100 sats \ 29 replies \ @Scoresby 16 Jan \ parent \ on: Opinion: Spam can't cause high fees - Thriller post bitcoin
As far as I understand, some of these "spam" transactions utilize witness data (inscriptions), while others do not (stamps).
I'm trying to talk about how we understand whether a thing is truly spam or whether it is something we don't like for other reasons.
The difference is important, and I don't think it's relevant to the argument whether one type of thing uses the segwit discount or not.
Why do you think I should have talked about it?
Arbitrary data is priced at a 75% discount to tx data (v,i,o,l). The chain will be used according to how it is priced.
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ArbitraryWitness data is priced at a 75% discount to tx data (v,i,o,l).
Isn't that for a good reason? Since this data doesn't have to be stored in expensive RAM of nodes but can be stored on cheap disk? That was my understanding how this decision to increase tx bandwidth this way was justified.
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so pedantic lol
It's still arbitrary. It still has to be downloaded. It still has to be verified. It still has to be stored indefinitely by someone. Who exactly does this discount benefit?
Perhaps when the segwit discount was being decided, the developers involved expected witness data to go in the witness. Now that that's no longer a reasonable expectation, the cost of witness data should be priced the same as the rest of the tx data.
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I think that having a conversation about whether segwit should be rolled back or changed is an interesting conversation.
I also think proposals for smaller blocks are interesting.
But I was trying to point out that the conversation around block space right now is, in fact, a conversation about what we want to use bitcoin for and not a technical conversation about a vulnerability or filtering.
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I definitely agree that this would increase the cost of inscriptions. Higher price means less demand. But it would also make it more expensive for me to spend from my multisig. I'm not sure if the end result will be bitcoin as money transactions being cheaper (in terms of the total fee i have to pay, not the rate) than they are now.
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Right, I agree. What I'm trying to get at is that if it really is spam, they will run out of money with or without the segwit discount.
If the segwit discount was of much relevance, the people who are doing stamps would run out of money because they aren't taking advantage of it and we wouldn't see much more of those.
Maybe that will happen, and if it does, great! Then we don't have to change anything to prevent that problem. If it doesn't go away, then it means they have a sustainable source of revenue and are not spam but a viable economic use of bitcoin.
We can still have a conversation about whether we want such uses, but that is fundamentally a censorship conversation and not a filtration one.
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You need a concrete definition for spam.
"[Bitcoin] verifies and secures endogenous data. Your use of a blockchain to store exogenous data shows you don’t understand the oracle problem."
Exogenous data (spam) has a price advantage to endogenous data, so of course it isn't being priced out. Let me put it to you this way: every 3 sat/vbyte increase in next block confirmation for a real transaction is a 1 sat/vbyte increase for a spam transaction. Couple that with the fact that the data of the spam tx can be sold and you've got yourself a spamchain flywheel.
Would love to see comparison of the number of stamps (not mentioned in the article) to the number of inscriptions. My guess is there are more inscriptions.
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If inscriptions were priced out by being 4× more expensive, why did the feerates go up ~500×?
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Re-read that, friend.
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I'm not sure I agree with the definition of spam as exogenous data.
If a person encodes some arbitrary data as a signature, it seems like that is clearly exogenous data.
But what if someone uses bitcoin script in a novel way, kinda like BitVM? Is the script exogenous data?
I think the only definition of spam that doesn't bring in subjective value judgments is what I said in the article: transactions that aren't willing to pay the fees.
As to whether there are more or less inscriptions/stamps, I still don't think it's relevant. If bitcoin block space is more valuable to idiots who want to put cat videos there than it is to people who want to use the hardest, most freedom-preserving, censorship resistant money ever invented, we aren't doing a very good job.
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I think the only definition of spam that doesn't bring in subjective value judgments is what I said in the article: transactions that aren't willing to pay the fees.
Yea... that's not subjective at all.
/s
But what if someone uses bitcoin script in a novel way, kinda like BitVM? Is the script exogenous data?
Depends on the locking script. Probably.
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I think we may be going in circles, but I do think that the economic truth of being able to pay transaction fees or not is about as objective as we are going to get.
If bitcoin fees were paid in fiat, I would agree with you, but they are paid in bitcoin and so, yes, I think the ability to pay them is an objective measure of whether something is spam or not.
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I think in this case, willingness and ability end up in the same place.
Bitcoin fees are paid from the inputs, so either you have enough or you don't.
If it's not economically worth it to you to make the transaction (and pay the fees) it's the same as not having enough to pay the fees.
As far as the fiat to bitcoin to shitcoin to fiat cycle, no one can mint bitcoin, so shitcoins (including fiat) valued in bitcoin will continue to decrease. As long as they have to buy bitcoin at some point in the cycle (which they do in order to pay fees) they will run out of money unless there is a real economic use for what they are doing.
75% discount. 75% of each block with useless data.
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