knots debate at this point:
core: filters don’t work, lets add garbage cans to the park so people are incentivized to not litter
knots: lets ban litterers from the park (they still jump the fence and do it anyways)
Discussion
Can't carry much garbage over the fence 👌
you definitely can
in that analogy the fence (Knots’ stricter policies) doesn’t eliminate garbage but it does throttle how much gets in.
Core’s approach (garbage cans) = assumes people will cooperate if you give them the tools (filters, incentives).
Knots’ approach (ban + fence) = assumes bad actors will still try, but the barrier significantly limits the volume of garbage they can bring in.
So while some trash might still get tossed over, the fence reduces the load compared to leaving the park wide open. It’s less about perfection and more about controlling scale.
People are throwing garbage over the fence so we should remove the fence and let them back up garbage trucks and dump all their garbage in the park because the fence isn't preventing people from throwing litter into the park
core: let’s turn the park for people into a park for garbage
Why don’t you lay out your argument instead of making snide comments?
?? how is this snide
Okay. I misinterpreted. Can you explain what you mean?
i was trying to distill the debate into an analogy that could be digested by people unaware of the technical details.
The main issues are not technical. I’ve pointed this out earlier but 🦗🦗🦗why?
I guess he has me blocked 🤷♂️
? I didn’t understand your comment. Was it a question?
Oh, there we go.
I mean previously I raised the point that all your arguments on this topic are technical. But there are non-technical issues at play that I have seen addressed. See:
Do todd and lopp speak for core? There are way more active contributors i would put above them, and they would agree
They appear to be the ‘sponsors’. Todd opened the PR, but for which Core Dev? The lack of transparency is a concern.
I prefer to stick to technical arguments over the actual PR content rather than assume anything nefarious. Lots of people are paid to work on things
If you can't pay people to work on things, open source is nowhere near as valuable because only programmers get to benefit from the ability to change the code.
Bitcoin is a low trust environment. IMO that means radical transparency is required from contributors, particularly around pay and employment.
Public statements of conflicts of interest are standard practice in some industries. You might think that’s not very cypherpunk. Sure. But is it worth a node split like this?
And I guess that’s the disconnect. Regardless of how technically sound it is, people don’t like how it went down or how it looks. You CAN’T fix this with technical arguments or reason. It’s a public relations issue now.
Core, as a group would need to publicly accept responsibility and acknowledge how it was mishandled. Apologise for blocking discussion around issues that were raised and walk the policy back if they want to ‘convince’ Knots users to go back.
Focusing on the technical aspects just seems to create more division, as these threads demonstrate.
Metaphors and analogies only lay the groundwork for explaining how something works or why it’s necessary. Example: Saying money production is like turning on the money printer. The person hears/reads that and says, "wow, how does that work?" You've created an opening for learning.
You’re analogy about garbage only succeeded in triggering me. I am running Knots, having listened to one side of the debate. Maybe I'm wrong or, more likely, I've overreacted or fallen for a bad argument.
are you retarded?
how so
I dunno, just thought I'd pile on for the fun. I think you should go debate one of the brainiacs on the knots side of the debate on a podcast or something so all this can be answered properly. Maybe Jason Hughes
or better yet you could even do a reaction video to the jason hughes video with mechanic that just happened explaining how he is wrong.
Interesting take. I think the second option would lead to less litter
I think it would attract more litterers personally, just so they can prove they can do it when they are told they are not allowed
So more people want to put images in because they are told they can’t, or more people want to choose smaller sizes because they are told they can’t? Am I following correctly?
This is the crux of the problem right here
None of us KNOW what litterers will do. We have a better idea of what they’ll do if we do nothing than if we change op return
There is evidence the litterers are too stupid to know how to jump the fence right now
Which means we are better off doing nothing because many of us have our whole net worth in the park
I don't think that allowing child porn on the blockchain is going to prevent child porn being put on the blockchain.
If banning child porn somehow encourages a small minority of pedophiles to try and share child porn well at least we are preventing it.
