Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] [BIP Proposal] Mempool Validation and Relay Policies via User-Defined Scripts

From: "'OJ' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2025 14:44:12 +0000

I fail to understand how we come from "filters do not work" to "filters adopted by a majority is censorship". There seems to be a confusion too regarding filtering arbitrary data and censorship of consensus valid tx, like OFAC compliant block. Those two are different. Chris G has pointed out many times as well that spam cannot be stopped with consensus rules change, only via policy it can be filtered to make the spammers attempt more difficult.
Invoking Satoshi by Greg Maxwell is also disingenuous when he was the first to have policy in place to prevent specific script into blocks.

Also the thinking that miners control the network is also bad as its imposing behaviour on nodes runners such that the relay network mempool should always be consistent with what gets mined.
Each node is a free agent that determine what its mempool should be and conversely miners are the one that should take notice of what the relay network homogeneous mempool is.
This BIP proposal move in the right direction in regards to finding a compromise while not disparaging anyones right as a free agent node runner.

Best regards,

-------- Original Message --------
On 9/26/25 2:03 PM, Garlo Nicon  wrote:

>> You cannot pick and choose which parts of a block you like and which parts are "abusive".
>
> In the current implementation, yes. But if you accept a proof, that a block is valid, instead of accepting a block in plaintext, then you can land on the same chain. Because after all, pruned nodes care only about the last 288 blocks, or something like that. If they can update their UTXO set, and always land on a valid chain, then they don't need transaction data in plaintext. They just need to update their UTXO database in a way, where attacking it would require breaking ECDSA, SHA-256, or similar things (a proof-based system, which would not weaken existing cryptographic assumptions, would be sufficient).
>
> And the same is true about Initial Blockchain Download. Only today, you have to download hundreds of GBs, to synchronize the new node from scratch. But it can be changed, and as the size of the whole chain will grow, people will be pushed, to start deploying some optimizations. Otherwise, there will be even less nodes, if node operators will decide to trust centralized solutions instead, or do things, which already happened in some altcoins, where people passed around an already synced node data, and trusted, that it is valid (especially in CPU-mined coins, where verifying thousands blocks required similar effort, than mining a new block).
>
> pt., 26 wrz 2025 o 02:25 Andrew Poelstra <[email-masked]> napisał(a):
>
>> On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 11:52:02AM -0600, Chris Guida wrote:
>>>
>>> Anyway, forcing users to relay transactions they consider abusive if they
>>> want to relay any transactions at all does not seem in keeping with
>>> bitcoin's ethos, not to mention that it obviously would never work.
>>>
>>
>> Once a transaction is in a block, you need to relay the transaction if
>> you want to relay a block. You cannot pick and choose which parts of a
>> block you like and which parts are "abusive". This is what it means for
>> something to be a consensus system.
>>
>> The purpose of the mempool is to approximate the contents of blocks,
>> both to help individual node operators (who would otherwise get large
>> quantities of "surprise transactions" with every block) and to help the
>> network (which would otherwise have poor propagation properties).
>>
>> Any sort of filtering beyond that done by miners is contrary to this
>> purpose of the mempool. This is a technical fact. It has nothing to do
>> with "bitcoin's ethos", except its ethos as a consensus system, which
>> directly contradicts your point.
>>
>> --
>> Andrew Poelstra
>> Director, Blockstream Research
>> Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
>> Web: https://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew
>>
>> The sun is always shining in space
>> -Justin Lewis-Webster
>>
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