Replying to Avatar waxwing

If the conversation is *only* about filtering at p2p level in your node: then it creates centralization pressure, and screws up your fee estimation, screws up compact blocks ... for zero benefit.

If it is *not* only for mempool filtering but a first step towards changing consensus, then it is advocating for something unethical.
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Super Testnet 7mo ago

> for zero benefit

I dispute this. When most users censor spam in their mempools, it pushes up the cost of getting spam mined. I think that reduces incidence of spam to an appreciable degree. This is a benefit and it comes with additional benefits, like reducing the centralization pressure spoken of in my slippery-slope post ("Spam-filled blocks lead to...a network [that]...is centralized.")

I want to weigh my proposed upsides against your proposed downsides, not just ignore them. Do my upsides outweigh the centralization pressure you speak of? I think so. At least up til now, it seems like the centralization pressure created by private mempool usage so far is marginal. The extra income accrued by those miners is tiny compared to their "regular" income. But the costs imposed on spammers is relatively massive: their costs double or sometimes even triple.

Similar considerations apply to fee estimation: very few fee estimation tools "only" look at what's in your mempool, and so far no one has complained that they couldn't get their transaction mined. If it eventually gets to that point I would support removing the filters but I see no evidence that it is a serious risk.

I am not familiar with your point about compact blocks. Can you elaborate or link to somewhere this point has been discussed at greater length?

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waxwing 7mo ago

I think the extra fees incurred, sure, exist, but it doesn't make sense that the difference would be significant, persistently. Why would a miner not just mine txs that are more profitable? It's not exactly hard to directly receive them on any public message channel, if not by direct bitcoin p2p gossip. It's not a meaningful friction.

Compact blocks are afaiu simply a caching mechanism; if you already have all the txs, you can verify a smaller version of the block, which points to txs you already have.

(Bip is 152.)

If you're locally filtering out likely-to-be-mined txs, that doesn't work, at least not as well.

nostr:nprofile1qqsgdp0taan9xwxadyc79nxl8svanu895yr8eyv0ytnss8p9tru047qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3samnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwdc8ymmkdahhxapwdekqzrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqm9jn0c was explaining this on his podcast, I don't usually think about these things ... but it's an illustration of the general point, that a "my preference" kind of mempool is just damaging what the purpose of a mempool even is. Imo.

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Super Testnet 7mo ago

> it doesn't make sense that the difference would be significant, persistently. Why would a miner not just mine txs that are more profitable?

For the same reasons I gave above: mining spam harms the goose in the long term, and some miners want the goose to stay healthy so that it keeps producing golden eggs. True, some are more interested in short term profits and do not really think about the long term effects. But I prefer to remedy this through education and persuasion.

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waxwing 7mo ago

Are you asking miners to decide what is and isn't a valid bitcoin use case, outside of consensus? I don't think you should do that.

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Super Testnet 7mo ago

> Are you asking miners to decide what is and isn't a valid bitcoin use case, outside of consensus?

Yes, in this sense:

I think consensus rules and mempool filtering rules both restrict what bitcoin can be used for. The former creates absolute restrictions while the latter just imposes additional costs on those who bypass the filters. Both are useful, but both types of rules only make sense with some sort of consensus on what the blockchain is actually for. It's clearly not a place for invalid transactions; they are absolutely prohibited.

Spam is only "lightly" restricted (i.e. by mempool filters). It consists of data whose meaning is not yet defined at the protocol level, and it seems useful to retain the validity of such data because some of it might "get" a defined meaning within the protocol later. But using it now, without a meaning understood by bitcoin nodes, is an abuse of the system, in my opinion. And I welcome miners to vmbe part of the conversation about that, both to set stricter policies, and, if necessary, to turn some of them into consensus rules.

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panacea 7mo ago

"...like reducing the centralization pressure spoken of in my slippery-slope post"

to what post is this referring to? where can i read this?