Everyone's freaking out about "spam" on Bitcoin again, like we haven't been through this a hundred times already. Let's go over the so-called "solutions" people keep throwing around like they're going to save the day:
Consensus changes? Not happening, we hardly made it out alive in the last one.
Node-level policies? Congratulations, you've successfully told your node not to forward transactions. Meanwhile, the miners -- the people who actually write to the blockchain -- couldn't care less (except for Luke's pool that lost his miners' dozen BTC for censoring Ordinals' transactions because Ordinals are bad for BTC but writing scriptures on it is good:
.)
Relay layer filtering like Libre Relay? cool, now you can filter transactions that still make it to miners anyway.
Block template/miners? ya sure thing, miners would be more than happy to ignore high-paying transactions just because you don't like them.
The harsh reality is: you can't stop people from using Bitcoin in dumb ways if they're willing to pay. Bitcoin is permissionless. That's the whole point. So if someone wants to spend $500 to attach their 30th birthday photo into the blockchain using a fake script, the miners are happy to take their money.
Some folks would rather pretend their personal node is Bitcoin's gatekeeper. "On my dead mempool!", while miners laugh and take the money anyway.
It's like this:
You've got a bunch of sugar-high kids jumping on your living room couch every night, you can't kick them out (they live here, sorry), so your options are:
A- Yell at them all night until your throat's sore
B-Just move the damn couch into their room and enjoy your movie in peace.
In general, I think the proposal is reasonable -- maybe except for removing -datacarrier and -datacarriersize. Those give node operators the basic freedom to decide what kind of junk they're willing to relay. If someone wants to filter nonsense from their node, why take that option away?
Also, when blocksize increase anyway?
Consensus changes? Not happening, we hardly made it out alive in the last one.
Node-level policies? Congratulations, you've successfully told your node not to forward transactions. Meanwhile, the miners -- the people who actually write to the blockchain -- couldn't care less (except for Luke's pool that lost his miners' dozen BTC for censoring Ordinals' transactions because Ordinals are bad for BTC but writing scriptures on it is good:
.)Relay layer filtering like Libre Relay? cool, now you can filter transactions that still make it to miners anyway.
Block template/miners? ya sure thing, miners would be more than happy to ignore high-paying transactions just because you don't like them.
The harsh reality is: you can't stop people from using Bitcoin in dumb ways if they're willing to pay. Bitcoin is permissionless. That's the whole point. So if someone wants to spend $500 to attach their 30th birthday photo into the blockchain using a fake script, the miners are happy to take their money.
Some folks would rather pretend their personal node is Bitcoin's gatekeeper. "On my dead mempool!", while miners laugh and take the money anyway.
It's like this:
You've got a bunch of sugar-high kids jumping on your living room couch every night, you can't kick them out (they live here, sorry), so your options are:
A- Yell at them all night until your throat's sore
B-Just move the damn couch into their room and enjoy your movie in peace.
In general, I think the proposal is reasonable -- maybe except for removing -datacarrier and -datacarriersize. Those give node operators the basic freedom to decide what kind of junk they're willing to relay. If someone wants to filter nonsense from their node, why take that option away?
Also, when blocksize increase anyway?