Bitcoin Core Development Circle Sparks Controversy: Transaction Relay Policy Causes Community Disagreement

Recently, the Bitcoin core development community has sparked heated discussions due to a new statement. This statement, titled "Bitcoin Core Development and Transaction Relay Policy," has generated a significant response in the community, with some opponents even comparing it to the infamous "New York Agreement."

The core content of the statement is that the Bitcoin core team plans to launch a built-in transaction Relay system. This move is seen as paving the way for the previous removal of the OP-Return block limit.

To understand this controversy, we need to review a background event from two years ago. At that time, inscription technology began to rise, storing content in the OP-Return area of Bitcoin blocks through a method known as "card bug," thereby effectively circumventing the block size limit of Bitcoin.

This practice has caused divisions within the Bitcoin community. Extreme conservatives have strongly opposed inscriptions, introducing a filter that treats inscription transactions as garbage transactions and refuses to package them. This move once led to a sharp decline in the price of Ordi.

In contrast, the relatively moderate conservatives believe that since inscriptions can already be put on the chain, it is better to formalize them. Therefore, they proposed a new proposal to change the limit of OP-Return from 80KB to no limit, effectively removing restrictions on inscriptions.

So, what exactly is this controversial "transaction relay"? Theoretically, Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network where miners should connect directly. However, considering the security of the real network environment, introducing transaction relays has become a compromise.

The main advantages of transaction relay are twofold: first, it helps to prevent denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, avoiding the congestion of miners' servers with a large volume of invalid transactions; second, it can accelerate the propagation speed of transactions and blocks, reducing network latency, thereby preventing large miners from gaining an unfair advantage.

It is worth noting that using a transaction Relay is voluntary and not mandatory. Different transaction Relays may adopt different strategies, with some having strict filtering rules and others being relatively lenient.

The core of the controversy lies in the definition of "garbage transactions." Extreme conservatives believe that inscriptions are garbage transactions and should be completely eliminated. They argue that Bitcoin should not serve as a storage chain. On the other hand, relatively moderate conservatives hold a different view; they believe that certain transactions should not be censored or restricted from being recorded on the chain, and filters should only target pure DoS attacks.

Currently, the market share of the Bitcoin Core client exceeds 90%. However, the development team emphasizes that Bitcoin is a user-defined network, and users have the right to choose which software to use and what policies to implement. To avoid being seen as centralized, they even avoid automatic software updates.

I personally support this dispute. I believe that as long as the inscriptions pay the fees normally, they should not be considered spam transactions. These transactions provide additional income for miners and help maintain the security of the Bitcoin network after multiple halvings in the future.

More importantly, I firmly oppose transaction censorship. One of the most proud features of Bitcoin is its resistance to transaction censorship, and adopting mild garbage filtering rules can both maintain this feature and improve network security.

Some criticize this as a compromise to miners, but I disagree with this view. Inscription users are also Bitcoin users. With technological advancements, allowing the Bitcoin blockchain to store some additional data without affecting the underlying architecture is not unacceptable.

Bitcoin may never become a purely storage chain, but as a supplementary function, storing a small amount of data seems to be no big deal. Just as physical gold can be used to carve records, our "electronic gold" should also allow for such flexibility.

Therefore, I fully support the proposal of the Bitcoin core team.