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1051 sats \ 10k boost \ 1 reply \ @usagi 9h \ parent \ on: A Comprehensive OP_RETURN Limits Q&A Resource to Combat Misinformation bitcoin
Using the word "allow", as in "Is Core allowing more spam by removing OP_RETURN limits", is misleading. Nobody who is making the pro-Knots argument is claiming that mempool policies will affect what is or is not "allowed".
What they are claiming is that OP_RETURN limits disincentivize spammers from creating transactions that violate those limits by making them more expensive. All else being equal, the more expensive it is to spam, the less of it there will be in the blockchain (ironically, this is exactly what many pro-Core people say we need – incentives to guide desirable behavior).
Why do OP_RETURN limits, or in general, any standardness rule, make non-standard transactions more expensive? In several ways (the writeup below is lightly edited from [1]):
- If I'm a spammer and I have a transaction that I know won't pass standardness rules, I'll have to go to a miner (or miners) directly via some special side-channel. If you're in control of a major mining pool and somebody comes to you with a transaction that won't pass standardness rules, you've got leverage to charge more (due to strictly lower competition). Not only that, but you know you're damaging your reputation by going against the will of a large part of the community (as expressed via those standardness rules), so you'll want compensation for that as well. The end result is that the transaction becomes more expensive for the spammer.
- In the event that two blocks are mined at the same time, one containing nonstandard transactions and the other containing only standard transactions, the block containing nonstandard transactions will propagate through the network more slowly, since nodes will need to download all the nonstandard transactions since they haven't seen them before (or if they have, they would have been filtered out of their mempool). Hence miners are more likely to see the standard block first, and mine on top of that. The nonstandard block is disadvantaged and risks being orphaned. This also makes things more expensive for the spammer since the miner will want to be compensated for this possibility. As a rough estimate, according to chatGPT, this happens about 1-3 times per week.
- It will take longer to get a nonstandard transaction into a block compared to a standard transaction. Standard transactions can be mined by all miners, whereas a nonstandard transaction can only be mined by whichever miners have accepted the transaction. Hence on top of the transaction costing more, it will also suffer from greater delay.
- Lastly, although a minor point, it's still worth mentioning that going through side channels requires extra effort on the part of the spammer.
These are all very real deterrents to non-standard transactions.
For one data point, see [2] which shows that since the beginning of this year, there have been THIRTY non-standard OP_RETURN transactions out of SEVEN MILLION. This serves both as an example showing non-standard transactions still being "allowed" on the blockchain (what pro-Core people love to repeatedly point out), as well as the effectiveness of the existing OP_RETURN filter. What do you think will happen to the number of non-standard OP_RETURN transactions if we remove this filter?
While I'm at it, I also want to address these arguments about how removing OP_RETURN limits will improve the situation with miner centralization. I think these arguments are incomplete – the real outcome is unclear (although I think more likely a net negative for decentralization).
Divide the miners today into three categories:
- Those that don't care about spamming the blockchain, and have access to special deals involving non-standard transactions (call this group "NSA", for non-standard, advantaged)
- Those that don't care about spamming the blockchain, and don't have access to special deals involving non-standard transactions (call this group "NSD", for non-standard, disadvantaged)
- Those that do care about spamming the blockchain (call this group P, for purists)
Now let's say OP_RETURN limits are removed, what would happen to each of these three groups?
NSA loses its monopoly over non-standard transactions, whereas NSD gains access to lucrative transactions it previously didn't have access to, so NSA loses relative to NSD. This is what the pro-Core people have been arguing. This seems like a good thing. But what about P? Not only do they not benefit from this change, they will likely suffer relative to NSA and NSD. Non-standard transaction spam becomes cheaper (an important point, not to be forgotten, and previously established above) and demand for such spam increases, likely leading to an increase in the overall revenue from spam transactions, which NSA and NSD benefit from but P does not, making P less competitive. And P happens to include entities like Ocean, which play a critical role in the overall decentralization effort.
This is of course all speculative on my part, but my point is merely that this is not a clear win for decentralization, as the pro-Core people have been claiming.
This last argument was edited from [3]. If you had a hard time following, I suggest looking at the parent post for [3], which links to an excellent (pro-Core) overview of the miner centralization issue.
[1] https://xcancel.com/RIPreason/status/1921764767108325772
[2] https://xcancel.com/oomahq/status/1916793928025596338
[3] https://xcancel.com/RIPreason/status/1921693384785420505
More stats on the OP_RETURN filter, confirming that yes, it makes spam more expensive:
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