Thanks for that effort 🙏

🙏✨✌️

A great summary of the core position as a whole

So true 😍

Great post. Best I've seen explaining core's position. No one got called retarded, either.

Thank you, Calle. I know where I stand, as well.

great read!

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#bitwar update from admiral calle - very good one

Thanks nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg for this digestible take.

Great summary.

Finally, a breakdown that makes sense.

nostr:nevent1qqs8sz8f9wss4xnm8fwxfrmxpwz9agywn0z4v5l7ymw0j9yjdkvxqegzypgdjn7zmpvqc6ptqud9gtutrcc6yq9s2z96h9dr80hss4wl9qwkxqcyqqqqqqghsukzt

Great post explaining cores reasoning without any non related attacks or accusations!

Even though I disagree with the point that it's not worth playing the cat and mouse game. I think we can define very well, what's a monetary tx and what not

and in the cases where we can't, the friction is so high and the data rate to low, that we can ignore it. It worked good until taproot.

In the long run, fees will solve most of this problem agreed 🤝 but we are not there yet.

Knots represents how dangerous religious zealotry and cult behavior can be to decentralized systems and a lot of people who should know better are failing the test.

Let the nodes alone, you idiots. Work for the plebs or leave.

Really enjoyed reading your take on things. 🤟

I hope the retards can read this much.

Hey nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg, I appreciate the work you do developing on top of bitcoin, but I’m confused on your explanation. Can you expand on these points you made:

1. How is op_return filtering out legitimate content? What is legitimate content in your opinion?

2. Why is helping my node predict what’s in the next block important? Is it more important than bloating the chain with images and video? Doesn’t keeping the level of entry to run a node keep bitcoin decentralized?

The medium-of-exchange ship appears to have sailed for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a store of value, and this is how the story ends most likely. Yes there will be some niche medium-of-exchange use, and performative spend here and there (including nostr zaps), but for the most part Bitcoin will be bought and sold between those looking to hold it and those looking to cash out on their holdings.

To those saying it can be both the ultimate medium of exchange and store of value at once, that's simply the middle character in the IQ curve meme. You can't encourage people to stack and unstack at the same time.

I think the future of the lightning network and cashu are both bright, but as transport for stablecoins, which are coins that your average person will actually spend at the store.

Thanks for taking the time to explain for the Nth time! Maybe in a year or two when the dust has settled someone will write a book "The Bitcoin relay policy war".

Yes. Needed to read this. Totally agree, bitcoin is a monetary network, not a storage system for shitty jpgs and etc. Take that elsewhere.

Both sides are still talking past each other Calle… you wrote well and articulated Core’s argument but I have yet to see any engagement with the real concern here, namely that Core pushed through an unpopular and poorly understood product with worrisome defaults (whether they’re actually good or bad is not the question) and a stated intention to eliminate choice altogether in the near future.

Again, whether the concerns are justified or not is a separate matter. Most of us are not technical enough to understand. We just want civil debate so we can side with the people who seem most reasonable and sane. Core came across as arrogant and unwilling to listen while their supporters have engaged in ad hominem attacks and just generally compounded Core’s behavior.

Knots has, in many cases, come to appear cult-like. Mechanic’s key arguments seem lost in the whirlwind (Knots supporters have missed the nuance) and I don’t see Core supporters engaging with Mechanic’s logic. As he says, Core is arguing “filters don’t work” but Mechanic is not basing his argument on that point. He even agrees that Core is technically correct.

I and others just want to see a civilized discussion (like you’ve put forward here, Calle) that actually acknowledges the perspectives put forth by either side.

A great post on the OP_RETURN and the Core vs. Knots controversy. It's worth reading and zapping.

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq5xeflpdskqvdq4swxj59793uvdzqzc9pzatjk3nhmcg2h0js8trqyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcpzemhxue69uhks6tnwshxummnw3ezumrpdejz7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcqypuq36ft5y9f57e6t3jg7ests302pr5mc4t98l3xmnu3fyndnpsx2l69s0c

Ha it all comes down to not being bullish enough…

Tank you for clear speaking out what I am thinking the same like you

thanks for that one calle!

All I want is a 80 bytes OP_Return.

Why is that so hard?

all very nice but why not just charge people $10 for an ID?

The enemy of good is better at the end of the day…….

Bitcoin seems to be doing fine at 109k………..

V30 doesn’t save #Bitcoin……

The necessity for changes right now is not evident……..

Necessity is defined as an impending, cataclysmic event that omission of an action would result in serious degradation of the network or necessity can also be defined as a state of consensus of node operators in regards to what they are running……….

The former and the latter currently do not exist……

I see the current indications for the changes as soft……..

Knots and older versions of Core represent the status quo…….

You can choose to run V30 and others may choose to run Knots and older Core versions……..

Is there a problem with an individual node operator deciding their own course?

nostr:npub1s33sw6y2p8kpz2t8avz5feu2n6yvfr6swykrnm2frletd7spnt5qew252p

Wrong. State and super-wealthy adversaries will not be deterred by high fees. They must not be given a contiguous 100kb unrestricted playground.

