- Saifedean Ammous supports efforts to make Bitcoin network spam more difficult and costly.
- GrassFedBitcoin urges the adoption of pull request #28408 for better inscription filtering on Bitcoin nodes.
- Blockstream CEO Adam Back cautions that filtering inscription spam may lead to a continual technical battle.
- Debate in the Bitcoin community grows as inscriptions raise concerns about blockchain bloat and network congestion.
- Current average Bitcoin block size is around 1.5 MB, but inscriptions could increase this to 4 MB per block.
Saifedean Ammous, an economist and author of “The Bitcoin Standard,” has expressed support for further development to curb spam inscriptions on the Bitcoin network. Ammous said he would contribute funds to hire a full-time developer dedicated to making Bitcoin spam activity more expensive and challenging.
The discussion began with the developer GrassFedBitcoin, who called for the approval of pull request #28408. This update would allow node operators to filter out unwanted inscriptions more easily, aiming to address issues with unnecessary data bloating Bitcoin’s blockchain. According to GrassFedBitcoin, the lack of such tools undermines Bitcoin’s role as a monetary protocol.
GrassFedBitcoin stated, “No one running a node wants to relay inscriptions,” arguing that previous changes to Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN limit were based on incorrect assumptions. He recommended a default, configurable policy discouraging the use of Bitcoin for non-monetary data, such as storing images like JPEGs.
Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, challenged these proposals by suggesting that inscription filtering could become an ongoing “arms race.” He noted that those embedding spam data in Bitcoin transactions could keep changing their approach, forcing developers to continually update their filtering tools. Ammous responded by comparing the issue to the ongoing fight against email spam, stating, “It’s not easy, but it’s worth trying to help bankrupt the spammers faster.” He emphasized that filtering spam is not censorship, as node operators already reject invalid transactions.
Some community members proposed counteracting developers who write spam code by treating their work as unpaid testing and updating filters accordingly. Ammous suggested deprecating spam tool development entirely and even hiring coders to overload such systems.
The ongoing debate highlights tensions in the Bitcoin community about the purpose and function of the network. Increased adoption of inscriptions could drive Bitcoin’s average block size as high as 4 MB, as reported by Mempool Research, compared to its current average of 1.5 MB.
For further reading, see how Bitcoin Ordinals compare with Ethereum–NFTs-a-comparative-overview” target=”_blank”>Ethereum NFTs.
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