Spam is determined by the receiver and is subjective.
There are some things to consider when deciding if you think OpenTimestamps on the chain is spam, though.
First, you could consider anything not needed for a financial transaction using Bitcoin the asset to be spam, but then you would have to consider Satoshi himself to have been a spammer.
Second, OpenTimestamps isn't storing jpegs or BRC-20 tokens on the chain. They are storing cryptographic hashes.
Hashes are very small and take up a negligible amount of space on chain. Hence why OpenTimestamps' transactions aren't even filtered by Knots' default limit of 40 bytes.
There is also no way to know what data was used to create a hash by just looking at the hash itself. So it's impossible to say it is referring to anything you would object to and consider spam, unless you already have a copy of the data yourself to be able to recreate the hash.
Finally, transactions containing an OP_RETURN, which is what OpenTimestamps uses for saving their hashes to the chain, create provably unspendable outputs, which means they don't have to be kept in a node's UTXO set. The UTXO set is not stored on the hard drive of the node, but in the node's RAM. Things that bloat the UTXO set are far more concerning.
So, as far as I am concerned, OpenTimestamps are being responsible in their use of blockspace, though it is for non-financial data.
Dikaios1517
npub1ku…v3lhe
2025-05-14 20:00:59
in reply to nevent1q…spcs
Author Public Key
npub1kun5628raxpm7usdkj62z2337hr77f3ryrg9cf0vjpyf4jvk9r9smv3lhePublished at
2025-05-14 20:00:59Event JSON
{
"id": "e50268b153dbc768d169d510ea5ec3e172d728ca1d50fca459c8166d346ea2ec",
"pubkey": "b7274d28e3e983bf720db4b4a12a31f5c7ef262320d05c25ec90489ac99628cb",
"created_at": 1747252859,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"3e29514721ee5a08e4d36657bd68e7b30691a2e9bd5289976792f5a1dccb93b5",
"",
"root",
"4aa4d22440770429fa745b674fab7e46ed267f36a1abae6ff4e8d26eb65b7f52"
],
[
"client",
"asknostr.site"
],
[
"p",
"4aa4d22440770429fa745b674fab7e46ed267f36a1abae6ff4e8d26eb65b7f52"
]
],
"content": "Spam is determined by the receiver and is subjective.\n\nThere are some things to consider when deciding if you think OpenTimestamps on the chain is spam, though.\n\nFirst, you could consider anything not needed for a financial transaction using Bitcoin the asset to be spam, but then you would have to consider Satoshi himself to have been a spammer.\n\nSecond, OpenTimestamps isn't storing jpegs or BRC-20 tokens on the chain. They are storing cryptographic hashes.\n\nHashes are very small and take up a negligible amount of space on chain. Hence why OpenTimestamps' transactions aren't even filtered by Knots' default limit of 40 bytes.\n\nThere is also no way to know what data was used to create a hash by just looking at the hash itself. So it's impossible to say it is referring to anything you would object to and consider spam, unless you already have a copy of the data yourself to be able to recreate the hash.\n\nFinally, transactions containing an OP_RETURN, which is what OpenTimestamps uses for saving their hashes to the chain, create provably unspendable outputs, which means they don't have to be kept in a node's UTXO set. The UTXO set is not stored on the hard drive of the node, but in the node's RAM. Things that bloat the UTXO set are far more concerning.\n\nSo, as far as I am concerned, OpenTimestamps are being responsible in their use of blockspace, though it is for non-financial data.",
"sig": "b178fe08193a82ff1e78922a409a2a2969ee8e014c8534e5b690776ac4ce1324ac5ff41c515b856e16f254d11986526e55ebee3590fb4272a52f54e567a849c7"
}