Core is essentially centralized on GitHub, The fact that people like Luke and mechanic can create their own fork and people can use it is the only reason I would say it is not centralized. The issue is not that spam exists, It is that when core increases the data carrier size, It will lead to child pornography on the bitcoin blockchain, Just like BSV, And when that hits the mainstream news, Institutions will need to explain that to their investors. Bad for bitcoin. Clearly bitcoin has proven its value as money, And the only legitimate argument is block propagation time, But is sharing child porn worth sacrificing the integrity of the network? There are plenty of places to find child pornography, And that will never change, But the fact that core is so against this sound argument is to me just like I cannot vote against monetary debasement any way except lowering my living standards. I cannot vote against this change in core any way except running an older version of core. Still feels like the politburo of core doesn’t care about child exploitation material on bitcoin.

"The fact that you need to update your filters is critical and that's where it ties back to Bitcoin: Suppose you have a mempool filter for transactions with a locktime of 21 because some stupid NFT project uses that. You maybe slow them down for a few weeks, but then they notice it and change their locktime to 22. You're back at zero, the spam filter doesn't work anymore. What do you do?"

Yes, spam filters are a game of cat and mouse and policy is explicitly not consensus and the current fight is because some policy is slated to be removed, turning the heat up to consensus level on the data carrier size debate.

"You need a governing body, or some centralized entity that keeps updating these filters and you need to download their new rules every single day."

Uhm, no. Some might do that to more effectively fight spam if some protocols decide to abuse the Bitcoin network despite them being not wanted by a subset of node runners but it's not some Politbüro providing the list all have to use. Some might update daily using one of many providers others might adjust their filters weekly or never but VCs can't just rely on spam filtering not happening anymore. I think that is at the Core of the Knots debate.

"The goal is to improve your node's prediction of what is going to be in the next block."

But that goal apparently does not align with what many node runners want to do - relay Bitcoin transactions, not spam. And to say you fly blind if you don't see the mempool is also exaggerated. OOB transactions might still not show up in the mempool and distort the picture from observing blocks but what gets mined is a good hint to what has to be paid.

Well explained, I hadn't really thought about filters as a vector of trust before.

It's interesting that you didn't call out web of trust as a spam prevention strategy, because that is implicitly the subject of the post.

Web of trust seems to work pretty well on nostr for reducing spam, but ironically destroys something like bitcoin which requires global (objective rather than subjective) consensus.

I happened to be reading about XRP this week (don't ask), and discovered that in lieu of proof of work, or even stake, their sequencers are validated by being included on other nodes' "UNL" s, or "Unique Node Lists", and don't receive fees for mining blocks.

These lists have to be meticulously curated, because any significant deviation between node policies will delay or even stop the network. At best, this curation happens on the social layer, and is in no way adversarial. If you break social consensus, you get kicked off the island and lose the ability to sequence transactions. XRP has 190 nodes, but only 35 are generally trusted to validate the network. To make matters worse, XRP curates a UNL which they encourage the network to use, and "carefully vet" node runners before including them. XRP is completely permissioned; it is no more decentralized than the Fed's board of directors.

I write all this because XRP demonstrates that web of trust is inherently exclusionary, and can only work to the extent that that is desirable (as in a "compliant" digital currency). It may have a minor role to play in decentralized systems, but only to the extent that those systems need not be considered "open", i.e., permissionless.

Again, this is ok for curating feeds on nostr, because I do not want access to my attention to be "open". Network partitioning is part of nostr - there is no "global". There is only my subjective, incomplete view of the network. Strategies other than web of trust are important for bootstrapping new users' reputation. But money has to work for everyone, at all times, and requiring reputation to transact essentially creates a social credit based permissioned monetary system.

nostr:npub1zt8u9mz68x3e6qhey8mhuuqahst4kc587gka7qj84uuhq6t878vsn7yx9r , the post on X is better as he replies to a load of queries too

Just like Democrats/CNN again and again: talking about all sorts of things that are not really the topics at hand.

You really think a state actor that want to attack bitcoin cares about the fee to insert CSAM?

These Core guys are either breathtakingly retarded or...

nostr:nevent1qqs8sz8f9wss4xnm8fwxfrmxpwz9agywn0z4v5l7ymw0j9yjdkvxqegzypgdjn7zmpvqc6ptqud9gtutrcc6yq9s2z96h9dr80hss4wl9qwkxqcyqqqqqqghsukzt

Total bull. Here's what actually happened.

Filters work just fine. Claiming that fee are the only filter ignores all of bitcoins history.

2023 a few new methods of spam were discovered.

Luke made a pr to filter that crap and core just refused to adopt them. This is the dramatic shift in the development process.

It's not that filters became less effective, it's that for some reason bitcoin core just decided to stop using them. This is why the name calling and the claims of shitcoining, because there is no other logical conclusion for why all of the sudden we were just going to let literal attacks go unchallenged. That is not hyperbole, these spammers has said publicly that their goal is to ruin bitcoin and make it unusable.

