You can have zero value tx, that's just policy. Adam Back's hashcash was an anti spam method used in spam assasin.
It's game theory all the way down. Blocks are an interative autction. The greedy technique is to take the highest set of fees. But that's only because the subsidy is relatively high.
As bitcoin gets older miner strategies will evolve towards a nash equlibirium which in which both long-term and short-term strategies come into play.
You may pay high fees now for spam in order to change the rules in your favour later down the line. Bitcoin is a very complex arms race against spam. It is not that expensive for bitcoin's competitors to spam the chain with plausibily deniable spam, and simulate fake demand.
It has worked remarkably well so far. It IS an anti spam system. But any change to the delicate balance we have so far, could have unintended consequences.
melvincarvalho / Melvin Carvalho
npub1me…t5c24
2025-05-06 15:22:34
in reply to nevent1q…59lr
Author Public Key
npub1melv683fw6n2mvhl5h6dhqd8mqfv3wmxnz4qph83ua4dk4006ezsrt5c24Published at
2025-05-06 15:22:34Event JSON
{
"id": "750da8f249792ddd90225f0be91a013191ea33c125f94d9a945edefdf2ef4836",
"pubkey": "de7ecd1e2976a6adb2ffa5f4db81a7d812c8bb6698aa00dcf1e76adb55efd645",
"created_at": 1746544954,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"e60d99c15a2802d86d140100a745b90d0fb301a0ddf870074298dfb8e97a3200",
"wss://ditto.pub/relay",
"root",
"e83b66a8ed2d37c07d1abea6e1b000a15549c69508fa4c5875556d52b0526c2b"
],
[
"e",
"e60d99c15a2802d86d140100a745b90d0fb301a0ddf870074298dfb8e97a3200",
"wss://ditto.pub/relay",
"reply",
"e83b66a8ed2d37c07d1abea6e1b000a15549c69508fa4c5875556d52b0526c2b"
],
[
"p",
"e83b66a8ed2d37c07d1abea6e1b000a15549c69508fa4c5875556d52b0526c2b",
"wss://ditto.pub/relay"
],
[
"client",
"Ditto",
"31990:15b68d319a088a9b0c6853d2232aff0d69c8c58f0dccceabfb9a82bd4fd19c58:ditto",
"wss://ditto.pub/relay"
]
],
"content": "You can have zero value tx, that's just policy. Adam Back's hashcash was an anti spam method used in spam assasin.\n\nIt's game theory all the way down. Blocks are an interative autction. The greedy technique is to take the highest set of fees. But that's only because the subsidy is relatively high.\n\nAs bitcoin gets older miner strategies will evolve towards a nash equlibirium which in which both long-term and short-term strategies come into play.\n\nYou may pay high fees now for spam in order to change the rules in your favour later down the line. Bitcoin is a very complex arms race against spam. It is not that expensive for bitcoin's competitors to spam the chain with plausibily deniable spam, and simulate fake demand.\n\nIt has worked remarkably well so far. It IS an anti spam system. But any change to the delicate balance we have so far, could have unintended consequences.",
"sig": "b3e6075377ed665b46c3a33a7c092d33e3eb1b6c2bc5ba63d8b35d2c14c046e8082c0b520f9c83ff66d147127f85ccd431e0c0c7b1c40425aa2d822a0f42a2a9"
}