1/ Several core contributors and ecosystem leaders just laid out the clearest explanation to date of why anti-spam efforts cannot work at the policy layer, why Ordinals can always route around restrictions, and why consensus-level proposals are the only effective — but extremely

2/ “Policy cannot stop JPEGs.” — CbSpears + Casey CbSpears explained that any policy-level anti-spam filter is doomed: — There are infinite ways to encode data — Ordinals can release new versions weekly — Workarounds are trivial — Forking Bitcoin to stop them is economically

3/ “Policy enforcement collapses unless ≥90% of the network upgrades.” — Murch Murch provided the empirical missing piece: • Mempool policy only works when 90%+ nodes enforce it • 23% of listening nodes are still on 27.x or older • Therefore no restrictive policy can have

4/ Why OP_RETURN limits no longer work (and even backfire) Murch again: – OP_RETURN was originally limited to raise the fixed cost of data embedding – Today inscriptions can embed 400kB as standard transactions – Witness discount makes them 4× cheaper per byte than OP_RETURN –

5/ “If something can be bypassed, it’s not real censorship.” — Adam Back Adam summarized the engineering reality: – Most people would block spam if there were a “button” – But policy changes won’t even slow it： • Only consensus changes (soft forks) can enforce

6/ The first real talk of compromise Luke de Wolf — initially critical — later acknowledged: — Both sides are closer to agreement than expected BIP444 is too aggressive in current form — Realistic compromise may involve: • A consensus-level OP_RETURN limit (e.g., 256 bytes)

7/ The deeper truth: Bitcoin’s script flexibility → infinite data channels Murch again (paraphrased): — As long as Bitcoin has a flexible scripting system — There will always be ways to embed arbitrary data — Blocking all methods would require “throwing out the — baby with

8/ Final takeaways Policy cannot stop inscriptions (requires ≥90% enforcement → impossible) Consensus changes can stop specific methods but they • take years • require broad agreement • are still circumventable via new encodings Ordinals can always route around

9/ Attached: “Bitcoin OP_RETURN Policy Debate Analysis” whiteboard diagram. 🧵 End. Follow @BitcoinKernel for real-time Bitcoin dev updates