Why do you need a picture of a monkey printed on your receipt? If the nft was text only, proof of purchase, like they were originally before the money laundering fake art scams changed the meaning. But I think it's too late for the term nft, just call them decentralised proof of purchase or something.

If we are not conflating spam (content) with spam (quantity), yes. Data hidden via stagnography is not a future IBD issue. I am not a reactionary here, I just don't like the intentional mischaracterization of a reasonable approach. Creating more of a validation burden on future nodes is the threat, in my estimation.

If OTS ever implements sign to contract, it could just be an ordinary 1in 1out payment, which would be less than a tx with a 40 byte opreturn. https://github.com/opentimestamps/python-opentimestamps/p…

OP_RETURN and taproot annex both expand the data burden on future nodes so I'm not really sure what you're talking about. (A pruned node can't be used for an IBD.) Fake pubkey outputs are still pubkey length and therefore not any harder on validation than a normal transaction. They are also a pro rata donation to the rest of us because they will never be spent. Also you are not " driving those uses to fake pubkeys." I'm not driving the thieves to my neighbor's house by locking my own doors. Steganography is not the issue here. If it looks like a normal transaction, the whys and wherefores are not up for debate.

Initial block download you check: Block- Syntax, PoW, timestamp, blocksize, and Txn- Syntax, signatures, inputs, and outputs So, I am not sure what you mean by "download and hash"