An anon posted this question here #1079203
and I'm going to answer it as best I can with the explanations I've seen regarding the current situation.
The Anon writes
Maybe core is captured. Why the are they trying to make shitcoining easy on bitcoin. The pr that kicked this off was specific to a shitcoin problem not a node problem.
Instead of posting a long response there... I thought it made more sense to include the post here... with regards to my understanding of the current situation overall?
If I don't understand it correctly... what am I missing? What more would "running Knots" probably accomplish?
If a bunch of people get together and 'run knots' does it keep the spam out of blocks? No. it just makes fee estimation harder... Which means that individual mempools are less accurate, less complete, and block propagation slower and less efficient (for compact blocks) across mempools.
What even 'is' a shitcoin? Imagine that an infinite number of token 'protocols' can exist in op_return data... literally 'anything' can arbitrarily "be" a token if someone 'pretends' that way.
Any number, any letter, any 'symbol' can 'represent' a token to degens... if that combination of data "appears" in a transaction. People can "imagine" they "own" that data and manipulate it by... creating more transactions. Literally ANY combination of symbols can indicate creating, moving, or manipulating something of value... if someome wants to "pretend" that way.
That's why Spam is literally an attack on blockspace, it's a DoS attack on the SPACE of blockspace itself
For example the outputs:
- 00000001
- 00000010
- 00000100
- 00001000
- 00010000 could be the number of satoshis in output UTXOs...
But what does this actually consist of? 1s and 0s.
And what ARE 1s and 0s? Data.
That's why some people say that "bitcoin is data" even though that saying pisses people off...
And so the only thing ultimately stopping a Denial of Service attack (which is what SPAM is) is consensus, the blocksize and fees.
What drives up fees? Legitimate users.
And how do users pay those fees? In Bitcoin....
You mine Bitcoin with energy.
And the something of value across all regions and dimensions... the great 'equalizer' of effort is energy.
It's therefore the FILTER across blockspace.
But only if people actually USE Bitcoin to transact.
The more Bitcoin is used peer to peer to transact the more expensive a DoS attack becomes because the stronger the fee market.
Incidentally, the more expensive censorship becomes as well.
That's a little more nuanced than saying "Core loves spam" but it is reflected in what's going on on-chain. Tell me... what's to keep a government from paying miners to mine absolute bull**** transactions including arbitrary data/inputs/outputs over and over?
Nothing. Except fees and fee pressure from users short of some kind of fork/change in consensus.
THAT'S why developers/CORE/others are so skeptical of filters.
It's not that that they "don't work" it's that they "don't work well" and in the future the most censorship-resistant network is one governed by fees with a VERY limited blockspace available to the entire world.
This video from Pleb Underground explains that perspective... better than I ever could