I put together my thoughts on the Bitcoin Core OP_RETURN limit removal PR debate. Hope this helps. Let me know your feedback.

An important nuance not mentioned in the video is spam for the explicit purpose to DDOS bitcoin network

Letting you know what I think (b/c you asked for that at the end of your vid). It feels like you conclude with a false dichotomy of "well, we can't eliminate the spam entirely, so why even try?" when it seems like there are ways to reasonably increase the cost to engage in spam activity that would crowd a significant amount of it out as "legitimate" financial use of block space (hopefully) increases over time. Unfortunately running knots has turned into a signaling mechanism to tell core devs "Hey, limiting bitcoin's use case as much as possible to money is super important to us!" And you're right that it may be a potentially dangerous way to signal that concern. Core maintainers could do a lot to diffuse things by just acknowledging this generally uncontroversial position and communicating if/how they can safeguard legitimate financial use of bitcoin and crowd out alternative use cases generally viewed as spam (instead they've come off as a bit arrogant). Just my 2 sats. Appreciate the time you spent putting this together and the nuance it conveys.

Good luck with whatever you plan to do.

An excellent presentation, but I'm not convinced. To generalize a bit, let Charlie represent all the miners that have access to all the transactions (including the lucrative jpg ones). Let Mike represent all the miners that don't have access to all the transactions (because they don't have the special channels). By removing limits on OP_RETURN, you eliminate the need for special channels, therefore Alice doesn't need to pay extra to bribe Charlie, while Mike now has access to more lucrative transactions. So Charlie earns slightly less and Mike earns slightly more. Indeed, this helps Mike and hurts Charlie. But how significant is this and what's the cost? Personally, as a solo miner, it would have zero impact on my decision to mine, because my purpose is not to make money but to contribute to decentralization. I would probably join Ocean, which could be hurt by this change because they would essentially be fighting with one hand tied behind their back – everyone else is including profitable jpg transactions while they reject them, so all else being equal, they will be making less money compared to other miners (more on this later). So you're helping Mike, hurting Charlie, and probably hurting Ocean. Does this actually reduce miner centralization? Given that Ocean is one of the most important efforts to tackle the miner centralization issue, I would guess no. Lastly, and most importantly, you yourself mentioned this in the video but did not highlight it: the side channel between Alice and Charlie costs extra for Alice: "[5:23] You go back and edit that transaction and bump up the fees by ten percent so I get a little extra money." Without the OP_RETURN limits, Charlie makes less because Alice pays less. Jpg spam becomes cheaper! Your own example demonstrated that "FILTEROR"s make spam more expensive! Above, I said Ocean "could" be hurt by this change because they are already at a disadvantage against Charlie. After the change, they will be at less of a disadvantage against Charlie, but at more of a disadvantage against Mike. But if jpg spam becomes cheaper, there will likely be more of it (Charlie's proportion of the pie shrinks, Mike's proportion gets bigger, size of the pie gets bigger). So I think this is likely a net loss for Ocean. So to conclude: Charlie loses. Mike gains. Ocean loses (probably). Alice (spam) gains. Running Knots.

I think the part of this most frequently ignored that I didn't really address in the video is that the purpose of spam is often to DDOS, not necessarily just some creative expression. So we should more reasonably assume that adam lawful evil and charlie is chaotic neutral

Reasoned explanation amidst the largely useless emotional noise in the community. Thank you!

Thank you 🍻

I thought we were trying to make perfect money? How does cat pictures on the chain make for a better money?

Mick, despite what you've been told, you can't stop it. If you try, it will only cause lots of collateral damage and to little effect. But it doesn't matter, because Bitcoin carries on largely unaffected with the spammers have squandered a fortune and now having less BTC.

Excellent work