Replying to Avatar Dr. Bitcoin, MD

For everyone getting emotional about data carrier size limits in Core 30: calm down…your concerns aren’t helped by emotions and there is still a needed debate to be had over illegal number storage and whether or not changing default configuration option for carrier size is of any effect or not on the social/legal layer of bitcoin (technical side is well figured out and is much more straightforward).

IMHO, questions to be debated center around CSAM or other illegal numbers: is this fear porn fud or a genuine concern? Even if just fud, isn’t that enough to invite law enforcement to investigate/confiscate/arrest, etc?

Even if we all knew that in the end bitcoin hash chain extenders need to be getting all transactions via decentralized censorship resistant network and need to be economically incentivized by transaction fees and the value thereof, that doesn’t necessarily mean inviting more police scrutiny now by blowing open op return is a wise decision…just because something will someday be necessary is not a valid argument for why it must be done _right now_

What am I missing?
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Mike 3mo ago 💬 1

You’re missing that anyone can already put anything in an inscription.

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Dr. Bitcoin, MD 3mo ago 💬 1

I can see how this truth fits in to this debate in multiple ways:

1) CSAM is probably already in the chain using the inscriptions method

2) CSAM is in the chain from years past

3) op return limits aren’t meaningful limits for spammers because inscriptions method get then 4x more space at ¼ the cost for spam

4) inscription technique is a cost to use in and of itself: it requires more brain power of the spammer to use inscriptions to spam over op return

5) Code for returning CSAM from bitcoin block is longer when stored in inscription format as opposed to op return or older storage methods , but never the less any code for reconstructing CSAM from blockchain can be a one liner on the command line.

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Mike 3mo ago 💬 1

Right, but all the tools are already out there. I call bullshit on the people screaming OP_RETURN is worse because it’s contiguous. The data is there or it’s not.

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Dr. Bitcoin, MD 3mo ago

Agreed.

Also, proving one’s hard drive contains CSAM is technically a little tricky. It’s not like your node and my node each have one big file called blockchain.db that hash to the same digest.

I was today years old when I learned there is an obfuscation key applied to the stored blockchain data on your node…I am assuming one can accomplish a cryptographic delete by deleting the obfuscation key…and anyone trying to prove your hard drive had CSAM on it would have to create it by using key and querying the database and crunching the numbers to make illegal numbers appear.