Nostr Web Client

For everyone getting on me about the OP_RETURN stuff:

I’m 100% open to being wrong, I was wrong about CTV and how I thought it could be maliciously used, but I’ve also only heard a handful of the exact same arguments about this issue for years and have been very clear why I don’t think they are sufficient and why I believe some of them are not even relevant.

• “Filters for what goes into the chain are censorship,” this is false and filtering what can be done on chain is literally how and why Bitcoin works in every way that it works. This completely begs the question about what is spam and what is an exploit, which is the whole debate.

• “You can get around it” isn’t relevant either, as standards make a difference, which is exactly why the discussion is around changing the standards. Same as someone can jump over my fence, but that doesn’t mean having one vs not being allowed to build one has no effect at all.

• “Your node doesn’t do anything,” Is the same argument I was told during the blocksize war. I’m aware it doesn’t alter the entirety of the network and it’s just my node, so don’t tell me like you’ve discovered some new information, but it is still *my* node and someone proposing to remove my control over what I should or should not accept and propagate isn’t why I run a node. I use my node to mine and wish to build my own templates. Explain how putting Bitcoins use as money ahead of as a place to store jpegs is bad. I don’t care how ineffective you think it is, but why is it bad for Bitcoin?

• “Just run Knots.” Correct, I will be now. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion about changes being made to core, and when feedback is asked for I’ll give you my honest opinion. If that bothers someone then being part of a decentralized protocol is probably not the best path for them. All anyone has done since I got into bitcoin was argue. That’s how decentralization works.

• “They paid a fee and it’s valid.” See point 1. Every bug and malicious transaction and spam in the past was always valid and paid the proper fee. Again, completely begs the question as to what is spam and what the highest purpose of Bitcoin is.

This is a conversation about the purpose of Bitcoin, and yes that’s subjective, but that doesn’t mean it’s arbitrary or it doesn’t matter. Convince me that allowing random data in unrestrained sizes will make Bitcoin better money, or the technical argument doesn’t matter, imo. Technical conversations matter only after we decide what is *worth* building technical solutions for and what the purpose of any technical change is… so again, it begs the question and comes back to the same old disagreement.

This is how I see it and I don’t see how this is at all an unreasonable perspective. Just my 2 sats

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Discussion

Avi Burra 8mo ago

The fence analogy is great. Well articulated, ser! 🫡

OceanSlim 8mo ago

And my response is why give everyone a default fence of arbitrary height. Why not start with no fence and let people build their own fence as high as they want?

supermass 8mo ago

no fence is a default fence of arbitrary height 0…

OceanSlim 8mo ago

And you can still build whatever fence you would like and I don't intend on protesting you don't.

supermass 8mo ago

and you could still take down your fence?? you are not arguing anything

OceanSlim 8mo ago

Yes. I argue that the base case should be no fence. Making fences is work. Trying to guess what height fence everyone can be happy with is a useless exercise. Less code. More simplicity. More maintainable. Let the concensous forks come and let people build whatever height fence they want.

supermass 8mo ago

making fences is work, and so is removing them.

removing them requires no additional supplies, and leaves the supplies there in case you would like to rebuild the fence.

if there is no fence to begin with, you’ve removed the supplies for those who want to build theirs.

why not have the default fence be the highest possible to leave the OPTION for those who want to remove them, but also make sure everyone has their own fencing supplies? and because there WILL be some who want to build a fence, the presence of the supplies is most important.

OceanSlim 8mo ago

Why not make it the lowest possible? Do you see how this is the part that is opinion oriented?

supermass 8mo ago

the part that isn’t opinion is, if people want a fence, they have to go out and figure out how to get all the stuff it takes to build them.

no such restriction exists for people who want to take their fence down.

people should have options by default.

OceanSlim 8mo ago

It's stupid to build fences for people that don't want them. It's a waste of time in resources both for the builder who wasted time and materials making a fence that's not wanted and the consumer who now has to spend time tearing it down.

average_bitcoiner 8mo ago

Fences means ladders or tunnels or finding a node without a fence.

Guy Swann 8mo ago

Of course, but that still isn’t an argument against a fence, imo. You don’t have to alter the economics of the problem very much to disincentivize it. Thats the original entire design behind POW. It was only a couple of seconds worth of computation that was required, but it has a significant effect on the cost for spammers vs honest users.

average_bitcoiner 8mo ago

Policy has no impact on the cost for spammers.

JackTheMimic 8mo ago

Co-signed. Near exactly my own sentiments.

nostr:nevent1qqs2ufawyhwsjgsrt7j36whau4lkmwyez3hegxy8rz39qamv2ktfuuspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsyg9euaj5dwsxg4hdxqweu54uf8ay3ec2d0ezs2l85xh899rkzgprmspsgqqqqqqsfn7jj6

Artur…qywr 8mo ago

I’m glad I learned about Knots today. I can’t wait to install it later tonight.

Jack K 8mo ago

I agree with a lot here, thank you! I think Bitcoins problem is that it has remained abstract for 16 years. This creates the illusion that development and purpose is inherently subjective; it’s not. Bitcoin is not abstract, it’s measured by energy; quantify it.

We have no objective definition of Bitcoin (yet) and this leaves us purely in the realm of abstraction and opinion. If my thesis and proof of what Bitcoin is at the physical level (the quantum computer) is correct; how would this change our discussion and understanding of the protocol, especially immutable data hosting? How can we even develop and propose protocol changes responsibly without this knowledge? Do we actually understand what a peer to peer electronic cash system is?

