Bitcoin developers discuss network congestion caused by BRC-20s.

May 16, 2023

Editor: WuBlockchain

The issue of high transaction fees and network congestion in the Bitcoin network caused by the popularity of Inscription and BRC-20 has been discussed in the Bitcoin developer community. On May 8th, Bitcoin core developer Ali Sherief initiated a discussion on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, questioning whether Bitcoin developers should take action against such “valueless” transactions, and proposed an optional solution to “introduce a run-time option to instantly prune all non-standard Taproot transactions.” Currently, many developers have participated in the discussion, some suggest directly censoring such transactions, while others believe that this is how the system operates and does not require intervention. There are also views suggesting appropriate adjustments or diverting them to L2. WuBlockchain summarized as follows:

Ali Sherief(initiator)：”I believe everyone on this list is aware of the recent congestion in the Bitcoin mempool caused by projects like BRC-20, resulting in real Bitcoin transactions being priced out. This has not been seen since December 2017. The worthless tokens that cause this congestion threaten the normal use of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer digital currency. If the volume doesn’t decrease in the next few weeks, should we take action? The Bitcoin network consists of developers, miners, and users. Since miners are largely responsible for allowing the system to be abused in this way, the harmony of Bitcoin transactions is currently being disrupted. Although this community has a strong history of avoiding intervention unless necessary, we should consider taking action now, such as curbing the loophole in BIP 342 and introducing BIPs and commits to the Bitcoin Core codebase. Alternatively, we could enforce “censorship” at the node level and introduce a runtime option to instantly prune all non-standard Taproot transactions, which would be easier to implement but may not be available until the next release. We need to find a solution that works for everyone and take responsibility for ensuring that this congestion cannot happen again using Taproot.”

link：https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021620.html

Michael Folkson:”Miners include transactions with high fees and compatible with consensus rules in mined blocks. There are two theoretical options if users don’t like the transactions included in blocks: a consensus change or a policy change. A consensus change would be difficult to pull off and have limited effectiveness, while a policy change would still allow direct submission to miners. The design decisions in BIP 342 have technical reasons and cannot be simply classified as useful or useless data. Policy or consensus rule changes are not feasible. Transaction usability is related to limited block space and market demand, not whether Taproot or Pre-Taproot addresses are used. Blind policy or consensus rule changes may be counterproductive.”

link: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021625.html

Erik Aronesty:”It may very well be that bitcoin cannot be a global ledger of all things in order to remain useful and decentralized, and instead the monetary use case must be it’s only goal. It can provide a permanent incentive mechanism for non-economic transactions, keeping them off-chain (L2).”

link:https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021635.html

Luke Dashjr:”Action should have been taken months ago. Spam filtration has been a standard part of Bitcoin Core since day 1. It’s a mistake that the existing filters weren’t extended to Taproot transactions. We can address that, or try a more narrow approach like OP_RETURN (ie, what “Ordisrespector” does). Since this is a bugfix, it doesn’t really even need to wait for a major release.”

link：https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021631.html

Peter Todd:”Miners are making millions of dollars from these inscription transactions. Miners can and do run their own nodes and interconnect to each other. Many people like myself will continue to run nodes that do not attempt to block inscriptions.”

link:https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021634.html

jk_14(Jaroslaw):”Not the spam itself is the real reason of feeling: “something must be done” The reason is: $30 fee per transaction,need to find a solution for long-term horrible fees problem — that fits everyone’s common ground.”

link:https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021641.html

Aleksandr:”two options would be possible:a) allocate only up to 10% of the space in the block for non-standard transactions;b) change the architecture in such a way that the onchain ordinals transaction became much more expensive, which would force them to go to their own type of the LN.”

link:https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/021670.html

learn more:https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-May/date.html

Wu Blockchain

Discussion about this post