There is no reason to force monetary use cases to compete with spam in the fee market. This completely distorts the incentive structure. Spammers stand to make money from their transactions where a monetary transaction only looses money to fees. This premise that you should be willing to pay more than spam for block space or you don't really care about bitcoin is false.

The use cases and therefore incentives are completely incompatible. A monetary network wants fees to be as low as possible, that's one of the reasons we invented lightning. Spammers are willing pay extraordinary fees because they are selling satoshis for more than they are worth. Spammer get paid to make transactions! How can some mom and pop shop or normal user compete with that?

Now fast forward to today, people like Calle are parading around pretending that filters just stopped working when in reality we just stopped using them.

When used filters work incredibly well. The cat and mouse game is absolutely worth playing because the ones using the protocol for its intended purpose have the advantage. Notice there are not a million new ways of spamming bitcoin, there are just a couple that can be easily filtered. You do not have to update every day, that is a wildly ridiculous claim. In the real world developing these schemes to sneak data into bitcoin take time to develop but only minutes to filter. Luke demonstrated this at btc++.

When scammy projects see that they will spend tons of resources to develop their product only to get filtered out, they will just stop trying. If for some reason they can just keep burning money spamming bitcoin and creating new protocols to do so, they are probably just connected to the money printer.

This is not 'the price of decentralization', it is an obvious attack and cores lack of action while the utxo set tripped and the block chain was flooded with jpegs should raise major red flags.

If it wasn't clear let me reiterate. YES, knots filters most spam already. The reason it doesn't do much is because 98% of the network, until recently, refused to do anything about it. Since 2023, when the majority of this nonsense started, there has been a decisive change in the priorities of the project.

This shift in attitude is the big change that we should all be extremely concerned about. The change to op return and standard fees are just going to make it easier to spam the chain and are a direct result of this change in attitude. If we allow this they just move on to the next filter they want to rip out and bitcoin will slowly turn into ethereum.

Is that what you want anon?

"Imagine you're using an outdated ad blocker but instead of filtering out ads, it now also filters out legitimate content you might be interested in."

This is not just about blocking ads, it's about blocking the size of the ads. If it can be text only... that's one thing. When it can be a full blown image because the size limit is removed... on a monetary system... then what are we doing?

> “we need to pay the price to keep it alive”

First time we have the argument that removing spam filters is needed to “keep Bitcoin alive” lol

Simple question, how does the dust-limit filter work so well without “cat and mouse” or “central authority”?

The all-or-nothing logical fallacy, also known as the false dichotomy or black-and-white fallacy, occurs when a situation is presented as having only two mutually exclusive options, ignoring any middle ground or alternative possibilities. It oversimplifies complex issues by framing them as an either/or choice, often to manipulate or persuade.

For example:

• “You’re either with us or against us.” This statement ignores the possibility of neutrality or partial agreement.

• “If you don’t support this policy, you must hate progress.” This overlooks nuanced positions or alternative solutions.

This fallacy is problematic because it limits critical thinking and dismisses valid alternatives, leading to flawed reasoning or polarized conclusions. Recognizing it involves identifying when someone presents a situation as having only two extremes without justifying why no other options exist.

Run QT

This is bullshit on its face. One does not need to rely on a single spam filter dev and trust them at all. Your cohort expects us to trust Core. You're inconsistent. And we have the right to control what's running on our computers. If you don't understand that, it is useless talking to you. I need not read the rest of this garbage.

Calle, thank you for laying out such a careful and reasoned argument. If the aim here is to move toward greater understanding between perspectives, this does a lot to clarify things.

That said, I want to push back on a couple of points.

First, you describe your post as bridging “technical people (devs)” and “non-technical users.” I don’t think you intended to frame the entire debate as a binary of Devs versus Users, but the first paragraph lands that way. Could you clarify? Often what happens in these debates is that users express frustrations about software, developers respond defensively or in a condescending tone, and then conflict escalates. I think I see what you’re pointing at, but the framing risks reinforcing that divide rather than helping bridge it.

Second, I agree with you that much of this isn’t just technical but philosophical and even emotional. When you write about filters being removed to improve network prediction, I think that’s part of where the disconnect lies. The Knots advocates who resist certain changes don’t necessarily care about predictive accuracy. They care more about maintaining control of what their own node is willing to relay. That’s not a technical optimization so much as a matter of principle. It’s a different axis than just efficiency or accuracy — it’s about personal agency.

To me, that’s where common ground might be: respecting user choice. We can support sensible defaults that help most participants, while also protecting the flexibility of people who want their nodes to behave differently. That strikes a balance between broad consensus and individual autonomy, which seems truer to Bitcoin’s spirit than forcing either “prediction accuracy” or rigid filtering.

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💯💯

Fee market competion for transaction finality will be the best, most neutral, longterm uncorruptible filter

FS

I think most agree spam can’t be stopped — fees handle that. But the OP_RETURN/datacarriersize debate feels more about defaults + operator choice. Removing it shifts Core from ‘discourage non-monetary use’ to full neutrality. The real question: what’s the benefit of raising the cap?

