The problem is not only bare multisig.

If you banned bare multisig, they can do the same with hash values. In both cases (a EC pubkey, a hash function output, there is no structure you can enforce [*], and no way for you to know if the creator has a preimage for what they're publishing. So they can embed data in it.

It's pretty strange how many otherwise very technically knowledgeable people think that we can stop this with some new standardness rule or whatever. We basically can't, unless we do something very drastic to what Bitcoin even is. (Demurrage? )

[*] Apart from the fact that only approx 50% of random 256 bit strings are valid x-coords on the curve, for the former

If you want to configure your node to stop the propagation of these transactions to other nodes, set this to 0:

It’s bold to state this is the worst case scenario. Things can always get worse…

I guess this is why my miner is getting more sats than usual

I know it’s viewed as a spam attack, but it does clog up the mempool and prevent people from making on-chain transactions at a reasonable fee.

In theory, the attackers will run out of funds eventually and it will stop. But here’s a thought I had: yes you can’t just print Bitcoin like you print fiat. But you can buy Bitcoin with printed fiat in various ways, giving you more Bitcoin to fund these attacks. It can’t go on forever, given the hard cap of supply, the fact that buying pressure would raise the fiat price, etc. but it can certainly drive normies to L2 by making on-chain prohibitive.

Just my 2 sats

“Forever” seems a little dramatic. Worst case, wouldn’t pruned node software just maintain a bad list to purge?

Doesn’t this ultimately just lead to some minor software improvements while costing the griever funds to attack?

Why do people keep saying this is worse? At least they are showing their true colors; they don't have to pretend anymore that ordinals are "good for bitcoin" or "artful" or whatever BS. Of course, the attackers would be better off keeping their bitcoin instead of wasting it like this, but apparently they have decided to die killing.

We are in the "then they attack you" phase. This is just the beginning. Expect worse attacks coming.

Do they still have to pay for all that bloat?

Blockchain animal spirits.

mikeinspace is a moron

One thing I'm not clear on: Is there any economic incentive behind this behavior (such as being used to mint BRC-20s and NFTs)? Or is it simply an expensive troll?