But let us find out. How do you define spam, and why should anyone take that definition seriously?
My definition of spam is when someone doesn't transact because they want to make an economic transaction, but rather to do something else, like filling blocks with crap or bloating the blockchain.
Alex, have you ever written any code? It's a wonderful thing to try, even if you never plan to do it for fun or profit. It's, in a way of speaking, explaining complex things to a machine, a machine which, though capable of being quick and consistent, doesn't know its ass from its elbow without you telling it, procedurally, how to do it. Step by step.
This will prepare you for future interhuman interactions, like the one I'm having with you.
Bitcoin is not sentient, it makes no value judgements beyond truth values of variable, so telling Bitcoin "spam is the stuff we don't want, get rid of it" will only result in "Brrp! bleep bloop X=42."
Please tell me you understand, and that I don't need to resort to lower, register-level explanations.Because there is a lower level? xD
Anyway it's easy to considerate spam. We could pu a low minimum fee. Say anything under 0.0001 btc fee is spam. Seems good no? It means it would cost people more money to spam.
I don't have a problem with introducing minimal fees, and no problem with defining spam as "any tx with less than X sat/kb." I'm good with that, though neither Classic or Core have this option on the table.
Can you guess why?
Once we define spam, we have a starting point, we can discuss why/why not the definition is acceptable to us & likely consequences of filtering those tx. Instead of being stuck in this lockgroove.
So you're implying bot Classic and Core have interest in letting the users stuck in their shit?
Because that seems rather obvious to me that the answer to spam attack is to decrete spam anything lower than X btc fee. It'll make every miners include as many txs as possible and will clear the mempool quickly.
I'm implying that introducing mandatory fees is seen by many as heresy, a striation cult at best.
"I know that, whatsoever Satoshi doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it" (the previous min. fee were merely 'suggestions,' not part of the protocol).
The *need* to introduce nontrivial minimal fees highlights the flaws of presuming a naturally-developing fee market.If free market doesn't lead to fee market, and we need to change the protocol, the sacred writings of our Prophet are wrong. And if wrong once...
But about fees & spam: Miners, according to "rational self-interest" argument, are sufficiently incentivized by "thou shalt not shit where thee sleepeth" commandment. They should not debase bitcoin by bloating the blockchain, thus devaluing their rewards. Caveat: They sell BTC for USD -- their wealth is not in BTC, so that's why.
So pushing for min fees brings attention to some serious shit, so not to be done.