🎲 In 2014 Luke Dashjr described mining policies such as OP_RETURN size limits as not being a development topic, and suggested randomizing the default value.

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Increasing the OP_RETURN maximum payload size - Luke Dashjr

The latest OP_RETURN war kicked off days prior to @btcplusplus mempool edition. very sus. In Austin to get to the bottom of this 👀

I've put some numbers together to help you determine whether the horse has already bolted regarding the use of bitcoin for non financial transactions. 49% the UTXO set is sub 1000 sat outputs 43% of transactions in the past 2 weeks had an OP_RETURN or were inscriptions.

I think there is a strong argument to be made that even if you hold the opinion that bitcoin is for financial transactions, not arbitrary data storage, the figurative horse has bolted and efforts to close the stable door are currently futile. The argument looks like this. 1) There are people who want to encode arbitrary data, and are willing to pay for this. Systems are being developed which use arbitrary data pushes to enable bitcoin financial transactions to happen on sidechains/layers, blurring the line between financial transactions and the arbitrary data most people think about (jpegs on the blockchain). 2) Blocking arbitrary data at the relay layer is a sisypheancan task which nobody has succeeded to do for a prolonged period of time. 3) Even if successful the relay network can and will be trivially bypassed if block template builders wish to accept these transactions which encode arbitrary data. So you need template builders to be on board (the more the better). 4) The current block template builders are not likely to be on board, as it goes against their short-mid term financial incentives. This is because they are typically (a) disengaged / ambivalent about bitcoin development (see radio silence regarding new soft fork discussions) (b) In favour of any and all use of blockspace which will increase revenue (see the direct submission services, use of librerelay, prevalence of side chain mining) (c) Of the opinion that their fiduciary responsibility is to construct blocks containing valid transactions which generate the highest possible revenue for their customers. 4) Even IF you were able to successfully persuade template builders to filter these transactions (say by decentralising template construction into the hands of more ideological lower time preference miners) there will be disagreement about what level of data encoding is acceptable, with some arguing that it is permissible in certain formats, and with hardliners arguing that all arbitrary data should be eliminated. The fragmentation will result in some arbitrary data being trivially pushed into the chain. 5) Even IF you were able to persuade the overwhelming majority of hashrate to reject arbitrary data inclusion it becomes difficult to reliably get transactions which clearly encode arbitrary data into blocks, the data would end up being encoded in a slightly less efficient manner with a 2x cost burden. 6) If 2x cost burden is sufficient to stop arbitrary data encoding then it can easily be priced out. If not, all that effort would be wasted because it wouldn't achieve the desired outcome.

A message to those on team #fixthefilters - your time would be better spent earning sats, which you can then use to fund development of a bitcoin node implementation which implements your desired configuration options. It's a cat and mouse game and the cat is currently asleep.

adding policy rules as a non mining node makes about as much difference as posting your opinion on the github pull request both sides agree on this 😂

The recent pull request to bitcoin core made by peter todd (pull 32359) removes the code to enforce a policy limit on the size and number of OP_RETURN outputs. Additionally, he proposes the removal of the configuration options to allow node runners to modify the maximum size of data carrying transactions.

If bitcoin core doesn’t have the functionality that you want you can build it, and share it with the world. If other people share your views they can also run that code.

You are making a transaction, you check mempool and set what seems like an appropriate fee, but then a new degen mint drops and your transaction gets buried. New transactions coming in push your transaction further back, and 24 hours later it's 10 blocks deep. Fortunately you used Mempool Auto Accelerator with a 24h Time Delay trigger, and your transaction confirms in the next block. I have 10 beta access spots, dm me.

unusual 151 sat/vB tx

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If you are building something on bitcoin and use @mempool every day I want to hear from you, drop me a message.

confused about the different mining options with @OCEAN ? I've made a table to compare STRATUM (V1) with DATUM. Will add in STRATUM V2 & DEMAND in the future. http://poolcompare.orange.surf

confused about the different mining options with @npub1qtvl...7dze ? I've made a table to compare STRATUM (V1) with DATUM. Will add in STRATUM V2 & DEMAND in the future. http://poolcomparison.orange.surf

"solo mining" is currently confusing as a term because it's being used to mean different things by different people (often with an agenda). Sovereign Mining: You select the transactions Lotto Mining: You get the full block reward

Miners use picks, not hammers 🔨 -> ⛏️

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

Babylon unstaking continue to account for a significant proportion of all bitcoin transaction fees, even hitting 50% on 11th April.

Blockspace is currently so cheap that a 4MvB inscription tx costs just 0.02 BTC

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

At OP_NEXT Day 1 (2h15m) Ryan Rasmussen mentioned that BitwiseInvest had to deal with dusting attacks shortly after BITB addresses were published. I've noticed that many (22) of the wallet addresses which are no longer used have received address poisoning attack transactions. example:

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Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

Live view of @mononaut announcing the release of v3.2