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Tbh I don’t really have problem with criminals using bitcoin as money. Money should be neutral and if that means criminals will use it for monetary purposes, so be it.

I think it will always be possible for people to store and relay arbitrary data using the bitcoin network through exploits or unintended use cases but as long as bitcoin’s only intended function remains as neutral money then I think a lot of the social, moral, legal potential issues to do with arbitrary data will subside. In the case of the expansion of op_return, it is expanding bitcoins use case from just neutral money to also arbitrary data relay and storage.

Touching on the case where basically any data can be compressed into 20 bytes, this sort of tech would affect not just bitcoin but basically everything else, and so cp could be encoded in basically any transfer of data.

ihsotas 2mo ago 💬 1

I agree in general. Bitcoin is a neutral network and is not responsible for criminals using it as money.

My broader point though is that bitcoin even with a larger op_return is not a realistic way to transmit images and is certainly one of the worst ways to do so. With throughput maxing out at 4mb per block and between $6000 and $10000 per block. That’s an absurd system for file sharing. The changes with core 30 are not signally anything regarding non monetary uses of the chain they are only signally that there is a garbage can to put stuff to keep the utxo set as clean as possible.

My opinion is if you don’t like the idea that your node might be hosting undesirable content you should run a pruned node. For 99% of people this is completely fine. 20gb runs a pruned node, as long as the utxos aren’t raped that number won’t change too much.

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Discussion

TheKayman 2mo ago 💬 1

I don’t think we are going to agree on your first point so let’s agree to disagree.

The issue with the garbage can analogy is that the garbage can is 4x more expensive. There is no economic incentive for spammers to use op_return. However, it still allows bad actors to relay illicit data through an officially supported method. Even if everyone still uses inscriptions, this change still widens the attack surface.

The issue with pruned nodes is that if I ran a pruned node I can’t run a transaction indexer such as an electrum indexer which is important for running an electrum server. Without this it makes it very hard to connect my sparrow wallet to my node. If 99% of people run pruned nodes then anyone doing an IBD would have to get the blockchain data from the 1%.

ihsotas 2mo ago

I agree that the cost of the garbage can is an issue. But I can’t imagine the outrage there would be if people suggested changes to make op return cheaper. However it is not an attack vector. Illegal data in the block chain isn’t an attack because running a node does not make you responsible for the encoded data in your node. Living in Any jurisdiction that says otherwise and you probably have bigger issues than the size of op_return and you should probably spend your time gathering guns and explosives and do some house cleaning. The tree of liberty isn’t going to water itself.

I would say if you care about self custody you run a full node. If you feel like this is a moral bridge too far I’d suggest you grow up. There is a lot of disagreeable shit in this world and a few low res images you have to go out of your way to see in a world drowning in HD smut is a pretty lame hill to die on.