Samson Mow Pushes Mining Hardware Ban as Bitcoin Core 30 Sparks Spam Debate

Bitcoin’s ongoing scaling dispute has taken a brand new twist as business figures debate tips on how to deal with what many are calling a “spam epidemic” on the community.

Lengthy-time BTC advocate and Jan3 CEO Samson Mow has urged that mining {hardware} producers ought to contemplate refusing gross sales, or at the least imposing penalties, on firms supporting transactions he describes as spam.

Mow’s {Hardware} Gambit

In an August 17 publish on X, amplifying an earlier proposal by Adam Beck to place social stress on miners as a way of curbing spam on the Bitcoin community, Mow urged that Block’s Proto Mining division, which builds a few of the most extremely environment friendly ASIC miners, might refuse gross sales or impose markups on companies like Marathon Digital (MARA) that mine transactions containing non-financial information.

“If @jack is on board… they might merely publish a press release that they won’t promote, or will promote {hardware} at a markup, to the businesses which can be enabling spam,” Mow tweeted.

He theorized that imposing a possible 2% financial penalty would outweigh the minor revenue increase of round 0.5% accruing from mining spam. This, he believes, would compel public mining companies to cease.

Whereas Block’s willingness to behave as an arbiter is presently unknown, Mow’s thought has acquired assist in some quarters. Bitcoin maxi Matt Kratter endorsed it, stating:

“Proto Rig shouldn’t promote their ASICs to unhealthy actors that assist Bitcoin spam. Let MARA purchase from the CCP and pay tariffs.”

The Core of the Controversy: OP_RETURN

Mow’s remarks have intensified an already heated debate round Bitcoin Core’s upcoming adjustments to OP_RETURN, the transaction sort typically blamed for bloated blocks.

In Could, the Bitcoin Core improvement staff determined to eliminate the long-standing 80-byte cap on OP_RETURN outputs in Core 30. The opcode permits small information packets to be embedded in BTC transactions however was traditionally restricted to forestall non-financial information from flooding blocks.

Nevertheless, builders, led by Gregory Sanders, argued the restrict was out of date since miners have been already bypassing it. They contend that eradicating it would promote cleaner information storage, preserve community neutrality, and likewise replicate current practices by non-public mining swimming pools.

“This isn’t endorsing non-financial information utilization, however accepting that as a censorship-resistant system, Bitcoin can and shall be used to be used instances not everybody agrees on,” a previous Core assertion defined.

Nonetheless, critics like Luke Dashjr have described the transfer as “utter madness,” warning that it might result in a rise in spam on Bitcoin, probably crowding reliable monetary transactions and altering the community’s most important goal.