Ironically, GitHub (open SW ref) is owned by Microsoft (closed SW ref).

Maybe a ‘self-git-on-BTC’ would be a better use case for block space 🤔

Please post more non-technical notes about the tech. 🤝

Very well articulated, and I actually learned a few technical details and other aspects from this whole thread.

Actions (or lack of) speak louder than words though. Code dev team refuses to plug the holes that have allowed more spam via the Inscriptions functionally. They call it "controversial" to do so. Increasing OP_RETURN (and making it deprecated) is very controversial (double standard).

At the moment, I rather take the current state of limited size spam, instead than 100k size spam (and unlimited size spam in the future).

People keep underestimating how fundamental PoW and fee-based friction are to Bitcoin’s resilience. Any attempt to introduce filter rules or heuristics inevitably drifts toward centralization and soft censorship. What makes Bitcoin unique is exactly that it doesn’t rely on trusted third parties to “decide” what is spam. Fees + PoW are the only neutral and sustainable mechanisms we have, and relaxing arbitrary mempool filters is a step in the right direction.

Posts like this are why zaps exist. Bravo.

The fog of war is steadily lifting

A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on

I think Calle is winning this, slowly but surely

nostr:nevent1qqs8sz8f9wss4xnm8fwxfrmxpwz9agywn0z4v5l7ymw0j9yjdkvxqeg0x9tvh

> The fact that you need to update your filters is critical and that's where it ties back to Bitcoin: Suppose you have a mempool filter for transactions with a locktime of 21 because some stupid NFT project uses that. You maybe slow them down for a few weeks, but then they notice it and change their locktime to 22. You're back at zero, the spam filter doesn't work anymore. What do you do?

I'm not sure this is the right example in this case. Knots proponents want to filter out transactions that embed arbitrary data. Is there any technical summary of all the possible ways data can be embedded arbitrarily in Bitcoin transactions?

The fact that protocols sitting on top of Bitcoin interpret otherwise standard transactions in alternative ways seems to be a non-issue.

The article is full with obvious flaws. Filters work and they slow down spammers.

Filters are presented as centralization point of trust but Bitcoin Core is not a centralization point of trust? Come on.

Filters are additional layer against spam. Fees still work, no one has dismissed them.

BSV is a shitcoin. They did the same change.

"Until now, these rules were determined by Bitcoin Core, but they have realized that these rules do not work anymore."

No, they did not realize that. They were corrupted to do it by Citrea.

https://r2a.primal.net/uploads2/0/83/62/08362e5e64680649ba147a87c35ec20f949f3f0662885fd3944b9fce72b171e1.mp4

"We're hearing things like Citrea is better than Ethereum," Chainway Labs co-founder Orkun Mahir Kılıç told CoinDesk. "It'll be better with time, because there's like $1 trillion, as of now, sitting in the Bitcoin blockchain. It is the most secure, battle-tested and decentralized blockchain. And we are bringing decentralized finance to it." 🤡🤡🤡

https://www.coinglass.com/news/91227

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I‘m always hearing the argument that the filter does not work. Why then raise the limit if it has no effect, if it’s so easy to bypass? Why forcing this obviously controversial issue into the next release harming the reputation of Bitcoin core? For nothing? Sounds nonsensical to me.

One of the clearest non technical explanations I’ve seen before defending Core. I’m confused why we need such a drastic increase by default but this helps answer some of the other questions I had

nostr:nevent1qqs8sz8f9wss4xnm8fwxfrmxpwz9agywn0z4v5l7ymw0j9yjdkvxqeg0x9tvh

What legitimate content is being filtered out?

Does this further support the need for lightening and liquid? Would this fee based filter approach make peer to peer payments too expensive for users who make small transactions? Would transacting on man chain really be an expensive decision and hence solidifying it as a vault for long term storage?

❌

Trust your intuition.

#bitcoin’ s best #spam prevention strategy is for spam to COST YOU MONEY.

nostr:nevent1qqs8sz8f9wss4xnm8fwxfrmxpwz9agywn0z4v5l7ymw0j9yjdkvxqeg0x9tvh

Thanks for sharing — really appreciate the insight.

Quick clarification: when you say “filters don’t work,” do you mean content-based filters specifically?

Because Bitcoin does have filters like the dust limit that seem to work well, and I assume we’re not about to remove those.

So is the distinction basically: drop spam/content filters and rely on fees, but keep the objective/economic ones like dust filters?

It's exactly because spam is hard to define and subjective that we need a simple heuristic, in this case a reasonable default op_return size limit, and not set-in-stone rules (i.e. protocol consensus) to combat spam at the mempool level.

There is a lot of hand wringing about the futility of filters which appears to mainly be an attempt to distract from the simplicity of what's happening here: the removal of a configuration option that, while not perfect, has done a pretty good job of discouraging abuse of op_return with excessive arbitrary data.

What's excessive is up to individual node operators, and that is exactly the best people to have the final say - the users that make the Bitcoin system as a whole exist.

