$BTC $I've been closely following the recent debate around spam inscriptions on the Bitcoin network — and Saifedean Ammous just weighed in with some serious points.
Responding to a thread by GrassFedBitcoin, Saifedean said he’s even willing to financially support a full-time developer to make Bitcoin spam more difficult and expensive. The goal? Preserve Bitcoin's integrity as a monetary protocol.
GrassFedBitcoin is pushing for Bitcoin Core to merge pull request #28408 — a proposal that would give node operators more power to filter out inscriptions. These inscriptions, often non-financial data like JPEGs, are causing unnecessary blockchain bloat. Honestly, I agree with his take — Bitcoin wasn’t designed to be a data dump.
Of course, there’s pushback. Adam Back called it an “arms race,” saying spam can always morph and adapt — which is a fair point. But as Saifedean rightly pointed out, this is no different from email spam. We didn’t shut down email — we fought back with smarter filters. That’s not censorship. It’s protecting the system.
Some voices in the community even went as far as calling out devs who create spam tools, saying their work should be deprecated, and maybe even fought with external coders who can disrupt their systems. Strong words, but it shows the level of frustration right now.
According to Mempool Research, inscriptions could push block sizes to 4MB — way beyond the current 1.5MB average. That’s not sustainable if we want Bitcoin to remain efficient and reliable.
For me, this whole discussion just reinforces a bigger truth: Bitcoin’s future depends on how we defend its purpose — and who’s willing to step up to do it.
