Erik, Fees AKA costs are the best spam control system and I thank you for highlighting that. However, I think that bitcoin has yet to receive sufficient payments usage to challenge credit card payments system when it comes to a race to the bottom in terms of processing transactional fees. In the USA, where I am, large businesses like UBER, Lyft, and many major telecom, cable, & electric utilities process huge volumes of regular and irregular credit card payments on a monthly basis. Almost none oft hose transactions are completed in bitcoin. A focus on lowering fees by increasing the block size by 10x is the simplest method to start accepting more payments in bitcoin from larger businesses. Brad On 2023-12-30 01:58, Erik Aronesty via bitcoin-dev wrote: > Bitcoin already has a spam prevention system called "fees". I don't believe it's insufficient. The only issue is the stochastic nature of its effectiveness > > Which can be resolved with things like payment pools, tree payments (https://utxos.org/uses/scaling/), etc. > > On Fri, Dec 29, 2023, 9:33 AM Greg Tonoski via bitcoin-dev wrote: > >>> Unfortunately, as near as I can tell there is no sensible way to >>> prevent people from storing arbitrary data in witnesses ... >> >> To prevent "from storing arbitrary data in witnesses" is the extreme >> case of the size limit discussed in this thread. Let's consider it along >> with other (less radical) options in order not to lose perspective, perhaps. >> >>> ...without incentivizing even worse behavior and/or breaking >>> legitimate use cases. >> >> I can't find evidence that would support the hypothesis. There had not >> been "even worse behavior and/or breaking legitimate use cases" observed >> before witnesses inception. The measure would probably restore >> incentives structure from the past. >> >> As a matter of fact, it is the current incentive structure that poses >> the problem - incentivizes worse behavior ("this sort of data is toxic >> to the network") and breaks legitimate use cases like a simple transfer >> of BTC. >> >>> If we ban "useless data" then it would be easy for would-be data >>> storers to instead embed their data inside "useful" data such as dummy >>> signatures or public keys. >> >> There is significant difference when storing data as dummy signatures >> (or OP_RETURN) which is much more expensive than (discounted) witness. >> Witness would not have been chosen as the storage of arbitrary data if >> it cost as much as alternatives, e.g. OP_RETURN. >> >> Also, banning "useless data" seems to be not the only option suggested >> by the author who asked about imposing "a size limit similar to OP_RETURN". >> >>> But from a technical point of view, I don't see any principled way to >>> stop this. >> >> Let's discuss ways that bring improvement rather than inexistence of a >> perfect technical solution that would have stopped "toxic data"/"crap on >> the chain". There are at least a few: >> - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/28408 >> - https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/29146 >> - deprecate OP_IF opcode. >> >> I feel like the elephant in the room has been brought up. Do you want to >> maintain Bitcoin without spam or a can't-stop-crap alternative, everybody? >> _______________________________________________ >> bitcoin-dev mailing list >> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev