jimmysong on Nostr: > "You can reduce spam by discouraging it" is a question of incentives, not one of ...

> "You can reduce spam by discouraging it" is a question of incentives, not one of fundamentals. I don't think we've finished the fundamental debate that you wanted yet.

I thought you agreed that Bitcoin is a monetary network (prioritizing Bitcoin transfers and not anything else like database entries) and that this is your priority. We're discussing now the downstream consequences of that, no? Are we not agreed on the fundamentals? I thought you agreed pretty quickly, perhaps to get to the downstream stuff faster.

> Do you agree that core devs in general are trying to make bitcon work as a monetary network with a similar/compatible definitively to yours? That is, that we are actually on the same side here, even if we have different thoughts on how best to achieve that goal?

I have no idea what individual motivations might be and I reject this framing that I have to agree first that "everyone has good intentions" or some such. I'm not in their heads, so I don't know. You've told me that Bitcoin the monetary network is the priority, so I'm asking questions to check. Verify, don't trust. This demand to accept the conclusion about intent before the verification is completely backwards. You've asked this several times as if it's some critical part of your reasoning, but for me, this question is to get an in-built advantage in the argument by forcing me to assume best intentions. If that's not the intention, then why are you asking such a question? Why should people assume that *every* core developer is committed to making Bitcoin the best monetary network that it can be given that it's a large number of individuals with lots of different beliefs, lots of different funding sources and lots of different backgrounds?

> Do you accept that reasonable people can disagree on what constitutes "spam"? Both in thinking things you think aren't spam actually are, and in thinking stuff you think is spam is fine?

At the very edges, sure. But that's a very bad framing of the issue. Do you really think there's any controversy about a dickbutt jpeg being monetary or not? Or memecoins? Or NFTs? Or messages like the ones we're seeing that are non-standard OP_RETURNs right now? Because those are the things going into the chain.

> Do you accept that bitcoin is not your network, to rule as you wish, but that rule changes require near unanimous consent, even from the reasonable people who disagree with you, and potentially even from people doing the spamming?

The node I run is mine. And that part of the network, I definitely should be able to rule as I wish. What the rest of the network does, I accept that I have little to no say in.

> Are you trying to ban spamming from bitcoin entirely?

Ideally, that would be great, but I recognize the technical reality that it's probably not possible (at least without a really restrictive soft fork or something similar). Do you agree that reducing spam, but not completely eliminating them, is desirable? And that increasing spam is undesirable?

> Are you merely trying to discourage spammers? Are you aware that that might have no effect, or the opposite ("how dare you tell me what to do, I'll do it to spite you")?

The word "merely" is a very bad framing given that the discouragement has largely worked. There were very few non-standard OP_RETURNs before this PR was created (30 out of 7M+ in the first 16 weeks of 2025). Are you suggesting that this PR will have no effect? That you won't get a lot more >83 byte OP_RETURNs in 2026 than, say 2024? I suppose that the PR might not have any effect, but I don't think there's any evidence for that. Could people do the opposite and spite Bitcoiners? Perhaps. But they have to spend their Bitcoin to do so, so it's not unlimited. They've been spiteful already (Stamps) and have largely stopped, presumably because it became uneconomical to do so.

> Do you believe that going into technical details on this topic, to work out how best to make bitcoin sustainable as a monetary network in the long term is a valuable thing to do, or is that just a way for experts to attempt to close down the discussion and exclude non-experts?

Again, the technical details here are pretty straightforward (remove standardness checks on OP_RETURN), so I'm unimpressed by more explaining of something that people clearly understand. What I've seen is that the technical details part has been used as a way to deny all the people who disagree a voice in the discussion, particularly around the economic incentives. And when people complain, we get even longer explanations, not about the economic incentives, but about the history of OP_RETURN or some such. It's almost like a DoS attack on the people that disagree.

> I notice you're gong straight back to personal attacks ("would you rather people question your competence rather than your intent") and justifying it with fairly specific thoughts about current approaches, rather than sticking with the fundamental principles you claimed to want to discuss.

I should have phrased this better. It wasn't meant to be a personal attack, but a response to this demand that I accept the intent of the developers. If I accept the premise that all the developers for this PR prioritize the monetary network AND have concluded that the PR does not prioritize the monetary network, the conclusion is exactly that, the developers for this PR are incompetent. As I've stated above, I don't accept that first premise and I'm open to having the second premise changed. I have worked with people like you and know you to be competent. Brilliant, even.