Removing OP_return limits seems like a huge mistake

[Satofan44]

The truth remains that no side can convince the other. When there comes a time on exploit on OP_RETURN. I won't be surprised if it's done by knot lover to try and prove their point that they are right because so far, they haven't.

The ones that scream the loudest about something like CSAM are usually the ones that are basement case examples of people holding CSAM.

And then Luke responded to Lopp by saying storage of illicit data is "immoral and illegal." Like he didn't hear what Lopp had said at all. He did repeatedly call Lopp a "bad actor." He can't really be reasoned with.

He's clearly arguing in bad faith, it is a waste of time to address him. There are much more productive uses of time available, like sitting down and not doing anything. Even that is more productive than talking to CSAM-jr.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Wind_FURY]

A link to Mempool.Space's report about OP_RETURN after Bitcoin Core release 30.

https://research.mempool.space/opreturn-report/

 👀

Their conclusion based on HARD data - OP_RETURN doesn't significantly bloat the blockchain, and it remains small and manageable.

Although it's too early to say that this matter is closed, it does dispel the FUD made by the filterbois.

[Cricktor]

Nice report, indeed. I'm not too surprised about the results and frankly never understood the irrational storm in a waterglass that was stirred up by the Knots cult regarding the new OP_RETURN standardness. Did they ever show solid evidence with concrete data?

And besides the Runes spam which uses rather small OP_RETURN payload, it's pretty obvious that other blockchain spammers wouldn't likely exploit the new relaxed size and count rules for OP_RETURN of Core-v30+ standardness. OP_RETURN weight is simply not discounted and why would blockchain spammers with their inscriptions and whatnotelse shit want to pay more transaction fees than necessary?

[l8orre]

... spammers wouldn't likely exploit ...

moron.

BTC protocol has been discombabulated for over ten years now by malicious actors.

Go ask your friends Brock, Adam Back, Joi Ito etcetc where they got their inspirations.

The amount of denial in coretard circles is quite interesting.

[DaveF]

That there was going to be no real *organic* change was obvious.

What surprised me is that none of the people pushing for lukecoin / censorcoin spent money to spam the blockchain to prove their point.

Although to spam it to the point that it mattered would cost a lot and be obvious what it was and would wind up putting money in competitors pockets so they might not really want to do it.

Shrug, whatever. They are now trying to say that MARA lost a block due to mining sub 1 sat vb transactions because it took too long to propagate.
:eyeroll:

-Dave

[Cricktor]

...

Did you deliberately cite me quite out of context? Have at least the decency to acknowledge that I was speaking of OP_RETURN context and not the way you try to frame it.

But that's probably the style of conversation your camp prefers.


Just to be clear, I don't like how Taproot and witness discount is exploited for silly inscriptions and bloating the blockchain with all sorts of crap. But I haven't seen a decent solution to this that doesn't do possibly severe harm.

It should be clear even for you that you can't shut down any method to put spam on the blockchain and likely we both don't want spammers to dodge to methods that permanently bloat the UTXO set.

One of the problems is that actors and gullible people entertain a market for Bitcoin blockchain spam where few will make profit in the end and don't care a shit about blockchain "health" and future of Bitcoin.

The above mentioned report shows that the OP_RETURN drama has no solid roots and evidence. It's framed and abused for other agendas that no camp has good solutions for.

[l8orre]

...

Did you deliberately cite me quite out of context? Have at least the decency to acknowledge that I was speaking of OP_RETURN context and not the way you try to frame it.

But that's probably the style of conversation your camp prefers.


Just to be clear, I don't like how Taproot and witness discount is exploited for silly inscriptions and bloating the blockchain with all sorts of crap. But I haven't seen a decent solution to this that doesn't do possibly severe harm.

It should be clear even for you that you can't shut down any method to put spam on the blockchain and likely we both don't want spammers to dodge to methods that permanently bloat the UTXO set.

One of the problems is that actors and gullible people entertain a market for Bitcoin blockchain spam where few will make profit in the end and don't care a shit about blockchain "health" and future of Bitcoin.

