The problem with the patch from the perspective of disallowing data embedding is that for it to be effective an overwhelming majority of nodes would have to upgrade to this patch. In the time where most nodes are not upgraded yet, the network will perform in a degraded manner, but data carrying transactions will still be relayed. If most nodes eventually upgrade, it is easy for the spammer to come up with a new script variation that is not covered by the current filter, which starts the entire game again. At the moment nodes upgrade very slowly. It usually takes years before a big majority of nodes upgrade to the newest version. You could argue that this is fine, and people will just be encouraged to update faster, but then you enter dangerous "auto-updating" teritory, which is against the core tenets of our project.
Replies (2)
what do you mean by 'degraded manner' for the network as a whole?
other than a lower availability of these spam transactions in any given set of nodes' mempool, it makes little no difference for a node that is enforcing existing policy which is the network at large. it would only be degraded for the participants that want higher availability of arbitrary data prior to the spam transaction getting mined which is even a smaller set of people than the people who actibely upgrade software and/or apply patches.
the argument i see being made is that fee estimation could be messed up, but the thing is that fees are up to the node. their ability to calculate fees on their own criterion of what to bid against is none of anyone's business and certainly doesnt degrade the rest of the network. the node knows whats best, assumptions on what a miner "might" include in blocks dont need to (and shouldn't) be forced upon them.
Not having transactions in the mempool that are being mined into a block degrades compact block resolution. This leads to slower block relay and a quadratic increase in p2p traffic. If you don't accept data carrying transactions that your peers send to you, you create a negative externality for them if they are mined, because they need to relay them to you again.
