Author: Jeremy 2021-08-20 04:51:31
Published on: 2021-08-20T04:51:31+00:00
At the BitDevs meetup in Austin, a new argument was presented in favor of removing the dust limit. The argument is that the dust limit is a per-node relay policy, and it is rational for miners to mine dust outputs because the cost of maintenance is lower than their immediate reward in fees. If txn relaying nodes censor something that a miner would mine, users will seek a private/direct relay to the miner and vice versa, which could be bad for privacy and decentralization. Therefore, the dust limit causes an incentive to increase network centralization. However, it is unclear whether the short term immediate incentive to promote network centralization is better or worse than a long term node operator overhead. The author believes that having a dust limit is worse because it creates an incentive to produce or roll out centralizing software, whereas not having a dust limit creates a mild incentive for node operators to improve utreexo decentralizing software. However, it is difficult to quantify the magnitude of these incentives.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T05:21:25.605548+00:00