Saifedean Ammous Throws Support Behind Spam-Fighting Developer

Economist and author of The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous, weighed in on the ongoing spam debate by offering to fund a developer dedicated to making Bitcoin spamming more difficult and expensive. “I’d throw in a few sats,” he wrote, signaling his willingness to contribute financially to efforts aimed at maintaining the network’s integrity.

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The comment came in response to a proposal by pseudonymous developer GrassFedBitcoin, who called for Bitcoin Core to adopt pull request #28408. This would allow node operators to filter out inscription-based spam more efficiently. According to GrassFedBitcoin, the lack of filtering tools contributes to unnecessary blockchain bloat and weakens Bitcoin’s function as a monetary protocol.

“Fighting Spam Is Not Censorship”

Ammous compared the issue to email spam—an arms race societies continue to fight without abandoning email altogether. He emphasized that rejecting spam transactions isn’t censorship, since node operators already reject invalid ones. His stance was clear: filtering inscriptions is not about control, it’s about protecting the network.

However, Blockstream CEO Adam Back pushed back, describing spam filtering as an endless technical war. He noted that spam data structures can be modified infinitely, requiring ever-evolving countermeasures. Yet even Back didn’t dispute the need to address the issue at some level.

Is Bitcoin’s Future at Risk?

The debate comes amid growing concerns that Bitcoin’s average block size could soar. A report by Mempool Research suggests inscription usage could push the average block to 4 MB—far above the current 1.5 MB—potentially leading to congestion and skyrocketing fees.

Ammous’s solution goes beyond policy: he suggests deprecating spam tools and even hiring outside coders to overwhelm systems designed to abuse the network. This marks a shift from ideological debate to direct action.

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Originally, this restriction aimed to discourage excessive use of block space for non-payment purposes. However, developers now say the limit no longer serves a purpose and that its removal will lead to a more efficient and transparent data flow.

What Is the Impact of Removing OP_RETURN?

OP_RETURN is a special transaction output that allows small pieces of data to be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain. It gained popularity during the ordinals hype in early 2024. Unlike standard outputs, OP_RETURN data is unspendable and doesn’t bloat the UTXO set.

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Users had already found ways to bypass the restriction, often using fake output addresses that were more damaging to the network. Developers argue that lifting the limit will promote network consistency, a cleaner UTXO set, and better reflect real-world Bitcoin usage.

Mixed Reactions from the Community

The change is not without controversy. Well-known Bitcoiner Samson Mow commented that users could simply stick with version 29.0 or use an alternative client. Others criticized the lack of proper consensus, suggesting the update was rushed without broader agreement.

The decision reignites a long-standing debate: Is Bitcoin solely a financial tool, or should it also function as a decentralized publishing platform?

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Addressing Past Issues and Enhancing Transparency

“The project has historically done a poor job at publicly disclosing security-critical bugs, whether externally reported or found by contributors” Bitcoin Core developer Antoine Poinsot and five others wrote to members of the Bitcoin Development Mailing List on July 3. This has led to a situation where Bitcoin users are led to believe that Bitcoin Core is free of bugs, but Poinsot stressed that this simply isn’t the case. “This perception is dangerous and, unfortunately, not accurate.”

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Bitcoin Core is the software that Bitcoin node operators download to access the Bitcoin blockchain, validate transactions, and build blocks. It plays a crucial role in securing more than $1.1 trillion locked in the Bitcoin network. Poinsot said the new policy would allow better communication about the risk of running outdated versions of Bitcoin Core and would provide a standardized disclosure process that would give researchers more incentive to find and responsibly disclose vulnerabilities. “Making the security bugs available to the wider group of contributors can help prevent future ones.”

Categorizing Vulnerabilities and Disclosure Timeline

The new disclosure policy will categorize vulnerabilities based on four levels of severity. The categories include:

1. Low: Bugs that are hard to exploit and have low impact, such as a wallet bug that requires access to the victim’s machine.
2. Medium: Bugs with limited impact, such as local network remote crashes.
3. High: Bugs that could have significant impact.
4. Critical: Bugs that threaten the entire network’s integrity, such as manipulating Bitcoin Core to inflate Bitcoin’s hard-capped supply or committing a “coin theft.”

Low, medium, and high bugs will aim to be disclosed two weeks after a fixed version is released, while disclosures for critical bugs will be determined on a case-by-case basis. The policy will be “gradually adopted” in the coming months, Poinsot added.

Poinsot noted that all vulnerabilities fixed in Bitcoin Core versions 0.21.0 and earlier have been disclosed as of July 3, and disclosures for versions 0.22.0 and 0.23.0 will come out later this month and in August. Bitcoin Core version 27.1 is the latest version adopted.

The new policy received praise from fellow Bitcoin Core developer Eric Voskuil: “Many other projects have been on the receiving end of this misperception, and it has in fact caused material harm to the community. I don’t know what precipitated this change, but props to you all for stepping up.”

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