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

From: Andrew Poelstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2025 23:33:29 +0000

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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