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PSA: “Inscriptions” are exploiting a vulnerability in #Bitcoin Core to spam the blockchain. Bitcoin Core has, since 2013, allowed users to set a limit on the size of extra data in transactions they relay or mine (`-datacarriersize`). By obfuscating their data as program code, Inscriptions bypass this limit.

This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1. It took longer than usual due to my workflow being severely disrupted at the end of last year (v24 was skipped entirely).

Bitcoin Core is still vulnerable in the upcoming v26 release. I can only hope it will finally get fixed before v27 next year.

Piriya ⚡🟧 2y ago

Ok, let me try to understand this.

So Bitcoin core has an option to set a data limit for extra data in each transaction but since inscription obfuscate 'extra data' as program code, ie, putting data elsewhere, like in the signature, for example, they were able to bypass this limit.

So this 'fix' is not about limiting or blocking inscriptions, but rather, to give a choice to node runners to choose wether they wanted to relay transaction with large 'extra data' or not as they should have always been able to (well, at least 2013) by making -datacarriersize to also apply to inscription data.

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