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@ Super Testnet
2025-05-12 21:09:22
> Are you asking miners to decide what is and isn't a valid bitcoin use case, outside of consensus?
Yes, in this sense:
I think consensus rules and mempool filtering rules both restrict what bitcoin can be used for. The former creates absolute restrictions while the latter just imposes additional costs on those who bypass the filters. Both are useful, but both types of rules only make sense with some sort of consensus on what the blockchain is actually for. It's clearly not a place for invalid transactions; they are absolutely prohibited.
Spam is only "lightly" restricted (i.e. by mempool filters). It consists of data whose meaning is not yet defined at the protocol level, and it seems useful to retain the validity of such data because some of it might "get" a defined meaning within the protocol later. But using it now, without a meaning understood by bitcoin nodes, is an abuse of the system, in my opinion. And I welcome miners to vmbe part of the conversation about that, both to set stricter policies, and, if necessary, to turn some of them into consensus rules.