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Fake pub keys are bad for the network. You can understand game theory I assume?

Yes, fake pubkeys increase the utxo set, which means that other than taking space in the blockchain, they also increase the space needed in the utxo DB. Not in RAM, as they will be pretty soon placed in disk cache never to be fetched again, since they cannot be spent, but still.

Storing the same amount of data in fake pubkeys costs (depending on feerate) up to 30 times (if you consider 1sat/vB as feerate floor, even more for lower feerates) the cost of OP_RETURN, and way more than that compared to witness if you consider the 75% discount.

So yes, fake pubkeys increase the space requirement for full nodes, but are much more expensive than that for spammers.

Game theory says that if you do not give the possibility to store garbage in huge multiple OP_RETURNs, and maybe patch the possibility to do that in witness, spammers will have a much harder time spamming.

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Discussion

ihsotas 1mo ago 💬 1

It’s not about easier or harder. Spammers don’t care how hard it is to put stupid moneys or dogs or whatever the fuck on chain. They don’t even care how much shit costs. Higher Expense just means rarity to their twisted little brains.

1. It’s not very hard to do this to begin with. block 273,536 contains a 14.4kb image of Nelson Mandela embedded across multiple transactions using pay to fake public keys. This has no limit.

2. Limiting op_return just pushes more bloat to the utxo and is objectively worse for the chain in the long run.

Bitcoin is a bad data storage system but it is designed is such a way that you can’t stop people from doing stupid shit. Making it possible to do stupid shit in a less harmful way seems better than making it only possible to do maximal harm regardless of your intentions. Wishing for people to be perfect angels is not how bitcoin operates.

leadbyexample 1mo ago 💬 1

Supposing what you say is true about spammers preferring rarity tied to higher expenses, even offering them a cleaner and cheaper way to spam will not convince them to forfeit the luxurious way of doing it, that is, with fake pubkeys.

So if that premise is valid, it contradicts your conclusion.

And if it is not valid, it does validate my point of only leaving the most expensive loopholes accessible.

No, people are not angels, people are a gross sum of praxeological individuals that work by profits and incentives.

More options to send spam inevitably means more spam.

ihsotas 1mo ago 💬 1

Right, but there are people who may choose the less polluting path if it was available. So if something is consensus valid it should be an option and if it is valid and a better choice it shouldn’t have limits as those limits only produce more damaging outcomes.

Now changing consensus rules is a different discussion. If we limit op return size via consensus change we solve some of the issue of direct to miner submissions, but we leave spammers only routes that are worse for the chain. I don’t think you stop spammers you just push them to old school methods that bloat the utxo and then the debate will start over and people will suggest op_return as a way to reduce bloat. The luke jr the 2nd will come out and say op return is only for pedos and they will soft fork to fix it and on and on and on.

In the end it doesn’t matter…at all. Then blocks are 4mb max. If we can’t keep up with that growth civilization is doomed.

leadbyexample 1mo ago

Amen.

Bitcoin will go on though, a little dirty but still.

Maybe drivechans will save the day, and there will be one just for sociopaths and deviants.