Author: Matt Corallo 2021-08-08 21:14:23
Published on: 2021-08-08T21:14:23+00:00
A Bitcoin developer named Jeremy suggested that the dust limit should be removed from Bitcoin, but another developer named Matt disagreed. The size of the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) set is a scalability constraint of the system and the dust limit plays a role in this. Currently, the dust limit is based on a feerate of only 3 sat/vByte and it should be increased to something like 20 sat/vB as fees are expected to go up over time. Jeremy argued that removing the dust limit would enable people to create any output they want, but Matt countered that the costs are borne by the system and not the creators. Low-value-but-enough-to-be-worth-spending-when-you're-done-with-them outputs can be used instead of dust sized htlcs in lightning. Additionally, thinly divisible colored coin protocols might make use of sats as value markers for transactions, but these schemes can and should use values which make them economical to spend. Lastly, Jeremy listed reasons why dust creation should be allowed such as various authentication/delegation smart contracts using dust outputs, and how confidential transactions could be prevented without compromising privacy/allowed transfers if the dust limit is not present. However, the significant costs to every miner and full node operator were cited as the main reason to disallow dust creation.
Updated on: 2023-05-21T03:27:06.464671+00:00