Are you considering running a Bitcoin Knots node? It's certainly your right to do so.
But you should be informed of what you're getting into.
Discussion
Why do you care?..
so much
Because I'm a security professional and I think people should be aware of the risks they are taking.
Doubt that is the only reason tbh.
Itās not, of course. FUD disguised as public service.
Lol
āSecurity professionalā
āOffers ethereum custody services.ā
Are religious beliefs a professional security issue?
I donāt know Linusās religion, but I donāt think the security of the kernel depends on it.
However, beyond reaffirming that it will be developed anyway, Citrea's 'Vitaliking the coreā - could this introduce security risks?
Thank you for sharing this information
The information in the blog comes from a corrupted shitcoiner.
Your post has convinced me to run knots.
Very important read.
Hereās one of the most telling pieces of evidence included in it:
š«±(āæĀ¤āæ)š«²
thanks Jameson
i won't bother even looking into Knots. total cringe.
this article is a PSA.
š¤šÆ
Yup do no research and trust the experts šŖš
the OP already did. i was turned off before i made it 30% into his exposƩ. the security issues mentioned are exactly the sort of things i look to avoid.
so unless the OP is lying or something drastic changes, it is not worth my time.
PS fuckyou for the sarcastic reply.
> so unless the OP is lying
Yes continue to trust the first person you read on any topic and do zero research yourself lol
Why not look into it?
the OP already did. i was turned off before i made it 30% into his exposƩ. the security issues mentioned are exactly the sort of things i look to avoid.
so unless the OP is lying or something drastic changes, it is not worth my time.
thanks for just asking why Luke. i'm happy to answer.
Knots has been working fine for me. And too much centralization around node running can become a serious issue, one we're seeing Core trying to exacerbate, imo. That's my two cents.
sure. use it then. it isn't an option for me with the security issues and stuff in the OP's post.
personal choice. š¤·ā¤ļø
Looks more like an ad hominem attack against Luke than the technical analysis I expected from a serious developer.
Ad hominem? He literally posted receipts of ridiculous things heās doing.
I came with receipts. There are many other things I could have posted but they're from private conversations that can't be publicly verified.
Indeed. I was skeptical of the Rosa Parks thing. And there is so much fake news from all sides, that I had to follow up a bit (no disrespect to you Jameson, but we all need to Verify - not Trust!)
His Facebook comments do exist, and are as retarded as promised
Reading between the lines, he's open to capital punishment for monetary transactions such as gambling. So I won't be taking any lectures from him on what is or isn't "monetary"
Thanks for putting this together Jameson
Those are the reasons why I did not switch to Bitcoin Knots.
Mainly to the fact that this project has only one maintainer not even signing his commits.
But if we go back to the subject, the OP_RETURN debate has been so heated, I simply chose to not upgrade past minor 29 until I can really observe and understand what the real implications will be.
Thatās a disingenuous and deceiving characterization. Most of the code from Knots comes from Core, which has more than one maintainer. If you think the differences between both implementations cannot be maintained by Luke alone, that would be an argument worth having.
Thanks for the non sequitur
If Core implemented a spam filter, Knots wouldn't be so populair.
Without going in the op return and filter debate. I would rather run something vetted by a large community.
If you donāt want op return just run v30 with config set to 0.
I guess your vote wonāt be ācastā in knot camp. at least wait until more contributors jump onto the knot thing.
Just a question, if I fork a project on Github and someone wants to put in a pull request, do they use my new project's Github or the original's?
And if commits are put in based on those pull requests how would anyone else beside the project owner sign and push them?
Normally you fork the target project to which you wish to make the pull request, commit it in your fork, and request the upstream maintainer to merge your exact commit.
Then your exact commit (with the same byte for byte code changes and commit hash) gets added to the upstream repository, essentially wrapped in a "merge commit" by the maintainer. This preserves the integrity of the code change proposed by the original author.
Right so, what if the original project maintainers and I (the one who forked the project) don't get along? How would I be able to merge code without their permission?
Whoever owns a given GitHub repository has the final say over what code changes are applied to it.
This is the same reason I maintain my Satoshi fork of Bitcoin Core. It contains metric collection code changes that would never be accepted by the upstream project.
So doesn't that really make the argument that "Luke is the sole maintainer" more of a function of the fact that Knots is a fork of Core, than some sort of apathy? Given the contention between the two?
Forks can have multiple maintainers.
Luke could implement the same security practices as Core if he wanted to.
Okay, how exactly? Unless he literally copies the code to his project. Then there would be duplication issues correct? This is obviously more of a Github issue than a code commit, merge, or push issue but still.
I would happily stay with core if you and others weren't trying to turn bitcoin into another ethereum. But since you are, it's the next best option for now.
Without a Turing-complete language Bitcoin will never be Ethereum.
That's what bitvm is for, which of course is a key element of Citrea plans.
