Side by side comparison of a Core Node and a Knots Node: The screenshots were taken at the same time from my personal node and mempool.space on Block 915311 Core Node is currently accepting transactions under 1 sat/vb as well as any non-monetary transactions like jpegs, inscriptions, runes, which are colloquially known as 'spam'. Knots Node is running the stock configuration 1sat/vb minimum fee and datacarrier=42. This means that the transaction are predominately monetary in nature because the majority of the non-monetary transactions are filtered out. Knots Node has 1,832 unconfirmed transactions that take up 3 MB. The Core Node has 134,665 unconfirmed transactions that take up 331 MB. Core Node mempool, note the majority of the block is categorized as "data" aka non-monetary transactions aka spam. Knots Node mempool, note the significantly less amount of "data". (Looks like filters work after all!) This tells me that there is an order of magnitude more non-monetary (spam) transactions than monetary transactions happening on the bitcoin network right now. As someone who wants to see bitcoin used as money, this concerns me. This is the primary reason that I elect to run a Knots Node that filters out non-monetary transactions. Hopefully this visual representation will help people understand the difference between the two types of nodes.