Eventually demand for block space will be high enough where fees can do the job on their own, but for now we're still in an era where low demand gives grifters an opportunity to abuse bitcoin. Node operators who oppose v30 correctly recognize the need for additional friction via filters. Node operators choosing knots or not updating to v30 are expressing their desire for software that preserves the monetary use case, and yes this is ideologically driven. If the software is taken ain different direction do not be surprised if unhappy users look for alternatives.

okay. Filter works and I'll never run core 30

If pow/fees are the only incentives that matter (and I agree with this), why is there no discussion about the witness discount being a mistake?

Hi Calle appreciate the constructive post. Thank you for that.

Yeah Bitcoin is money. Running knots because I don’t want more spam. Simple

It's funny to see the creator of Cashu, based on centralized mints, lecturing Bitcoin about centralization. Fees are the filter, sure, but Bitcoin already balances incentives with policy. BSV showed what happens without guardrails.

Knots are rising, one in four,

Voices guarding Satoshi’s core.

Against the tide of data storms,

They fight to keep the money form.

At first this was a TLDR moment for me, but then I realized I could read it on my nostr:npub1a00wj229auzjswlq4s77y4u8eqdx5k9ppatgl8rtv8va65f6mwksum9q3h tablet while drinking coffee OUTDOORS in the sunshine.

Gamechanger to read digital content and absorb nature's rays 🌞👇

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Yes I agree fees do serve as a filter, however the issue with saying this is that fees are also a filter to regular bitcoin transactions. I think it’s a bit naive to assume spam will get priced out and monetary transactions will not. If companies / spammers can find a way to make money from their spam, suddenly fees just become a business expense. Now you have spammers who are making money from their transactions competing with regular people just wanting to send a monetary transaction and not be making a profit. I wonder who the fees will filter out in this case…

Thanks for writing this, nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg . Can you help with a couple more questions?

How do we get rid of inscriptions? Is there anything we could do, regardless of how difficult it would be, that could do it?

Can we get rid of the segwit discount? I understand segwit solved an exploit that was involved in the MtGox hack, but is the discount really necessary?

Most bitcoin users are non-technical & selfishly motivated by their own incentives

Satoshi's genius was to align all of these incentives in an adversarial context

Show me the incentive & I'll show you the outcome

npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42 calmly explains in 3 minutes how the economic incentives of spamming interact with bitcoin & why transaction fees are the ultimate filter

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Communication is important. If Core/Yourself/Anyone else had if communicated like this from the beginning things might have been different.

Pow is for keeping a tie to a real world inforgeable cost (energy), keeping the block production as it is intended, and a few other things. Fees prevent DoS attacks, the ocassional spam cannot be truly prevented, a spam business like citrea can be prevented with filters because they as a decentralized business cannot afford to play cat and mouse or having txs not going through. Filter centralization it's not a problem, is Core a centralized governance? where do you currently get your node consensus rules and new soft forks?

Over complicating the explanation for no reason is not the way you explain things to non technical users.

To simplify it.

Core wants to turn Bitcoin into a data hosting service.

Knots want Bitcoin to stay Bitcoin

Best explanation I've heard calle!

This is a long post that hopefully bridges some gaps between technical people (devs) and non-technical users and how they look at spam prevention in Bitcoin. I hope that it clarifies why I think that there is such a huge misunderstanding between both camps.

I'll preface this post with first disqualifying any malicious attempts to misrepresent the motives of either camp. Everybody wants to improve Bitcoin as money. Money is Bitcoin's use case. It's not a data storage system. If you think otherwise, there are countless shitcoins to play with.

Alright, let's get into it.

I have worked on anonymous systems for over a decade. I have read tons of research on spam detection, rate-limiting, and I've implemented spam prevention techniques in the real world.

I am very confident to say that there is not a single known method to prevent spam in decentralized anonymous open networks other than proof of work.

This is what Satoshi realized when he designed Bitcoin and it's why only transaction fees can reliably fight spam without sacrificing any of Bitcoin's properties.

Let me explain.

Spam prevention is a cat and mouse game. As a system's architect, your goal is to make the life of a spammer harder (increase the friction). This is why, on the web, you see captchas, sign-ups, or anything that can artificially slow you down. Slowing down is key. This is why Satoshi turned to proof of work.

Let's contrast this to other methods for spam prevention. This is not an exhaustive list but it illustrates the design space of this problem, other methods are often derivatives of these:

CAPTCHAS are a centralized form of proof of work for humans: Google's servers give you a hard-to-solve task (select all bicycles) that will slow you down so that you can't bombard a website with millions of requests. It requires centralization: you need to prove Google that you're human so that you can use another website. If you could host your own CAPTCHA service, why would anyone believe you're not cheating?

LOGINS with email and passwords are most popular way to slow down users. Before you can sign up, you need to get an email address, and to get an email address, you often need a phone number today. The purpose of this is, again, to slow you down (and to track you to be honest). It only works well when emails are hard to get, i.e. in a centralized web where Google controls how hard it is to get an email account. If you could easily use your own email server, why would anyone believe you're not a bot?

