₿rMoon on Nostr: What is a spam transaction? What is a legitimate transaction? What is an ...
What is a spam transaction? What is a legitimate transaction? What is an illegitimate transaction? There are two ways to answer this. One is a paternalistic, top-down approach that says, this is what is allowed, this is what is not allowed, and by making a list, we will prevent the network from filling to capacity.
But that breaks the fundamental capability of bitcoin, which is net neutrality. Bitcoin doesn’t care who the sender or the receiver is, what the application is, what the value of the transaction is. All it cares about is, did you pay the fee? If you paid the fee, your transaction is legitimate by definition because you thought it was legitimate enough to attach that fee. The very act of paying the fee legitimizes the transaction.
Antonopoulos, Andreas M. The Internet of Money
But that breaks the fundamental capability of bitcoin, which is net neutrality. Bitcoin doesn’t care who the sender or the receiver is, what the application is, what the value of the transaction is. All it cares about is, did you pay the fee? If you paid the fee, your transaction is legitimate by definition because you thought it was legitimate enough to attach that fee. The very act of paying the fee legitimizes the transaction.
Antonopoulos, Andreas M. The Internet of Money