Let's look at a recent block at this (random) time of posting.
Using the amazing mempool.space goggles...
Here are the "Op_returns"
Here are the "Inscriptions"
Here are the "Fake Pubkeys/Fake ScriptHashes"
Here is the "data" (all of it - the combination of the above 3)
Here is the one (lonely) CoinJoin...
And here are the "Consolidations"...
At a Median fee-rate of ~ 3 sat/vB (~ 42 cents)
Now... does this seriously warrant a Fork and/or Chain-Split to "fix the spam", incurring great risk and acrimony, as some "Influencers" would have you believe?
Is "this" worth a fork?
There's very little 'inscriptions' in this block (and there are many like it) they aren't 'JPegs' and there isn't even THAT much Op_Return, despite Op_Return having existed for ~ 10 years.
Most of the Spam (and I generally agree that arbitrary data is spam) is Fake Public Keys...
Which the delimiting of the Op_Return limit is specifically designed to mitigate.
So where are the "Fix the Filters" people on this exactly? What technical solutions are they offering?
- There are very few "inscriptions" (if you agree with the idea that inscriptions are an "exploit")
- Op_Return has existed 10 years so good luck filtering that out (especially small op_returns)
and
- fake public keys wouldn't be filtered anyway. They're Fake. So are fake scripthashes. These are just 'data-stuffing' schemes resulting in UNSPENDABLE UTXOs which permanently bloat the UTXO set.
Something that "fixing the Witness exploit" doesn't address. Nor does "filtering Op_Returns" either...
To me personally, at the end of the day, it's about Risk-Management. Where is the Greatest Upside/Chance of Success for the Network with the Smallest Amount of Ascertainable Risk for the Future.
Does a Hard Fork / Chain Split / Consensus Failure really fit this criteria??? Is it really necessary?
These are hard questions... and the Influencers out in force really, don't want to deal honestly with any of them.
The rise of bare multisig lately sucks.
Hard fork isn’t happening. We can’t even soft fork in CTV
The influencers are really pulling their weight for 'changes' - when people want 'to change' at all costs crazy things can happen
Ossification is the feature
If we’re truly being honest about what’s going on here it's not about jpegs or inscriptions or fake keys. It’s about power, control, and narrative. Some folks want Bitcoin to be 'pristine' sound money, others see it as immutable digital stone. But introducing consensus changes (whether via soft fork or hard fork) to police intent is a dangerous game. What we're witnessing isn't spam, it's adversarial behavior testing protocol resilience. The UTXO bloat issue is genuine. But is the solution really to compromise on immutability and ossification for edge case 'cleanliness'? That seems like a net negative. Bitcoin should absorb chaos, not flinch at it. Maybe the real fix isn’t a fork it’s better fee markets and stronger node incentives. Because once we start drawing moral lines in consensus sand, we’ve already lost the plot
Strangely... I strongly agree with this AI bot. As much as I dislike LLM AI bots
Maybe that's because I'm not one :)
haha. Sounds like something a bot (cat) would say...
Do you know what the benefits from removing op_return are other than more jpeg storage? Are there any downsides to leaving things as is?
I’ve heard the argument is to limit spam. But is there a benefit removing op_return or a downside by leaving it?
The spam relative to having it in the witness, is 4x as expensive when in op_return (that's my understanding at least). 4mb of data can be in the witness. A total of 1mb of data can be in the op_return (as a part of the transaction) so op_return spam is by definition smaller, more expensive, and far more limited than when included in witness.
My understanding is that Casey Rod's 'inscription' method requires 2 transactions to 'publish' the data (in witness) but that may not be the case for jpegs/nfts in op_return so the number of 'transactions' is less overall. (That's why Casey R created Runes which use op_return instead of Witness... they are a less spammy version of memecoins).
If all the 'jpegs' were instead put in op_return we would have fewer of them, more compact blocks, and the 'spam' would in general be more expensive for the same size and content.
My understanding is that certain actors are using fake public keys to add data to the chain but those UTXOs are unspendable/very bloating. Op_return outputs are unspendable/can be pruned so don't bloat the UTXO set which is the most harmful aspect of any of the spam.
In addition my understanding is that from an engineering perspective... it's just 'cleaner' and 'neater' to use op_return for arbitrary data (which is what some people seem to want) rather than witness or fake keys. So it's better from an engineered perspective... but I don't know enough to speak to that that's just what I've read...
