It reduces the centralizing effects of submitting direct to miners and it makes it possible to not push spam to utxo. Both of these things are better for bitcoin and therefore support the monetary aspects of the chain.
Discussion
Yes if spammers can use op_return instead of direct submission to miners, it helps to prevent mining centralisation from getting worse. However, the only pool I could find that publicly offers this service is Mara with slipstream. Doesnât it seem a bit premature to remove op_return limits with the intent of reducing mining centralisation by making a service that a pool with only 5% of the hash rate offers, obsolete? I understand that other pools may implement this service later down the line, but that means this change does not reduce mining centralisation from its current levels, it only helps to prevent it getting worse. We can agree mining centralisation is a problem today, so wouldnât it make more sense to support solutions that actually reduce mining centralisation like Ocean and DATUM instead of pushing contentious changes that only help prevent this issue from getting worse?
Removing op_return does give spammers a less technically harmful alternative solution for uploading spam, but are many spammers actually going to use it if the op_return solution is 4x more expensive? I hear the âfees are the filterâ argument a lot , but this contradicts the point that with the removal of op_return spammers can spam in a less harmful way because wouldnât they choose the cheaper alternative (witness data)? We both agree that inscriptions are bad for bitcoin and so isnât the most logical choice to provide a solution to this bug, such as the one knots has already implemented (inscriptions filtering at the mempool level) and the one core refused to implement in 2023.
Perhaps mara is not dominate because the service they offer is not in demand currently. I think core would argue against things that create the game theory conditions for more centralizations. Core has been discussing these changes for years.
Datum wonât fix this specific issue.
Everything is a technical difficult thing until it isnât. Software makes all types of spam easier over time.
Filtering inscriptions at the mempool level isnât a bug fix. Itâs just more filters and is fraught with cat and mouse games, arms race, and major issues false positives. I would rather we deal with spam vs have non spam transactions getting censored my overzealous filtering.
One of the reasons core say they are making this change is to address mining centralisation by disincentivising direct submission services. Funnily enough Datum does fix this. If a large majority of pools use Datum then itâs the individual miner responsible for the block template construction, not the pool. This then makes it significantly harder to directly submit your transaction and see it included as there is much more variation in who is mining the block. The issue with mining centralisation today is that there are a small number of pools with majority of the hash power responsible for block template construction. This can lead to out of band transactions becoming more centralising for the large pools. But why not support a solution that gives the block template construction back to the hashers which would solve this entire block template construction centralisation issue?
If Maraâs slipstream is not in demand why even rush to make this change. What youâre saying is, itâs not in demand now but we guess it will in demand in the future. It seems very premature. There is currently a lot of demand for spam on bitcoin, so itâs interesting that this service is not also in demand.
The cat and mouse game is always worth playing if you donât want to facilitate spam on bitcoin. It signals a hostility towards spammers, which will push a large majority of spammers away (it pushed vitalik buterin away in 2014), because the only way to spam is to pioneer a new method which is beyond the ability of a majority of people, and even if this new method can be made easier for regular people, it will be able to be filtered out by nodes as well. If bitcoin is very unchanging, there are only so many possible ways spammers can hack spam in. And itâs a game that the anti-spammers will win because filters more dynamic and easier to implement than the creation of new methods of spam.
Iâm interested to understand how filters facilitate censorship. Currently 99% of all nodes have filters, does that mean bitcoin today and since itâs creation has been a censoring platform? Also, filters do not filter out monetary transactions, for example, even if on knots you set the datacarriersize=0 (which is the filter relevant to op_return), all native monetary transaction will not be filtered. Itâs a similar story with filtering inscriptions as inscriptions have to use a pattern that is identifiable.
What do you propose when you say âIâd rather we deal with spamâ because doesnât opening the op_return limits actively facilitate spam?
Datum doesnât solve the issue of miners wanting to mine higher fee blocks. You are fighting against greed and that rarely works out. All you need is one pool attracting all the miners who want maximum revenue and suddenly the balance tips and these miners become the high margin game in town. Over time they win and the datum miners excluding spam lose.
There are methods to hide spam in inscriptions that filters cannot stop without censoring non spam transactions. I would rather deal with some spam than deal with a system that is now suddenly no longer censorship resistant. This is a fundamental philosophical issue. Luke jr is driven by an insane desire to please the state. I donât care what the state wants I want freedom.
The current filters at issue donât facilitate censorship because they arenât actually doing much. People who want to get shit on chain have lots of aveneues. The filters luke is proposing to weed out inscriptions will promote censorship because no one can guarantee that they wonât be censoring transactions that are in fact valid monetary use cases. This becomes a governance issue and turns this whole system into a shitcoin dao.
We have rules about what a valid transaction is. A mempool policy should not override that.
In the end this all doesnât matter much but it has been illustrative as to how many bitcoiners are retarded followers of someone like Luke Jr.
Miners wanting higher fee blocks is not an issue and is in fact important for the security of the network as the block subsidy decreases and the industry becomes more competitive. The issue is that a very small number of entities have control over block template construction. How does Datum fix this? It allows for any hasher not just the pools to be in charge of block template construction. This of course addresses block template construction centralisation as now you have millions of individual hashers responsible for what goes into a block. This means it will be extremely impractical to go direct to a miner as even the largest miner Mara only has ~5% of the hash rate, meaning it would/could take a long time before your submission was mined.
âAll you need is one pool attracting all the miners who want maximum revenueâ. Wouldnât this large pool also attract all the miners that donât include spam as well and therefore the rewards would be distributed among miners who do and donât mine spam? We must assume miners will always prioritise profit and so the nodes need to disincentivise miners from including spam. How do the nodes do this? If a majority of nodes filter large op_return transactions (over 80 bytes) the block filled with large op_return will propagate slower and the risk of that block going stale is higher. This disincentivises miners from mining spam filled blocks as they may lose the whole block entirely. This is a realistic possibility and why Mara charges 2x for slipstream.
âThe current filters at issue donât facilitate censorship because they arenât actually doing much.â. If this is the case, why does removing them improve the network in anyway if they donât do much? Why not just leave them if they arenât doing anything? Itâs funny that you say they donât do much when 99% of all op_return transactions since the addition of op_return have been under 80 bytes meaning they are extremely effective at what they were designed to do. Just because they can be bypassed by a determined spammer doesnât mean they donât do anything. The fact they have to be bypassed means they do their job very well.
The current filters issue relates to datacarriersize. This DOES NOT filter regular transactions because regular transactions do not use op_return. Op_return was designed for arbitrary data and so this the filter of 42/80 bytes related to how much arbitrary data will be relayed. Opening op_return to 100kb signals that the storage and sending of arbitrary data is a native feature of bitcoin, basically meaning that spam is accepted. I assume we both want bitcoin to be a monetary only protocol, the changes to op_return take bitcoin in the opposite direction.
âWe have rules about what a valid transaction is. A mempool policy should not override that. â. The rules regard to consensus which are the rules we all agree on and hence will be looser. When I run a node, I have my own mempool that is not shared with anyone. Should I be able to decide what data my own hardware stores in plain text in RAM, and relays?
Mempool policy does not âoverrideâ a valid transaction because everything in a mempool must be adhering to consensus rules otherwise nodes wonât accept it.