Dust Expiry: Clean the UTXO set from spam

The discussion raises an intriguing point about the efficiency and acceptability of handling dust outputs within blockchain transactions, particularly focusing on their impact and how they are managed. It highlights that historical data may suggest a low spending rate for these outputs, with less than 1% actually being utilized in subsequent transactions. This infrequency in spending dust outputs suggests that even with the added necessity of a Merkle proof for those that are spent, the overall impact on the blockchain's resource requirements remains minimal.

This is especially significant when considering specific types of dust outputs, such as Pay-to-Multisig (P2MS), which reportedly have a much higher incidence of being generated rather than spent. The argument put forth suggests that the blockchain could handle these dust outputs more efficiently, implying that current practices concerning dust management might be overly cautious or not optimized according to actual usage patterns and their resultant footprint on the network. This perspective encourages a reevaluation of how dust outputs, particularly those of the P2MS variety, are treated, suggesting that there could be room for improving the system's efficiency by adjusting protocols around these smaller transactions.