estimatefee / estimatepriority RPC methods

New RPC methods: return an estimate of the fee (or priority) a
transaction needs to be likely to confirm in a given number of
blocks.

Mike Hearn created the first version of this method for estimating fees.
It works as follows:

For transactions that took 1 to N (I picked N=25) blocks to confirm,
keep N buckets with at most 100 entries in each recording the
fees-per-kilobyte paid by those transactions.

(separate buckets are kept for transactions that confirmed because
they are high-priority)

The buckets are filled as blocks are found, and are saved/restored
in a new fee_estiamtes.dat file in the data directory.

A few variations on Mike's initial scheme:

To estimate the fee needed for a transaction to confirm in X buckets,
all of the samples in all of the buckets are used and a median of
all of the data is used to make the estimate. For example, imagine
25 buckets each containing the full 100 entries. Those 2,500 samples
are sorted, and the estimate of the fee needed to confirm in the very
next block is the 50'th-highest-fee-entry in that sorted list; the
estimate of the fee needed to confirm in the next two blocks is the
150'th-highest-fee-entry, etc.

That algorithm has the nice property that estimates of how much fee
you need to pay to get confirmed in block N will always be greater
than or equal to the estimate for block N+1. It would clearly be wrong
to say "pay 11 uBTC and you'll get confirmed in 3 blocks, but pay
12 uBTC and it will take LONGER".

A single block will not contribute more than 10 entries to any one
bucket, so a single miner and a large block cannot overwhelm
the estimates.

1 files changed, 142 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/qa/rpc-tests/smartfees.py b/qa/rpc-tests/smartfees.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..e8abbfba19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/qa/rpc-tests/smartfees.py
@@ -0,0 +1,142 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+
+#
+# Test fee estimation code
+#
+
+# Add python-bitcoinrpc to module search path:
+import os
+import sys
+sys.path.append(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)), "python-bitcoinrpc"))
+
+import json
+import random
+import shutil
+import subprocess
+import tempfile
+import traceback
+
+from bitcoinrpc.authproxy import AuthServiceProxy, JSONRPCException
+from util import *
+
+
+def run_test(nodes, test_dir):
+    nodes.append(start_node(0, test_dir,
+                            ["-debug=mempool", "-debug=estimatefee"]))
+    # Node1 mines small-but-not-tiny blocks, and allows free transactions.
+    # NOTE: the CreateNewBlock code starts counting block size at 1,000 bytes,
+    # so blockmaxsize of 2,000 is really just 1,000 bytes (room enough for
+    # 6 or 7 transactions)
+    nodes.append(start_node(1, test_dir,
+                            ["-blockprioritysize=1500", "-blockmaxsize=2000",
+                             "-debug=mempool", "-debug=estimatefee"]))
+    connect_nodes(nodes[1], 0)
+
+    # Node2 is a stingy miner, that
+    # produces very small blocks (room for only 3 or so transactions)
+    node2args = [ "-blockprioritysize=0", "-blockmaxsize=1500",
+                             "-debug=mempool", "-debug=estimatefee"]
+    nodes.append(start_node(2, test_dir, node2args))
+    connect_nodes(nodes[2], 0)
+
+    sync_blocks(nodes)
+
+    # Prime the memory pool with pairs of transactions
+    # (high-priority, random fee and zero-priority, random fee)
+    min_fee = Decimal("0.001")
+    fees_per_kb = [];
+    for i in range(12):
+        (txid, txhex, fee) = random_zeropri_transaction(nodes, Decimal("1.1"),
+                                                        min_fee, min_fee, 20)
+        tx_kbytes = (len(txhex)/2)/1000.0
+        fees_per_kb.append(float(fee)/tx_kbytes)
+
+    # Mine blocks with node2 until the memory pool clears:
+    count_start = nodes[2].getblockcount()
+    while len(nodes[2].getrawmempool()) > 0:
+        nodes[2].setgenerate(True, 1)
+        sync_blocks(nodes)
+
+    all_estimates = [ nodes[0].estimatefee(i) for i in range(1,20) ]
+    print("Fee estimates, super-stingy miner: "+str([str(e) for e in all_estimates]))
+
+    # Estimates should be within the bounds of what transactions fees actually were:
+    delta = 1.0e-6 # account for rounding error
+    for e in filter(lambda x: x >= 0, all_estimates):
+        if float(e)+delta < min(fees_per_kb) or float(e)-delta > max(fees_per_kb):
+            raise AssertionError("Estimated fee (%f) out of range (%f,%f)"%(float(e), min_fee_kb, max_fee_kb))
+
+    # Generate transactions while mining 30 more blocks, this time with node1:
+    for i in range(30):
+        for j in range(random.randrange(6-4,6+4)):
+            (txid, txhex, fee) = random_transaction(nodes, Decimal("1.1"),
+                                                    Decimal("0.0"), min_fee, 20)
+            tx_kbytes = (len(txhex)/2)/1000.0
+            fees_per_kb.append(float(fee)/tx_kbytes)
+        nodes[1].setgenerate(True, 1)
+        sync_blocks(nodes)
+
+    all_estimates = [ nodes[0].estimatefee(i) for i in range(1,20) ]
+    print("Fee estimates, more generous miner: "+str([ str(e) for e in all_estimates]))
+    for e in filter(lambda x: x >= 0, all_estimates):
+        if float(e)+delta < min(fees_per_kb) or float(e)-delta > max(fees_per_kb):
+            raise AssertionError("Estimated fee (%f) out of range (%f,%f)"%(float(e), min_fee_kb, max_fee_kb))
+
+    # Finish by mining a normal-sized block:
+    while len(nodes[0].getrawmempool()) > 0:
+        nodes[0].setgenerate(True, 1)
+        sync_blocks(nodes)
+
+    final_estimates = [ nodes[0].estimatefee(i) for i in range(1,20) ]
+    print("Final fee estimates: "+str([ str(e) for e in final_estimates]))
+
+def main():
+    import optparse
+
+    parser = optparse.OptionParser(usage="%prog [options]")
+    parser.add_option("--nocleanup", dest="nocleanup", default=False, action="store_true",
+                      help="Leave bitcoinds and test.* datadir on exit or error")
+    parser.add_option("--srcdir", dest="srcdir", default="../../src",
+                      help="Source directory containing bitcoind/bitcoin-cli (default: %default%)")
+    parser.add_option("--tmpdir", dest="tmpdir", default=tempfile.mkdtemp(prefix="test"),
+                      help="Root directory for datadirs")
+    (options, args) = parser.parse_args()
+
+    os.environ['PATH'] = options.srcdir+":"+os.environ['PATH']
+
+    check_json_precision()
+
+    success = False
+    nodes = []
+    try:
+        print("Initializing test directory "+options.tmpdir)
+        print("  node0 running at: 127.0.0.1:%d"%(p2p_port(0)))
+        if not os.path.isdir(options.tmpdir):
+            os.makedirs(options.tmpdir)
+        initialize_chain(options.tmpdir)
+
+        run_test(nodes, options.tmpdir)
+
+        success = True
+
+    except AssertionError as e:
+        print("Assertion failed: "+e.message)
+    except Exception as e:
+        print("Unexpected exception caught during testing: "+str(e))
+        traceback.print_tb(sys.exc_info()[2])
+
+    if not options.nocleanup:
+        print("Cleaning up")
+        stop_nodes(nodes)
+        wait_bitcoinds()
+        shutil.rmtree(options.tmpdir)
+
+    if success:
+        print("Tests successful")
+        sys.exit(0)
+    else:
+        print("Failed")
+        sys.exit(1)
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    main()