Mempool policy isn't consensus. BIP-110 moves the OP_RETURN limit from 'recommendation' to 'rule miners must follow.' That's the difference between a suggested speed limit and a governor on your engin...
Fair point that OP_RETURN is being brought to consensus from policy, but it still doesn't change the fact that BIP 110 doesn't descriminate per data type, but per data size.
It would be great if the fees were a way to limit spam, but they are not. Fees decide how fast a transaction will get included in the block, not if it's valid.
If fees could limit spam, we would not have such a big increase in utxo set and blockchain size since 2023, roughly when gamified spam (Inscriptions , BRC-20, Runes, etc.) started.
What incentive does a node have to relay and store spam? Unless a node runner wants to spam in which case why not use another chain that does this much better and is not hostile to it?
Maybe because Bitcoin network is truly decentralized and there is value in storing something on it forever, which cannot be said for any other chain. If that's true, the irony is that with more and more spam, the utxo set and the chain size will increase to levels that nodes will be increasingly hard to run, decreasing decentralization until Bitcoin becomes just like other chains.
Spam comes and goes because it's worthless, not because fees stoped it. But the utxo bloat and increased chain size stay forever.
So we can debate here what is spam, what is the purpose of Bitcoin and pretend that fees are going to stop spam, but reality doesn't care about what we think. It's happening right before our eyes.
It would be great if the fees were a way to limit spam, but they are not. Fees decide how fast a transaction will get included in the block, not if it's valid.
If fees could limit spam, we would not have such a big increase in utxo set and blockchain size since 2023, roughly when gamified spam (Inscriptions , BRC-20, Runes, etc.) started.
What incentive does a node have to relay and store spam? Unless a node runner wants to spam in which case why not use another chain that does this much better and is not hostile to it?
Maybe because Bitcoin network is truly decentralized and there is value in storing something on it forever, which cannot be said for any other chain. If that's true, the irony is that with more and more spam, the utxo set and the chain size will increase to levels that nodes will be increasingly hard to run, decreasing decentralization until Bitcoin becomes just like other chains.
Spam comes and goes because it's worthless, not because fees stoped it. But the utxo bloat and increased chain size stay forever.
So we can debate here what is spam, what is the purpose of Bitcoin and pretend that fees are going to stop spam, but reality doesn't care about what we think. It's happening right before our eyes.