"There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept."

Black and white thinking is not very helpful here particularly because the goals of pro-filtering and anti-censorship aren't exact opposites.

A widely censored world would greatly degrade the value of Bitcoin, particularly if the censors managed to enlist significant miners. It would be routed around at great cost, and with much less freedom provided for the world. But just like people continue to buy racy magazines or other completely lawful targets of operation chokepoint with USD, people would still route around Bitcoin censorship. But why even use Bitcoin if it's in a similar space of your transactions being capriciously blocks, your funds frozen, etc. as exists with legacy infrastructure?

But the irony is that the traffic that people most desperately want to stop would be among the least impeded-- already today the spam traffic exists at all because it's well funded (or really existed a year ago, we are long past the huge spam floods-- they were depleted by costs and fizzled as predicted-- and Ocean Mining is fighting yesterday's battle. But what exists exists because its well funded). Meanwhile joe blow sending funds p2p to friends or family in far off places doesn't have the funds or technical acumen to deal with censorship potentially targeting him, his activities, or his payees. The effect of censorship is basically to require people to learn how to be money launderers to freely transact, and those who don't suffer.

The case is even stronger re: the recently filtering arguments because unlike some consensus rule anyone can just mine a block (rent hashpower, you don't have to own it) or even more so the stuff like op_return limits have long been bypassed by major miners. So the policy restriction was already not working. So in some sense there are arguments getting conflated: The op_return policy limit has already failed. So when people point out that it doesn't work it's just a statement of fact rather than speculation. But basically the 'bad' traffic has a lot easier time than more innocent traffic, which is part of why filters can be both ineffective and dangerous. It's also the case that existing filter efforts are not backed by civil litigation or state mandates, but building infrastructure creates an obvious stepping stone to that (in part because of the insufficient effectiveness of filtering)-- it's just a bad road that will almost inevitably lead to more escalations. Bitcoin is just better of adopting the position that other people's transactions aren't our business, even if they're stupid or drive fees up a bit for some periods and create annoyances, because the alternative is easily much worse.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 9:26 PM Aiden McClelland <me@drbonez.dev> wrote:

>I have no idea what you're referring to there.

It's something I inferred from your primary argument that seems to be that user-configurable filters are bad because they would cause censorship. But it also sounds like you're saying such filters are completely ineffective at any sort of censorship at all. I don't really understand how these two viewpoints can coexist. What am I missing here?

Best,
Aiden McClelland

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 3:14 PM Greg Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:
I am not a core developer. I have not been for some eight years now.

> that you yourself are worried they will reach the 80% needed

I have no idea what you're referring to there. If lots of people run nodes that screw up propagation they'll be routed around. I developed the technical concepts required to get nearly 100% tx coverage even if almost all nodes are blocking them quite a few years ago ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.10518 ), but deployment of the implementation has gone slow due to other factors (you know, such as the most experienced developers being hit with billions of dollars in lawsuits as a cost for their support of Bitcoin)... I expect if censoring actually becomes widespread that technological improvements which further moot it will be developed.

These are just vulnerabilities that should be closed anyways-- after all anyone at any time can just spin up any number of "nodes" that behave in arbitrary ways, at ant time. It's been a lower priority because there are other countermeasures (addnode-a-friend, manually setbanning bad peers, etc.) and aforementione distractions.

> censorship due to widespread use of transaction filters is a bad thing (I'm not really taking a stance on that right now).

I would point you to the history of discussion on Bitcoin starting back with Satoshi's earliest announcements, and perhaps to help you understand that if you want that what you want isn't bitcoin. If after consideration you don't think censorship wouldn't be very bad, then really you and I have nothing further to discuss.

> are you willing to work with and compromise with people who are looking for a solution like this? Or are you going to force them to abandon the Core project entirely

I don't really think there is any space to compromise with people who think it's okay to add censorship to Bitcoin-- I mean sure whatever exact relay policy there is there is plenty of tradeoffs but from the start of this new filter debate the filter proponents have immediately come out with vile insults accusing developers of promoting child sexual abuse and shitcoins and what not---- that isn't some attempt to navigate a technical/political trademark, it's an effort to villify and destory the opposition. And unambiguously so as luke has said outright that his goal is to destroy Bitcoin Core. So what's the compromise there?

> Or even worse still, felt compelled to coordinate a UASF to block these transactions entirely?

I very much think people should do that-- they should actually make some consensus rules for their filters to fork off and we can see what the market thinks. -- And also even if the market prefers censored Bitcoin, that's also fine with me, in the sense in my view Bitcoin was created to be money as largely free from human judgement as possible. When it was created most of the world was doing something else and didn't know they needed freedom money. If it's still the case that most of the world doesn't want freedom money that would be no shock. They should be free to have what they want and people who want freedom money should be free to have what they want. I got into bitcoin before it was worth practically anything because of the freedom it provides, and I think that's paramount.

