Out of gas transaction is included in the blockchain even if it is reversed?

Question

In my private testnet, I sent a transaction that runs out of gas before completion, which can be seen from gasUsed: 28666 = gas: 28666 and failure status: "0x0",. I thought it would not be incorporated into the blockchain. But it was (in blockNum #1456). It this expected? If yes, wouldn't a spammer keep sending transactions with low gas limit and fill in all blocks?

> eth.getTransaction("0xe97d2b5e6f109c7d299dcd8673474d9853363c611bf1d973062cfcbc26a7ede7")
{
  blockHash: "0x907826c61038402c394d2e297b03643929cef97fb943574e8312a09fa84387c2",
  blockNumber: 1456,
  from: "0xf6de496ec5601d74937ddd77af09c8cd4ba41ab5",
  gas: 28666,
  gasPrice: 22000000000,
  hash: "0xe97d2b5e6f109c7d299dcd8673474d9853363c611bf1d973062cfcbc26a7ede7",
  input: "0xa9059cbb000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000029a2241af62c0000",
  nonce: 8,
  r: "0xb9d8c5f664887c10070681f2c35d3baa8f1e4d57439f3e93bafc920b2a126f90",
  s: "0x7e969e860765a7102c8bad833c672df08b5d760f1a2d2aac717857e401653ae8",
  to: "0x091e99d1fbf1d18b7c42aeb6938dec588b2aae9c",
  transactionIndex: 0,
  v: "0x42",
  value: 0
}
> eth.getTransactionReceipt("0xe97d2b5e6f109c7d299dcd8673474d9853363c611bf1d973062cfcbc26a7ede7")
{
  blockHash: "0x907826c61038402c394d2e297b03643929cef97fb943574e8312a09fa84387c2",
  blockNumber: 1456,
  contractAddress: null,
  cumulativeGasUsed: 28666,
  from: "0xf6de496ec5601d74937ddd77af09c8cd4ba41ab5",
  gasUsed: 28666,
  logs: [],
  logsBloom: "0x00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
  status: "0x0",
  to: "0x091e99d1fbf1d18b7c42aeb6938dec588b2aae9c",
  transactionHash: "0xe97d2b5e6f109c7d299dcd8673474d9853363c611bf1d973062cfcbc26a7ede7",
  transactionIndex: 0
}

Answer 1

It this expected?

Yes. If failed transactions are not included in a block, a spammer can send fail transactions constantly with a high gas price, which takes priority under default miner settings, to reduce the rate of block creation as miners are "jammed" by those fail transactions.

If yes, wouldn't a spammer keep sending transactions with low gas limit and fill in all blocks?

There is a constant gas cost (21000 gas) for sending a transaction to avoid sending spam transactions without any cost.

Ethereum uses a concept called block gas limit to determine the how many transactions can be included in a block. The block gas limit is ~8M at the moment. So the cost is really high for a spammer to attack the network by creating transactions.