From: Aiden McClelland <me@drbonez•dev>
To: Greg Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail•com>
Cc: yes_please <caucasianjazz12@gmail•com>,
Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] [BIP Proposal] Mempool Validation and Relay Policies via User-Defined Scripts
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:51:19 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAOSz24TJU-4Q76MtzL+oYYFpXQvrOay5XtdrR0DxVBUAFz=5og@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAAS2fgSmiKhmQGAEo2eSQJmen-4kT1vD7dY8UESV4dQrjXau7w@mail.gmail.com>
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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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>>>>>> To view this discussion visit
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>>>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bitcoindev/cbdab6fa-93bc-44c9-80f0-6c68c6554f56n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>>>>>> .
>>>>>>
>>>>> --
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>>>> .
>>>>
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>>> .
>>>
>>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2025-09-25 21:27 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-09-24 18:18 Aiden McClelland
2025-09-24 18:46 ` Greg Maxwell
2025-09-24 18:54 ` Aiden McClelland
2025-09-24 22:49 ` Greg Maxwell
2025-09-25 9:21 ` yes_please
2025-09-25 20:03 ` Greg Maxwell
2025-09-25 20:51 ` Aiden McClelland [this message]
2025-09-25 21:14 ` Greg Maxwell
2025-09-25 21:25 ` Aiden McClelland
2025-09-25 21:51 ` Greg Maxwell
2025-09-26 2:06 ` Chris Riley
2025-09-26 2:17 ` Aiden McClelland
2025-09-26 2:28 ` Chris Riley
2025-09-25 17:52 ` Chris Guida
2025-09-25 20:46 ` Greg Maxwell
2025-09-25 21:02 ` Chris Guida
2025-09-25 23:33 ` Andrew Poelstra
2025-09-26 7:58 ` Garlo Nicon
2025-09-24 19:16 ` Chris Guida
2025-09-24 20:01 ` Greg Maxwell
2025-09-25 2:20 ` bigshiny
2025-09-25 14:33 ` Luke Dashjr
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