Update: There have been 11700 transactions since block 894289 that have had OP_RETURN size > 83. This is way more than the 30 from the first 4 months and it's probably because of @oomahq 's challenge to make the non-standard OP_RETURNs more than 50% of the total OP_RETURNs. Running the numbers on these, here are the fee rates that they paid compared to the median fee rate. On average the 11700 transactions paid 191% more than the median fee rates of the blocks in which they were included. Or put another way, these transactions paid a bit less than triple the median fee rate. 1336 paid less than the median fee rate 2197 paid between the median and 50% more than the median fee rate 3516 paid between 1.5x-2.5x the median fee rate 1554 paid between 2.5x-3.5x the median fee rate 3094 paid more than the 3.5x the median fee rate 1064 were mined by F2Pool 10636 were mined by MARA Pool You can look at all the transactions in the spreadsheet I put together:

Google Docs

Non-Standard OP_RETURN transactions

Just did a little sleuthing on the OP_RETURN > 83 bytes from @oomahq 's post (https://x.com/oomahq/status/1916793928025596338). There were 30 such transactions in the ~4 month period: 8 had reasonable fees (< 2x the median for the block) 11 had around double fees 7 had around triple fees 4 had 5x-8x fees 9 were mined by F2Pool (10-11%) 21 were mined by Mara (6-7%) So in general, the OP_RETURN filter means the non-standard transactions were on average paying a good deal more than normal transactions to get into a block. And since only about 18% of the hashing power seems to mine them, they had to wait 5-6x longer to confirm. If the point of filters is to make spamming cumbersome and costly, I'd say that they're doing their job. TX IDs in the first comment so you can look for yourself.

Right now non-standard transactions compete for block space only within mining pools that allow out-of-band payments, which naturally makes them less reliable and more expensive. This makes non-standard transactions economically disincentivized compared to standard transactions. So filters don't "work" in the sense that they prevent all spam. But they work in the sense that they disincentivize them.

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Bitcoin Tech Talk #448

Interesting Stuff

Cat and mouse games sound futile, until you realize that you catch a lot of the mice.

Spam is not some esoteric difficult-to-define thing. It's about as dumb as the "what is a woman" argument and has the same energy.

If you're worried about the OP_RETURN controversy, don't stress. BItcoin will not just be fine, but controversies like this resolve with a huge price bump.

GM, economic incentives are a first order approximation which don't take moral values into account.

GM, you make better decisions if you're married and have kids.

What made me suspicious before about the OP_RETURN debate was how the proposal removed the datacarriersize option. What makes me suspicious now is the dismissive, arrogant framing.

GM, I am praying for the people of India and Pakistan.

A lot of idealistic coders think that by explaining the technical reasoning, they can get people on their side of the argument. I get why. In technical circles, there really is often one best practice and you can arrive at consensus through explaining the nuances of the issue, though that happens far less often than is believed. But this current argument really isn't a technical one. It's a social, monetary and economic one and no amount of technical nuance-splaining is going to get consensus. I applaud the effort, but the higher level question that we're all really fighting about is this: What is Bitcoin? Is it money? Or is it money and ...?

You know what I'm not hearing about this debate? How price is going to crash because of it.

For me, the bigger question around this OP_RETURN debate is getting rid of the datacarriersize option (one proposal gets rid of it now, another deprecates it for getting rid of it in the future). The Core devs are underestimating just how many people construct their own block templates given the popularity of devices like the BitAxe. Given many such miners are principled and won't mine spam transactions, that option is a very important one to have for their own mempool.

Yesterday Wife: What are you thinking about? Me: Bench Press, why? Wife: You had this smile on your face.

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Bitcoin Tech Talk #447

Interesting Stuff

Once AI gets good enough, we'll all be running exactly the software we want with exactly the patches we want that have passed the exact unit and integration tests that we want. Let a thousand clients bloom.

There is such a thing as social consensus and moral standards. Just because you can do something does not mean you should. And just because someone can do something does not mean you throw up your hands and say you can't do anything. Social pressure is effective. And the moral high ground matters.

GM, I'd like to see a Core fork managed via Nostr and not GitHub. Who's with me? h/t @DETERMINISTIC OPTIMISM 🌞

GM, drama is great for Bitcoin.