Blandy / Blandy McBland is on Nostr

"fbf5f506c1ab839c709d113cbc85798c84996dc47b358baf0eeeeab8b75731465097cd292e195b4dccfbe2550c1678d54015776cab221cc29eb3ce2d8dd29ec0"

Last Notes

2025-09-19 14:00:28 UTC

- reply

You’re welcome. Emotions seem to be running high on all sides over what seems to me to be a relatively small and technical change.
The back door is in the Bitcoin consensus rules, not node transaction filters, so changing that is more involved.
You’re right that it would make it a little easier to add spam into OP_RETURN without filters, but this back door is fairly inconsequential compared to the giant cathedral-sized front door: witness data.
And even if 100% of nodes had filters on, if someone really wants to put more data in OP_RETURN, they will go straight to a miner because it is valid in consensus. Here, you can do it right now if you want: https://slipstream.mara.com
The question isn’t whether or not to let spam in Bitcoin, that ship has sailed. A lot of people don’t want to accept it, and I don’t like it either, but this particular node filter doesn’t move the spam needle much in either direction. People are standing in front of a mountain and fighting over a molehill. (And getting pretty nasty about it)
The real question is whether it’s worse to make it slightly easier to put spam in block space that costs them 4x as much as where they normally put it, or let the UTXO set bloat with unspendable transactions that we’ll need to keep track of forever?
Personally, I think bloat is worse but not an existential threat either way.
Run Knots, run core, it’s all good. More nodes is better.

2025-09-18 22:31:11 UTC

- reply

There’s a company that has a Bitcoin utility use case (not pics or vids) that can’t use cheaper witness data for some reason, and won’t fit in the 80 byte filtered OP_RETURN limit, and they really want to use the P2P network of nodes because their data is time-sensitive and they want to get it to as many miners as possible as fast as possible.
So they are creating transactions that are technically valid with unspendable outputs because there’s no filter on that. But it means every node must carry all these unspendable UTXOs forever, which is bloaty and not nice.
Whether you agree with this company or not, they found a way to do what they want to do while getting around current filters and they probably won’t be the last ones to do so.
The hope is that this company or others that come along later with similar ambitions would use a bigger OP_RETURN instead, if that were an option.
It is also possible that someone will come up with a use case for bigger OP_RETURN data that is less time sensitive. If lots of nodes are filtering those transactions they could go around the mempool and submit to large miners directly. IF this got valuable enough it could put smaller miners at a disadvantage to bigger miners in fees.
If someone just wants to put arbitrary data on Bitcoin, it already costs much less to put it in witness data, so “spamming” OP_RETURN doesn’t make a lot of sense and if you REALLY want to, its technically valid right now anyway.

2025-08-15 13:32:46 UTC

- reply

I think it’s short for web log.

2025-04-04 17:52:50 UTC

- reply

It kind of hurts my heart that everyone who talks about putting an animation filter over Lord of the Rings either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that LOTR was animated back in the 70’s.

2023-01-26 19:04:58 UTC

- reply

Hello!

2022-12-29 05:56:53 UTC

Inspired by a post at mcoscillator.com:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Yduw
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Yduw
The Blue Line the interest rate at which all US taxes would be required just to service the debt.
The Red Line is roughly the average interest rate the US has been paying on its debt.
The Green Line is the Consumer Price Index.
It would be "bad" if the Blue and Red Lines cross.
The Red Line wants to be above the Green Line. (positive real rates)
The Blue Line drops in recessions.

2022-12-20 18:41:27 UTC

- reply

I wasn’t quite getting it at first but I played around a bit and it clicked for me. Thanks for your help.

2022-12-20 13:38:38 UTC

- reply

Ok. Thanks for the help.

2022-12-20 13:37:52 UTC

- reply

Thanks!
Ok, I’ll look into that.

2022-12-20 06:36:47 UTC

- reply

Hello. I’m also new to Lightning. I opened a channel with you for 350k. Would you consider opening a channel for me? I don’t have any inbound liquidity and I’m trying to figure this out. Thanks!
022a52e45abf52b004d693b451a0dcd8f84c3c74e57d20a5d2640c1bdf9b2f7ccf@dlb6mfgqvkbvvoiflcq4dd52c7usek723wd7dvfohonyu3s5jd3zngad.onion:9735