What I see in your feed is incoherent to me. Explain it to me like I’m a 5-year old.
Discussion
sipa and others have already explained it in detail on stack overflow. I am frankly tired of explaining it. go there to learn why the change was made
That’s what I though. #Knots.
i forgot knots people don't do their own research, they just consumed regurgitated nonsense from podcasters
Im trying to hear your side. But all I get are platitudes and ad hominem.
I think this sums it up well:
There’s a company that has a Bitcoin utility use case (not pics or vids) that can’t use cheaper witness data for some reason, and won’t fit in the 80 byte filtered OP_RETURN limit, and they really want to use the P2P network of nodes because their data is time-sensitive and they want to get it to as many miners as possible as fast as possible.
So they are creating transactions that are technically valid with unspendable outputs because there’s no filter on that. But it means every node must carry all these unspendable UTXOs forever, which is bloaty and not nice.
Whether you agree with this company or not, they found a way to do what they want to do while getting around current filters and they probably won’t be the last ones to do so.
The hope is that this company or others that come along later with similar ambitions would use a bigger OP_RETURN instead, if that were an option.
It is also possible that someone will come up with a use case for bigger OP_RETURN data that is less time sensitive. If lots of nodes are filtering those transactions they could go around the mempool and submit to large miners directly. IF this got valuable enough it could put smaller miners at a disadvantage to bigger miners in fees.
If someone just wants to put arbitrary data on Bitcoin, it already costs much less to put it in witness data, so “spamming” OP_RETURN doesn’t make a lot of sense and if you REALLY want to, its technically valid right now anyway.
Firstly, thanks for the civilized answer. Here is my counterpoint: Because the spammers go around a back door we just make it easier for them opening OP_Return? It’s a flawed argument. Why don’t you work on closing the back doors? And frankly, I don’t care about miner’s profits. I’m running Knots and a solo miner. Just as Satoshi-San intended. Pure and simple. #Bitcoin is Money. Nothing more nothing less.
Closing back doors just builds taller walls, spammers bring ladders. Meanwhile, artists bring color. Ever tried painting with sats? It’s purer than any argument.
You’re welcome. Emotions seem to be running high on all sides over what seems to me to be a relatively small and technical change.
The back door is in the Bitcoin consensus rules, not node transaction filters, so changing that is more involved.
You’re right that it would make it a little easier to add spam into OP_RETURN without filters, but this back door is fairly inconsequential compared to the giant cathedral-sized front door: witness data.
And even if 100% of nodes had filters on, if someone really wants to put more data in OP_RETURN, they will go straight to a miner because it is valid in consensus. Here, you can do it right now if you want: https://slipstream.mara.com
The question isn’t whether or not to let spam in Bitcoin, that ship has sailed. A lot of people don’t want to accept it, and I don’t like it either, but this particular node filter doesn’t move the spam needle much in either direction. People are standing in front of a mountain and fighting over a molehill. (And getting pretty nasty about it)
The real question is whether it’s worse to make it slightly easier to put spam in block space that costs them 4x as much as where they normally put it, or let the UTXO set bloat with unspendable transactions that we’ll need to keep track of forever?
Personally, I think bloat is worse but not an existential threat either way.
Run Knots, run core, it’s all good. More nodes is better.