The next one is the most relevant to Bitcoin:

AD BLOCK FILTERS are another form of spam prevention but this time the roles are reversed: you as a user fight against the spam from websites and advertising companies trying to invade your brain. Ad blocking works only under certain conditions: First you need to be able to "spell out" what the spam looks like, i.e. what the filter should filter out. Second, you need to update your filters every time someone circumvents them. Have you ever installed a youtube ad blocker and then noticed that it stops working after a few weeks? That's because you're playing cat-and-mouse with youtube. You block, they circumvent, you update your filters, repeat.

The fact that you need to update your filters is critical and that's where it ties back to Bitcoin: Suppose you have a mempool filter for transactions with a locktime of 21 because some stupid NFT project uses that. You maybe slow them down for a few weeks, but then they notice it and change their locktime to 22. You're back at zero, the spam filter doesn't work anymore. What do you do?

You update your filter! But where do you get your new filter from? You need a governing body, or some centralized entity that keeps updating these filters and you need to download their new rules every single day. That's what ad blockers in your web browser do. They trust a centralized authority to know what's best for you, and blindly accept their new filters. Every single day.

I hope you see the issue here. Nobody should even consider this idea of constantly updating filter rules in Bitcoin. This would give the filter providers a concerning level of power and trust. It would turn Bitcoin into a centrally planned system, the opposite of what makes Bitcoin special.

This is why filters do not work for decentralized anonymous systems. They require a central authority. Until now, these rules were determined by Bitcoin Core, but they have realized that these rules do not work anymore. Transactions bypass the filters easily and at some point, carrying them around became a burden to the node runners themselves. Imagine you're using an outdated ad blocker but instead of filtering out ads, it now also filters out legitimate content you might be interested in. That's what mempool filters do, and that's why Bitcoin Core is slowly relaxing these filters. This has been discussed for over two years, it's not a sudden decision.

The goal of this change is not to help transactions to slip through more easily. The goal is to improve your node's prediction of what is going to be in the next block. Most people misrepresent this part. They say "it's to turn Bitcoin into a shitcoin" but that is just a false statement at best, or a manipulation tactic at worst.

Let's tie it back to proof of work and why fees are the actual filter that keeps Bitcoin secure and prevents spam reasonably well: Satoshi realized that there is no technique that could slow down block production and prevent denial of service attacks in a decentralized system other than proof of work. Fees prevent you from filling blocks with an infinite number of transactions. All the other options would introduce some form of trust or open the door for censorship – nothing works other than proof of work.

He was smart enough to design a system where the proof of work that goes into block production is "minted" into the monetary unit of the system itself: You spend energy, you get sats (mining). This slows down block production. How do you slow down transactions within those blocks? You spend the sats themselves, original earned form block production, as fees for the transactions within the block!

This idea is truly genius and it's the only reason why Bitcoin can exist. All other attempts of creating decentralized money have failed to solve this step. Think about it: without knowing who you are, whether you're one person pretending to be a thousand, or a thousand people pretending to be one. Bitcoin defends itself (and anyone who runs nodes in the Bitcoin system) from spam by making you pay for your activity.

People sometimes counter this by saying: the economic demand for decentralized data storage is higher than the monetary use case. First of all, I think that's just wrong. There are way cheaper ways to store data (there are shitcoins for this), and the value of having decentralized neutral internet money is beyond comparison.

However, there's a much deeper concern here. If you truly believe this, I ask you: what is Bitcoin worth to you? If you think Bitcoin can't succeed as money (i.e. be competitive), why do you even care? If you're not willing to pay fees for the use case that we all believe Bitcoin is designed for (money), and you believe that no one is willing to pay for it, how can it even persist into the future?

You can't have it all. If Bitcoin is money (which I believe it is), then we need to pay the price to keep it alive. There is no free lunch.

Either we centralize, or we pay the price of decentralization. I know where I stand.

Peace.

When nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg makes long posts, I get excited.

Users choosing to follow various filter rule providers as they update filters is a point of centralization but literally the whole network following core devs, who along with updates, also alter filter rules, is not a point of centralization?

Oh yeah also filters don't work.

The fees are the filter argument does not address the mempool issue that this change to op_return brings.

Because core 30 nodes will accept and relay 100kb files by default, this allows for files to be sent across the p2p network without having to get this transaction mined.

Criminals / bad actors can exploit this by relaying illegal data to their buddy on the other side of the world, anonymously and for free because this is all happening at the mempool level.

Yes, eventually after a period of time of this transaction not being mined it will be dropped from the node’s mempool, but by this point that illegal file has already been relayed to other bad actors.

In short: the removal of op_return filters in core 30 software creates infrastructure for an extremely effective, anonymous and free data relay / sharing service that will be exploited by criminals with illegal files.

This is not me being a purist saying “this is immoral”. This is me saying “this introduces a legitimate attack vector that governments and the powers at be who want to see bitcoin fail WILL use”.

