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Low 37 Bitcoin

policy: don't CheckEphemeralSpends on reorg

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by Greg Sanders

45/100 · Thin
policy: don't CheckEphemeralSpends on reorg
✓ Descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component! No meaningful explanatory body
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This Bitcoin Core change adjusts how the network's memory pool (mempool) handles tiny-value 'dust' transactions when a blockchain reorganization occurs. Previously, during a reorg, transactions that had been mined in a block were re-checked under normal mempool rules, which could wrongly reject related transactions that spend dust outputs. The fix skips that specific dust-spending check during reorgs, allowing legitimate reorged transactions to re-enter the mempool. It is a policy/standardness fix, not a consensus bug, so it cannot change which blocks are valid or steal funds.

Recommended action

Treat as a normal policy bugfix. Reviewers should confirm that bypassing CheckEphemeralSpends during reorg cannot be abused to keep invalid or non-standard transactions in the mempool permanently, since reorged transactions still pass other standardness and consensus checks. No urgent security response is indicated.

Security signals we found

01

Policy/standardness bypass only under reorg path (m_bypass_limits)

02

Functional test rewritten to assert reorged sweep and descendants are accepted

03

No consensus code changed; no signature or script validation altered

04

No explicit security advisory, CVE, or researcher attribution in commit

Risk score

Why this scored 37/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 8/30
Exploitability 5/25
Stealth signal 6/15
Affected reach 7/15
Confidence 7/10
Evidence quality 4/5
Human-validated context

Community notes

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