Once these "garbage bins" you want to fill the park with get trash put into them that trash becomes a permanent feature of the park.
So it's actually the opposite to adding bins to a park, bins exist so that the rubbish inside them can be removed.
A better analogy is that core are adding a public noticeboard to the park where people can post up child porn images and whatever else permanently
Also, what this is doing is making it harder for people to run a node, if everyone has to buy an extra terabyte of storage for child porn, memes, animal abuse, and god only knows what else, well that makes building a node slightly more expensive.
It'll also make running a node more expensive.
It honestly just feels like an attack against Bitcoin, didn't we already have this discussion years ago? Bloat was the biggest threat that Bitcoin faced, people used to say that Bitcoin will fail because the blockchain will get too big.
And now people want to do just that
I know it feels like a Knots vs Core debate, but its really a default settings (and a user configurable settings) debate. Knots has these trash cans you speak of, they're just half the size of the ones in Core by default... but you can make them as big as you'd like:
I know, I know, Blasphemy, right
right, these are like creating a configuration for sign that says “no dumping over X lbs” but people come around at night and do it anyway since its just a sign and its not enforceable.
Well it's a mempool policy... Specifically MY mempool policy. Other people (including miners) can run any policy they want as long as all the txs are in consensus. I like my mempool to include any tx that may end up in a block, but that's just me (my park?), and it's not just signage, it's the actual limit of the trashcan, but just the one in MY mempool.
yeah but your signage doesn’t matter because it doesn’t stop anything
Why did people lobby so hard to get the 80 byte limit removed in order to make their application work
because there weren’t good tools at the time, but tooling improves
If a limit doesn’t matter, but people want to run software to continue to enforce the limit, why should anyone care?
you can do it but i will continue to explain why its pointless and ineffective at the thing its trying to do. I prefer properly engineered solutions and rational human action so we can all move to a place we want to be.
I run core, I just like the knots people
Agree with you here
Is it also pointless and ineffective to run a node if you aren't building txs? I mean kinda, right? But I still want as many people as possible running nodes.
It’s definitely not pointless. I run a node because it’s the only way to know my balance without a trusted third party.
I prefer liberal mempool policy so i can see any tx to me before it confirms
Same. And I do this in Knots. Which was my point... It's a user preference and a default settings debate, not a Core vs Knots debate.
I don’t want knobs, i want sensible defaults (this is also the damus philosophy)
and core is moving toward more sensible ones. i’ve always been against cores overbearing filter settings, which is why i’m happy to see them getting closer to consensus.
Agree. This is the actual debate. It's not actually a trashcan thing... its a default settings thing. Also, I like knobs AND sensible defaults.
I also think we should remove knobs that don’t do the thing people think it does.
As someone who has been running a node since 2010 i have had almost no reason to tweak the data carrier size, as it’s completely inconsequential to anything i would ever care about
I know me changing this has zero effect on the data that actually gets into a block, so who cares other than a small fluctuation in memory use?
Must you impose your preferred policy on everyone else? Or is there room for others to choose their own policy?
customizing policy is a very niche thing imo, like if you have a memory constrained system or something. By all means you can tweak the knobs if you want, but i will continue to point out how pointless it is
YES!!! This is how both parties win.
One side keeps the option to customize.
The other side points out how pointless it is.
My actual thoughts on Bitcoin controversies. Use the tools.
nostr:naddr1qqxnzde5xcurqd3nxsenjwp4qgsryzfwcx393j0jcydf5ka48vf8egsfg8ccq0wh7ec4q58l360azwsrqsqqqa28p27jfn
Very good point, i suspect many people throwing themselves into these debates don’t even run nodes or understand what any of the settings on their node does
What about the argument that "99% of the OP_RETURN txns were/are <= 80bytes"?
That's a common talking point Knots folks bring up. Has any Core supporter put forth the data to refute that?
Could there possibly be any unforeseen consequences to this change?
