Proposal to solve the spam war: configurable data blob relay policy

The email discusses a proposal for designing an additional relay service aimed at integrating and streamlining the use of existing blockchain capabilities to address and potentially render moot current controversies surrounding non-financial transactions on the network. The sender argues against maintaining or instituting a relay policy that does not align with what is already reliably making it into blocks. They highlight several drawbacks to such policies, including their inefficacy due to the possibility of direct submission to miners or the creation of software with different policies, potential harm to block propagation speeds, interference with DoS protection mechanisms, negative impacts on fee estimation, and a possible increase in profitability for private submission services that could disadvantage smaller miners.

The correspondence further elaborates on the effectiveness of relay policies, pointing out the low proportion of non-standard transactions in blocks and the general respect for the dust limit as evidence of their efficacy. It challenges the consistency between relay policy and consensus, citing pragmatic reasons for historically adopted relay policies. The sender questions the practical concerns regarding fee estimation methods and the actual impact of relay policies on block propagation speeds, calling for evidence if available. They argue that making relay filters less restrictive could worsen the situation by increasing the number of non-standard transactions that nodes need to process, thereby forcing node operators to upgrade to maintain performance levels.

The proposed relay service is designed to allow nodes to only download transactions containing OP_RETURN commitments that comply with existing standardness filters, thus reducing the data needed to verify blocks without requiring significant changes in node operations. The sender asserts that this service would require minimal adoption (~10% of nodes) to be reliable for Layer 2 (L2) protocols and would not negatively impact nodes that choose not to participate.

Finally, the email addresses the potential misunderstanding that the sender supports non-financial transactions per se. Instead, they emphasize that technical concerns should be paramount over aesthetic ones. The sender critiques the idea of crafting more restrictive policies, arguing that this could push users towards bypassing these policies through direct submissions to miners or the use of software without such policies. They suggest a model where arbitrary data is relayed via a system that fits within the standardness policies of the majority of the network, thereby adding value for L2 protocol users without imposing significant additional burdens.