An “attention whore” to use the correct technical terminology.

Can't one be both? And who posting on social media is not an attention seeker? I am.

His rationale is not based on a threat to the consensus rules but on a threat to decentralisation of the bitcoin network. I'm not saying that he's right, I don't know it. I'm just saying that your framing is wrong, in my opinion.

Well, that comes down to more detailed definition of who attention seeker is, but fair point, we all seek for attention.

maybe this more accurate ;) View quoted note →

where that threat to decentralisation of the bitcoin network comes from?

As far as I understand it: the harder, more expensive and/or more dangerous (illegal?) is to run a bitcoin node, the less people will run nodes, the more centralised the network, the more it is vulnerable. The idea is that spam is making it harder to run nodes.

It's one of the bitcoin weakening vectors that they are blaming some Core devs for.

A. What if of all nodes already have illegal content? Probably they do... it's too late already ;) B. There is no way to prevent from putting illegal content into Blockchain C. Spam doesn't make more expensive to run a node, we should expect to have full blocks no matter if they contain spam or not. my take

A and B I'm not going to argue with. C is more nuanced than that. The size of the utxo set is bloated by the inscriptions, it's affecting the IBD and making it more resource consuming for miners (which makes it even harder for small miners to compete with the big ones – another centralising force). The inscription spam could be stopped two years ago (there was a PR for that), but it wasn't. And the inscriptions are still being mined, like a 4 MB block by MARA recently. We shouldn't be forced to compete for the blockspace with spammers. Mining is a small margin business and the big miners will try to convince everyone that the blocks must be full and they are entitled to fill the blockchain with toxic waste. I don't agree with that. I don't want people to throw garbage to the river even when I'm not using the river at the given moment. And this river flows next to my door (my node). This is a tool to break the fiat system. The system will be fighting against it. We need bitcoin to be resilient and simple. It was designed to do one thing and in order to win with fiat, it has to be the best at it – being money. It won't be possible, when it will be optimised to do some other things (like eth and others). To be the best at something you need to optimise only for this very thing.

hey @Maciek sorry for the late reply on this, been quite busy, hope you understand... you are spot on on this! I mean the irrevocably growing utxo set caused by spam. I don't know what I was thinking, probably I was addressing some other knots's gang argument that you didn't bring up. sorry about that. so, when it comes to polluted utxo set, this is actually my biggest concern, that imho, knots is not going to fix. The fake pub keys, without corresponding private keys, generated to smuggle arbitrary data can be indistinguishable from valid transaction keys. Of course there might be a need to put some data markers to tell where the arbitrary data is hidden, but those can be changed at any time, at zero cost and with the speed of light. How do knots want to combat this? You mentioned a PR created two years ago. Do you know the mechanics of this? How this PR could prevent from faking pub keys? I am very curious. Once a fake pub key enters a confirmed transaction, it will stay in the utxo set until the very last day of Bitcoin, which means forever. You said you are not going to argue with my B, but saying that we can prevent creating fake pub keys is a contradiction to my B. so, what am I missing here? Also, please don't tell me you don't like spam, there is no single bitcoiner that wants spam in Bitcoin, if they say otherwise, they are just trolling. We don't need to remind each other that spam is an unwanted thing. We don't need to bring this level of arguments together with why bitcoin is important when we talk about technical aspects of spam prevention. Imho, the question we need to answer is: is our time and energy worth fighting this, or better focus on other things and create incentives for other users of the Bitcoin network, so the need for spam diminishes naturally with ongoing Bitcoin adoption.

These are some valid points. In the meantime I'm following the fake pubkeys discussion and it becomes apparent to me, that it's above my pay grade. I did get caught up in tribalism early in the discussion and I'm slowly untangling from it. I doubt though, that all the people involved in this discussion are against spam/etherisation. Probably some are just trolling, but some have evident conflicts of interest. This remains my concern, but I don't know what to do with it. The proposals and the approach of the Knots camp are not always ideal, but I see genuine concerns and sincere attempts to defend bitcoin. That's why I reacted to your initial post. They iterate their proposals, work on them, gather feedback and seek agreement. To me this seems fair. I'm going to follow the discussion still, but I'll try to refrain from statements about issues I don't fully understand.

