BIP Idea: incrementalrelayfee in feefilter?

Matt initiated a conversation emphasizing the difficulties users face due to discrepancies in minrelaytxfee and incrementalrelayfee settings across nodes. A significant issue arises when a Replace-By-Fee (RBF) transaction is accepted by a user's node but rejected by peers with different incrementalrelayfee settings, creating a deadlock where the transaction cannot proceed. Furthermore, the lack of visibility into peers' minimum RBF fee preferences exacerbates this problem, as there is currently no mechanism for sharing such preferences over the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network, barring the minrelaytxfee communicated through BIP133’s feefilter.

In response to these challenges, there has been an update in the feerate policy in Bitcoin Core's latest releases, which is reflected in adoption rates according to Clark Moody's dashboard. Over 30% of listening nodes have adopted the new lower incremental feerate, indicating a shift towards more economical transaction policies. However, the uptake by wallets to support creating transactions with these reduced feerates or to implement replacements at the lower incremental relay fee has been slow. This lag suggests that while node policy may evolve, wallet support does not always keep pace, leading to a misalignment in the ecosystem's adaptation to new policies. The discussion around whether to introduce special handling for incrementalrelayfee points towards a preference for broader, scalable solutions, with BIP 153: SENDTEMPLATE being proposed as a more effective approach to address these issues comprehensively.

Matt, in his communication, shared insights from firsthand experience as one of the early adopters of the lower fee settings, highlighting the practical challenges in finding compatible peers and suggesting enhancements to improve the situation. He proposes two ideas: firstly, making incrementalrelayfee information available to promote better network compatibility and secondly, enhancing node configuration options to allow targeting peers that meet specific minrelaytxfee and minincrementalfee criteria during the discovery process. These suggestions aim to ease the adoption process and enhance transaction efficiency across the network, underscoring the importance of adaptability and collaboration among developers, node operators, and wallet providers in the evolving Bitcoin ecosystem.