The above mentioned report shows that the OP_RETURN drama has no solid roots and evidence. It's framed and abused for other agendas that no camp has good solutions for.

if I misunderstood you and arbitrary data storage is not one of the use cases we just have today, I would apologize.

otherwise, if you'd be naive enough to incrementally fragment the protocol on the belief that assertions like

... spammers wouldn't likely exploit ...

constitute a solid basis for a fundamental technology: you'd be a total and utter moron and imbecile.

[Satofan44]

Their conclusion based on HARD data - OP_RETURN doesn't significantly bloat the blockchain, and it remains small and manageable.

Yeah, it was discussed in some other threads. There is basically no uptick in the usage of bigger OP_RETURNs at all, and any small change can be dismissed as variance. Contrary to whatever exaggerating and panicking astroturfers and "independent thinkers" (many of such retards that barely have basic Bitcoin knowledge are in the WO thread) claimed, nothing changed at all -- and the conservative and rational voices ended up being right.

Although it's too early to say that this matter is closed, it does dispel the FUD made by the filterbois.

The case is closed whatever happens. If an attacker or spam-obsessed entity wants to harm Bitcoin, they are not going to use OP_RETURN they are going to use UTXOs. Therefore, no matter what happens in the future the arguments by Core will remain correct. Whether there will be a lot more OP_RETURN or not will not change this. In the case that there is heavy OP_RETURN usage, the lesson is that we have managed to prevent significant UTXO bloat by providing this alternative.

Did they ever show solid evidence with concrete data?

No.

And besides the Runes spam which uses rather small OP_RETURN payload, it's pretty obvious that other blockchain spammers wouldn't likely exploit the new relaxed size and count rules for OP_RETURN of Core-v30+ standardness.

There is nothing to exploit, that is the knowledge that they have been twisting. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of what OP_RETURN is and what it is for. If I am using something in the way that it is intended to be used and for the things that it is intended to be used for, then that is not an exploit.

The amount of denial in coretard circles is quite interesting.

You are a shitcoin leech that has never contributed anything to Bitcoin, so you can fuck off.

Although to spam it to the point that it mattered would cost a lot and be obvious what it was and would wind up putting money in competitors pockets so they might not really want to do it.

Someone could try to run the numbers, but the cost to sustain that kind of attack for a significant period of time to make it believable is probably quite significant. If it did happen but only lasted a very short amount of time nobody would believe it. I would not believe it until at least there were several months of sustained spam, and only then would I merely consider this as a possibility. Anyway, Luke-jr and his buddies are mostly broke. Besides collecting mining pool royalties they mostly spending their time fantasizing about being in CSAM committee and reviewing footage all day long. If instead they did quality work somewhere else, they may have enough money to fund this kind of attack.

[DaveF]

Although to spam it to the point that it mattered would cost a lot and be obvious what it was and would wind up putting money in competitors pockets so they might not really want to do it.

Someone could try to run the numbers, but the cost to sustain that kind of attack for a significant period of time to make it believable is probably quite significant. If it did happen but only lasted a very short amount of time nobody would believe it. I would not believe it until at least there were several months of sustained spam, and only then would I merely consider this as a possibility. Anyway, Luke-jr and his buddies are mostly broke. Besides collecting mining pool royalties they mostly spending their time fantasizing about being in CSAM committee and reviewing footage all day long. If instead they did quality work somewhere else, they may have enough money to fund this kind of attack.

Yup, and remember since Ocean does not mine these transactions all they would be doing is giving money to their competition.

I really hope they fork off and go the way of BSV.

-Dave

[l8orre]

The amount of denial in coretard circles is quite interesting.

You are a shitcoin leech that has never contributed anything to Bitcoin, so you can fuck off.

sure. as you mention it, I'll better heed your instruction and do as you say.

usually I occasionally observe this circus out of academic interest.

now having excised a fundamental issue of cognitive dissonance in this petri dish, I will just leave you to it again.

well, almost- while I am at the kbd, remind me again please-

what was the thing again with Epstin investing in Blockstream and funding three of five core devs via MIT media lab?

reminder for you so you can look it up: just before the time when the increasing disjointness of BTC protocol started?

and all the other collaborations?