Ultimately if Bitcoin is defined physically (it is), every single person operating on bitcoin, building/developing on bitcoin and running their business on bitcoin is going to have to grapple with this new understanding. Our entire design theory on protocol development inherently changes to a new fundamental truth; beneath the illusion of fiat prices lies the anchor to joules.

I truly think nobody understands bitcoin (including myself) and therefore we should not change the protocol until we do. If Bitcoin is the quantum computer, everything changes and we’ve all been wrong for 16 years. We cannot develop responsibly without consensus on base layer fundamentals.

OceanSlim 8mo ago

Because no individual should be the arbiter of what transactions are valuable. To me, this change only serves to make core less complex, not more. Simplifying The code base is a noble goal. The block size is still limited to 4mb. So the concern that it makes nodes harder to run is invalid imo.

supermass 8mo ago

my mempool my rules, you are not getting this component.

we determine what transactions are valuable TO US.

the blockchain will still aggregate those values for everyone else if they are properly participating.

OceanSlim 8mo ago

I am getting that component... You're the one that seems to be missing that point since you want to enforce filters on mine...

supermass 8mo ago

the filter is still enforced WITH the PR.

it’s just enforced to allow a different set of data upon the rest of us.

there’s no escape from that

Guy Swann 8mo ago

The second part is fair and a decent point, but the conversation between whether Bitcoin is a system for monetary transactions versus a place to store jpegs is not "individuals arbitrating what transactions are valuable." It is a question of what *is* a transaction in the first place.

This is why i think the court analogy is very apt:

By saying the courts should be restricted only to arbitration and judicial judgement protecting people's rights, and that we should not allow people to rent it out for parties and concerts, is not someone dictating which is valuable, its making a clear engineering/design choice to protect the *purpose* of the system. If the system doesn't have a purpose and isn't designed to protect or ensure a particular use case, it will serve *none* of them well.

This is exactly why Bitcoin explicitly did not go the Ethereum route.

"A jack of all trades is a master of none."

I'm in this for the explicit purpose of designing and protecting a master system of sound money and that axiomatically requires valuing it for monetary security and exchange over storing somebody's jpegs.

OceanSlim 8mo ago

I have no problem with running or funding concensous forks. Would be nice to have like none, lite and heavy, filter forks. Let the community decide what they want on chain. If it becomes a problem we can all switch to heavy. UASF ftw right?

Lumor 8mo ago

Limiting relay of spam makes spammers pay extra for pool-operators to include their transactions. This incentivizes further mining centralization, as these bigger pools earn extra from being the ones to publish the spam.

BitcoinIsFuture 8mo ago

🎯

Clarkian 8mo ago

Why do people want to poop in the park?

Zein 8mo ago

🤙

jtown 8mo ago

I'm switching to bitcoin knots as we speak. I got a question tho. If a bitcoin core node mines a block with the jpeg data included will my node download that information since it's now part of a block?

I put my knots settings to

Datacarriersize: 0

Reject parasitic transactions ✅️

Reject token transactions ✅️

Javier 8mo ago

Yes it will.

slapsquat 8mo ago

The simplest argument that can be made is: If someone uses the blockchain to store internationally criminalized porn, we're all in possession, even if tenporarily. It doesn't matter if we're running knots or whatever node that muh "filters". Elaborating:

1. To filter the mempool, you first need to receive the transaction and, while in memory until you discard it you're in possession.

2. A block gets confirmed with said contents. To validate the block, you need it in full, at least in memory, therefore you're in possession.

3. You store the full blocks - you're in possession.

4. You don't store the full blocks - you're no longer part of the bitcoin network.

Only paid shills and balls deep crypto bros believe this is good for bitcoin.

You can argue that: it didn't kill Ethereum. Right, because ethereum is a setback to bitcoin's purpose itself.

THIS CAN AND WILL BE USED TO TRY AND KILL BITCOIN - It will be nothing but yet another setback. We will prevail ✌️

Guy Swann 8mo ago

The steelman of the opposing is that this can be stored any number of ways and especially if it’s an attack, no filter of any kind will be able to prevent it in some way. Because in that case it isn’t about incentives.

I agree theoretically when it comes to the conversation about spam. But practically this doesn’t change anything.

This is part of why I still think the argument is a cultural and purpose based one. It isn’t about any one solution or tool. It’s about whether we treat it as spam or capitulate to welcoming anyone to post whatever crap they want to in the chain by explicitly accommodating them.

Charlie 8mo ago

The problem is the wanting to meddle and interfere with what you think is ‘random’ data. It may have a huge impact in society, amplifying the value of that particular UTXO spends. Each transaction is more valuable for the sender then the fee they choose to pay and if they make it into the block, that’s what they get.

It always depends on how deep you want to meddle with the rules I suppose.

At the end of the day it’s not about maximising the number of

isaac-asdf 8mo ago

‪“You can get around it” - changing standardness to allow your node to have an accurate picture of the mempool and future blocks protects you as a node runner. Your fence analogy breaks down at who is harmed by breaking the rule - by filtering out consensus valid transactions you (the node runner) are more likely to be hurt than the person propagating the transaction

Guy Swann 8mo ago

I can receive them, but simply not propagate them or put them in the block templates i make while mining.

isaac-asdf 8mo ago

Being able to choose to not mine them seems reasonable, but I think not relaying them hurts overall network decentralization. All nodes benefit from seeing potential transactions before they come in a block so you can verify validity pre-block arriving. So if you withhold propagation it harms other nodes when a block does arrive

Eporediese 8mo ago

After listening to your round table with Mechanic, I will be switching my node to Knots this weekend. Thanks as ever, you are the 1940s BBC of freedom.