Remind me again why people are so up in arms about spam on the timechain?
Discussion
😊🧡🫡
Something about believing they know what's best for the universe and arbitrarily trying to force it instead of pursuing a better understanding of the parts they don't see.
I have spam filtering settings on my node but I'm fine with people paying hefty amounts of money to get arbitrary data on there. The free market will provide.
I hot you
It makes it more costly to operate a node, which hurts decentralization over time
Got*
There is still a 4mb per block limit no?
Yes, but that doesn’t change my point. A change/proposal that allows for additional data that wouldn’t be there otherwise increases the cost of running a node and is a headwind to decentralization.
To what extent? Who knows, but we can know it won’t lower the cost of running and node and further decentralization
The block size limit already keeps the nodes small enough to maintain decentralization. That's why this argument has no weight.
‘Small enough’ and ‘Decentralized’ are not objetive parameters. A change that allows for more arbitrary data to be included in blocks that would not otherwise be there can only hurt the cost of running a node and decentralization.
I never stated the extent of the negative impact, just that there very clearly is one. So the question is, is it worth it?
There isn't an impact. That's the whole point you're missing.
It doesn't allow for any data that wouldn't be there otherwise. It removes filters. Those filters can already be removed and be in concensous anyways.
Why is a change needed?
It's not NEEDED. It makes Core more maintainable. Passing this puts the whole debate to rest. Senseless arguments about stuff that doesn't matter.
If nothing is being changed, then what is being passed?
Default filters. This is changing the default to have none and if users want them, then they can add them. It's better to have no arbitrary default filters. Because that's what they are. Arbitrary. If you would like to change your mempool policy after this merge then you are free to do so.
I guess if we are to believe that it Bitcoin is not strictly a monetary network, then changing the default to allow any type of data is not a big deal.
I am of the opinion that Bitcoin’s purpose is as a monetary network, so changing the default settings to allow for information that is not aligned with that purpose is a move in the wrong direction.
Subversion happens from within. Not saying this is an attack by state actors, but if they wanted to attack bitcoin they would do it this way. Slowly pushing for small changes that are seemingly not a big deal.
Just because someone can jump over a wall, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to have walls.
I don't understand why we give everyone a wall by default. This still allows for everyone to build their own wall as high as they want to. It just makes the default no wall. Making the repo more maintainable and putting the whole debate over how high the default wall should be.
Thanks for your summary. So, how does one go about re-adding the filters? Is it easy?
Not particularly. But it is easy to run a concensous forks like knots that has the filters in it. So if you would like to filter your mempool, then you can easily run knots.
So in the current bitcoin software, these filters are available, but not turned on?
They are available and some are turned on as we speak
Some, but not others?
No they are all on, it's just a matter of the thresholds. By default the OP RETURN data can hold 80bytes of data. You can raise or lower this limit. The PR is to remove it entirely. If they do, you can still run a node with whatever limit you want and you would still be in concensous.
Thanks. Does pruning remove this data by default?
No. Pruning just removes txins up to a certain checkpoint that you define. It doesn't care what's in them. But also this is for mempool policy. ie transactions that have not yet been confirmed. Once a txt is confirmed, every node will store it. No matter what their mempool policy is
There’s a block size limit.
I thought the ordinals and non monetary transactions were making node syncing of the latter years take waaaaaaay longer to sync.
That it what happened to me on my last sync of the full timechain, and i had attributed it to that 🙃😅
Is that not so?
Thanks
It is cheaper to verify inscriptions than a lot of normal transactions
So?
Allowing for additional data that would not be there without a change increases the cost of running a node and is a headwind to decentralization.
You feel it wont affect decentralization over time? I think the current concern is about needlessly making it more difficult to filter, for those who want to.
I heard it had something to do with prioritizing node operators barrier to operations. Need more info.
Maybe because spam has 2 components, the attack and its timing.
Well, let’s see how all the smugsters and mockers feel about it when fees spike back up to 1,000 sats/vbyte, making everything from opening and closing lightning channels, executing coin joins, consolidating UTXOs, and making routine on-chain transfers darned near impossible. All so we can record monkey pictures and other non-monetary transactions in perpetuity.
Is it your view that there is, over the long term, structurally more demand to pay for monkey JPEGs than there is demand for monetary bitcoin transactions?
Yes, but only for brief periods of time. As I recall, the last time the monkeys outbid the monetary guys, it lasted maybe 8-9 hours. Fees were over 1,000. Eventually the monkey folks are paying more in fees than they’re earning on the monkeys and fee rates return to normal. But I can tell you firsthand, if you have urgent non-monkey-business to do on-chain during one of those monkey-heavy periods, you’re in for a world of hurt. 🐵
Most altcoin activity is one-and-done.
What makes you think there will be another wave of monkey JPEGs of similar scale? People have learned it’s a scam now and the market is flooded with their unlimited supply.
Even if there is another wave of that stuff, imagine the types of clogs that will exist once bitcoin is successful as a global payment and settlement network.
