[BIP Proposal] Mempool Validation and Relay Policies via User-Defined Scripts

The discussion between Aiden McClelland, Greg Maxwell, and Chris Guida centers around a proposal aimed at altering the governance of mempool policy within the Bitcoin network. This proposal seeks to mitigate tensions by shifting the responsibility for decision-making regarding which transactions are relayed and which are not, away from Bitcoin core maintainers to the users themselves. The core idea is to democratize the process of filter authorship, allowing users more freedom in choosing the transactions they wish to support or ignore, rather than having these decisions made by a centralized authority.

Greg Maxwell expresses cautious optimism about the proposal, acknowledging its potential to resolve existing disputes over mempool policy. He notes that the current central maintainers are not keen on being the arbiters of network policy, suggesting that this shift could relieve them of an unwelcome burden while empowering individual users.

Chris Guida challenges Maxwell's interpretation, emphasizing that the proposal aims to reduce authoritarian control over transaction relays by decentralizing decision-making power. Guida questions the rationale behind the preference for running a blocks-only configuration, which does not filter transactions, over a more selective approach that would allow for partial filtration based on user preferences. He argues that moving away from a system where core maintainers set all default policies towards one where users have greater autonomy could lead to a more open and less authoritarian management of the Bitcoin network's mempool policy.