Which bip proposed to turn BTC into non fixed, p.o.s., premined coin? Haven't seen that one yet...š¤
Could it be.... more hyperbole!?!
Do you stand to financially benefit from the OP_RETURN limit changes in Bitcoin Core, and if so, is this financial interest influencing your advocacy for these changes?
Kind of a ridiculous question... I mean, if a developer truly believes that a certain pattern of SW development is "better for Bitcoin", and like most other Bitcoin Devs one has invested significantly in Bitcoin, than of course changes that improve Bitcoin as a SW project will "financially benefit" the developers. That's the point.
Are you implying some other form of (Fiat) monetary benefit to nostr:nprofile1qyv8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnvdac8qtnnda3kjctv9uqzpaegm8nwwpyrtrnsjv84efjtp9mhpkvfenvxs487vx8d48y28qgxxgzsvk outside of the context of Bitcoin's (Fiat) price rising?
Chris is likely referring to my Citrea investment, which I've explained numerous times that Citrea doesn't need larger OP_RETURN to operate their protocol.
Thank you for the response, Iām going to push back a bit, you say that Citrea doesnāt āneedā larger OP_RETURN. My question is more along the lines of does Citrea benefit from larger OP_RETURN?. To be clear, my intent is not to attack your character, but allow you to respond directly as this is a common criticism I hear. I see a lot of people talking past eachother on this issue . Then devolving into personal attacks and emotional appeals.
The answer youāre looking for is yes.
Iām less looking for an answer and more wanting an honest dialogue to occur. We may be past that though. Personally It doesnāt bother me if a person advocates for something that benefits them financially. It is certainly relevant to a debate though.
You wonāt get an honest answer from him. Gaslighting and out of context half truths at best.
I haven't done the math in a while, but the answer is that the benefit is so marginal that it is effectively zero.
First off, we're talking about 160 bytes of data.
Secondly, it's only used if a specific dispute resolution process gets triggered. And the incentives are in place to make sure the validators try their best to prevent it from triggering. So it's expected to happen extremely rare, possibly never.
Chatgbt and grok both disagree with this statement.
So why donāt you just stfu about it if you donāt care people run knots?
(Spoiler: he cares a lot.)
The question is why?
(Spoiler: incentive)
š§”šš»š»
š¤š§”
LLMs are retarded.
Here is post form sh who:
1. Is knots proponent
2. Knows what he is talking about (knowledgeable in bitvm)
š¤š
š¤£š¤
š£ļøšØāØ
š¤š§”
What a disgusting liar. Citrea started this shit with Antoine because they needed OP_RETURN bigger than 83 Bytes.
Great! We donāt need it either! š
If itās relevant to the debate then it canāt be āRidiculousā. I assume nostr:nprofile1qqs0w2xeumnsfq6cuuynpaw2vjcfwacdnzwvmp59flnp3mdfez3czpsprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumr0wpczuum0vd5kzmp0ksxxx2 does have Bitcoins best interests at heart. Iām not implying anything, Iām trying to clarify directly from Jameson a charge leveled at him.
Fair enough. I suppose I was a bit triggered by the "qui bono?" charge as it tends to get overused by liberals and left-of-center types to invalidate arguments by people who do, in fact, have incentives to see a system succeed monetarily, but in a way that isn't necessarily unaligned with the larger pro-social aspects of the project.
Thanks, I havenāt really followed the details of this debate enough to have a meaningful opinion. Iām sure nostr:nprofile1qqs0w2xeumnsfq6cuuynpaw2vjcfwacdnzwvmp59flnp3mdfez3czpsprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumr0wpczuum0vd5kzmp0ksxxx2 has answered this charge already. I just havenāt seen a direct answer.
I understand itās very easy to get āTriggeredā especially once a discussion has already devolved into personal attacks and appeals to emotion. Iām confident the best Bitcoiners can stay above all that.
After reading Jamesons article on nostr:nprofile1qqs0m40g76hqmwqhhc9hrk3qfxxpsp5k3k9xgk24nsjf7v305u6xffcpzfmhxue69uhkummnw3ezucn4d9kxgtcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsk233ah it brings up some important context regarding Lukeās history with core, security practices, incentives, beliefs, etc. related to the debate and decision making by node runners.
I have seen no evidence that Luke or Jameson are bad actors. Just men who are trying to do what they think is right for bitcoin.
I appreciated the article as an informational piece for my continued understanding of the debate and the people involved, hopefully leading to some kind of consensus and peace around the issues.
If anything Lopp says in his blog about Luke/Knots is true or valid then this makes what he and core are doing extremely irresponsible. Core is the reference Bitcoin client, not Lopp's personal vehicle for squeezing some fiat out of VC backed Citrea. Changing core to appease this one particular actor, with the unintended (or intended) consequences such a change inevitably causes, is unbelievably reckless. Especially when, according to Lopp, there is no viable alternative.