All sorts of people will be priced out of the base layer from monetary transactions alone, unless Bitcoin stays small and niche.
What makes me think there will be another wave of monkey spam? Bitcoin Core devs are literally pushing through a source code update as we speak, against the wishes of many, that lifts the cap on the amount of spam that can be crammed into a transaction and, if I’m reading the proposal correctly, makes it more difficult to filter it out at the node level. They’re literally welcoming this type of activity with open arms. It’s championed by a fellow who promotes and profits from these schemes.
No, altcoin scams are most certainly NOT “one and done.” There’s a sucker born every minute. People will not learn. Even the lion’s share of prior victims will not learn.
Now, if your point is that people won’t be fooled by that *exact* same monkey promotion, then ok, I concede. Maybe they won’t. Maybe next time it’ll be a rhino. Or a Trump-themed cat. Or some other harebrained meme. One of them will catch on and fees will spike as monetary transactions get crowded out in favor of these garbage transactions. Then the fee bubble will pop and the cycle repeats.
As an aside, one of the things I absolutely love about Ethereum (as a Bitcoin maxi) is that historically, it’s acted as a magnet 🧲 for this type of garbage, keeping it out of the Bitcoin ecosystem. And how does the Bitcoin developer community respond? By inviting that exact same garbage into our own house.
Your point that hypothetically L1 backspace competition would heat up anyway, even in the absence of all monkeys 🐒, due to the sheer quantity of legitimate monetary transactions, is well taken. You’re absolutely right. And if it happens before the general masses get acclimated to L2 solutions then yeah, that’s a problem. But whatever time window you imagine we have before that happens shrinks dramatically with monkeys (and other chicanery) crowding out legit transactions.
lol that should be block space not backspace. Guess I should’ve used my backspace before hitting Post.
Dude what’s happening here?I’m fairly new to the btc game so I don’t have historical lived examples, but this behavior of btc core does not make any sense!
The only reasons for their behaviour I can’t think of are:
- they got corrupted by the system or blackmailed
- they got drunk with power and think they can force whatever they decide
- they got rich enough and now don’t care anymore about btc original mission
But what I don’t get the most is that if implemented this change will destroy btc, like you said it will be flooded with spam without a doubt, pushing out ppl who want to use it for monetary transaction. Do core really believe this will not happen? I can’t believe they don’t see it coming
Sorry man just trying to engage with someone on this issue which is managed in such a weird way
I wish I had some inside information on what’s going on with the Bitcoin core devs, but I’m just an outside observer reading the same stuff you are.
From what I can tell, one of the key guys trying to obsolete Bitcoin’s original mission as a medium of exchange and store of value and transform into a less capable Ethereum knockoff, is a partner in a company that promotes this garbage. It’s just greed.
I wouldn’t say it’s the end of Bitcoin, but when I see that those in control are banning dissenting opinions, deleting comments, and ramming through harmful proposals that mainstream Bitcoiners don’t want, I’d say it might be the *beginning* of the end. It’s just too soon to say.
At the end of the day, maybe it’s just inevitable that the control of money, be it fiat or Bitcoin, eventually finds its way into the hands of a small group intent on using it for their own ends at the expense of everyone else. Maybe that’s just the nature of money.
Yes I agree with you, it might be the beginning of the end if things don’t change….
But it seems fishy as hell, even Lyn, which I always considered as one of my reference point in the btc community, seems strange about this issue (the answers she gives, and the way she treats the topic as if it’s not a major point of contention)
Lyn’s a macroeconomic wiz but not necessarily in a position to understand the ripple effects of these seemingly small protocol changes. Nor does he claim to be. Nor do I, for that matter.
I’m a pretty simple minded guy with only a surface level understanding of how these BTC transactions are crafted. From my perspective, I’m just asking myself, “Does this make things easier for spammers , or harder? Does it further Bitcoin’s primary purpose as money, or just it make it easier to crowd out monetary transactions with garbage? Do the people pushing the proposal receive outsized financial benefits from the change due to their own business interests?”
The only response I’ve seen so far is, “No worries. Spammers probably won’t make use of this exploit we’re introducing because, guess what, we’ve already introduced a *prior* attack vector that’s even *more* effective for supporting spam transactions.” Meh, ok. Maybe that’s true, but not exactly a compelling narrative. Why take the risk when no one is really certain what the side effects will be?
Even if turns out the change is a non-issue from a technical standpoint, if there’s enough acrimony over it to cause a split or hard fork, either on the chain itself or in terms developer mindshare, that truly is a problem. No way institutions or government agencies will want to stay onboard if there’s a debate over which branch is the real Bitcoin. I don’t think it’ll come to that, but I already see rumblings of people digging in, running alternate Bitcoin implementations, trying to poach devs from the core group, etc.
It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
The questions you asks yourself are exactly the same I ask myself!!
Yes the response core gave is not very compelling, but most of all it’s the way they behave that is worrying me. Almost like they don’t have to explain things to anybody and we plebs are too stupid to understand anyway and shouldn’t have a say in the matter….
