https://twiiit.com/LaurentMT/status/1973416866212180089

Exactly what @optimism says here: policy is capable of discouraging new behavior from taking a first foothold, or as long as almost the entire hashrate does not accept the new behavior. Low-feerate transactions had been propagating on the network for years before the sub-sat-summer, but when one miner started including the low-feerate transactions the behavior was adopted quickly by a larger part of the network.

I don’t have the exact numbers on hand, but I agree with Optimism that a surprisingly low adoption among the node population is sufficient for transactions to propagate somewhat reliably, even more so if they are preferentially peering. Laurent had some interesting simulation results regarding transaction propagation here: https://x.com/LaurentMT/status/1973416866212180089.

Murch

That’s part of why it works at all! (^_^)/

I suck at the math worse than you but came to the same conclusion. 

What I find fascinating is how many people believe wholeheartedly in the efficacy of rule enforcement by policy -- despite it's rather weak abilities.

Scoresby

because a permissive policy can "impose" their will on other nodes that have more restrictive policies ...

The caveat is: if there are miners willing to mine it. Some of the pool operators are closely following default policy, and others are much more permissive. I still think that this pluralism is 

But what this means practically: if only 10% of the hashpower will mine your default-non-standard tx, it'll on average take 10x longer for your transaction to be included. I remember someone experimenting a year or 2 ago (iirc in BitVM context, not 100% sure though) and waiting 2+ weeks for a larger non-standard tx to be mined. So you'll have to be patient, pay premium, actively rebroadcast, do some preferential peering, and so on.

... we succumb to the idea that it could work the other way too: a restrictive policy could be imposed on nodes with less restrictive policies.

I did this math multiple times but I suck at it, so do correct me if I fuck up here. If you want to fully restrict a peer from propagating across 125 connection slots through a policy, with 99% certainty, you need 

 of the network enforcing your policy. For 80% certainty, you need 99.821%... for a 50/50 shot, 99.447%...

Which is why it doesn't work the other way around.

bitcoin

Mempool Policy is Bitcoin’s Administrative State - Buck Perley

> because a permissive policy can "impose" their will on other nodes that have more restrictive policies ...

The caveat is: if there are miners willing to mine it. Some of the pool operators are closely following default policy, and others are much more permissive. I still think that this pluralism is **the** feature of Bitcoin.

But what this means practically: if only 10% of the hashpower will mine your default-non-standard tx, it'll on average take 10x longer for your transaction to be included. I remember someone experimenting a year or 2 ago (iirc in BitVM context, not 100% sure though) and waiting 2+ weeks for a larger non-standard tx to be mined. So you'll have to be patient, pay premium, actively rebroadcast, do some preferential peering, and so on.

> ... we succumb to the idea that it could work the other way too: a restrictive policy could be imposed on nodes with less restrictive policies.

I did this math multiple times but I suck at it, so do correct me if I fuck up here. If you want to fully restrict a peer from propagating across 125 connection slots through a policy, with 99% certainty, you need $$0.99^{\frac{1}{125}} = 99.991\%$$ of the network enforcing your policy. For 80% certainty, you need 99.821%... for a 50/50 shot, 99.447%...

Which is why it doesn't work the other way around.