Bitcoin Core Development Community Divided: Should Inscription Transactions Be Considered Junk?

Recently, the Bitcoin core development community has sparked intense discussions due to a new statement. This statement, titled "Bitcoin Core Development and Transaction Relay Policy", has elicited strong reactions within the community, with some even comparing it to the infamous "New York Agreement".

The core content of this statement is the introduction of a built-in trading relay system. This move is likely paving the way for the previous proposal to remove the OP-Return block limit.

Why did this statement provoke such a large controversy? This dates back to the background of the rise of inscriptions two years ago. At that time, inscriptions and runes used a method similar to "exploiting vulnerabilities" to store content in the OP-Return area of Bitcoin blocks, effectively circumventing the capacity limit of Bitcoin blocks.

This phenomenon has led to divisions within the Bitcoin community. Some extreme conservatives strongly oppose inscriptions, and at the behest of certain individuals, the second-ranked Bitcoin client in market share implemented a strict garbage transaction filter, treating inscription transactions as garbage and refusing to package them. This move has caused the prices of certain inscription projects to plummet.

However, relatively moderate conservatives believe that since inscriptions can already be put on the chain through workarounds, it is better to directly acknowledge their legitimacy. Therefore, in recent months, they have proposed a new proposal to change the capacity limit of OP-Return from 80KB to unlimited, which effectively removes the restrictions on inscriptions and allows them to be officially put on the chain.

Although the popularity of inscription projects has significantly decreased, this practice may bring additional profits to miners, thereby enhancing the security of the Bitcoin network.

So, what exactly is this controversial "transaction relay"? Theoretically, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network, and all miners should be directly connected. However, in the current relatively secure network environment, this approach seems a bit overly cautious.

Therefore, transaction relays have emerged. Users can choose to send transactions to the relay first (note that this is voluntary and not mandatory). Doing so has two major benefits:

1. Helps prevent denial-of-service attacks, avoiding overloading miners' servers with a large number of zero-fee transactions;
2. Accelerate the speed of transaction and block propagation, reduce latency, and prevent large miners from gaining an unfair advantage.

This was originally a favorable situation. However, the issue lies in the fact that different trading relays employ different strategies; some have very strict filtering of junk trades, while others are completely open.

It is important to note that this should not be seen as a transaction review, but rather as a way to filter out spam transactions, and users can choose not to use these features.

In fact, there is a consensus within the community on the need to filter out spam transactions, but the point of contention lies in the differing definitions of "spam transactions."

Extremely conservative factions believe that inscriptions are garbage transactions and should be completely eradicated. They think that Bitcoin should not be a storage chain.

Moderately conservative individuals believe that specific types of transactions (such as inscriptions) should not be censored or restricted on-chain. They argue that filters should only target pure denial-of-service attacks.

The former advocates for radical spam filtering, while the latter tends to favor moderate spam filtering.

In the past, these transaction relays were mostly maintained by volunteers, especially those that adopted aggressive spam filtering rules, as these volunteers had a strong opposition to inscriptions.

However, once the Bitcoin core development team adds moderate garbage filtering rules to the client, it may lead to a significant shrinkage in market share for those adopting aggressive garbage filtering rules.

This situation is somewhat similar to when the official suddenly announces a certain pairing, thereby striking down unofficial pairings in fan creations. It can be said that the official has, to some extent, squeezed the creative space of the grassroots.

Of course, although the market share of the Bitcoin core client exceeds 90%, the core development team does not consider themselves "official".

They emphasize that Bitcoin is a user-defined network, where users have the ultimate freedom to choose what software to use and to implement any strategies they wish. Bitcoin core contributors do not have the authority to impose these regulations; to avoid conflicts of interest, they even refrain from automatic software updates.

I personally support this update from the core development team.

Just as a fence wall only 10 centimeters high is practically useless, if certain behaviors can no longer be stopped, it is better to accept them directly.

Although I am not particularly interested in inscriptions, I do not think they should be regarded as garbage transactions. As long as the normal transaction fees are paid, they should be considered legitimate transactions.

Inscription pays fees normally according to its block space usage, and there is no reason to refuse this extra income. Moreover, this additional income helps maintain the strong security of the network after multiple Bitcoin halvings.

More importantly, I firmly oppose transaction censorship. If the Bitcoin core development team leads any form of discrimination against transactions that normally pay fees, it could gradually evolve into transaction censorship.

One of the most proud features of Bitcoin is its security and lack of transaction censorship. The use of moderate garbage filtering rules has a positive impact on both of these features.

Some critics say that this is a compromise by the core development team to the miners (because they considered the miners' income) while ignoring the interests of users. However, I disagree with this view—inscription users are also users of Bitcoin.

The times are progressing, and the hardware environment is no longer that of 2008. Storing some text or images on the Bitcoin blockchain in 2025 will not be a difficult task for nodes. Moreover, Satoshi Nakamoto himself left the news of the time in the genesis block.

Bitcoin will never become a purely storage chain, but what’s wrong with storing some data as an additional feature without changing the underlying mechanism? Even physical gold has records carved on it, and our "electronic gold" should allow for this practice as well.

Therefore, I fully support this proposal from the core development team.