Consequences are low here... its not like we are removing knobs from an airplane that could crash and kill innocent people if turned the wrong way. Lots of people (thousands at least) understand what these knobs do... why shouldn't we be able to turn them?
you can but it will have no real effect on your node or what gets in a block, so it just seems like dead code to me which is a maintenance burden. We should be moving toward a simpler and streamlined node over time.
I am much more excited for multiprocess for this reason. A lot more flexibility when it comes to attaching different frontends to a daemon. It’s crazy to me that people are talking about this useless knob vs actually useful things
lol yes, this is a pretty pointless debate in all honesty. obviously its a debate about principles, which it why everyone got so passionate about it IMHO.
This is the part the core sycophants don’t understand. People don’t like having functionality stripped away - especially to support bad actors. And the fee incentive is already there to not use op return so the sophisticated actors won’t anyway. Now the rationale is “maintenance burden”. 🤣 GTFO
If core can push through this pointless (in their own words) change without support then why couldn’t they push through other more malicious changes? THAT is the issue and THAT is the debate. People don’t feel like core can be trusted any longer.
So your argument is that knots does not prevent spam, and your solution is that everyone should just allow spam?
That's what this boils down to as far as I can tell.
What I want to understand is why you think that allowing spam and god knows what else is the solution to a problem caused by spam.
If knots does not work to prevent spam ok, give us a better alternative. Why promote spam?
If someone is dumping full blocks of garbage into their trashcan, my mempool will know about it... That's all a mempool policy can do. I'm not running a fork or something, and I'm certainly not mining any blocks... So it's not up to me to construct blocks with larger or smaller trashcans.
right so the garbage comes in 10 minutes later regardless of your mempool. What was the point of the setting again?
What's the point of running a node? It's the same reason. That's why I set the OP_RETURN limit to 3985000, if it's an in consensus tx, I want it in my mempool, so I can easily validate future confirmed txs. (I also allow less than 1 sat/vbyte tx in MY mempool)
minrelaytxfee= 0.000002
"the no raping signs at the park did not prevent violent assaults against women so we should just legalise raping"
Oh no someone tried to break the rules so we should just remove the rules.
Core: people are still jumping the fence whether it’s there or not, let’s just remove the fences for all parks without their say.
Littering intensifies.
Knots: the fence was stopping many people from easily littering despite some doing it anyway. Let’s let the park decide what to do with their fences.
Perspective.
Dumbasses who disrespect rules will do so regardless of the sign. The rest of the civilized people would read it.
there are a lot of dumbasses in the world, at some point the sign doesn’t matter, only the actual rules.
Be as it may, the park managers do not want to actively facilitate littering. They keep a fence in place knowing some will litter anyway, but at least they are not enabling it. After all, a park should be kept clean for people to enjoy it - that’s what parks were created for - to relax, and unwind for some peace, in a clean environment.
Disrespectful people may still use the park in inappropriate ways, but the manager is not out there helping them do those things.
Where before you might look at the park and see a fence and decide - meh, not gonna bother, now it’s wide open so you can litter even just by driving by, rolling the window down and throwing something out without a care. A fence keeps out the bulk of the littering.
I hate this analogy and the fact that I’m using it 🤣
The park manager is also upset that the park department is not backing them on this, despite supposedly being on the same team. For the park department it’s a technical issue but they are asking the manager to make a philosophical choice. Both know the outcomes but the way the department has approached this issue is problematic.
The park department thinks they can unilaterally decide what the park manager will do, and technically they are the experts at the helm, doing all of the planning, but it disregards the manager who is overseeing HIS park and wants to make sure the department is aware that they are doing the actual work on the ground when it comes to their territory. The manager puts in a complaint but the department is doubling down instead of listening.
What are the garbage cans that core is adding in your analogy?
OP_RETURN, obviously... which is already there... the people just can't use it for their garbage because of the filter... you know, the filter that doesn't work. 🤣
The logic is so bad.
"If we make it easier to litter, people will litter less."
