👉 Bitcoin Optech #256

  • summarizes a discussion of extending BOLT11 invoices to request 2 payments
  • includes ‘Waiting for confirmation #6: Policy Consistency’ from our series about policies for transaction relay & mempool inclusion

Last week’s post introduced policy, a set of transaction validation rules applied in addition to consensus rules. These rules are not applied to transactions in blocks, so a node can still stay in consensus even if its policy differs from that of its peers. Just like a node operator may decide to not participate in transaction relay, they are also free to choose any policy, up to none at all (exposing their node to the DoS risk). This means we cannot assume complete homogeneity of mempool policies across the network. However, in order for a user’s transaction to be received by a miner, it must travel through a path of nodes that all accept it into their mempool – dissimilarity of policy between nodes directly affects transaction relay functionality.