Bitcoin Core OP RETURN and spam explained by a Core Dev with Antoine Poinsot | SLP661 Seeing as people want to discuss Bitcoin spam, Antoine Poinsot and I discuss Bitcoin's OP_RETURN in depth - covering spam filtering, consensus rules, miner centralization, the future of spam concerns & more. (00:00)... - Intro (01:42) - Understanding Consensus & Relay policies in Bitcoin (05:21) - Historical context of standardness Rules in Bitcoin Core (11:05) - Are Bitcoin Core proponents being paid to ‘break’ Bitcoin? (13:42) - Differentiating b/w OP_RETURN PR & the general spam filtering debate (22:46) - Is Bitcoin Money or a Data Storage protocol? How do most Core devs view it? (25:36) - Why not raise the OP_RETURN limit to ~150 bytes? (29:02) - How urgent is it to fix the issue? (31:56) - Why not let the node runners choose what they want to relay? (39:03) - Do filters work or do they not? (43:27) - Are concerns about UTXO bloat, miner centralisation, block propagation etc. being overplayed by Core devs? (50:30) - Will miners who mine spam be penalised if node runners run knots? (1:00:28) - Is Bitcoin Core serious about stopping UTXO bloat? (1:07:00) - Why did Core not try to stop bare multisig spam? (1:08:58) - Should Bitcoin devs be playing a whackamole game with spammers? (1:18:24) - Summary & Future of OP_RETURN and spam concerns Includes Paid Partnershipsshow more

Spotify: Site: YT:

Thanks to show sponsors @BoldBitcoin @Coinkite @GaloyMoney

@Coinkite @GaloyMoney Antoine explains some of the 2023 history and why there is a perverse incentive. “This tight policy rule created incentives to use more harmful waste, and it’s unnecessary in this case because people who want to store data are using a structure that costs them 4X less”

@Coinkite @GaloyMoney Q: Do Bitcoin Core devs see bitcoin as money? A: All Bitcoin core developers see bitcoin as money

Q: How urgent is it to fix this? A: If we only consider @citrea_xyz, it’s not that urgent. But also we need to consider that it’s a signal… you are creating perverse incentives… and I think we should act quick to make sure that new applications do not build on top of the technique that is used by Citrea that is harmful.

Q: What about keeping a config option? A: Once the default changes, it becomes the de facto policy on the network, one local node changing the option is not going to have any effect globally. “I don’t think we should have an option that has zero to mildly negative effect on the user”

On attempting to prevent transactions going to miners: "You will basically need everyone to make this change, and if you want to make a tx, you just need ONE person to relay this tx that others don’t want you to make... You just need some percentage of the relay network or an alternate relay network for the transaction that other people don't want you to make, to be made." FullRBF parallels

“do filters work or do they not? Is this an apparent contradiction by core devs?” Antoine explains: “Standardness rules work for the public standard relay network, consensus rules work for bitcoin (what goes into blocks). So saying that standardness rules are going to prevent data from entering blocks is incorrect”

Topics: Is miner centralization an overblown concern? And is anybody trying to change Bitcoin “I think miner centralization is one of the biggest issues for bitcoin right now” “If we don’t have censorship resistance for Bitcoin, Bitcoin is uninteresting” “Nobody is trying to change Bitcoin” (i.e. consensus rules) “There is no such proposal on the table, even from the fix the filters people” Bitcoin is the protocol, Bitcoin Core is an implementation

Topic: The level of Knots adoption Antoine: It won’t make much of a difference. What matters is propagation between miners, miners are incentivised. You can have different implementations that have different policy rules, and miners are incentivised to have a set of policy that involves ALL of them so then they can get the fees from all the various relay networks”

Q: Is Bitcoin Core unserious about stopping UTXO bloat? A: It’s playing on the terms, because it’s confusing forever unspendable UTXOs (e.g. Citrea fraud challenge data) with uneconomical UTXOs (created by BRC-20). BRC-20 related to a meta protocol… and we cannot filter a meta protocol. There was 8GB of usage of the UTXO set related to a metaprotocol, but filtering inscriptions is not going to remove the demand for a meta protocol”

Re: Cat and Mouse game vs Spammers - Antoine explains that Core by its nature moves slowly (for good reasons) and so would not be very rapidly releasing new filters and an auto-update of Core/filters would be antithetical to what Bitcoin represents. In reality, he views it like the ‘mouse’ in this case wouldn’t even care, because they would either use direct to miner submission/APIs, or an alternate relay network, other than what is provided by Core.

@Coinkite @GaloyMoney @citrea_xyz Antoine on the problem with outside incentives and private mempools, why it is good to keep it accessible for new entrants into bitcoin mining

@Coinkite @GaloyMoney @citrea_xyz What happens from here with OP RETURN?

@Coinkite @GaloyMoney @citrea_xyz The link to the currently open PR on bitcoin core github by @theinstagibbs is here: And once again the link to @darosior's overall write up on Delving Bitcoin is here:

New to Bitcoin? ‘Bitcoin Nation’ offers a comprehensive introduction to Bitcoin’s role in fixing economic and social systems. This book explains how Bitcoin can be a solution to issues like inflation and financial instability, making it more than just a currency.