Here you can see the email from Galois on the Google devs email list:
https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/Q6ulQb13okgMy repeated attempts at replying to him were censored by the admins, so I though I would post it here.
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Hi Galois, Claire, the list.
The problem is that you're redefining "spam" to mean "transactions I don't like" rather than using the technical definition: transactions that DoS the network.
Citation needed. Nowhere did I state that spam is "transactions I don't like". Spam on bitcoin is any data that is non-monetary and not required for bitcoin to function as money. Garbage like BRC tokens or jpegs are good examples of spam.
Inscriptions, ordinals, OP_RETURN: these are consensus-valid transactions that pay fees. Miners choose to include them. That's not spam, that's the fee market working.
Of course the spammer paid his miner fee, or it would not have made it onto a block. Or course the tx was consensus valid, or it would not have made it into a block. Of course a miner chose to add it to his block, or it would not have made it into a block.
But that is like saying the Nigerian prince paid his internet bill, his email followed all the SMPT and POP protocols, and my ISP chose to send the email to my inbox, therefore the Nigerian Prince email is not spam and must not be discarded.
Anything that is not intended to send or receive bitcoin is spam on the bitcoin chain.
You can disagree with the use case, but calling it an "attack" is disingenuous.
I'm not the only one who disagrees with your "use case". See what Satoshi had to say about your " use case" here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5575199.msg66431361#msg66431361Your email spam analogy is backwards: email spam is unwanted by the recipient. Here, miners ARE the recipients, and they're explicitly accepting these transactions by including them in blocks.
You are taking my analogy too far. The point of my analogy is that of course the spammer paid his internet bill or paid his miner fee. If all the spammers stopped paying their internet bill or their miner fees, spam wouldn't be a problem.
Of course the spammer followed all the email protocols or the consensus rules. If he had not, spam would not be a problem.
And of course my ISP forwarded the email to me or the miner added it to a block. Otherwise the spam would not be a problem.
You, yourself, Galois, understand very well that money is the only supported and sanctioned use case of bitcoin. Which is why you work so hard at making your BTC tokens look like genuine monetary transactions, by using spam techniques like op_return, fake pubkeys, fake scriptgash, fake Segwit data, the Taproot exploit, and spamware services like OpenRelay and Slipstream. Because you know you have to fool the system into thinking you are doing a monetary transaction when you clearly are not.
Bitcoin is agnostic about UTXO content. It's not up to developers to decide what's a "legitimate monetary transaction" based on the white paper. The protocol is defined by consensus rules in the code, not by our interpretation of Satoshi's intent.
You ate correct. It's not up to the devs to decide what is spam and what should be allowed on chain. That would be too much of a centralizing force. Like when core uniterally decided to blow up the op_return filter.
The power to regulate what should be allowed on chain belongs to the 100,000 nodes. Because it would be too easy to compromise the 5 big pools or the core devs. But pretty much impossible to get the 100,000 nodes to agree to run an OLFAC compliant list, for example.
The job of the devs is to provide the nodes with the tolls they need to make their own decision. Bit it's core's position that core itself should maintain a centralised mempool and relay policy they can impose on all their nodes.
Spam prevention in the codebase (like the witness data checks in validation.cpp) exists to prevent DoS vectors, not to judge transaction purpose. That's the actual definition of spam we should be using.
Of course, I would not expect a BRC token promoter like you to like the idea of BRC tokens being spam.
Filter whatever you want on your node. That's your right and policy rules exist for this.
Unfortunately policy is no longer enough to regulate spam. Since miners are now adopting spamware like SlipStream and OpenRelay as tools to promote spam and go around the p-2-p network policy. If the miners want to shove jpegs on chain, it belongs to the 100,000 nodes to put the miners nose in their piss puddle.
But advocating for protocol-level censorship of consensus-valid, fee-paying transactions because you don't like what they're used for is far more dangerous than any jpeg in witness data.
I don't like spam. Satoshi also didn't like spam as this is what he had to say when faced with the idea of Lady Gaga videos filling up the chain:
That's one of the reasons for transaction fees. There are other things we can do if necessary.
And here is what Satoshi had to say when faced with the idea of a "use case" other than money:
Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.
You can call anti-spam measures as censorship of you want. But Satoshi didn't thing preventing LadybGaga videos and BitDSN from using bitcoin as censorship. Neither do I. But I would not expect you to admit BRC tokens are spam.
