Creating a Filter for Blockchain Data: Pros and Cons

Hey everyone, I'm working on a draft for a new API that could help people pull blockchain data easily without getting tangled up in legal issues from illegal content. The idea is to filter out stuff like CP and malware from the results. I'm not a lawyer, just trying to keep it simple.

Honestly, I don't get the point. When you sync Bitcoin, you grab everything. APIs are for specific data, so altering that seems pointless. You're basically making a catalog of the bad stuff on the blockchain. Isn't that worse?

Exactly! Even if you use RPC calls, the data isn’t exactly user-friendly. You still need to decode everything yourself, which is a hassle. Sounds like just another way to compile a list of ‘illegal’ content.

Precedent is the real issue here. If you start editing blockchain data, you’ve introduced a middleman, and that’s shaky ground. Bitcoin is all about trust and verifiability. If you create a sanitized version, you confuse users about the true state of the blockchain.

Interesting point. There’s actually a similar chat happening here about OP_RETURN filtering during block propagation. It seems like building a blacklist of 'bad' data is a slippery slope, and moderation is tough for any platform. There’s no universal agreement on what’s right or wrong.

I can definitely see this causing more problems than it solves. Imagine if centralized exchanges start creating their own filtered versions of transactions and blocks. They might end up making it impossible to use their services without 'clean' coins.

So, if I get this right, you want to create a filter that moderates transactions based on your own definitions of 'unwanted'? I see that in some public IPFS nodes too, they have to deal with legal stuff like DMCA.

Yeah, I guess it could be useful for companies that want to restrict what their employees can access. But still, you’re just creating a way to censor blockchain data. If someone wants that info, you might just block it. That’s censorship.

I'm not worried about exchanges blocking transactions from specific blocks. They can’t predict where their withdrawals will be confirmed.

You could start filtering based on certain outputs like OP_RETURN. Identifying problematic data could also involve analyzing scripts, but it’s not a straightforward task.

That’s a slippery slope. If governments start censoring internet content, it’s a tight rein on access. In Bitcoin, most services still give full access. This just seems like a small filter that restricts requests for some types of data.

I’d suggest a different approach. Instead of filtering for illegal content, how about blocking out all data transactions? This could include OP_RETURN outputs and known protocols that embed data.

So basically, you’re suggesting to filter out all transactions? There are existing methods for that. Just stop relaying certain transactions altogether.

Identifying harmful content manually is super time-consuming. I’m leaning towards a simple automated tool that excludes OP_RETURN and ordinals. It won’t be perfect but could reduce clutter.

Good call. A single fake public key could hold lots of outputs, including problematic data. There are protocols out there that can carry significant amounts of data.

I thought fake public key outputs were just basic addresses. Are there actually more ways to embed data than I realized?

Yeah, fake public keys can store hex strings from random data. There’s no limit to what you can encode in these protocols, and transactions can have tons of outputs.

Interesting, and existing solutions could help. BIP 157 clients filter spam naturally, and the more wallets that do this, the less of an issue the unlimited OP_RETURN will become.

For sure, full nodes will always handle the storage. But if more clients can auto-exclude unspendable outputs, we might be able to manage this better.

I feel like there’s a lot of unnecessary worry about content that most users don’t even know about. Creating a database of this stuff might just call attention to it instead of burying it.