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Can I somehow create a transaction that is broadcasted over the bitcoin network but will not go into a block?

Might be handy for SatoshiDice like confirmations.

edit: What I have in mind is transporting information over the bitcoin network without bloating the blockchain.

kermit
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  • There's no way to do that, the protocol isn't built to do such a thing. – o0'. Mar 14 '13 at 19:01
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    You are asking is there a transaction type that will be relayed by nodes but not included in a block. Does this help: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/6035/153 – Stephen Gornick Mar 15 '13 at 03:45
  • Fork of this question here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8408/can-nlocktime-tx-be-used-to-flood-the-miners-mempools – kermit Mar 15 '13 at 08:22
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    @Lohoris: Answer accepted - for now :) – kermit Mar 15 '13 at 08:25
  • Actually it might be possible using nLocktime and sequence numbers... see fork link above. Might not be fully implemented as of now, though. – kermit Apr 02 '13 at 08:34

2 Answers2

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This has two problems:

  1. The network still needs to remember those transactions, so this doesn't save storage space.
  2. If someone does a double-spend attack, two nodes could believe two different things about the state of the network, depending on which transaction they heard about first. Over time, their views of the network would diverge more and more.
Nick ODell
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It is perfectly possible to create a transaction that is valid but not broadcast to the Bitcoin network.

However the usefulness is a doubtful because what such a transaction will tell is basically "the person that created this transaction had control over this amount of money at this point of time", it has no use to actually transmit value as the blockchain does not timestamp the transaction by including it in a block and no one will acknowledge that the money has changed hands.

If you want to detail your use case you may get a better answer.

David
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