The filters work perfectly at their main job: keeping filtered content out of your mempool
When widely adopted they also delay the propagation of spam-filled blocks, which provides a nice monetary incentive for miners to ignore spam: ignoring spam = fewer blocks orphaned = higher income
While it is true that the propagation path gets delayed, miners and power users have long been able and will still be able to bypass using custom scripts, alternative witness structures, or unconventional encoding.
Besides, larger OP_RETURN field incentivizes prunable and transparent data storage rather than encouraging users to hide non-monetary data in spendable outputs, which bloats the UTXO set and complicates pruning.
These are the main counter points that are raised by ackers, what are your thoughts on those?
Re: bypassing the delay, whatever mechanism users opt for in order to bypass the filters, that very mechanism can simply be added to the filters.
Regarding pruning, relaxing the op_return filter does invite some increased usage of this prunable field, and that usage is problematic for many users: it invites more spam into their mempools.
Have you intentionally left out the UTXO bloat part? And what about miners taking the junk txs directly from the issuers? Doesn't this provide the miners an edge that manifests through higher profits in mining centralization?
> Have you intentionally left out the UTXO bloat part?
I am only aware of one protocol that stores meaningful amounts of data in outputs (Stamps), and they have openly said that they do so in order that the data cannot be pruned. "Inviting" those people specifically to use op_returns -- i.e. the very people who have said they don't want it -- seems like a poor reason to relax the filters. Instead, it seems like it will just invite more op_return spam by people who previously wouldn't have done it at all.
> what about miners taking the junk txs directly from the issuers?
Miners who include privately-submitted transactions in their blocks have a higher orphan rate, because the rest of the network propagates that block more slowly than blocks containing only publicly-known transactions, as nodes have to download/validate the privately-submitted transactions, which were not already in their mempools. The extra time they spend doing so gives that miner's competitors more time to mine/propagate a competing block at the same blockheight. This is part of why private mempools typically charge a higher rate: the extra cost compensates for the risk of losing money through an orphaned block.
Widespread mempool filters thus modify the economic incentives that apply to miners: they can certainly receive filtered transactions via a private mempool service, but their incentive is to make it cost more (which is what we antispam people want), and they may even refuse to do it altogether if it causes too many orphaned blocks. E.g. we saw Mara Pool and CKPool both stop mining subsat transactions because doing so increased their orphan rate too high.
Mara Pool's post on this: https://x.com/PortlandHODL/status/1958520763083825640
CKPool's post on this: https://x.com/ckpooldev/status/1957235824451559746
This is part of why I celebrate more widespread filters. It means spammers are more likely to use private mempools, which raises their costs, and results in more orphans for spam-friendly miners. Both of those are good things that I want to see more of.
That answer satisfies my curiosity. That's why you're one of my favorite dudes around here. Cheers.
I was going to zap you first, and then I read the second paragraph and I'm doubling it.
Slower CBR is the deserved friction imposed by nodes to blocks, proportional to their crumminess.
How common are orphaned blocks now?
Common enough that Mara Pool and CKPool both stop mining subsat transactions because doing so increased their orphan rate too high.
Mara Pool's post on this: https://x.com/PortlandHODL/status/1958520763083825640
CKPool's post on this: https://x.com/ckpooldev/status/1957235824451559746
Mara is still mining transactions below 1 sat/vbyte. They just aren't mining bids as low as 0.1 sat/vbyte, it appears their price floor is 0.5 sat/vbyte.
Wrong. Stale blocks (what the above commenter calls orphan blocks) are very rare, and neither MARA not CKPool have mined any since including sub sat fee rate txs in their blocks. Read the posts you are linking and also see stale blocks here fork.observer
What? Isn't like 90% of hash rate done by few pools which probably have each other in peer list on their nodes?
Or are you talking about sb randomly miming block on bitaxe?
I doubt they care about single digit % increase in chance of mining valid block.
Exactly. Slower block propagation cements mining centralization by incentivizing the largest miners to create their privileged peer network.