I don't think pubkeys are above your pay grade. This is actually quite simple. Most Bitcoin address are a result of hash function (except prefixes etc.). The output of any hash function is deterministic, but also looks random (it's not random, but you can't tell what and if it contains any information). So , because this random look of the address, we can't tell if the address is modified or not to contain spam. Even if an address looks like it's modified, you also can't exclude possibility it's valid. That's why it's so difficult (actually impossible) to filter them out. The spammers have to include additional data markers to recognize their own spam. Once we know what markers they use, we can set a filter. But, at that point they can just change the markers and we start from scratch updating the filters. Cat and mice game ;) Hope it makes sense. Unfortunately it's only one of many pieces in this whole debate about spam :(

Thanks! Do I get it right: in the end the main discussion seems to be: is it worth it or not to play the whack-a-mole game? One rabbi says it's worth it, the other says it's not.

well, that's one of the key points of the debate. but this extends to the OP_RETURN thing, unfortunately... IMHO what's missing in this debate is, nobody takes into valuation who the spammers are, or could be. I mean, are they JPEG fanboys/spekulants/scammers who see value in NFTS, or its the state level actors (governments, banks, corporations) who are attacking Bitcoin to make Bitcoin network too expensive to use? If they are JPEG fanboys, then node runners could possibly discourage them from spamming the network (by making it more difficult), but for the filtering nodes to be effective they need to be 90% of the network. Or maybe JPEGS are no longer trendy because they already failed to deliver value. They already pumped so much money into this project, and net total return from this hype is negative. Maybe they will never return? Atm fees are very low. I'm asking, where are the spammers? Also, what are the chances we reach 90% consensus on the network? If the state/bankers are the attackers, then no filters will work. They will go straight to the miners, force them or bribe them to include spam in the blocks. All verification nodes will accept them, since consensus rules are no violated. Finally, bypassing filters is the easiest hack in the world. Spammers only need to change data markers and continue upload. Sad but true, this the nature of open decentralized protocol. Now, like I said before, I'm most concerned about utxo set, because every fake pub key created to smuggle spam, will stay in the utxo set forever. And not only it makes running a node more expensive (threatening decentralization - maybe), but definitely more expensive to run pruned nodes, since utxo set can't be pruned. Let me just remind at this point that non-custodial native lightning wallets use pruned nodes, so they don't take much space and can be installed on the mobile phones. Reduced data space is very valuable for them and anybody who wants sovereign non-custodial LN wallet running on mobile devices should be protecting utxo set from growing. So the question is: how do we prevent utxo set from growing if probability of stopping spammers is very low? One of the ideas is to remove limits from OP_RETURN. Its's not ideal, because its still much more expensive to use use OP_RETURN for spamming than witness section of trxs. But if someone is willing to pay more, and don't bloat utxo set, why don't allow it? Argument I don't understand is that removing OP_RETURN limit will enable CSAM. But CSAM is already (with high probability) on Bitcoin network and Nostr! The unwanted feature of freedom networks is that we can't censor things. Throwing data into OP_RETURN is much more expensive that in witness. Who will choose more expensive spamming? Seriously who? It's like going to grocery store, finding two identical products with different price and choosing to pay for the more expensive one. Who would do that? Now, going back to whack-a-mole game and is it worth it... Bitcoin devs are very rare species, their time is very scarce, extremely precious. So, if fighting SPAM takes a lot of energy and time, but can achieve not much (comparing to work spent), what do you want Bitcoin devs to work on? For me, I prefer talented devs like Luke Dashjr, to work on one of the following things, rather than chasing rabbits: - scaling Bitcoin - even there was no SPAM on the network, Bitcoin still can't handle entire planet population - improve Bitcoin UX - Bitcoin still too difficult for most people to use efficiently - work on more decentralized and cost effective mining protocols - current miners centralization is not looking good, but not critical imho. And the last question nobody is willing to answer. Once Bitcoin fiat price go up 10x, network fees go up 10x too. With the fees 10x+ from now, will we see spammers willing to pay so much more for the JPEGS that already failed to deliver? I don't think so (unless its a state level attack), and also see some devs not event engaging in the discussion, because with or without knots, the spam will go away, and its better to spent that time on something that will last longer and will work better toward Bitcoin adoption. Both sides want to protect Bitcoin, they just have different understanding of how the best do that. It might seem like I defend CORE devs. I don't. I think they went bananas and completely failed to communicate their reasoning. They are also ignorant and high-nosed, thinking everybody else thinking differently are stupid. They really need someone who would do a PR for them, some technical program manager, whatever, because they suck. However, when I stripped down all the emotional BS that came from both sides, and stick only to technical aspects with addition of applied statistics, I lean towards CORE decisions. ok, you not gonna force me to write again such long essays again... over to you ;)