There is hardly any on chain because of filters. What a fucking moron.
Discussion
The question I have is if the uncapping of Op Return will provide more available megabytes for jpeg-ers to capitalize on - which could incentivize them to use it over settling for the discounted witness.
Peter is advocating for that.
The path Core has chosen is to optimize bitcoin around the usecase of arbitrary data storage, instead of building systems that deter against it.
I'm not sure that's entirely true,
if everyone was running knots would the jpeg-ers abusing witness data suddenly get stopped in their tracks?
He is openly on record as "hoping" spammers will increase larger opsec rtn transactions instead of using their miner workaround.
To answer your question,.I don't think it stops them, abusers like Mara will put any garbage on chain.
But it is significant for Core, it shows they are compromised and have lost their way.
If those same transactions that were already taking place end up in OPReturn instead of the direct to miner setup - that would be a win.
If it encourages more transactions of the sort, at least the witness discount isn't provided & OPReturn is pruneable.
You could argue it's a net negative, but then you'd also have to take the stance that Lightning network & congruent multisig addresses weren't worth a little more spam here & there.
-> I think the main gist of this debacle is that core devs haven't had to stand up to user scrutiny in a while.
-> this woke everyone up & people started paying attention to knots - which has been around for a while now - no one cared.
-> this is good for Bitcoin education & decentralization.
Agree with your last points. This battle may be lost, but the lines are being drawn at least.