Bitcoin Core Says Contributors Should Not Mandate Software Policies
Bitcoin Core developers last week released a statement emphasizing that users are free to choose their own Bitcoin software and policies. They reiterated that no one, including Bitcoin Core, could force users to update or adopt specific rules.
Bitcoin Core said it would not block valid, fee-paying transactions that miners wanted to include in blocks, arguing that the software’s job was to efficiently relay transactions and blocks, not to enforce restrictions on new or unpopular transaction types, including inscriptions or non-financial data.
“This is not endorsing or condoning non-financial data usage, but accepting that as a censorship-resistant system, Bitcoin can and will be used for use cases not everyone agrees on,” the team said.
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The statement was predictably met with some backlash from certain members of the Bitcoin community, including developer Luke Dashjr, a prominent Bitcoin Core developer and creator of the OCEAN mining pool, who strongly opposes the inclusion and propagation of what he considers “spam transactions” on the network.
Dashjr believes that so-called spam transactions, including ordinal inscriptions and similar data-heavy uses, are abuses of the blockchain, which he likened to denial-of-service attacks, not legitimate use cases.
“This OPED contradicts itself, presenting out of band relay as both negative and also ‘an important aspect of Bitcoin’s censorship resistance’” Dashjr said on X.
“It ignores the lack of consent to spam by users/node operators, giving deference to the attackers and the malicious miners who might conspire with them,” he said.
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