M for Marauder: BTC Junk Block Attack
So about a year ago a Bitcoin mining company called MARA created a custom block full of fake Bitcoin operations in order to paint their own logo into the 2-dimensional rendering of a block. The funny thing about this is that, while the data is technically on-chain, the rendering of this data like this in 2-dimensional form is completely arbitrary and made up... Actually it's very similar to NFT "art" on Ethereum. The ETH blockchain only contains the hash of the JPEG, but the actual JPEG has to be stored off chain and can go offline at a moment's notice.
In this case MARA was targeting a really good Bitcoin explorer that everyone should have bookmarked: https://mempool.space/
Why is this such a badass website? Well, other than the fact that it's just organized really well and is very easy to navigate (good UI and UX) it also shows you operations that technically don't exist yet. In fact, that's the name of the website: mempool. The mempool is a list of operations that haven't been confirmed in a block yet, so you can see things about to happen before they actually happen.
This can be really useful especially for reducing stress levels.
Back in the day when you sent Bitcoin it might take 5 minutes to happen, or 10 minutes, or 15 minutes, or even a full hour (this is still true and will always be true). If you were sending a lot of money this creates extreme "transfer anxiety". You're not actually sure if you performed the operation correctly and you're sitting there wondering if you just messed up and lost thousands of dollars on a classic crypto blunder. The ability to look at the mempool allows you to check out what you've done before it's even happened. If you actually did do something wrong it's possible to override the action and clawback the money rather than just hoping it all works out.
Bitcoin is permanent like that.
If you want to go see what MARA did a year ago it's still right there for everyone to scope. https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000341cc26cda4af82cd25f7063c448772228cbf2836915b?audit=false
Block 836361... a garbage block full of fake ass transactions that creates a pixilated image of their own logo. Of course this pissed off more than a few people (including myself) for spamming the chain with an advertisement instead of using it for the intended purpose of a functioning ledger. Everyone who wanted to move Bitcoin had to wait for the next block... and a lot of them had to pay more to do it because the last block was "missing". At the same time those who paid less fees didn't even get included in a block for a while... so that's an annoying thing to consider.
https://x.com/edict3d/status/1916876529730203714
https://mempool.space/tx/2154a77befea7b7c1700f37fafa2a3db238b62b891a66df953f08385f3cd178e
So what did MARA do this time?
This morning MARA posted some extra information in a block in something called an op-code. OP_RETURN data to be exact. It's the same functionality Satoshi used on the genesis block when he referenced the well-timed 2008 housing collapse.
If you're wondering why the op-code often seems to contain garbage characters it's due to the fact that Bitcoin uses hexadecimal and non standard character formatting rather than normal ones like ascii or unicode like most operating systems are used to.
So what did MARA have to say this time?
Fix Nix the Filters
“NIXTHEFILTERS” Filtering JPEGs on Bitcoin is like trying to hold water with a tennis racket. It looks principled until someone points out the puddle. Ocean launched with all the moral authority of a spam-fighting crusade, proudly declaring war on inscriptions. Meanwhile, their own block templates were smuggling JPEGs without even noticing. Then came the receipts: BenTheCarman: https://mempool.space/tx/32806ffe7040f2b57b4f0298f1e3a23d6a3296d25c75afdee5281729f15e8319 Rob Hamilton: https://mempool.space/tx/38086f6079c9eeb1e1a637600645e99982281f5f8ee23dd9680d879b9e7da204 https://x.com/benthecarman/status/1819156196131045496 These weren’t accidents. These were intentional filter bypasses. One of them confirmed in 2 minutes. No tricks. Just miners doing what Bitcoin miners do. Including valid transactions. In February 2024, Marathon released Slipstream. It didn’t just help push complex transactions. It proved filtering doesn’t work. You can’t stop inscriptions. You can only stop yourself from mining them. So what did we learn? Attempts to filter JPEGs, art, privacy, or any other flavor of ‘unwanted’ transaction on Bitcoin are: Economically irrational, technically trivial to route around and guaranteed to fail. http://fixthefilters.com/
All of that appears on-chain in the op-return code of block 894325
It cost around $13 to post that data to the chain, but also Mara mined the block so this is the same as them paying themselves the $13, which is kinda funny and also relevant to the last time they pulled an on-chain stunt.
This is actually a highly philosophical debate
Mara is on the (correct) side of this argument. Their argument is simple: there's no such thing as "junk" data. If a user pays the fee or if the miner puts the data into the block: it's valid. Opinions are irrelevant. Code is law. Bitcoin is a payed service, and those who pay get service. Period. The End. That's all she wrote.
This philosophy is confirmed by all sorts of old school Bitcoiners, including Andreas Antonopoulos, who I learned the vast majority of this stuff from back in the 2018 era. The entire point of a censorship resistant network is that it's censorship resistant. You'd think this statement would be self-evident, but there are plenty of other Bitcoiners on their high-horse thinking they know better.
lol it's from 2008
Proving once again that most people are just larping.
Imagine trying to convey the importance of freedom-of-speech, and then THE SECOND someone says something you don't like you try to censor them. That is what these Bitcoiners opposing Mara, inscriptions, and ordinals are trying to do. They don't want "shitcoins" and "bloat" on the chain so badly that they're willing to undermine their own principals to get what they want.
Except Bitcoin proves unequivocally that their tactics are useless and the Bitcoin network wins regardless as to what these thin-skinned peasants cry about. The analogy of trying to capture water in a tennis racket is quite apt. Any miner that doesn't agree with the censorship is going to allow this data onto the chain. It can't be stopped because of the way POW works, which one of the main features of POW consensus and hash mining. Bitcoin just works as intended, once again.
I can relate to both sides of this argument.
In fact there are a lot of people just like me. I don't want JPEGS on Bitcoin. I don't want BRC-20 tokens. All that crap can fuck right off to another chain that can actually handle the bandwidth. The purpose of Bitcoin is to move Bitcoin from one person to another using the world's most secure and censorship resistant ledger. There's really no good reason (thus far) to use Bitcoin for any of this other stuff that crypto is currently experimenting with.
The difference is that while I don't want that data on the chain, I would also never advocate censoring the chain to get what I want. I might not like it, but I will accept it. Because that's what freedom of speech actually means. It means when things don't go your way you don't try to rig the system for your own benefit. That's the entire point. If everyone agreed there'd be no reason to have the conversation in the first place. Consensus is a helluva thing.
So what does http://fixthefilters.com/ say?
https://ordinals.com/content/d9bfd536f65f8455a3f012c5095175033b9fd22f80b5870b77a78fcd1b3115b6i0
Bitcoin needs better mining pools. Too bad OCEAN fucked it up and made template construction an ethical question and not an economic question, manufacturing cultural consent for actual censorship and compliant blocks.
Don't tell us how to Bitcoin, statist cucks.
- RED TEAM
lol well I wasn't expecting that
Can't really go much harder than that.
Imagine being like the CEO of a respected company having to explain away something like this that is so clearly unprofessional. I must say that I kind of respect that they would put it out there in such a raw and offensive fashion. Maybe the grassroots vision of Bitcoin is still alive and well after all.
Conclusion
Money is the language of value transfer. The freedom to send money permissionlessly across borders is ultimately the highest and most important form of freedom-of-speech there is. Trying to cultivate moral authority and seize power for oneself over this issue is the most cringe thing a person can do, especially within the landscape of cryptocurrency in which this type of behavior is expressly prohibited.