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238 sats \ 10 replies \ @unschooled 1 May \ on: Can Someone Please Tell Me What is Going On With Bitcoin Core AskSN
Watch this. Kratter lays out the background info sufficiently in an easy to digest way. He editorializes some of the information, so please feel free to think critically and form your own opinion.
#967721
It's good to be aware of your limitations, but bitcoin's culture and ecosystem has been formed in the crucible of some intense debate by people like you and me. Your opinion matters, even though some gray beard devs will have you believe it doesn't. So keep learning and asking questions to try and understand, but also don't be afraid to speak out if something isn't adding up, bearing in mind where the appropriate avenues are for doing so.
Matt Kratter has created some awesome videos, and has an amazing following on Youtube and in this space in general. However his video leaves a lot of information out imo and doesn't provide the full context.
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Afact the core-side of things hasn't been very well explained, which may be why Kratter is presenting this bias and may account for (not necessarily excuse) the nature of the pushback.
What you wrote in another comment,
Core is proposing that op_return standards become more relaxed in Core so that op_return is used... instead of "more harmful" things like witness data or dust outputs that that are 1) impossible to prune and 2) impossible to be spent. A UTXO that can never be spent and cannot be pruned bloats the UTXO set... making it harder to run nodes especially on limited hardware.
is the first teleological (cf #968027) explanation for dropping the op_return standardness limitations I've seen so far, whereas most of Core's attempts to explain/justify themselves merely state the obvious fact that spam finds it's way into the mempools in spite of op_return having the limits in place.
One concern I have, in response to your summary of the core-side, is whether they are serious about making it easier for people run nodes. Since Todd's recent boldness, this has not been particularly obvious in the narrative Core is pushing. They want to change a part of the implementation that has been there for longer than a decade, so IMHO there's at least some level of resistance that is warranted.
If you have more evidence that this may be the case, then I'd be curious to see what that is.
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In my opinion they would be best off doing... nothing. When it is not clear what to do, in Bitcoin the best thing is to do nothing. Don't change anything.
Having said that I read all the comments of that PR and that's where I saw this
is the first teleological (cf #968027) explanation for dropping the op_return standardness limitations I've seen so far
The explanation was that op_return is much better than fake keys, bare multisig, or unspendable UTXOs but I am not an expert read all the explanations for yourself.
As far as making it harder to run nodes... my understanding is that the bloating of the UTXO set with dust is the hardest thing about running nodes today. The storage of the 'data' from inscriptions isn't a big deal the 4mb block limit cannot be exceeded and that data just sits there.
It's the dust transactions and larger utxo set for low-powered nodes. If they were all op_return outputs they could be ignored/pruned/have a lesser impact.
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A block can have up to 4 MB of witness data, but only up to 1 MB of other transaction data. OP_RETURN outputs are other data. If you store stuff in OP_RETURNs instead of witness data, the resulting block will be smaller. And yeah, it’s harm reduction as @028559d218 said. That’s also what I was trying to convey, but their post here is much pithier.
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I can see that @petertodd is suggesting that utxo bloat is a direct consequence of the OP_RETURN standardness limit, which appears a rational argument at first glance. How would I be able to verify this using my own node?
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You can't. The UTXO set itself, what your node stores, doesn't tell you anything useful about why a transaction was created.
You have to think about this for yourself, e.g. by looking at projects using Bitcoin and understanding what they're doing and why.
Thank you for the link and the comments! At the end of the day my outlook on life is I never want to stop learning and I love how you and the rest of the SN community has been so great with helping me bridge this gap! Like you mentioned there are def various people in all sorts of groups or corners that are just rude and dismissive of having an opinion so it’s great to see people here not acting like that!
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