"The goal of changing the op-return rules is to preserve the ability of anyone to run a node. "

What’s the connection? Well, people want to put information inside of bitcoin transactions. You may disagree with this idea, but for them there is an economic rationale for doing it. They’re willing to pay good money to publish this information, much like someone might publish a classified ad in a newspaper.

Building your own block template is a great opportunity to filter out transactions. At the relay level, however, you’re only undermining the goals you set out to accomplish.

I fully believe in decentralized systems, as does every Bitcoiner I know. It’s incredible to watch the node running community grow and people feel empowered by helping keep bitcoin decentralized. If you’re not already running a Bitaxe, I’d recommend it. Filter the transactions going into your blocks your Bitaxe is mining if you want to have a say in data on bitcoin.

For the sake of maintaining bitcoin as decentralized system, however, I’d strongly suggest you reconsider filtering the mempool and restricting op-return data.

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200 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 6h

I think I agree with her. RAM is a bigger bottleneck than storage for node runners, in my current experience

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether expanding OP_RETURN will meaningfully reduce spam in the witness data

I don't have much to say about how filtering atthe relay level disadvantages small miners, but it sounds correct

232 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 4h

RAM is a bigger bottleneck than storage for node runners

I had no notable issues with a dbcache of 4GB on an Odroid M2 I sync'd and ran earlier this year, even though it didn't have the whole utxo db cached. It does have NVME and good controllers though - so that may help not having issues with loading from disk. Oh and I'm supposed to get that RPi 8GB delivered this Saturday, so I'll have a go at setting it up and doing IBD with it - so I'll keep you posted on that. Either way, if it works on the Odroid, it should work on the Pi, so it'd be at best a coding issue.

I don't have much to say about how filtering at the relay level disadvantages small miners

Back of the envelope math, anyone do correct me if I mess up somewhere:

If you have 8 slots where you randomly connect to peers and 20% of the network filters txs, then you have... .00025% chance to have every slot filtered, and thus 99.99975% chance of having at least 1 non-filtering peer. So in theory it sounds fine. But how many of these peers are actually capable of delivering all txs to you? 10% of the non-filtering part of the network? Let's do the math again:

8 slots, 8% desirable peers, gives you a 49% chance (instead of 57% if no one were filtering) of having at least 1 desirable peer.

This implies that it's not an immediate problem, especially since your node will disconnect malfunctioning or slow outgoing peers, so you have infinite tries and most nodes will eventually find a good set of peers (that won't work for filtering peers right now though); this is one of the things that has been engineered pretty awesomely over the years. But ultimately, when the % of the network that is filtering grows, this could become a problem: it is a forward-looking concern.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 4h

Cool, looking forward to your test results on IBD.

213 sats \ 6 replies \ @BlokchainB 8h

THE QUEEN HAS SPOKEN

I run a bitaxe!

183 sats \ 5 replies \ @optimism 8h

Idea: (if you have time) ask dcentral to print a 1-time SN edition yellow one and either raffle it or auction it - at tabconf?

111 sats \ 4 replies \ @BlokchainB 8h

That’s not a bad idea but who is decental?

300 sats \ 3 replies \ @optimism 7h

https://d-central.tech/product/the-bitaxe/

Was the first vendor of bitaxes in NA. But they're actually in Canada so may be crappy if it gets taxed.

They have cool self designed axe stands though... Which is why I thought of them. Can also get a plain one from Virginia Freedom Tech or solosatoshi and ask someone else to print the stand/case

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @BlokchainB 7h

I got mine via fold and crypto cloaks promo

159 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 7h

I think the "responsible" source for a BitAxe is through an OSMU contributor. See https://bitaxe.org/buy -> select North America.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 7h

Hahaha

300 sats \ 3 replies \ @optimism 10h

Building your own block template is a great opportunity to filter out transactions.

Glad to have independently written something similar this morning for a much smaller audience.

Also GREAT point about the bitaxe - though last time I discussed bitaxes with a mining service provider they laughed me out of the room:

But I have to believe that they that laugh last... otherwise might as well pack up.

121 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby OP 10h

On a long enough time horizon, do we all become miners?

202 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 8h

On a long enough time horizon we will all be under ground. So in some ways... yes?

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 9h

We once all were miners so this would be the ultimate reversal of trends. But I doubt it, because hashing simply scales very well.

But, even if 0.7-1% of blocks are mined by individual honeybadgers that don't care, with their own blocktemplate policies and no pool middleman¹ then we'll have a block a day on average that isn't governable or coercible.

because you will be unlikely to make ROI with a bitaxe when you're on pooled payouts and you'll never hit the lottery in that setup. ↩

"The goal of changing the op-return rules is to preserve the ability of anyone to run a node. "

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