Gus..

I’m not gonna run Bitcoin Core on anything, ever !

The Long-Term Degradation of Bitcoin Full Nodes Due to Unrestricted Non-Monetary Data Spam The activity in question — persistent, high-volume inscription-style or arbitrary data transactions (typically leveraging OP_RETURN, Taproot script paths, or oversized witness data) — imposes compounding resource costs on the Bitcoin network’s full nodes. These costs scale linearly with blockspace consumption and transaction volume, directly threatening the economic feasibility of sovereign node operation. 1. Storage and Blockchain Growth Acceleration Each spam transaction permanently appends non-prunable data to the blockchain (or, in the case of witness data, to the witness commitment). Even with pruning enabled, full archival nodes and initial block download (IBD) for new nodes must process and store the entire history. Historical data shows that sustained spam campaigns have already accelerated blockchain growth beyond the baseline monetary transaction rate. Over years, this drives disk I/O and SSD capacity requirements from the current ~600 GB baseline to multi-terabyte levels for a fully validating node. Consumer-grade hardware (e.g., a 2 TB NVMe SSD) becomes insufficient for long-term operation without frequent manual pruning and re-validation cycles, which themselves consume additional bandwidth and CPU. 2. Bandwidth and Synchronization Overhead Full nodes must relay and validate every transaction and block. Spam increases: • Average block size toward the 4 MB witness-weighted limit on a more consistent basis. • Mempool pressure, forcing nodes to allocate more RAM for transaction caching and eviction logic. • IBD time for new nodes, which already exceeds 24–48 hours on consumer connections; sustained spam can push this beyond practical thresholds for home users with asymmetric residential broadband (typically 100–500 Mbps down / 10–50 Mbps up). The result is higher ongoing bandwidth bills and longer periods of desynchronization, reducing node reliability and network participation incentives. 3. CPU and Validation Costs Validation of each spam transaction requires: • Script execution (even if trivially true in many inscription patterns). • UTXO set lookups (if outputs are created, even dust). • Signature checks and witness validation. While individual transactions may be cheap in fees, their aggregate effect raises per-block validation time. On modest hardware (e.g., Raspberry Pi 5-class or older Intel NUC), this can push CPU utilization during block propagation above sustainable levels, leading to increased power draw and thermal throttling. Over multi-year horizons, the cumulative effect is that only higher-end servers or cloud instances remain viable for 24/7 operation. 4. Economic Barrier to Entry and Centralization Spiral When the marginal cost of running a fully validating, consensus-enforcing node exceeds the economic means of individual sovereign users (currently estimated at several hundred USD/year in hardware, electricity, and bandwidth for a reliable setup), participation collapses to professional operators, data-center colocation, or cloud providers. Historical precedent in other networks shows this leads to: • A sharp decline in the number of reachable full nodes. • Increased reliance on third-party RPC providers, block explorers, or light-client services. • Erosion of the verification principle (“Don’t trust, verify”) in favor of custodial or simplified payment verification (SPV) models. This is precisely the centralization vector Bitcoin’s design was engineered to resist. A network where only a handful of well-capitalized entities run economically viable nodes becomes vulnerable to coordinated policy changes, censorship, or regulatory capture — the very outcome that distinguishes Bitcoin from permissioned or trusted-third-party systems. In summary, unchecked spam is not a neutral “use case” expansion; it is an externality that systematically raises the hardware, energy, and connectivity floor required for node operation. Left unaddressed, it transforms Bitcoin from a peer-to-peer cash system verifiable by anyone into a settlement layer accessible primarily through intermediaries. The long-term viability of decentralization therefore depends on node operators and miners enforcing blockspace discipline — whether through consensus rules, default policy filters, or market-driven fee pressure — to keep the cost of sovereignty within reach of ordinary participants.

20/ The PR had 423 thumbs-down against 105 thumbs-up. Ava Chow had said publicly in Dec 2023: "If it is controversial, then we don't touch it." It was merged anyway. Luke Dashjr was muted on the PR. Bitcoin Mechanic was muted on the PR.