Yes

Speaking as one of those non-technical users. From everything I have read about this here, it sounds like both sides of the argument claim the high-ground of not wanting to hurt Bitcoin. I can't really judge who may be right in this or who isn't, but what I find the most disturbing about this whole discussion is that it is even possible to change Bitcoin in a bad way. With Bitcoin being this supposedly immutable, trustless system of money. It's never been hacked, but a few devs can just put out an update and it causes this huge crisis? Doesn't make sense.

If you have ever been to war then you know there is always a price to pay. I’m done paying the price for centralization.

I’m ready for the decentralized revolution.

Be on the right side of history!

"The value of bitcoins would be relative to the electricity consumed to produce them."

-Satoshi

Peace 🙏

Read this balanced and objective analysis.

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Just because you know some methods of fighting spam you do not know all of them, and you do not know how they can evolve in the future and make what is impossible today possible. The goal is not zero spam, but less spam. You are completely ignoring asymetric risks and surging costs that will fall on node operators, just so that shitcoiners and miners can get richer. The ones who are aware of that are opposing changes pushed by core.

If you would allow anyone to anonymously and permanently store and retrieve forever any number of 100KB contiguous data blocks on 39K redundant nodes all around the globe including in space for a one time fee of roughly $111/100KB of worthless fiat, you haven't really thought this through.

There's no other anonymous immutable distributed file sharing service like it in the world. To certain people, that's priceless. To others, fiat currency is unlimited.

Think about it.

Satoshi said it would be unwise. He's still right. Nick Szabo just reawakened to echo Satoshi on this.

This is why we should leave OP_RETURN alone AND fix the inscriptions hack like Knots already does.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

#Enshitcoinification

Running #Knots

#MBDA

I would describe myself as a technical user and I understand the technical arguments core is attempting to make but I think you are still wrong here.

Yes perfect spam filters don't exist, but saying that decentralised spam filters can never work is not true otherwise email would be unusable. Yes I know email is more centralised now than originally intended so maybe not the perfect example but I can still run an email server and filter 90%+ of spam myself.

What's important is making bitcoin hostile to spam, yes it's a cat and mouse, wack-a-mole game that will never be 'won', but total victory is not needed.

The alternative, to accommodate spammers by giving them a 'nice' way to spam only encourages them, both to spam more and to demand more and more 'accommodations' via essentially blackmail - give us what we want or we harm the chain with more UTXOs etc. Making bitcoin hostile to spammers has worked pretty well for years (apart from the inscriptions fiasco caused by core not fixing a bug - again an example of what happens if you accommodate spammers). There is a reason most scams/spam has occured on other chains rather than bitcoin up till now.

I'm skeptical only because of the size increase, which will lead to a larger blockchain and thus harder storage. I'm not sure if this will affect decentralization, but I'm not as technically savvy about Bitcoin as you are. So, I'll trust your judgment and see it as a positive, since I shouldn't always act on first instincts but dive deeper into things.

I love you Calle but this is just another post of "let me trying to explain better the technical argument cause you didn't get it well enough" which does not add anything new to the converstaion and that is not addressing the real issues IMO. Thi spost it's just another proof that core, after 5 months, still has not understood where is the disconnect with its users.

Most ppl have perfectly understood the technical rational proposed by core but they still DISAGREE on this change. Some people think the potential dangers are noth worth the potential rewards, some people perceive this as another "let's accomodate a little bit more" spammers, some people think the increase from 80 to 100k is too much, some people agree with the change but have been spooked by some core devs attitude.

If core really want to gain some of the trust it has clearly lost, it needs to stop focusing only on keep repeating its technical motivations, and direct the focus somehwere else. I can assure you that this core fiasco is not due to insufficient clarity/explanation of its technical motivations, but rather to:

1) management of the whole issue from day 1 (see github banning and open-close PR)

2) core devs reaction to users not liking this change (good god man, the reaction screamed authoritarian all over with sprinkle of arrogance, childish behaviour and ad ominem attack)

3) the most fervent advocates of this change have been Antoine (creator of PR, makes sense), Jameson Loop, Shinobi, Peter Todd. The last 3 names are probalby the least "loved" devs in existance (for some fair reasons), and they are the one who have pushed for this change the most (podcasts, live debates on YT). From a public relations perspective this was the worst possible way to handle it

4) Core went from "if you don't like the change just switch implementation" to assiduosly (and quite desperately honestly) trying to get back ppl once they saw many more ppl than they thought switched implementation. Then you did not really mean what you said about "just switch if you don't like it, we are cool", cause you clearly are not cool with it

I already wrote 3 times (the first in May when this all started) to core devs to help them understand they need to get out of their tecno-bubble and stop refusing to cosider any factor that is not technical. Nodes are managed by human beings, and human beings have emotions, sensations and trust. If you do not incorporate this aspects in comunicating/handling your technical decisions, this is just the first of many horrible managed issue. If you really want to reconnect with your users it's not about another technical explanation, listen to the feedback people are providing man

Peace and love

If spam filters didn’t work, why do we have mostly less than 83 bytes OP_RETURN and more than 1 sat/vB fees?

nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg

Calle, I appreciate the clarity and depth of your post. I agree with you on the importance of assuming good faith. Everyone here is trying to strengthen Bitcoin, not weaken it. But the changes currently being made around OP_RETURN size and relay fee policy are not being carefully examined. They are introducing new problems that are more immediate and concrete than the hypothetical problems they are claimed to address.