 

[d5000]

A link to Mempool.Space's report about OP_RETURN after Bitcoin Core release 30.

https://research.mempool.space/opreturn-report/

Interesting

It is a bit similar to my thread "OP_RETURN observer". BTW: if someone wants to see OP_RETURN data usage in real time just use this link to Dune.com (if the data is outdated and I forget to re-run the scripts, everybody with an account on Dune can run them too).

But the Mempool report of course digs a bit deeper, for example detailing also the protocols that were use, and the usage of multiple outputs. I didn't remember for example that the 2019 spam wave was caused by Veriblock. Veriblock is a service (it still exists, see https://veriblock.org/, but is largely irrelevant now), that includes altcoin block hashes in Bitcoin transactions to anchor altcoin chains.

But the conclusions are the same than I arrived with my thread: nothing has changed so far after Core 30. All possible negative future scenarios are purely speculative, and the most important: economic incentives have not changed in a significant way.

[Wind_FURY]

... spammers wouldn't likely exploit ...

moron.

BTC protocol has been discombabulated for over ten years now by malicious actors.

Go ask your friends Brock, Adam Back, Joi Ito etcetc where they got their inspirations.

The amount of denial in coretard circles is quite interesting.

That's a big word for you. Why don't you go to a corner and reflect on the effectiveness of those filters and what its purpose is technically supposed to be.

A link to Mempool.Space's report about OP_RETURN after Bitcoin Core release 30.

https://research.mempool.space/opreturn-report/

Interesting

It is a bit similar to my thread "OP_RETURN observer". BTW: if someone wants to see OP_RETURN data usage in real time just use this link to Dune.com (if the data is outdated and I forget to re-run the scripts, everybody with an account on Dune can run them too).

But the Mempool report of course digs a bit deeper, for example detailing also the protocols that were use, and the usage of multiple outputs. I didn't remember for example that the 2019 spam wave was caused by Veriblock. Veriblock is a service (it still exists, see https://veriblock.org/, but is largely irrelevant now), that includes altcoin block hashes in Bitcoin transactions to anchor altcoin chains.

But the conclusions are the same than I arrived with my thread: nothing has changed so far after Core 30. All possible negative future scenarios are purely speculative, and the most important: economic incentives have not changed in a significant way.

Which proves that BIP-110/filters are merely for the purpose of virtue-signalling/hand-waving. Because those "filters" are NOT actually effective in filtering the transactions that they call "spam", then what's its actual purpose?

[nutildah]

Bitcoin: the fastest growing asset of all-time
Core critics: "Its broken and a failure."

From the mempool.space report referenced above... this is the situation of the topic of discussion:



Basically the chart shows there was an uptick in non-standard OP_RETURN transactions for the 1st 2 months after the release of Core 30 (noted by the dotted line). Then activity dropped significantly this year & has yet to come back. Will it ever? The economic incentives have to be there. I feel like the "on Bitcoin" shitcoiner meta is now pretty played out by this point. Early Ordinals believers are now saying it was a scam outright. Meaning, the degen crowd is moving on to the next thing.

For me as an "average Bitcoin user" (if there was such a thing), I just care about fees being low, which they are. Existentially I care about stuff like the health of the network, number of active nodes, network hash rate, commercial & societal adoption. But really most users just care if its practical to make transactions.

[Wind_FURY]

Bitcoin: the fastest growing asset of all-time
Core critics: "Its broken and a failure."

From the mempool.space report referenced above... this is the situation of the topic of discussion:



Basically the chart shows there was an uptick in non-standard OP_RETURN transactions for the 1st 2 months after the release of Core 30 (noted by the dotted line). Then activity dropped significantly this year & has yet to come back. Will it ever? The economic incentives have to be there. I feel like the "on Bitcoin" shitcoiner meta is now pretty played out by this point. Early Ordinals believers are now saying it was a scam outright. Meaning, the degen crowd is moving on to the next thing.

Dick pics and fart sounds lovers/users, and their makers, will have a better opportunity of getting incentivized in shitcoin networks/blockchains like Ethereum and Solana. Why use Bitcoin at all? It's harder for those people to scam Bitcoin users than shitcoin users.