I don't know if they have each other as peers. I do know that at least two pools have complained that ignoring the subsat tx filters caused them to lose money via an increased orphan rate. CKPool complained about this here: https://x.com/ckpooldev/status/1957235824451559746 and Mara Pool complained about it here: https://x.com/PortlandHODL/status/1958520763083825640
So if they *are* peering with one another it is apparently insufficient. The miners who *ignore* that peering (maybe Ocean?) and just broadcast blocks to the rest of the network benefitted by getting their blocks propagated faster, and winning more races. I want to see that play out again, but this time with inscriptions, and to that end I am excited to see the Knots count rise.
Wow, I get it! But the difference has to be miniscule.
The thing is, additional revenue from sub sat txs is 0.06% which is super low. So that's why.
Also the orpahend block chance increases only because some miners are accepting them and some not.
This does not really apply to OP_RETURN debate. Or? Is there sb else beside Ocean?
What is a chance currently, that there are 2 new competing blocks - one by core and one by knots mimer AND next block by knots miner building on the competing knots block?
That's not what your linked posts are complaining about. Both pools have an orphan rate of zero. In fact all pools mining sub sat txs have an orphan rate of zero https://x.com/mononautical/status/1968138304265900433
Wete they complaining about greater *risk* of orphan blocks rather than an increased *rate* of orphan blocks?
The risk is purely hypothetical. However both pools made *more* money by mining sub sat txs. They certainly didn't *lose* money.
It seems strange to stop doing a profitable thing because of unfounded fear. Do you find their behavior strange?
That's the thing: it is NOT profitable as according to ckpool it increased rewards by 0.06% which is nothing.
Mempool filters somehow filter mined blocks now?
They make new blocks slower if those blocks contain non-standard transactions. It's because the nodes did not have those spam tx in their mempools and need to request them first.
Thanks, realized that after reading the post from ckpool provided by nostr:npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399s
Oh no, they have to download 4 mb all 10 minutes 😱😱😱🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
I've recently heard the argument, that overall fast block propagation is desirable mostly for SMALL miners, miners who use their own template, home miners -- the ones likely to mine with OCEAN.
Large miners have well connected nodes, can peer to each other.
Individual home miners are less connected, so slow block propagation puts them at a larger disadvantage.
I have heard that argument too. But look at the data: two pools -- Mara and CKpool -- cited a higher orphan risk in their explanations for why they stopped ignoring the subsat tx filters.
Mara's post on this: https://x.com/PortlandHODL/status/1958520763083825640
CkPool's post on this: https://x.com/ckpooldev/status/1957235824451559746
Despite whatever peering strategies they are using, they both decided to construct blocks with fewer filtered transactions in them. I would be very surprised if that wasn't because lots of filtered transactions equates to slower block relay.
Ck's post (the 2nd quoted) doesn't say anything about orphan rate or block propagation, his reasons are different, and he describes in detail: too little extra fee income, and the his worry about UTXO bloat.
The post about MARA mentions increased orphan block probability due to the lower propagation. This is quite interesting.
But look at the full picture:
- that was in a time when virtually ALL nodes filtered sub-1-fee transactions
- the extra income from these transactions is minuscule.
These conditions are not the same for the kind of spam transactions discussed!
(BTW, this post is more of an anecdotal evidence, but I credit it credibility.)
That's a new idea to me: looking at block propagation times differentiated by the contents of the blocks (e.g. contains "spam" or not). I haven't thought about this in this way so far!
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If you consider higher block propagation time for "spammy" blocks as a desirable side effect, how about adding an EXPLICIT PROPAGATION DELAY for "spammy" blocks? Like waiting for few seconds before sending it out.
("spammy" block: a block that contains txs that my node would filter out from its mempool, that I consider "spam" by my standards)
(An delay too long, or refusing to forward is a behavior that can be detected by other nodes and retaliated against.)
Since both approaches would a) increase miner centralization, and b) motivate spammers to use more covert, UTXO based spam, I'm not a big fan if either.
Ty! This idea that we need this change to prevent miner centralization is a red herring and is something continuously propagated by low knowledge core sycophants without evidence
