The ongoing dispute over scaling Bitcoin has taken a new turn as industry leaders discuss how to address what is being called a “spam epidemic” on the network. Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3 and a long-time advocate for BTC, has proposed that mining hardware manufacturers should consider refusing sales or imposing penalties on companies that support what he describes as spam transactions. Mow’s suggestion, which he calls the “Hardware Gambit,” was first proposed by Adam Beck and involves putting social pressure on miners to curb spam on the Bitcoin network. Mow suggests that Block’s Proto Mining division, which builds highly efficient ASIC miners, could refuse sales or impose markups on companies like Marathon Digital (MARA) that mine transactions containing non-financial data. He believes that this economic penalty of around 2% would outweigh the minor profit boost of 0.5% that comes from mining spam, and would compel public mining firms to stop. While it is unknown if Block would be willing to act as an arbiter, Mow’s idea has received support from some, including Bitcoin maximalist Matt Kratter. The controversy at the core of this debate is around Bitcoin Core’s upcoming changes to OP_RETURN, a transaction type that is often blamed for bloated blocks. In May, the Bitcoin Core development team decided to remove the long-standing 80-byte cap on OP_RETURN outputs in Core 30. This opcode allows small data packets to be embedded in BTC transactions, but was historically restricted to prevent non-financial data from flooding blocks. However, developers, led by Gregory Sanders, argued that the limit was obsolete since miners were already bypassing it. They believe that removing it will promote cleaner data storage, maintain network neutrality, and reflect existing practices by private mining pools. However, critics like Luke Dashjr have called this move “utter insanity,” warning that it will lead to an increase in spam on Bitcoin, potentially crowding out legitimate financial transactions and altering the network’s main purpose.
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