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@ aj
2025-05-18 15:14:42
I'm happy enough with that definition, though I'd phrase more broadly, perhaps as "managing control of coins" - setting up a lightning channel doesn't transfer funds, but it changes how the funds are controlled. Note that the trigger for this, Citrea wanting to commit 160 bytes into a txid as part of a many kB penalty process, it's also about transferring bitcoin (moving funds that were custodied by the bridge or moving funds a a penalty for cheating) and/or establishing control of funds.
I do have mixed feelings about people doing NFTs and memecoins: 50% that they're idiots, 50% that they're not worth thinking about. At least the stress tests they've provided now and then do have some positive value though in increasing the network's robustness.
Where I disagree above comes when you start calling bitcoin "your" house, or saying (iirc, something like) "we should prevent spammers from using bitcoin". If bitcoin's going to go anywhere, it can't be something where some select individuals can exercise outsize control over the network as a whole based on their personal dislikes. If you're in a position to stop people from spamming, governments are in a position to stop people funding opposition parties. Bitcoin can't be your house with your rules for the same reason it can't be some govt's house under its rules.
If you want to dissuade people, rather than forbid them, that's a different question, that needs a different metaphor. For example "let's keep our neighbourhood nice, so we all benefit" rather than "so long as you live under my roof, ..." one.
But before we drop into figuring out in technical detail if either forbidding/dissuading has any chance of being effective, there is a different point I would make at a fundamental level.
The issue with a global public ledger is that **every** entry in it other than those relating to your personal coins is fundamentally spam as far as you're concerned. If there were any way of making bitcoin where I don't need to be told and record how much someone in Alabama is withdrawing from coinbase to self custody, that would be an improvement. Eg, my view of the blockchain could be perhaps 12kB of headers a day and perhaps 1kB per on chain transaction I make, which would be much better. Unfortunately that's not possible, so we instead give everyone's txs to everyone, and put a limit on how much data that is.
But the limit we apply to prevent that from getting out of hand is exactly the same as the limit we need to prevent on chain spam from getting out of hand. This is already a solved problem, though of course it's possible it might be better if the limit were raised or lowered. In particular, it's not a problem that needs us to distinguish between transfer/control data and spam data.