For me as an "average Bitcoin user" (if there was such a thing), I just care about fees being low, which they are. Existentially I care about stuff like the health of the network, number of active nodes, network hash rate, commercial & societal adoption. But really most users just care if its practical to make transactions.

Any sort of user wants low fees, INCLUDING those users who use Bitcoin for "unwanted transactions".

[fillippone]

For me as an "average Bitcoin user" (if there was such a thing), I just care about fees being low, which they are. Existentially I care about stuff like the health of the network, number of active nodes, network hash rate, commercial & societal adoption. But really most users just care if its practical to make transactions.

For the moment, this debate is a “nothingburger”. Fees are low, ordinal transaction are a tiny percentage of the confirmed transactions, apart from very brief fee burst, there is no fuss about this.
This however might not the case forever. We cannot just hope ordinal craziness will simply go away.

[Satofan44]

For me as an "average Bitcoin user" (if there was such a thing), I just care about fees being low, which they are. Existentially I care about stuff like the health of the network, number of active nodes, network hash rate, commercial & societal adoption. But really most users just care if its practical to make transactions.

For the moment, this debate is a “nothingburger”. Fees are low, ordinal transaction are a tiny percentage of the confirmed transactions, apart from very brief fee burst, there is no fuss about this.
This however might not the case forever. We cannot just hope ordinal craziness will simply go away.

While you are absolutely correct with this, it does not change anything. The ultimate truth is that these things can not be prevented at all in the end, so what are we supposed to do about it? It seems that many people have a tough time accepting this reality, that is why sometimes they come up with extremely ridiculous anti Core arguments. Should we for ideological reasons spend years' worth of valuable time fighting a battle that can not be won for or should we instead pick the most reasonable practical solution and move on? As you can see, the "filter side" did not actually manage to come up with a solution that works. Their soft fork would severely limit Bitcoin, confiscate coins in various types of outputs and it still would not prevent spam. The reason for which even the loudest proponents of filtering spam have not been able to solve it is precisely because it can not be solved. Having to pay a fee based on data is Satoshi's solution to spam, that is the only one that really does something.

As far as fees and usability are concerned, education is the prime solution here. It is always time for education. To those that have average technical literacy, more details about UTXO management and other stuff can be explained. For those that do not have any, simply onboard them to a mobile LN wallet. Custodial is fine for small amounts and this kind of use case. They will learn that Bitcoin can be used during any time in a fast way on layer 2, and therefore high fees during certain periods will not impact them. It is a simple question. If given the option, would you want to drive your car when the streets are packed or when there's nobody around?   Lastly, let's not go into ideological reasons and the optimal ways of using Bitcoin. We are trying to onboard back people that got scammed in shitcoins and those that do not know any technical concepts such as UTXOs.

[Wind_FURY]

For me as an "average Bitcoin user" (if there was such a thing), I just care about fees being low, which they are. Existentially I care about stuff like the health of the network, number of active nodes, network hash rate, commercial & societal adoption. But really most users just care if its practical to make transactions.

For the moment, this debate is a “nothingburger”. Fees are low, ordinal transaction are a tiny percentage of the confirmed transactions, apart from very brief fee burst, there is no fuss about this.

This BIP-110 supporter actually said what we have been saying about dick pics/fart sounds and the fee market. It's laughable how they debate against the Core Developers without understanding themselves.



He's admitting that we're right.

That's fine, but jpegs are going to get priced out anyway. They're not a threat to the network

https://x.com/mattkratter/status/1732812053122064795

This however might not the case forever. We cannot just hope ordinal craziness will simply go away.

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spam prevention is the one of the main functions of the fee market.

[Satofan44]

This BIP-110 supporter actually said what we have been saying about dick pics/fart sounds and the fee market. It's laughable how they debate against the Core Developers without understanding themselves.



He's admitting that we're right.

That's fine, but jpegs are going to get priced out anyway. They're not a threat to the network
https://x.com/mattkratter/status/1732812053122064795

This however might not the case forever. We cannot just hope ordinal craziness will simply go away.

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spam prevention is the one of the main functions of the fee market.