You frame the issue primarily as a question of how to prevent blockchain spam, with fees as the only decentralized answer. That misses two key layers. First, the blockchain itself already has structural spam filters built into the protocol: the block size limit and the 10-minute block interval determined by difficulty adjustment. Those are what prevent infinite transactions, not fees. Fees determine priority within the fixed block space, but they are not the mechanism that sets the boundary. The size and timing constraints were deliberately chosen so that individuals could afford to keep a full copy of the chain on inexpensive hardware. This was the original economic model, and it remains central to Bitcoin’s decentralization.

Second, you are not addressing the relay mesh. The change to allow OP_RETURN data up to 100 kilobytes per transaction, combined with the sub-sat per vbyte relay policy introduced in v29, creates a completely new class of abuse. It is one thing for someone to pay a miner directly to insert 100 kilobytes of arbitrary data into a block. That has always been possible by paying a mining pool directly. It is another thing to let anyone use the peer-to-peer relay mesh as a free content distribution network by pushing 100 kilobyte transactions through the network at negligible potential cost, knowing they will never be mined.

Before v29, the minimum relay fee was around 1 sat per vbyte. This meant that using the relay network carried a real economic cost. Lowering that threshold to 0.01 sat per vbyte or less removes the cost. A spammer can now broadcast large transactions for essentially nothing. These transactions will sit in mempools, consume RAM, eat bandwidth, and crowd out legitimate activity, without ever reaching a block. There is no fee market mechanism that solves this, because the spammer is not actually paying for block space. They are abusing the transport layer itself.

This is not just a blockchain problem, and it is not just a future problem. It’s a relay layer problem today. If this policy remains in place, the peer-to-peer network becomes an unpriced commons, and like every unpriced commons, it will be abused. The bandwidth and memory requirements to run a node will increase dramatically. Ordinary node operators will be forced out, and centralization pressure will increase. That is the opposite of what Bitcoin’s design intends.

Your analogies to CAPTCHAs, logins, and ad blockers are also misplaced. Those are rate-limiting mechanisms for identity and access control in centralized systems. OP_RETURN filtering and relay policy are content filters. A better analogy is email spam filtering. Each mail server chooses its own rules. There is no central authority dictating identical behavior. Nodes deciding what they are willing to relay is not central planning. It is local policy and a critical component of node sovereignty.

There is also a larger pattern at work here. Developers, by nature, tend to look for technical solutions to potential future problems. But the market is not calling for these changes. The problem being described is not present today. The solutions being introduced do not solve any actual problems, but they do create new ones and worsen existing issues. We are not facing a flood of legitimate transactions that can’t get through because relay fees are too high. What we are doing is opening the door to large-scale abuse of the relay mesh and the blockchain without any clear benefit.

I also want to call attention to something in your post that appears indirectly, but is important. Your closing argument is structurally the same as Peter Todd’s tail emission argument: that someday in the future miners may not have enough incentive, so we must change the protocol now before it’s too late. This is a speculative future scenario. We don’t know if it will happen, when it will happen, or what the economic environment will be if it does. Changing fundamental network policies today based on hypothetical future conditions is not sound systems engineering. If such a problem arises, the tools and circumstances available in that future will almost certainly differ from those we have now. Solving a future potential problem with present tools is not only uninformed by definition, it is most certainly wrong.

Developers are important, but they are not the sole authority on how the network should function. The market is. And the market has already voted, through real use and sustained preference, for the current structure of the Bitcoin blockchain and relay policies over thousands of alternatives. The strength of Bitcoin lies precisely in its ability to let market forces determine what works, not in preemptively changing fundamental parameters based on speculative scenarios.

We should not make these kinds of changes lightly, and although you may have been involved in the discussion for two years, the discussion is not over. The decision is not final, nor will it ever be. We already have open-source forks, more than one viable alternative with more to come. Allowing 100 kilobyte payloads combined with sub-sat relay fees creates immediate, predictable problems, while claiming to address problems that may never materialize. The proper course is to let the market surface real issues, then address them when they exist, not to introduce new vulnerabilities based on hypothetical futures.

Respectfully, the changes being proposed do not solve real problems. They create them.

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The core insight here cuts through all the noise: you can’t out clever thermodynamics. Every spam filter without cost becomes a centralization vector. Whether it’s Google’s servers deciding you’re human or some council deciding what “legitimate”Bitcoin usage looks like. The genius of fees isn’t that they’re perfect, it’s that they’re the only decentralized solution to the spam problem that doesn’t require asking permission from anyone. Either pay in energy or pay in trust. Pick one.

Is there a tldr?

The mature tone is an improvement.

one day i would like to spend an entire week trying to comprehend this. worth it to me.