Nostr Web Client

1.) It is always possible to store non financial data in Bitcoin. Pubkeys have to be stored and pubkeys can be jpegs. And there is no way to tell if they are jpegs.

2.) storing jpegs in pubkeys is expensive for anyone running a node. Since there is no way to tell it's a jpeg and since it can be possibly spent later, nodes have to store the outputs in a data structure called utxo set forever

3.) if there is a way to store the jpegs in a way that tells node runners "you don't need to keep this shit, it cannot be spent" and the sender pays the miners for it anyway, it's better to provide this options

4.) filters don't remove jpegs, they move jpegs to option 1 which is worse for everyone

5.) because of 1, there will always be jpegs in Bitcoin.

6.) because of consensus rules allowing mining of longer jpeg outputs, the filters won't do chicken shit. If someone wants to store a jpeg, they find the cheapest way to do it. Normally people put the tx to a shared mempool and miners mine whatever is most profitable from the mempool. But if nodes are stubborn and don't relay, and miners want to make money, they will make it possible for another way to submit a tx that will make their operation more profitable.

As a result of these, you should be running Core v30 and block filteroors on social media to keep your sanity.

NokSuKao 2mo ago

This is what I have learned:

1)Using pubkeys for this reason is inefficient and expensive, which is good. Don’t make it easy to put spam into the blockchain.

2) It’s not a burden if the amount of this transactions is very low. Which from my understanding is the case.

3) Keep it inefficient to put spam into the blockchain

(see 1)

4) Filters are necessary. Not only is it more difficult/inefficient to put spam into the blockchain (as you mentioned) the other thing is that the community gives a signal to all participants that spam isn’t a use case of Bitcoin. Acting against may result in loss of reputation (social costs). Spammers should have to use inefficient loopholes to put spam into the blockchain Its only a burden if people are using the pubkey method considerably.

6) Make mining decentralized and this won’t be the case I guess. Also the profits of Mara with its slipstream service is low from what I have heard(not sure). So will there be an incentive in the long run? And you have to consider the loss of reputation a miner will suffer from doing things that Bitcoin is not designed for. Will they really do everything just for short term profits?

Don’t update, make a statement to the core team not to force controversial changes into Bitcoin. If in the future the Blockchain is flooded with fake pubkeys lets reassess.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Akashi Hyogo 2mo ago

The problem with point 1) is, that it is much more taxing on nodes then on spammers.

If you want to sync the chain in any reasonable time all the unspent utxo set has to be loaded in RAM.

It is already a few GB which has basically killed most of Rpi nodes.

Juraj 2mo ago

Exactly.

That's why it's better to provide a way to store that is other than this. Because if there is no other way, it will be done this way

NokSuKao 2mo ago

I‘m running a raspberry pi with 8GB ram. Took me about 2.5 days to synchronize. What is acceptable I think.

NokSuKao 2mo ago

And if I correctly understand, Bitcoin core only uses 512MB ram for the UTXO set the rest is stored on the ssd and fetched if needed. I do not see a problem with ram or disk space unless the number of those transactions will rise considerably.

Juraj 2mo ago

With op_return, the utxo set does not grow at all. With pubkey data, it will grow forever.

NokSuKao 2mo ago

Yes if there will be a significant amount of those transactions which is doubtable as there are cheaper ways (exploiting SegWit).

Juraj 2mo ago

1) It is inefficient, but it should be. And that's the point of this point. There should be better options. This point is about anchoring the fact that in no way it is possible to block spam, this option is always here and unstoppable.

2.) no, the value does not matter. Utxo has to be saved in utxo set if it is spendable. It can be an anchor output, so you can't prune it, that would break lightning for example.

3.) yes, keep it inefficient, but more efficient than the option that bloats the utxo set. Prunable outputs are better than bloating utxo set.

4.) spammers don't give a shit about their reputation, they wear it proudly. This doesn't work. They just have a different mindset and they don't care about being excluded from the true bitcoiner tribe.

6.) miners should not care about reputation, the point of pow is removing the need for reputation and replacing it with profit incentive. Also, the miners choose to reveal their identity, but they can choose to mine completely anonymously, removing any reputation costs.

For shareholder, the main reputation is if the operation is profitable. And that's a good thing.