Filters don’t stop JPEGs.
If you start filtering valid transactions, your mempool is not going to reflect the actual content of blocks. This has a ton of negative consequences.
Discussion
In practice they do. Yes spammers can pay more or go to more effort to go direct to rouge miners but that does not mean we should abandon all attempts to limit spam.
Your second paragraph reveals the problem with your thinking. It is the nodes that are in charge, miners should respect node runners preferences not the other way around. Nodes Mempool filtering (which they have always done) is a signal of our preferences to the miners. Thanks to miner pool centralisation, individual rouge miners are able to ignore the nodes wishes and put unwanted junk in the blocks. The fact that mining has become this centralised gives us bigger problems anyway but that's another issue.
If we accept that nodes no longer have a say in the content of the Mempool then bitcoin is dead and we might as well let the big two mining pools run everything. Then we have become ethereum or any other shitcoin.
Filters WORSEN mining centralization. That’s the entire point. You’re attacking bitcoin, all over nothing.
Mempools don’t determine bitcoin, it’s the consensus rules.
So you believe the miners control bitcoin not the nodes?
No, I didn’t say that.
You right now:
It was a question not a statement. I'm trying to understand the origin of your view that nodes preferences about what should be in blocks doesnt matter at all.
Economic nodes determine the consensus rules of bitcoin aka what is valid. Miners determine what transactions go into blocks.
But we’re discussing mempool policy, not consensus rules.
Nodes cannot prevent a valid transaction from being sent to a miner.
Technically true.. So why do spammers want the filters removed?
Nodes can make it harder and more expensive to spam the network. That's why they want the filters removed.
No, the expense will NOT be more, long term.
Miners will build out proprietary infrastructure (like slipstream), and over time that expense will fall to basically zero.
But that has demonstrably negative effects on bitcoin as a whole.
So rather than fix the problem we just give in to spammers? There is no reason to believe that out of band transactions will ever cost the same as legitimate transactions.
Meanwhile we need to work aggressively to fix the miner centralisation problem. Making bitcoin a spam friendly space in the meantime will do enormous harm, not just in reducing decentralisation but in the public perception of bitcoin. You want institutional and nation state adoption and the number go up that goes with it? If bitcoin becomes a cesspool of spam and scams like ethereum or solana the chance of that goes down massively.
If you want non-monetary transactions on bitcoin thats fine but don't also expect bitcoin to become the base layer of money worldwide.
Are you listening to anything I’m saying?
You are WORSENING miner centralization.
Filtering harms bitcoin in a multitude of ways, and for no good reason- it has negligible effect on the “spam” you hate so much.
You’re trying to design bitcoin based on ideology, not logic.
And you’re not just worsening bitcoin for “spammers” you’re actually harming its use as money, which heavily depends upon a public mempool that we can use to accurately estimate transaction fees.
Everything you’re doing is based on emotion, not reason; you’re so blinded by your hatred of shitcoins, you’re willing to damage bitcoin just act like a tough pure bitcoin maxi.
I'm listening but I don't think you are. It's perfectly logical to not make bitcoin a safe space for spammers. Node must have a say in what goes into blocks, giving up and ceeding all control to miners, which is what removing the ability of nodes to filter will do, will be the end of bitcoin in the long run. The ONLY thing that makes bitcoin unique (other than first mover advantage, network effects etc) is that its nodes can be run by ordinary users. The nodes signal to the miners what they want them to do. The fact that miners can currently ignore them is the problem that needs to be fixed (by decentralising mining), the solution is not to just give up all control to the miners. If that happens we are effectively ethereum.