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.

This is one of the "business model" of the spammers. They want to sell spam on Bitcoin. Frankly, its disgusting. Notice how at this moment the spam is limited to 80 Bytes. They want to remove the limit. Run your Bitcoin Knots to keep Bitcoin free and decentralized!

A recap of the OP_RETURN "debate" ------ Core: Filters don't work. Bitcoiners: They obviously do, otherwise you wouldn't need to remove them. Core: We don't have the technical means, so we're removing the limit. Bitcoiners: We gave you the technical means in a PR two years ago, Core rejected it, it was implemented in Knots and it works. Core: We can't stop all spam reliably, so why bother? Bitcoiners: Because life is not black or white, and fastening your seatbelt when driving a car is safer even though some people die in car crashes. Core: Here's 7 transactions that even your precious filters didn't catch. Bitcoiners: Here's 2 million transactions that were caught. Core: You can't censor valid transactions just because you don't like them. They paid a fee! Bitcoiners: There's millions of Nigerian princes contacting people through email every day. These are "valid transactions" too, yet you send those to spam. This is obviously not censorship, so that argument is deceitful and intellectually dishonest. Core: What is spam objectively anyway? Bitcoiners: The receiver - not the sender - gets to decide what's useful to them. You're removing the ability of nodes to decide that, implying you know best. Core: These transactions will end up in blocks anyway, and we can't incentivize profit-seeking miners to go out-of-band. Bitcoiners: It's not your job to incentivize or deter miners. Your job is to work on the Bitcoin client while prioritizing the one thing that makes Bitcoin unique and truly decentralized: nodes. Core: But we want better fee estimation and block propagation. Bitcoiners: So do we, but never at the expense of decentralization and self-sovereignty. Nodes run the show. Core: This is a technical discussion. Stop philosophying and using analogies, you plebs! Bitcoiners: We gave you a technical solution that works, the philosophic rationale and the logical arguments. Stop turning Bitcoin into a shitcoin. Am I missing anything here? ------- If you're seeing bias here, it's because you're too stubborn to admit that one side is clearly more informed, rational and morally calibrated than the other. This is why there's distrust in Core. It's got nothing to do with technical competency and rational discourse. It's just pure and simple political shenanigans, whataboutisms, strawman arguments and in some cases sheer lies. - Hodling like i mean it

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.