Prioritizing larger value transactions doesn't really solve the problem because it's perfectly possible to spam by sending large amounts of bitcoin from one of your addresses to another ad infinitum.
No, you can't, because every time you send them they become "new", and the priority is age multiplied by amount:
Code:
// Priority is sum(valuein * age) / txsize
(valuein is the size of the bitcoin input, age is # of blocks deep, and txsize is the number of bytes the transaction takes up)
Quote
If you prioritize older transactions, people would be incentivised to split their bitcoin holdings in such a fashion as to ensure that they do not generate significant amounts of change when they buy things with bitcoins. If you hold your bitcoins in powers of 2 * 0.01 then you can pay for anything you can aford with no change and the least fragmentation. Of course after spending the money you have to rebalance your holdings as soon as possible. The best way to do this is not immediately obvious to me. Possibly under certain circumstances it might be advantageous to generate change as long as you could specify how you wanted it split up. Possibly powers of 3 might be best for multiple purchases.
Anyway, the end effect would be that transactions would have more ins and outs. Probably the average number of ins and outs would be some very small multiple (or large fraction) of the log of the number of bitcoin pennies in the transaction. I estimate that this might increase the average transactions size by over 10 times.
Anyway, the end effect would be that transactions would have more ins and outs. Probably the average number of ins and outs would be some very small multiple (or large fraction) of the log of the number of bitcoin pennies in the transaction. I estimate that this might increase the average transactions size by over 10 times.
Ummm... the more you mess around with the coins in your wallet, the newer they are, and the lower their priority (relative to everybody else who might want to get their transactions into the next block). I haven't thought deeply about it, but I bet simply leaving your coins as they are and making change as necessary will work out best. But please, create your own client and try to break things on the test network!