Economist and author of “The Bitcoin Standard,” Saifedean Ammous, expressed willingness to “throw in a few satoshis” to support a specialist focused on complicating and increasing the cost of spam on the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency.
Email spam is also an arms race, yet we race it every day, and we don’t give up on it when one spam email gets through. I and others would probably throw in a few sats to help fund a full time job for a dev whose sole purpose is to think of how to make spamming bitcoin harder and…
— Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean) May 17, 2025
Ammous drew parallels between unwanted messages on the network and email.
“It’s not easy. But it’s worth trying to help spammers go bankrupt faster,” he explained.
The economist argued that such efforts do not constitute censorship, noting that node operators already reject invalid transactions.
The expert joined debates regarding the proliferation of Ordinals “inscriptions.” The discussion reflects ongoing tensions within the community about network usage.
According to Mempool Research, the spread of “inscriptions” could lead to an increase in the average block size to 4 MB, significantly higher than the current 1.5 MB.
Developer known as GrassFedBitcoin believes the lack of filtering tools contributes to unnecessary blockchain “bloat” and undermines the role of digital gold as a monetary protocol.
The expert urged Bitcoin Core to consider request 28408, which would empower node operators with the necessary authority to limit spam.
Let’s talk about filtering inscriptions.
Because if it’s possible — the main rationale for blowing out the OP RETURN limit to such an absurd degree no longer exists.
It is achievable.
28408 needs to be reopened and merged into Core.
No one running a node wants to relay… pic.twitter.com/6ItdhVapCh
— Mechanic #FixTheFilters #300kb (@GrassFedBitcoin) May 17, 2025
GrassFedBitcoin noted that currently, few are interested in including “inscriptions.” In the past, increasing the OP_RETURN limit was justified by false assumptions, the specialist added.
He advocated for a customizable default policy that prevents the use of Bitcoin for storing JPEG files rather than monetary data.
Blockstream CEO Adam Back challenged this proposal, describing filtering as an “arms race.”
“Inscriptions can be trivially filtered” not if they keep changing it. then someone has to sit there writing parsers to catch the new ones daily. arms race.
— Adam Back (@adam3us) May 17, 2025
In his view, spam data embedded in Bitcoin transactions can be endlessly modified using code structures, necessitating regular updates to filtering tools.
Earlier, Ammous dismissed the negative impact of institutional players on the first cryptocurrency.
Previously, Block CEO Jack Dorsey was among the experts who supported the proposal to remove satoshis as the base unit of digital gold.