Bitcoin Network Faces Challenges Amid Spam Inscription Debate

According to Cointelegraph, economist and author of The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous, has entered the ongoing discussion regarding spam inscriptions on the Bitcoin network. Ammous expressed willingness to contribute financially to support a full-time developer dedicated to making Bitcoin spamming more challenging and costly. Ammous's comments were in response to a thread initiated by the pseudonymous developer GrassFedBitcoin, who advocated for Bitcoin Core to merge pull request #28408. This proposal aims to enable node operators to filter inscriptions more effectively, addressing concerns about blockchain bloat and Bitcoin's role as a monetary protocol. GrassFedBitcoin argued that the absence of inscription filtering tools leads to unnecessary data congestion and undermines Bitcoin's primary function. He suggested implementing a configurable, default policy to discourage using Bitcoin for storing non-monetary data, such as JPEGs. Blockstream CEO Adam Back countered the proposal, describing inscription filtering as an "arms race." He highlighted the adaptability of spam data embedded in Bitcoin transactions, which can be continuously modified using various code structures, necessitating constant updates to filtering tools. Ammous compared the Bitcoin spam issue to email spam, emphasizing the ongoing societal battle against spam without abandoning the underlying system. He asserted that combating spam is not censorship, as node operators already reject invalid transactions. The debate attracted input from other participants, with one suggesting that Core developers treat spam-coding employees at certain startups as "unwilling QA engineers" and unstandardize every trick they deploy. Ammous further proposed "deprecating" the work of developers creating spam tools and hiring external coders to overwhelm their systems. This conversation highlights persistent tensions within the Bitcoin community regarding the network's intended use. As inscriptions continue to congest the network, calls for technical countermeasures and critiques of those defending spam are intensifying. A report from Mempool Research on February 4 indicated that the adoption of inscriptions could increase the Bitcoin network's average block size to as much as 4 megabytes per block, significantly higher than the current average of 1.5 megabytes.