who has a good counter argument to Mechanic? I didn't see it in this video, and I can't come up with one myself. I'm just convinced. I'd like to hear good counters
Discussion
I have one. Yes, really.
The spam is there, it can't be stopped, delimiting OP_RETURN potentially makes the spam less destructive to the ledger so making this change makes sense.
This is a valid argument.
Forcefully removing the limit configuration option for individuals is the real shady shit.
If you wanna change the default, that's a separate conversation. Ignoring this giant lashback and removing limits, while banning mechanic from github, just REEKS of fuckery.
Yes, that is where the discussion has moved to.
Unfortunately Core don’t seem to have noticed.
Exactly, it leads to a compromise of being just a default setting instead of no option to configure. It's a big ask.
"The big ask" in "The Art of the Deal" refers to the strategy of making a bold, ambitious request in negotiations. By starting with a significant ask, you create a strong position that allows for negotiation and potential concessions. This approach can lead to better outcomes, as it encourages the other party to engage and find a middle ground, rather than settling for a lower initial request.
So if this happens to be the strategy, the response should be to capitulate that core is captured and just run knots.
lol I switched to Knots this morning
I agree with core devs that paying miners out-of-band is a problem (but currently not as big a problem as they make it out to be), but the solution they propose is horrible. It really just seems like laziness. They don't want to do the work to come up with a better solution, and they're tired of arguing about it. That's just giving up. We need better core devs if that's the case.
Yes, also this 👆
nostr:nprofile1qqstnem9g6aqv3tw6vqaneftcj06frns56lj9q470gdww228vysz8hqpzdmhxue69uhkzmr8duh82arcduhx7mn9qy2hwumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcam28zl explains how the Slipstream approach could eventually lose via orphan blocks in his most recent episode
Mechanic can't see the shape of every possible future valid transaction or every future spam. This includes requirements for potential future L2 scaling solutions.
Without that you can't even begin to write a valid filter. After that everyone who has written a regex knows what happens next.
As long as all the pissing and moaning from both sides is about mempool and not valid blocks it feels a bit like a psyop argument to me. Like US politics going on and on about left right to distract you from the fact that they are both authoritarian and there is no freedom candidate or platform. Both sides on the stage seemed to pointedly avoid any discussion of validation rules to get on chain.
Unless we're talking about changing validation rules the change is smoke and no fire. The real problem is the conflict of interest from core, bad public relations, and general fuckery. Just because they are shitheads doesn't mean every change they proposed is bad.
My full authority at my company... A few people on both sides are getting written up. Don't merge. New PR that changes the default but doesn't remove the option on my desk by Friday.
can we hire you as Bitcoin CEO?
I like your final solution very much
As has come up before, I don't have sufficient conflict of interest to get an opensats grant.
lol youre a cold dude Bill
I picked the wrong side back during the Great Seedsigner vs Coldcard wars of back whenever that was so this post doesn't hurt my chances.
Maybe thinking opensats is corrupted and people should donate directly to devs themselves is the ultimate conflict of interest and I'll get in?
I always thought 10th man would be a great full time position for me.
https://themindcollection.com/the-tenth-man-rule-devils-advocacy/
Just because one cannot predict every form of spam does not mean one should surrender to all of it. Spam filters, like all boundaries, are not invalidated by their limitations. They’re justified by their effectiveness and even imperfect walls still hold back the flood.
Mechanic never claimed omniscience. He acknowledges the inevitability of bypasses. But to use that fact as an argument for abandoning filters entirely is intellectually lazy and, frankly, manipulative. It’s like saying locks are pointless because thieves exist.
This isn't about censorship or validation rules. It's about sovereignty. About whether a node runner retains the right to curate their own mempool, to reject what they believe pollutes the system before it becomes consensus reality. Removing that power isn't neutral, it’s malicious. It’s an attack on the autonomy of the individual in the name of vague, speculative future possibilities.
To liken this debate to a "left vs right" psyop is a false equivalence. Validation rules and mempool policy are not theatrics. They are philosophical ground lines... who decides what Bitcoin propagates? The miner? The core dev? Or the person running the node?
If the answer isn’t the node runner, then Bitcoin stops being decentralised and starts becoming curated. And a curated Bitcoin is no different from the systems it was designed to escape.
In fact, it's the core devs that are claiming omniscience. They assert that spam transactions will get into blocks "one way or another" but of course they don't know this. Yet another analogy is gun ownership. We don't know how many more home invasions there would be without legal gun ownership. Similarly we don't know how much more spam there would be without the filter.
They mention that miners use private mempools and will include transactions nonetheless as they have incentive of higher fees.(like they do it already, it's not an hypothetical thing)
So running nodes with filters only makes the network more split, and more centralized(miners will tend to run code that give them fatter fees overall). So it does not avoid spam in the blocks.
This is what I understood from their arguments.
Yes, spammers can still submit transactions directly to miners through private channels. But this isn’t free... it transforms spam from a low-cost, frictionless broadcast into a high-cost act of collusion. It requires coordination, trust, infrastructure, and, above all, higher fees. Filters work by raising the price of spam. That alone is victory.
Their argument is, at its core: “Because some will defect, all must submit.” That is slave morality.
If filtered nodes cause divergence, that’s not a failure... it’s a revelation. It exposes where sovereignty really lies: not in the many, but in the few who validate blocks. The real fear is not about spam, but about unmasking how centralized the network already is.
To say filtered nodes increase centralisation is to say: “Only total submission preserves unity.” But the filtered node refuses this. It says: “I choose what I propagate. I define my values.” It is not a passive conduit for garbage. It is a declaration of independence in a system quietly ruled by pools.
I pick locks as a hobby. I promise you, locks are pointless.
Plus as we all know no one who locked their doors has ever been robbed.
Control what spam? Unless you are going to change block validation rules and hard fork the chain all this is over 10 minutes. So it wasn't in your mempool for 10 minutes. Next block validation it goes on chain for you to store forever. Unless it were in op_return, then you could choose not to save it.
I already said, make me god and you get your setting and that the core devs acted like asshats so I'm not sure why I'm personally being attacked like this.
I do think the default settings for core should be for it to attempt to have the most accurate possible mempool it can. Kinda wild people are so ideologically opposed to that.
what about orphan blocks?
I don't think orphaning a block here and there matters to this. For the most part every TX that got orphaned will be in the next 2-3 blocks, they are still high fee and in someone's mempool.
The tech seems clear to me, the knots people are somehow more worried about spam in mempool than saved on chain.
If it is just about attitude, this is the guy here to save you from the core team being condescending instead of helping explain the change to node runners.
If it's not concensus changes it's not going to do anything but make things worse for everyone.
Filter fans don't understand bitcoin and running knots to limit op_return size is like this
yea but imagine there are like a million guys with mops I guess?
There are not even 5% moppers but even if there was 99.9% moppers, large op_returns still happen. It's a virtue signaling LARP.
what's wrong with large op_returns in a world with lots of moppers?
The moppers are the ones that get hurt mostly because they can't estimate fees properly since they don't know what's really in the mempool. Non moppers sitting on the beach laughing have accurate fee estimation.
Moppers still think they will be able to dry the beach, but the tide keeps rolling in.
so would you expect they'll stop doing it eventually?
