Nostr Web Client

THESIS

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Bitcoin is STRONGEST when DEFAULTS=TIGHT and CONTROLS=WIDE.

Knots is the antifragile client. Core trends toward cartelware.

AXIOMS

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A1. Security outranks convenience.

Fee estimation and propagation tweaks are noise compared to keeping consensus sacred.

A2. Policy variety = resilience.

A mixed mempool makes censorship costly & faults survivable. Policy must never ossify into consensus defaults.

A3. OOB/PP are ineradicable through policy. They’re latency hacks. You contain them, not abolish them.

A4. Non-mining nodes incentives = tight policy. Sovereign nodes protect themselves from DDOS by filtering junk.

A5. Miner incentives = loose policy. Templates broaden to maximize fees, but edges stay controlled.

A6. Max resiliency = max distance between tight nodes & loose miners, plus max variety across the spectrum.

A6 is a function of A2, A4, and A5.

COROLLARIES

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C1. All nodes matter.

Even “quiet” nodes that neither mine nor spend enforce consensus. They:

1) quarantine invalid forks (2013) => they don’t just reject, they prevent further relay.

2) throttle spam floods (2015),

3) protect supply cap (2018 inflation bug).

Without them, miners are just hashing an altcoin fork. With them, Bitcoin stays Bitcoin.

C2. Healthiest client traits:

1) Ships tightest defaults to keep the baseline lean.

2) Exposes all policy knobs so power users can widen deliberately.

3) Hides nothing, welds nothing. Defaults aren’t destiny.

Objections & Counters

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1. “Loose helps fee estimation.” Wrong. Block inclusion, not mempool relay, sets the price. Extra junk adds variance, not clarity.

2. “Loose aids propagation.” No. Compact blocks + low bandwidth costs matter. Loose-everywhere just bloats relay and kills home nodes.

3. “Diversity fragments mempools.” That’s the point. Fragmentation stops defaults from ossifying into law.

4. “OOB makes policy moot.” OOB masks insider costs, doesn’t erase them. Tight defaults quarantine the blast radius.

Fees change the game

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a) Low fees: diversity looks muted, OOB papers over.

b) High fees: diversity bites. Weird-but-valid txs = pure revenue. Ignore them and you’re burning sats.

Tight defaults guarantee those signals survive.

CONCLUSION: Knots vs Core

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KNOTS:

Tight defaults + wide operator knobs. Policy entropy preserved, consensus untouched.

CORE

Loosening defaults and welding settings to mirror miner behavior. Fewer knobs, higher costs, creeping centralization.