Not a scam. It's names on bitcoin. They have gone down to 12 (i think) characters. So there is competition for utxos. But the good news is that these are all prunable OP_RETURNS so nodes dont need to store it. Should calm down in a few days. That's not to say they dont have scams planned! But this spike was known.
Discussion
Where do they sell these names? And how is it scarce enough to use that much money in TX fees?
They dont sell them. It's bitcoin native names. Anyone can make one. If you use one of their wallets they might charge you a slightly higher fee. But just make your own tx. And you own that name forever, according to the spec. We've been missing names on bitcon for ages. They actually stumbled upon some innovation. You format the OP_RETURN according to the spec, and you get to own the character string if you are first. This is useful for a lot of things, including with nostr.
I don't get it tbh. What is this spec called so I can try to understand it?
This is just another form of nfts / inscriptions / scams. It’s a collectible. Oh, but “it’s on the blockchain!” It’s irrelevant. The only thing that makes a utxo worth anything is the underlying btc that can be spent. Any thing attached to it is just noise filling up block space.
I forked the spec and took all the best names so I can sell them too.
Sir... just because it's pruneable doesn't make it good news. If everyone was running pruned nodes then there are no nodes on the network willing to bootstrap new nodes.
The only good news is that some people will be poorer after this.
Wise to assume everything is an attack until proved otherwise. Let's keep thinking adversarially. Thanks! Luckily, I think this one is only 5 blocks.
I see the "it's prunable so it's okay" argument all the time. People don't realize that we NEED full nodes that aren't pruned.... if majority of nodes get pruned the network will eventually die.
Yep, thanks for presenting a good argument. That's the only way we can make bitcoin the best it can be. More civil on nostr than on X! I'm generally strongly against spamming the blockchain, especially with assinine inscriptions I view OP_RETURNs as a more nuanced thing. I was orginally against OP_RETURN when everyone else was for them, until they justify a use case. Names on bitcoin might be that use case. I can see utility in my applications, let's say I want to eliminate spammers and give users their preferred name, an OP_RETURN can give a (nostr) user proof of existence, and some skin in the game. I remain open to facts and logic. Thanks!