Replies (18)
It's not about stopping; it's about severely rate limiting and disincentivizing it. And currently most of the network filters including all core clients under v30, and it's probable effective in limiting non standard op return txs.
It will be interesting to see how many nodes will upgrade and also what the big miners will do.
Thanks for your input! Yes incentives matter. Rate limiting matters. Bloating the blockchain matters.
Libre relay proved that it only takes a few nodes and one mining pool willing to bypass filters to evade filtering.
The only real way to stop this is to change Bitcoin consensus rules. Running knots is a LARP for people to signal that they don't like "spam". It doesn't prevent anything.
Recent <1sat/VB transactions also another example of this.
It matters and it's an important signal the nodes send to the miners about what is acceptable and what is shunned, it's the cultural core of the network. Miners can ignore it but will be punished by degraded block relay speed and risk losing money due to orphaned blocks. It's an amazing power balance.
Besides that, your node is your sovereign territory and people calling it a LARP, if you enforce your own mempool policy, don't get that point. It's not only about the bloat, you provide a ressource, free of charge, to the network, so you can and must enforce policy how you wish it beeing used.
I think most bitcoin node runners want to participate in monetary transaction relay and not arbitrary data relay. Atleast I do and that's why I filter out non standard tx.
Another aspect is, that if you open up your node to freely relay unmoderated arbitrary data, this can lead to severe legal consequences, for no benefit whatsoever for you personally. So the filters are also a form of self protection, because the big miners for sure will filter or do you belive a stock traded company will mine CSAM into the chain?
This hole debate is such a waste of people's time, nobody wants it, has no benefit and exposes bitcoin node runners to legal and regulatory attacks, which in return make node running less attractive for normal plebs and reduce the decentralization of the network by that.
Finally 99% of the transaction that make it into the chain adhere and respect the filters, coincidence or do filters and node policy work?
Your individual mempool policy is irrelevant if it still gets mined. Leave the CSAM FUD out of it. So what if you don't relay it (you are still caching it) but it still lands up on your node anyway when the transaction is mined.
Miners don't care about your signal, they are trying to make a profit. They will mine the most profitable, valid transactions and that incentive is what makes Bitcoin work as permissionless, censor resistant money.
The ONLY way to prevent this activity is to fork and make these transactions invalid.
I'm not telling you not to run knots. Do what you like. Just don't think that you are preventing anything. You're not. Just virtue signaling.
Prove it with quantitative data, then. We are waiting. Why do you thing most transactions adhere to the filter, just by chance?
Because most transactions aren't unusual at the moment. During the ordinals/inscriptions craze a few years ago, those transactions were a high ratio of confirmed transactions. If something like that happens again, and knots filters them, people that want to transact this way will just bypass knots nodes as mempool peers, making a sub network of nodes, just like libre relay did.
Like you said, this is a waste of time to argue about. If you don't get it, you haven't thought about it enough.
Currently near 100% are filtering, as they have always been. There are no Core v30 nodes yet. When 5% upgrade to v30 and 95% are running < v30 or Knots, how will the spam propigate to the miners? The majority of nodes are the concensus. Currently the status quo is winning. You haven't convinced us that this change is good for Bitcoin.
Running #Knots
Ordinals and Inscription where not non-standard transactions, it doenst prove anything! It's really important to understand this fact...
I didn't say they were.
Doesn't need to be 100%.
Great, so how does this then support the argument you made? Completely different situation!
Why are the ordinal spamers now backing up core? Well because they know, if there is a majority off knots nodes it's over with their spamful use of bitcoin, because knots filters this shit out.
Node policy matters!
Appreciate your feedback!
Nobody ever said 100%! That's what core people put in our mouths. We just don't want to relay that stuff, and as a supermajority of the network currently does the same, it severely rate-limits those transactions.
The transaction you posted actually proves this point, as it needed to overpay by 3x to be included in the block.
No, again I point to libre relay.
It does if it wants to stop this
It still gets in.