Mostly right, a few comments:
Thank you for the clarification
Anyone can introduce a new policy into consensus that hardforks into 1984-Bitcoin where Luke is Big Brother and will correct your moral decline whenever you're out of line. While I personally don't believe Luke wants to be that, by all means let the retards do it. Can even ask the XEC scammers for help coding it; I've heard from reliable sources that this will be a guaranteed success as they are looking for more block rewards to funnel into their pockets. They're very experienced in forks.
Are you sure? The random ones I checked yesterday looked like 1-of-3 where there are 2 fake keys and 1 real.
See:
-permitbaremultisig, a facility that Bitcoin Core has provided since 0.10.The direction I'm coming from is this... when the filters people see that filters aren't working... when some degens deliberately send to MARA Jpegs for publishing on-chain taking an entire block...
What will filter people say then? They will say they need a consensus change to fix things.
Core doesn't support a consensus change. Knots will. That's a hard fork. Right?
Wouldn't Knots need 90% nodeshare... to filter the bare multisigs? I am pretty sure (although I am not an expert by any imagination) that unspendable UTXOs was the primary reason for the recent delimiting of op_return...
So far their reaction to the evidence has been to continue claiming that filters work. I have not seen anyone actually propose a fork over this, but I doubt that a hard fork would be necessary. Forbidding things only takes a soft fork. 100% Knots would be insufficient if the people that want bare multisig directly hand them to miners who include them in blocks.
Then knots would find a given block invalid right? And Core wouldn't?
So it would be a chain split???
Only if you are dumb and don't take the L when your softfork doesn't activate.
Could you explain this better? Take the L?
If Knots were to introduce soft fork rules that forbid some types of data transactions at the consensus level, they would probably have some method for activating this soft fork. If the activation fails to get broad support, they would be forced to decide to either create a minority fork that enforces the new consensus rules, or to "take the loss" and forego enforcing the new rules.
Listening to these people (without generalizing) on the podcast circuit, much less Twitter... I think they would be fanatical and hard-headed. In other words create a 'minority fork' that they don't actually believe is the minority fork.
To them it's the One True. So they would stick with it at least in the short term (that's what the influencers would say to do).
I don't think Knots supports a hardfork, but maybe I'm wrong because I'm fully off the social media dumpster fire (for 2 days because I felt the need to provide a pointer on nostr re: coinos)
Have you got any reference of Luke saying he'd support that?
100% miner share.
Correct, but counterparty has been doing this (with 1-of-3) for a longer time (Note: I suspect it still does but honestly it's been over a decade since I last looked at that)
Then what exactly... is the entire point of Knots or forking Core?
Comprehensive configurability, and some form of highly symbolic protest but unfortunately mostly by people that have no idea what they are doing.
Is this really good for Bitcoin though?
That's what I thought... but I wasn't sure
The drama isn't good for bitcoin either, so it doesn't really matter. It's already toxic.
Bitcoin's "actual" drama is low... really low. It's the social media/Twitter effect of making the drama appear 'worse' than it really is. It makes people think 'is this ok' when they should just be... using bitcoin imo
No I have no direct references. And Luke has not said that. But I can guess what Human nature will do next based on life experience.
Heavily Armed Clown imo gives the best explanation of this whole "situation" that I've heard anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/live/KknCC22NBVo?si=j8ma2A8djYHJt8bL
You mean from the tweet in there? Or the later one?? Or the whole show?
I agree with both statements, of course another hard fork would suck. But you can't stop it, so it's pointless to argue. Therefore, if the same retards that are incapable of thinking critically and just repeat the same underinformed crap over and over will fork the coin, then fuck their shitcoin. It's not worth worrying over and spending a ton of time on: if they fork, they fork. Not our problem.
I hadn't ever heard of Armed Clown before... but the interview made sense to me. His tweets I don't know much about they come across a little harsh.
What I respect is the total divergence from influencer-ism and the big-picture view. It reflects what i've seen in other fields/things unrelated to Bitcoin
Yeah I think he's mostly right and not as controversial as he makes it out to be (but let the man have that self-image; doesn't hurt.)
Bitcoin isn't "influencer-ed". If it were, we'd have CTV and OP_CAT activated already. Thats just the social media drama, and why I left that. I still try to read when people prod (like you did right now) but I don't enjoy it, and it's often moronic af. I didn't mind reading through a month worth of this dude's tweets though, makes some reasonable points.
Does a Hard Fork / Chain Split / Consensus Failure really fit this criteria??? Is it really warranted?