand, I wanted to be good for at least the balance of the short-term median, sorry, long-term median, then I would pay the next one. 22:33.580 --> 22:38.100 I want more, you know, another 100,000 blocks and I keep going up the line. 22:39.340 --> 22:41.880 So the implications are fees are highly predictable. 22:41.880 --> 22:46.320 For example, a fee of four times will ensure the minimum fee is minimal until the drop in the long-term median. 22:47.280 --> 22:50.660 And then you can examine the long-term median and actually predict the worst-case scenario. 22:50.800 --> 22:52.640 Or you can choose a fee all the way. 22:52.640 --> 22:55.220 But in reality, there's no free lunch. 22:55.220 --> 22:59.760 I mean, the longer you want to protect this, the more fee you pay. 22:59.760 --> 23:12.440 And I should point out, even increasing this penalty-free zone to something as high as the long-term median, which I suspect is one of the ideas behind the proposals, will mitigate this even further. 23:12.440 --> 23:17.820 But you still have this principle that the longer you go, you want to go the higher the fee. 23:17.820 --> 23:29.540 So if you want your fee to be minable, like, say, three months down the road, you're going to pay, or four months down the road, you're going to pay a much higher fee than if you just want to create the transaction and just send it right to the network. 23:32.510 --> 23:34.670 This is the critical impact of the project. 23:34.670 --> 23:37.230 You remove this risk of a sudden collapse of the long-term median. 23:37.230 --> 23:39.370 And this is the biggest issue that I identified. 23:39.670 --> 23:45.470 And that is, what happens is, if you let it collapse, then bingo, you have this massive recovery. 23:45.470 --> 23:48.910 Because if you drop all the way down, it could take like two to three years to get up there. 23:48.910 --> 23:51.550 And all of a sudden, in a couple of months, it collapses. 23:51.890 --> 23:57.430 And this is why having this graduated decline in the long-term median is very critical. 23:57.430 --> 24:01.190 And it does allow... this is probably the most critical approach. 24:01.190 --> 24:05.950 You do not want that long-term median to suddenly drop all the way from the top to the bottom. 24:05.950 --> 24:09.270 You want it to go down in steps, the same way it grew up in steps. 24:11.750 --> 24:14.710 There's minimal action in the absence of a sudden drop in transaction. 24:14.710 --> 24:21.170 And of course, the reason for this is that the dynamic penalty fee, so essentially, doesn't even come into play. 24:21.930 --> 24:30.750 And another interesting thing is that you could actually increase the rate to look at transaction growth. 24:30.750 --> 24:33.010 And I have a link here, and this should work. 24:33.010 --> 24:35.510 I'm going to link it here, and I'm going to show you the site. 24:36.530 --> 24:40.590 And you should see... there we go. 24:40.610 --> 24:46.070 Okay, so if I go on the link here, and I'll see the site. 24:46.070 --> 24:48.670 And you should see the site here on the screen. 24:49.790 --> 25:05.510 And basically, if you look at transactions, you're going to see that there is a very significant trend on the screen here. 25:05.510 --> 25:09.530 And again, we will see what we're seeing in this scenario. 25:09.830 --> 25:12.330 So I will close this out right now. 25:12.390 --> 25:13.930 This is come up. 25:15.550 --> 25:20.790 Yes, it comes up here, and we will then go out again. 25:23.010 --> 25:28.410 Okay, and we will close these out. 25:30.960 --> 25:34.760 There, and we should see the proposal again. 25:34.760 --> 25:38.280 So again, if you click on the link, you will see the transaction rates. 25:38.720 --> 25:45.160 And this is actually a way to see what happens if you actually... 25:47.360 --> 25:52.720 you can actually look at the transactions, and you can see basically what the trends are. 25:52.720 --> 25:59.560 What you'll find is that some of the recent trends are very close to the maximum rate of the long-term median. 26:00.920 --> 26:06.660 Okay, so now we are going to look at some implications again. 26:07.000 --> 26:12.320 If we increase the minimum relay fee, this mitigates against flood XMR types of attacks. 26:12.320 --> 26:20.780 Now, I started a second here, and I would say that flood XMR is potentially the bigger threat than Big Bang, simply because it's a motivation. 26:20.780 --> 26:33.600 Now, also flood XMR is easiest to mitigate, because what you do is you simply increase the... if you increase the ring size, then you turn around and you increase the cost to the attacker, and essentially relative to the defense. 26:33.600 --> 26:36.660 And that's a factor of the attack. 26:36.660 --> 26:44.200 But we've got to bear in mind that this minimum relay fee also mitigates against these types of attacks. 26:44.240 --> 26:47.880 I've included a link to the proposal specification here. 26:47.880 --> 26:50.920 And again, you can go to the... and take a look at it there. 26:53.440 --> 26:55.980 And I've been looking for some questions and discussion. 26:56.780 --> 27:02.800 So I will turn it back to the moderator if there's any questions that I need to answer, or any discussion.