Just did a little sleuthing on the OP_RETURN > 83 bytes from @oomahq 's post (
X (formerly Twitter)
Risk-Averse Ghost of Unhosted Marcellus ๐Ÿ‘ป (@oomahq) on X
Seems like an ol' thread to debunk this nonsense is in order ๐Ÿงต Between blocks 877325 (01 Jan 2025) and 894289 (today) there's 30 non-std OP_RET...
). There were 30 such transactions in the ~4 month period: 8 had reasonable fees (< 2x the median for the block) 11 had around double fees 7 had around triple fees 4 had 5x-8x fees 9 were mined by F2Pool (10-11%) 21 were mined by Mara (6-7%) So in general, the OP_RETURN filter means the non-standard transactions were on average paying a good deal more than normal transactions to get into a block. And since only about 18% of the hashing power seems to mine them, they had to wait 5-6x longer to confirm. If the point of filters is to make spamming cumbersome and costly, I'd say that they're doing their job. TX IDs in the first comment so you can look for yourself. image
Right now non-standard transactions compete for block space only within mining pools that allow out-of-band payments, which naturally makes them less reliable and more expensive. This makes non-standard transactions economically disincentivized compared to standard transactions. So filters don't "work" in the sense that they prevent all spam. But they work in the sense that they disincentivize them.
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Interesting Stuff
Cat and mouse games sound futile, until you realize that you catch a lot of the mice.
Spam is not some esoteric difficult-to-define thing. It's about as dumb as the "what is a woman" argument and has the same energy.
If you're worried about the OP_RETURN controversy, don't stress. BItcoin will not just be fine, but controversies like this resolve with a huge price bump.