Sure, but this is quite a simplified view on it and is contrary to what Bitcoin is supposed to be. We can't expect it to be able to act as a digital peer to peer cash and simultaneously only rely on fees to price out undesirable behaviors. These two positions are not compatible with each other. I believe d5000 talks about this occasionally in some threads, we must remember that Bitcoin does not exist in a bubble. There are alternatives for people, and while those alternatives do not offer what Bitcoin does in terms of decentralization and security, they do in usability. Fees are a difficult topic because whatever direction they take to an extreme they always come with downsides besides the benefits. The ordinals spam was pretty shitty, I am glad that it is over for now but we need to look for preemptive alternatives or processes through which we will retain usability for the average person even in such times. Otherwise, what are we supposed to tell someone? Don't pay that high fee, wait a few weeks until the spam hopefully clears up and then you can do your transaction at a reasonable fee? Of course such a person unless they are red-pilled will just go and do the same transaction over some shitcoin.

As far as fees and usability are concerned, education is the prime solution here. It is always time for education. To those that have average technical literacy, more details about UTXO management and other stuff can be explained. For those that do not have any, simply onboard them to a mobile LN wallet.

Stuff like this helps, but it helps more with those who are already in the Bitcoin system for some time or those that are able to navigate their way around these things. It does not help with new users or in cases where a person has to make transactions during a spam wave but they are not on LN already. Anyway, the issue of fees in relation to spam or specifically OP_RETURN usage was not often brought up from what I have seen. They have mostly focused on some ridiculous exaggerations and CSAM obsessions.

[gmaxwell]

Otherwise, what are we supposed to tell someone? Don't pay that high fee, wait a few weeks until the spam hopefully clears up and then you can do your transaction at a reasonable fee? Of course such a person unless they are red-pilled will just go and do the same transaction over some shitcoin.

Arguably a feature, not a bug:  the fact that they will substantially takes "spend millions to flood people off of using Bitcoin" off the table as a successful avenue to deny people access to cryptocurrency.  The fact that there are many shitcoins to choose from substantially takes the attack off the table for "to make my alternative more profitable".

This is not a surprise-- this kind of thing is the primary advantage of the existence of shitcoins:  That they make it clear that suppressive attacks on people's access to cryptocurrency that exploit some limitation or tradeoff made in Bitcoin will ultimately not deny people access to cryptocurrency, and spares us the resource waste and difficult compromises that would come from defending against them.

They have mostly focused on some ridiculous exaggerations and CSAM obsessions.

Even here these things are arguably ultimately doing us good-- because they'll have the long term effect of identifying and stripping out the toxic manipulators and people gullible enough to follow them.   As obnoxious as the current hysteria is it's better off than if the substantially the same actors with arguments of similar quality were trying to-- say-- introduce coin "recovery" backdoors. (well, assuming they're not-- maybe not a coincidence that the principal actor in all this is someone who actually lost all his coins... and now he's explicitly said he's trying to drive the existing community implementation off the network and replace it with his own and doing so at clearly a huge cost.  One could wonder what the payoff there is...).

Identifying and excluding people with bad reasoning on an absurd non-issue will diminish their influence in the future on matters where their poor judgement might be less apparent.  It doesn't mean that it isn't obnoxious to deal with now, or that it isn't something that should make people concerned about Bitcoin's value but the underlying pathology of the gullible mob that might try to set fire to Bitcoin already existed and the current drama just exposed it.

Certainly bad actors like the people at ocean mining behind this nonsense are never again going to get handed a pile of money by people who care about Bitcoin.  It would have been better if they never did in the first place-- the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago, but the next best time is today.  It's an expensive lesson-- one that so far has cost the Bitcoin core project its maintainer, and likely depressed Bitcoin prices temporarily (through the actions of csam hysteria, distracting resources from important improvements, and exposing a risk that toxic actors will be able to block important improvements like providing an avenue for QC resistant keys).  But it's not hard to imagine much worse things outcomes from the same kind of poor judgement and gullibility.

[Satofan44]

Otherwise, what are we supposed to tell someone? Don't pay that high fee, wait a few weeks until the spam hopefully clears up and then you can do your transaction at a reasonable fee? Of course such a person unless they are red-pilled will just go and do the same transaction over some shitcoin.

Arguably a feature, not a bug:  the fact that they will substantially takes "spend millions to flood people off of using Bitcoin" off the table as a successful avenue to deny people access to cryptocurrency.  The fact that there are many shitcoins to choose from substantially takes the attack off the table for "to make my alternative more profitable".

This is not a surprise-- this kind of thing is the primary advantage of the existence of shitcoins:  That they make it clear that suppressive attacks on people's access to cryptocurrency that exploit some limitation or tradeoff made in Bitcoin will ultimately not deny people access to cryptocurrency, and spares us the resource waste and difficult compromises that would come from defending against them.

I am not trying to argue that it is a bug, I have described it as the only real mechanism that actually works against spam in my previous post. However, I still believe that we ought to tread carefully. While we are idealists in some ways and quite red-pilled, many existing or future users are not (or most aren't and won't be). We could say well who cares, it is their loss in the end -- but if we want to achieve global adoption, we need these kind of people too. It is actually this feature of defense that has at times caused people to sway into other directions, and not knowing better, they were fooled into all sorts of shitcoin scams. Again, for this I am thinking only of a purely practical perspective. The times when the network is overloaded or under a spam attack, many normal transactions are completely priced out. I can't tell someone to use LN at that time unless they have LN already set up. The fallback is preemptive education during peaceful times such as right now, but that does not help people who either are not here yet or do not set up LN for whatever reason on time. To put it in another way, I don't want a single person to use a shitcoin under any circumstance unless I can't avoid it.  

They have mostly focused on some ridiculous exaggerations and CSAM obsessions.

Even here these things are arguably ultimately doing us good-- because they'll have the long term effect of identifying and stripping out the toxic manipulators and people gullible enough to follow them.   As obnoxious as the current hysteria is it's better off than if the substantially the same actors with arguments of similar quality were trying to-- say-- introduce coin "recovery" backdoors. (well, assuming they're not-- maybe not a coincidence that the principal actor in all this is someone who actually lost all his coins... and now he's explicitly said he's trying to drive the existing community implementation off the network and replace it with his own and doing so at clearly a huge cost.  One could wonder what the payoff there is...).

Identifying and excluding people with bad reasoning on an absurd non-issue will diminish their influence in the future on matters where their poor judgement might be less apparent.  It doesn't mean that it isn't obnoxious to deal with now, or that it isn't something that should make people concerned about Bitcoin's value but the underlying pathology of the gullible mob that might try to set fire to Bitcoin already existed and the current drama just exposed it.

Certainly bad actors like the people at ocean mining behind this nonsense are never again going to get handed a pile of money by people who care about Bitcoin.  It would have been better if they never did in the first place-- the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago, but the next best time is today.  It's an expensive lesson-- one that so far has cost the Bitcoin core project its maintainer, and likely depressed Bitcoin prices temporarily (through the actions of csam hysteria, distracting resources from important improvements, and exposing a risk that toxic actors will be able to block important improvements like providing an avenue for QC resistant keys).  But it's not hard to imagine much worse things outcomes from the same kind of poor judgement and gullibility.

Absolutely, some people are way too forgiving of bad actors just because they had some past contributions. They seem to be stuck in a preordained destiny-style chain of events thinking. It is not like if luke-jr or gavin didn't do some of the things, that there would be a 0% chance that someone else would have done them in the absence of their actions. The irony here is that they almost never apply this to Bitcoin Core in generally. They are willing to shit on them for the smallest disagreements despite the massive amount of gratitude that they should receive -- simultaneously, they are willing to excuse or downplay the damaging behavior of luke or Gavin simply because of their past contributions. Anyway, I believe that luke has been around far too long and was already toxic enough to be alienated even before the OP_RETURN drama. Entertaining these actors and their ideas, even if it is only mild acceptance or worry, causes considerable harm. The CSAM hysteria was mounting on top of existing FUD regarding quantum computers and other stories during this period. I was looking for an old video while writing this post.

Some may have watched it before but surely many haven't. Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q52kFL8zVoM. This doesn't even include all types but it is good general knowledge about these types of people. There was another one that was more focused on how malicious actors infiltrate projects in a targeted way, but I can't find that one.