Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin Core’s relay policy defends neutrality but faces criticism for enabling spam.
- Luke Dashjr argues the policy contradicts Bitcoin’s decentralized principles.
- The debate highlights tension between censorship resistance and network protection.
Bitcoin Core’s recent position on transaction relay policies has drawn criticism from prominent developers and sparked broader debate over Bitcoin’s direction.
The new policy, aimed at improving block propagation and miner fee prediction, has been accused of enabling spam and undermining decentralization.
Developer perspectives on Bitcoin Core’s policy
The developers emphasized that Bitcoin Core supports a peer-to-peer protocol rather than enforcing network rules.
They wrote:
Bitcoin is a network that is defined by its users.
They argue that transactions with sustained economic demand should not be blocked—even if they are non-standard or low-fee.
Luke Dashjr’s rejection of the policy
Veteran developer Luke Dashjr, creator of the OCEAN Bitcoin mining pool, strongly rejected the policy, calling it “harmful” and “centralizing.”
In a post on X, he wrote:
The goals of transaction relay listed are basically all wrong. Predicting what will be mined is a centralizing goal. Expecting spam to be mined is defeatism.
Dashjr further claimed the policy legitimizes what should be considered denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, treating them as valid use cases.
Here’s the full post:
NACK
The goals of transaction relay listed are basically all wrong. Predicting what will be mined is a centralizing goal. Expecting spam to be mined is defeatism. Helping spam propagate is harmful.
This OPED contradicts itself, presenting out of band relay as both negative and…
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) June 7, 2025
Historical context & ongoing debate
The controversy echoes earlier challenges from Craig Wright, who has sued Bitcoin Core, arguing that it strays from Bitcoin’s original design.
In his words:
They must do it on the basis of the original design… peer-to-peer transactions, a decentralized, electronic cash system.
While some users defended Bitcoin Core’s neutral stance as essential to preserving censorship resistance, the debate underscores an ongoing dilemma:
Should Bitcoin be purely fee-driven and neutral, or should it guard against potentially harmful activity?
Bitbo Dashboard → / Original Article