The issue, in my opinion, and the reason we generally have the spam to begin with... is because blockspace is being underutilized.

Most of the day every day fees aren't 1 sat/vbyte. They are (.2) sat/vbyte or less in other words practically free. The spam is free. So no wonder you get blocks full of it.

I would support a block-size decrease soft-fork before I supported bip-444 or whatever... people dumping data into the Witness field isn't the problem. The problem is that they have almost nothing else (no other demand) to compete with.

No Demand? Free blockspace? Expect to get junk. More valuable space? That people have to bid for? Get more valuable transactions.

Smaller blocks would force the market to reprice blockspace... take up less hard-disk space, and ultimately make the network more efficient. It wouldn't require goofy 'emergency activation' or 'chain rollbacks' if it were widely agreed to.

Keep the witness discount but just reduce block size by like... 50%. It's simple. It's good for nodes too. Wouldn't that be better than a contentious bip?