Perhaps you should consider why they *don't* do that? I'd say it's because (1) it won't work, and (2) it's not actually what the world wants-- an outspoken influence campaign is not necessarily all that reflective of much of anything. Particularly given how inaccurate and emotionally pandering the filter advocacy has been. But, hey, I've been wrong before.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 8:51 PM Aiden McClelland <me@drbonez.dev> wrote:
Greg,

Let me assume for a minute, for the sake of argument, that I agree that transaction censorship due to widespread use of transaction filters is a bad thing (I'm not really taking a stance on that right now). It is an irrefutable fact that a very large portion of the user base wants to filter transactions. So many so, that you yourself are worried they will reach the 80% needed to prevent certain types of transactions from propogating. Wouldn't it then be worse if these 80% of users went and ran an alternative implementation, most likely written by it's most radical supporters? Or even worse still, felt compelled to coordinate a UASF to block these transactions entirely?

I at no point intended to insinuate that you or any other core contributer be compelled to implement a proposal like this. It's up to its supporters to do so. The real question is, are you willing to work with and compromise with people who are looking for a solution like this? Or are you going to force them to abandon the Core project entirely?

Best,
Aiden McClelland

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:03 PM Greg Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) Allowing node

Who said anything about allowing? Everyone is allowed to do whatever they want. Drill a hole in your head if you like, not my concern. None of this thread is about what people are allowed to do-- that's off the table. The design and licensing of Bitcoin is such that no one gets to stop anyone else from what they want to do anyways (which is, in fact, a big part of the issue here). To think otherwise is to be stuck in a kind of serf thinking where you can only do what other people allow you to do. That has never been what Bitcoin was about.

Rather, the question is should people who care about Bitcoin spend their time and money developing infrastructure that would be useful, even primarily useful, for censorship. I say no. Especially because any time spent on it is time away from anti-censorship pro-privacy tools and because the effort spent doing so would undermine anti-censorship and pro-privacy efforts because they would inevitably moot the efforts expected getting into peoples business and filtering their transactions.

You don't have to agree, and you're free to do your own thing just as I'm free to say that I think it's a bad direction. From the very beginning Bitcoin has stood against the freedom to transact being overridden by some admin based on their judgment call weighing principles against other concerns, or at the behest of their superiors. So many Bitcoiner will stand against, route around, and do what they can do to make ineffectual the blocking of consensual transactions. It might not seem as many at the moment, but the pro-privacy and anti-censorship 'side' doesn't have a paid PR and influence campaign, but it also doesn't matter so much because Bitcoin takes advantage of the nature of information being easy to spread and hard to stifel and it doesn't that that huge an effort to route around censorship efforts.

There are elements of anti-censorship in Bitcoin that have been so far underdeveloped. It's unfortunate that their further development might be forced at a time when efforts are needed on other areas. But perhaps they wouldn't get done without a concrete motivation. Such is life.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 9:21 AM yes_please <caucasianjazz12@gmail.com> wrote:
Sorry Greg, could you please elaborate further on your ideas? Some are not exactly clear:
1) Allowing node runners to configure their node as they please and refuse to relay some txs is considered authoritarian, censorship, and an attempt to regulate third parties conduct. On the other hand, forcing nodes to merge towards a single shared configuration (by preventing them to block txs) is not considered authoritarian because this imposition does not discriminate towards any txs and is thus non-authoritarian? Did I get the reasoning correctly here?
2) If the aim is to have a homogenous mempool state and to model what will get mined, shouldn’t we reach this state through distributed independent nodes who decide independently on what they prefer this homogenous state to be? If we don’t reach this state through this distributed/independent mechanism, then how are we to reach this state? Who gets to decide and steer the direction so that we all converge towards this homogenous state? One of the strongest aspects of bitcoin is the fact that no single party can force a change/direction, and the network has to somehow reach a shared agreement through independent decision makers who act in what manner they think is best. The proposed BIP seems to be aligned with such a principle, I fail to see any authoritarian aspect here.
3) I share your sentiment and the aim to have a homogenous mempool state, but I am skeptical of the manner in which we are to achieve this according to the ideas you have here expressed (namely not through a distributed independent organic manner)

Respectfully, yes_please

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 12:50 AM Greg Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:
So that when the "consistent state" changes as a result of some issue you can update configs instead of having to update software-- which has considerable more costs and risks, especially if you're carrying local customizations as many miners do.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 8:47 PM Aiden McClelland <me@drbonez.dev> wrote:
If mempool consistency across the network is all that is important, why allow any configuration of mempool relay policies at all?

On Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 12:47:28 PM UTC-6 Greg Maxwell wrote:
This appears to substantially misunderstands the purpose of the mempool broadly in the network-- it's purpose is to model what will get mined. If you're not doing that you might as well set blocks only. Significant discrepancies are harmful to the system and promote centralization and fail to achieve a useful purpose in any case. What marginal benefits might be provided do not justify building and deploying the technological infrastructure for massive censorship.

If you think this is important, I advise you to select another cryptocurrency which is compatible with such authoritarian leanings. -- though I am unsure if any exist since it is such a transparently pointless direction.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 6:30 PM Aiden McClelland <m...@drbonez.dev> wrote:
Hi all,

I'd like to share for discussion a draft BIP to allow for a modular mempool/relay policy: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/1985

I think it could potentially reduce conflict within the community around relay policy, as an alternative to running lots of different node implementations/forks when there are disagreements.

I am working on a reference implementation using Bellard's QuickJS, but it has been almost a decade since I've written C++, so it's slow going and I'm sure doesn't follow best-practices. Once it's working, it can be cleaned up.

Thanks,
Aiden McClelland

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