SatoshiDice does not follow the rules:
The blockchain is a system for transferring value, of which the final total is specified in advance. Those are the terms of the social contract every Bitcoin holder has adopted understanding. Those are the terms every node has agreed to voluntarily participate in the network.
Nodes and miners have not unanimously agreed to have their resources/time spent inefficently processing informational messages like "you lose", "you win", or even "I bet on game with much". This was never part of the agreement.
My cognitive dissonance alarm is ringing.
On the one hand you're against people including 'informational messages' in the blockchain, even if actual value is transferred...
On the other hand your mining pool has embedded prayers and scripture into the blockchain.
Perhaps you've recently changed your opinion on blockchain bloat?
Regardless, I think S.Dice performs a few services to Bitcoin as a whole and is a good thing:
- It stress tests the Bitcoin network. Without it we wouldn't truly know how the network would handle transaction volumes that we see today as it accounts for a large proportion of global volume.
- It provides an incentive to use Bitcoin. While many are of the opinion that gambling is wrong, far more people around the globe enjoy it. S.Dice provides a simple way to gamble and has introduced Bitcoin to new users as a result; people can't gamble online as easily with cash.
- It lets us anticipate future requirements for Bitcoin sooner, as Mike has pointed out with respect to the soft block limit. This is like a small alarm: we're 1/4 of the way to a breaking point so let's start thinking about the best way to solve this problem now.
Yes, S.Dice produces a large volume of transactions, but S.Dice is NOT an attack of the network. Every transaction into S.Dice is a transfer of legitimate value, and every response is another transfer of value. An attack would transfer NO value, or such negligible value that it is worthless.
Refusing to process these transfers in value is similar to a net-neutrality issue: it's a "currency-neutrality" issue.
Bitcoin was developed to prevent any party from declaring who can and cannot participate in a financial network. Blacklisting a set of addresses from having their transactions included in the blockchain seems like a step backwards and is the antithesis of Bitcoin's raison d'etre.