Let’s see how it unfolds….if even btc fails to revolutionize the world I’m giving up forever !!
I don’t get it, bitcoin is for monetary transaction, that’s his purpose.
Why are we now evaluating if there’s more demand/revenue from other non-monetary transactions uses? Is the purpose of btc suddenly changed?
Isn’t better for btc to “set in stone” its monetary use, and only after evaluating to extend it to other uses?
“Timechain”, i see you're a MAN of culture as well
because nodes aren't free cloud storage
they pay for it though
1) They do pay a transaction fee.
2) Nodes can be pruned.
Seriously?
Payonf 40 cents tx fee to a *miner* to store crap on other people's computers *for free* makes this somehow acceptable to you?
I want to use money -> I must store other peoples JPGs for free in perpetuity.
Disappointing lack of critical thinking.
Node runners check miners’ work to make sure it meets the consensus rules of the software they voluntarily run, and then store it if it does. Mining is more expensive than node running, and is usually done for profit whereas node running is usually done to facilitate some other service (running an exchange or handling one’s own transactions).
That could include other people’s transactions, or other arbitrary data, which has existed back to the genesis block.
And some data is prunable. Ideally arbitrary data should be in prunable areas rather than unprunable areas that bloat the UTXO set.
The block size limit keeps overall bandwidth and storage requirements in check. A node runner can’t know ahead of time how full blocks will be, but they’re basically signing up for a maximum limit of 4MB every 10 mins.
Bitcoin is money
Agreed.
But it’s also other things, going as far back as the genesis block.
Spam/excess data effects node runners. Node runners are the people who voluntarily run nodes to enforce the rules of the network, without them you don't have decentralized enforcement of bitcoin rules. More data means more storage space required on the node. Keeping it smaller allows the average person to run node, right now we're creeping over 1TB so those who haven't moved to 2TB will need to upgrade. SSDs are the best option, but they aren't cheap and they blowup every so often. If you want to go all out and protect your node data then you need 2 for RAID and that's gonna get pricey.
I still don't quite get why this extra data can't be put on an L2 that people can choose to run or somehow linked to the main timechain instead of directly on it. It seems messy with people just triyng to jam it in instead of getting a better solution.
Pruned nodes are the way forward if we want more nodes running.
Pruned nodes cannot prove immutability from genesis block.
Yes they can, pruned nodes fully download and validate all historical blocks. They just throw the data away once they validated it.
Agree. But they still need the data from someone.
This change will result to even more pruned nodes, consequently more centralization on the level of "providers of the true"
We should always calculate future resource burdens on nodes with full blocks, if the premise is that we want Bitcoin to be used. Changing policy does not change this calculation.
And it will increase because of this change. 😢
What will increase?
Storage space needed for full block nodes.
If the assumption is that blocks will be full, which is the assumption we should be operating under, this is not true. Blocks can't get fuller than full, because of a change to policy.
Correct, but if we fill blocks full of contracts and other data then there's less room for payments, the purpose of the network. It's a lot of different trade-offs to balance. I feel as if these changes are accepted then there's a good chance we start having a block size discussion right away because there's not enough block space.
I think we really need to keep it simple and focused or we risk blowing it all up.
Indeed, there might be a qualitative change, but no quantitative one for node runners. The change under discussion at the moment will probably not lead to a big change in data embeddings in the chain though. Stamps, brc-20, and inscriptions will porbably not move their infrastructure to a potentially more expensive OP_RETURN setup. Bare multisig, and emebedding data in the witness will probably remain more efficient for them. The positive hope of this change is that future protocols that need to anchor data in the chain every so often, will do so with in a prunable, and non-UTXO set polluting way. They will embed the data anyway, but changing the OP_RETURN limits might reduce harm.
That’s why block size limits exist tho.
Node runners enforce the rules they agree with, only for the benefit of themselves (not the network as a whole). So it's not really an altruistic endeavor. I agree that putting random data on bitcoin is not ideal. But in an open and decentralised system, it cannot really be stopped.
It's for the benifit of myself, but it's for others who care about the same ideals/rules. The incentives rule. I don't quite buy the argument for it's all about me. One person is important, but also nothing when it comes to inforcing rules in a decentrilized system.
They run out of Sats one day or the other.
The UTXO set grew from 4GB to 12GB in just 2.5 years.
Because of a temporary fad. Not currently growing, for a year now.
The current disagreement is about expanding op return size, which is proposed specifically to reduce further UTXO bloat (since all else being equal, it’s better to put arbitrary data into op return than into the UTXO set).
Hang on, I thought it was about removing the option of some filters? Are these filters for the op return data?
What is adjusted vsize?
Bitcoin blocks have two independent consensus-enforced resource constraints - a 4MWU weight limit, and the 80,000 sigop limit.
Can we somehow expunge the spam to enhance resilience of the payment part of our payment system? ☹ It's like someone smeared shit all over your shiny gold coin
That's either because:
- filters work
- spamming the timechain doesn't pay
Either way, no point in changing what's not broken, right?