[bitcoin-dev] [Mempool spam] Should we as developers reject non-standard Taproot transactions from full nodes?

Sun May 7 17:22:23 UTC 2023

Hi guys,

I think everyone on this list knows what has happened to the Bitcoin mempool during the past 96 hours. Due to side projects such as BRC-20 having such a high volume, real bitcoin transactions are being priced out and that is what is causing the massive congestion that has arguable not been seen since December 2017. I do not count the March 2021 congestion because that was only with 1-5sat/vbyte.

Such justifiably worthless ("worthless" is not even my word - that's how its creator described them[1]) tokens threaten the smooth and normal use of the Bitcoin network as a peer-to-pear digital currency, as it was intended to be used as.

If the volume does not die down over the next few weeks, should we take an action? The bitcoin network is a triumvirate of developers, miners, and users. Considering that miners are largely the entities at fault for allowing the system to be abused like this, the harmony of Bitcoin transactions is being disrupted right now. Although this community has a strong history of not putting its fingers into pies unless absolutely necessary - an example being during the block size wars and Segwit - should similar action be taken now, in the form of i) BIPs and/or ii) commits into the Bitcoin Core codebase, to curtail the loophole in BIP 342 (which defines the validation rules for Taproot scripts) which has allowed these unintended consequences?

An alternative would be to enforce this "censorship" at the node level and introduce a run-time option to instantly prune all non-standard Taproot transactions. This will be easier to implement, but won't hit the road until minimum next release.

I know that some people will have their criticisms about this, absolutists/libertarians/maximum-freedom advocates, which is fine, but we need to find a solution for this that fits everyone's common ground. We indirectly allowed this to happen, which previously wasn't possible before. So we also have a responsibility to do something to ensure that this kind of congestion can never happen again using Taproot.

-Ali

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[1]: [https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/05/pump-the-brcs-the-promise-and-peril-of-bitcoin-backed-tokens/](https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/05/pump-the-brcs-the-promise-and-peril-of-bitcoin-backed-tokens/?outputType=amp)
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