Nostr Web Client

I think JPEGs on the timechain are stupid.

But the idea that they're going to hurt Bitcoin seems so weak to me. Like the US dollar can withstand people scribbling on it but Bitcoin can't?

In fact, the idea of Bitcoin as a glorious digital monument with some graffiti scribbled on it represents humanity pretty well. That's kind of us in a nutshell. Seems on-brand. Perfectionists trying to keep their little gardens tidy while trolls come in and find ways to mess with them anyway.

NFTs and memecoins already had their peak fad moments. People now know that they're non-scarce gambling toys rather than investments. It's just echoes of that peak now. The only thing that concerned me about the ordinals/runes period was the rapid UTXO bloat, not the blockspace usage, since the latter already has a consensus limit on it.

And if Bitcoin transactions can't outprice JPEGs in the long run, then it's just not that valuable. Bitcoin currently does about 1% of the gross settlement volume of Fedwire. That's peanuts. Imagine if it reaches a point where it does even like 10% of Fedwire. What would you pay to move a full bitcoin globally, permissionlessly, in 10 minutes, in a world where it's no longer a niche thing?

ESE 7mo ago

I agree with a lot of what you're saying — Bitcoin can and should be able to handle some noise. Graffiti on the monument is fine, and yeah, it’s a pretty honest reflection of humanity.

The concern isn’t about the JPEGs themselves — it’s about the direction of the response. What worries many of us is that instead of letting node runners decide how to handle this kind of activity on their own, the current maintainers of Bitcoin Core are removing those choices. Filters that let you ignore spam? Deprecated. Settings that help lower-resourced nodes protect themselves? Quietly being raised 1000×. People who have tried to raise concerns about this issue have been banned from GitHub, including me. Not for abuse — just for disagreement.

So it’s not about “Bitcoin can’t handle scribbles.” It’s about whether people running sovereign nodes are still allowed to say, “Not on my relay.” That’s not central planning — that’s local control. And the fear is that we’re watching that get eroded.

Suppose Bitcoin can survive trolls, great. However, it should also withstand people saying 'no thanks' to troll payloads. That’s what decentralization means — not just a protocol, but permission to dissent. If we lose that, even quietly, it changes the culture of Bitcoin more than JPEGs ever could.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

21MQHardenningBTC 7mo ago

I'm loving this expression of concern and I agree with your above note.

But node runners have another good option to defend their rights mentioned above: Bitcoin Knots.

Similarly if something similar happens to to it too, maybe many more node implementations will show up and the protocol will survive stronger giving attackers a lesson that will be felt in their pockets.

My personal reaction ( and recommendation to anyone with same concerns) not upgrading the Core implementation and installing Knots. Vote with your Raspberry Pi the way you want and options you decide.

ESE 7mo ago