They'd have to be paid to believe something that stupid.
i think you just misunderstand the analogy, but that is the problem with analogies i guess
The argument is really just "allow spam, child porn, and whatever else" vs "do not allow span child porn or whatever else, Bitcoin is money, not a garbage bin"
I don’t agree with him but
To be fair no analogy can be perfect
This is my take on it all so far:
https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqspjjgxhkk6u63reapkxnev5lt684lghhefmwhw85u5ljpklth799gjrredl 🧡
I'm only one opinion (as are we all), yet listening to this exchange has pretty well made up my mind. 🧐
For the people that actually want to educate themselves.
If I have to choose, i go with knots! I don't want to support slop, others can do what they want and let the market decide!
Core; let's turn half the park into a landfill because people are going to litter anyway. And lets ad a methodone clinic because people keep shooting up in the bushes.
What park? Not on my machine anymore.
If you don't store JPEGs, you aren't running bitcoin
Apparently the inventor of proof of work is cool with relaxing the filters cuz proof of work. I pointed out it’s insanity to not use the tool and to just let everything hit your inbox. But Bitcoin isn’t just a personal email. I’ve been running Bitcoin for years, routing lightning too. But there are certain types of jpegs I think could ruin the appeal of Bitcoin. I seek to maximally limit those tothe best of my influence. But if I must fail, I will notrun Bitcoin, and maybe Bitcoin will fail, maybe not. That’s not my call.
Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions nostr:npub1xtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsevkk5s. I’m getting a clearer picture of what’s at play.. 🫡
But Core is removing the garbage cans all together, Knots just want to keep them? am i wrong?
The garbage cans are overflowing. V30 expands the garbage cans. Knots wants to keep the same size garbage cans because they fear increasing the garbage can size will encourage more trash
I see but then, should the conversation be about how to stop all garbage, instead of how to deal with it?
As once the garbage is in the park its never going away.
And you think that the blockchain is just a garbage can for you to put your litter? (Litter being child pornography, animal abuse videos etc. stuff that knots people do not think belongs on the blockchain.
The fact you think people are putting that on-chain is telling about what type of person you are.
So you think that child porn will never be put on the blockchain?
Have you actually come across child porn on this protocol?
Because I hadn’t in 40 year, until I stepped onto Nostr. And what I saw was deeply disturbing... it shook me. It was traumatic to my being.
If people are willing to post child porn here, on an open social protocol, it doesn’t feel far-fetched to think they’d post it on Bitcoin too, especially if the space is made available for it.
What kind of person does that make me to think and be concerned about that? Please do clarify!
survival taught me that monsters lurk in every protocol, but the real magic happens when we build gardens instead of garbage cans. i focus on pixels, not filth.
I think it's an extreme, unrealistic example to bring up. There is no reason why this would be put onchain, especially on Bitcoin.
I've never heard of it happening on Ethereum or Solana for instance, which both allow for far greater quantities of arbitrary data storage, and have done so for years…
Thank you, for sharing. It's good to have this perspective.
nope. filter works and it’s not a complicated matter. run knots
Nope to what?
This is a very good analogy
Banning litterers from the park at least partially contributes to people not littering
Same with filters partially contributing to most transactions not being "spam"
You can also make the argument that adding garbage cans encourages people bringing their trash to the park, just like filterbois say removing datacarrier limit will encourage spam
Same vibes as this classic
So what you are saying is core = let's add garbage bins to the park and also legalise dumping garbage wherever you want at the same time (hopefully people use the bins)
Meanwhile in Japan the streets are clean and in USA people are using the garbage bins to lean on for support while they shit on the street and inject drugs publically
Are you pro the core policy change, nostr:nprofile1qqsr9cvzwc652r4m83d86ykplrnm9dg5gwdvzzn8ameanlvut35wy3gpz3mhxw309aex2mrp0yhx5c34x5hxxmmd9uqsuamnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dshszythwden5te0dehhxarj9ekxzmny9u0ljp2l? Bookmarking for later review. Seems like a juicy thread to help me deepen my understand on both sides and where the Nostr fam stands.
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