brandon black/reardencode, a bitcoin engineer I've got to talk to a lot recently and have been impressed by his depth of knowledge...
shared and interesting fact about tx propagation that I didn't realize on the "filters (modulo 0 fee relay) are basically retarded" panel in portland:
even if you have 99.999% of nodes with filters, just due to the way tx's broadcasts are retried in bitcoin and how likeminded nodes find each other, transactions will almost always find its way to a block regardless of the number of nodes filtering it.
they even found a case where libre relay (a node for very liberal filters) was blocking a tx, and yet it still went through. you can sum this up as "the weirdos will find each other".
0 fee filters are still useful for regular node operation, but it won't stop consensus tx's in the p2p network, even if there are very few nodes with no filters.
Replies (46)
Yeah, but this is the same argument of futility that is used against moralists of any religion. Sure YOU will follow your God's rules but, at least a few people won't.
Yes, but *I* won't and that's all that matters to me. Even if 99.9999% of other people steal, I won't because I have my own morality.
then get consensus to change consensus rules instead of virtue signalling
It's not my place to tell others what to do with their machines either. That's the beauty of anarchy. I do what I want, and you do you.
your filters don't work and the tx will end up in the block regardless, its literally virtue signalling. it has no technical merit, it's not even an effective protest.
I don't think you understand my position. Is it virtue signaling if a mafia member walks up to me and tells me to pass a package full of bribes to the guy standing next to me? Especially if I refuse and he just hands it to the next guy who gladly does it for him?
I. DONT. WANT. TO. BE. INVOLVED.
That is my point. I will not be a relay point for things I don't approve of. I don't care if you do.
you are involved, you relay the block the tx is in
Also, I am not protesting that others follow my moral code. I just am not going to do the thing, and no one can make me do it.
Not sure if that's a fair point, because at that point
@JackTheMimic doesn't have a choice, aside from forking bitcoin entirely.
The UASF was also virtue signaling.
Lol, a block with mined trasactions and an unconfirmed transaction are not the same thing.
In my previous analogy if someone tells me "Hey those bribes got delivered"
and someone asks me: "did those bribes get delivered?"
I would still say yes, because I am not a liar either.
right, which is why I call it virtue signalling. you can't stop other people from sending consensus valid transactions full stop.
best we can do is discourage abuse of the network. and filters are not effective at that, and create other bad side effects like pushing people to non-p2p relay which harms the censorship resistance of the network.
I feel like the use of Virtue signaling implies that I am trying to send a signal by my actions, when I am just acting. Throwing a ball is not a signal that others should also throw balls.
Mempools are a mistake.
not really, it actually had a useful purpose.
which one
Couldn’t agree more
Alternative? I mean without a central authority, a decentralized pool of transaction propagation seems like the only way of sending that data without a 3rd party network.
All of them. It assumes altruism from node operators. Tragedy of the commons.
How do you categorize mempools?
Direct to miner submissions.
thats just my bad mempool dad joke 😆
I think it could only really be reasonably construed as virtue signalling if the person is actively trying to be part of a tribe, that being the supposedly virtuous one. If they are mostly keeping to themselves then it can't be virtue signalling.
If people are choosing to bypass nodes and rely on non-p2p relay, would that not represent a cost?
Asking out of curiosity, not because I have much of a dog in this fight.
That works but most miners just pull from the network, what is the benefit of using side-channeled txns?
Gotta love the nuance of text as a communication medium. 🙃
I don't have to deal with using my badnwidth on behalf of others.
This doesn't work if we want mining to be decentralized and permissionless. Unfortunately it works today because there are so few mining pools.
To borrow from Will's argument you already do when the transactions you don't propagate are confirmed.
I am not against side-channels I just don't know what happens if a company pays a premium to a miner for inclusion and another miner snags it from propagation (because why just bet on one horse). Do they get a fee refund or is that a cost of doing business?
Correct. But the incentive is there and yet to be fully exercised.
Reducing the economically viable scale of mining ops is the key. Waiting some halvings may help but we need better market making tools for hashrate in the meantime.
This is why i'm interested in working on ehash pools.
Direct to miner solutions prevent those tx's from being gossiped to avoid this.
Why/how do nodes with no fee restrictions find each other?
What is the alternative?
Google doesn't block 100% of spam. Some make it through. Google should just remove all spam filters and stop fighting it.
Same argument. #bitcoin
I can't wait to see Bitcoin Knots growth after 30 is released. What will the percentage be on 12/31/25???
View quoted note →I think what happens is that it will keep trying to find peers that will relay the tx? I will have to look at the code to confirm. I found it surprising as well.
How would you prevent it? If company A pays MARA to mine a certain txn, then Company A also broadcasts the txn, what would hinder that?
Company A is incentivized to broadcast as well as work directly with MARA. Then MARA would be on the hook for an invalid txn included in the block. But if MARA wins the race, Company A still gets included.
Clearly virtue signaling itself is useful when it comes to decentralized protocols.
Direct to miner.
RTFM for slipstream.
Lol, I literally just did, there is no carve out for broadcasting the transaction as well as using their service. So, I mean what are you referring to exactly.
It pays 2x fees at a given time and is primarily for non-standard transactions with guarenteed block time within a day. Relaying those don't happen because policy. Someone could submit to another miner and nothing stops them but right now there aren't many offering slipstream like services.
💯
I disagree. There is no incentive for miners to share their transactions.
I imagine it would very quickly evolve to at least having proxy services that forwards your transaction to many miners, but ultimately this is a pretty drastic change with unforeseeable consequences.
Sure but, that is just more confirmation that even if other miners DON'T relay those kind of transactions, you still CAN broadcast it.
Broadcasting into the ether is great. Relay policy makes great ether.
Exactly so miners would want you to send them directly so they cab have the juiciest blocks.
So are filters censorship, or not? Those guys are literally writing the script.
View quoted note →delusional low iq take