When will you release your implementation?
How does this piece advance bitcoin or bridge the devide of the community?
it helps knots users know what they are getting into, considering so many people are saying they plan on switching. how is this not helpful?
most of this content is stuff many pro-core people were already aware of, clearly it is not well known or there would be more hesitation to adopt a fork by luke.
i've always said if people care so much about this one PR someone should just make a fork of v30 with this single change reverted.
you don't need to run core with hundreds of god-knows-what changes on top
this would be a lot easier to rebase as well
What is a woman?
Could that someone be you (or another in your camp), if it's really that simple to defuse and settle this debate? I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I just don't want bitcoin's prospects of success and fruition to be threatened, whether by Cnots or Kore.
As someone whose contribution to bitcoin is little more than adoption and advocacy, I have no technical authority as to which, if either, is a threat or not. The whole debate is a minefield of overwhelming information with 360 degrees of crossfire, and many throughout the community are exhausted, but hopeful for a sensible resolution.
It seems to me like you just offered one. I would love to see you follow through, if that's really all it takes. Thanks either way for your huge contribution to bitcoin code development and nostr damus, too. Your recent appearance on the titcoin podcast with Walker was a joy to listen to. ā
no I donāt want to attack bitcoin and make the spam situation worse
Let me guess, you guys would call it a dangerous one-man-show right after it got forked right? Eventhough its all of core's work with just a couple of reverted changes?
It clearly doenst stop us to run Knots, everyone knows Luke is an autist. It just seems like a helpless attack TBH, which will just increase the devide.
Since we're all history buffs now let's remember how Lopp was on the big block shitcoiner side of the block size war, at least until the rats left the sinking ship. Some things never change. https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/elegant-and-ass-backward-jameson-lopps-first-impression-of-bitcoin/
Ahhh I seeā¦. Makes sense.
The worst part about knots is Luke. If the code was properly secured and maintained it would be a much less of an issue, but here we are.
Than surely you can point us to questionable parts in the Knots repository?
What I'm getting from this is that anyone working or involved in any significant way with Blockstream Coin are self-absorbed, narcissistic cunts.
Thanks for the confirmation.
The amount of time this Lopp fellow spends on this issue isn't suspicious to you, dear reader?
Maybe he thinks it's important? š¤·
I think it's the most important issue in Bitcoin right now, and I spend maybe 1% of the time Lopp does.
Something else has to be going on. It's almost as if removing filters is crucial for his plans to succeed...
Luke is camping out in Loppās mind, rent free.
Luke is one of the weirdest statist cucks to walk the earth. Take everything bad about leftist and smash it together with everything bad about the right and then give them a keyboard and the worst beard in the business and you have Luke Jr. Throw in almost a. dozen offspring so we can enjoy this insanity for generations to come.
majority or paid for majority wins
I always said the issue of Luke losing most of his bitcoins IS a big deal. He no longer has a financial interest in bitcoins success plus when he went to the feds to cry for help they very easily could put him on their payroll. Lord knows he needed money. And they get a mole inside Bitcoin. A very symbiotic relationship indeed.
Plus Luke clearly has a bone to pick with Bitcoin community. And it is important to know that this individual is a little bit mentally unsound.
Does it also matter that Peter Todd sold half his bitcoin 11 years ago? https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/s/2M5FPyZcSC
Selling half and making a lot of profit vs losing it all and running to the feds?
It was 11 years ago, he missed out on a lot of gains just like Luke. Explains his severe BDS, like wanting to get rid of the 21M supply cap, and his "I'll make any PR for money" policy. Todd and Lopp are the kind of devs that were shown the door a few years ago. It's disgusting to see people who should know better worshipping these shitcoiners.
I don't worship anybody. I run an old version of core because I believe it's in my best interest.
I meant that worshipping comment for people like Adam Back, jb55, calle, walker, and many others. And the fact I disagree with all these "experts" is fine by me. I'm used to being in that situation. Smart move to run an old version. At least wait until we see what the unintended consequences are (I'm sure there will be some).
Thank you for this
Its easier to manipulate a group of incompetents than a principled individual.
Uneducated have always been the primary base
Clown š¤”
People can both think Luke is a nutter and that core is the biggest threat to Bitcoin
I was going to start agreeing with you until you said Rosa Parks. Your worship of false-flag heroes crosses the line. I'm quite done.
What a š¤”
This is signal. And the reason you should be running knots.
#knots #bitcoin
Let me see. Child Porn vs No Child Porn. The latter for me please.
took me several minutes to read.
so...
pro knots: OP_Return limit, spam transaction filtering
pro Core: code integrity, peer reviewed, risk control
what am I missing
Luke is the most different of all different breeds lol ..
I like the section about how a turbo-autist, immune to peer pressure might not be the best person for managing an important open-source repo.
But regarding the Knots repo management critique, imo one needs to cut Knots some serious slack, because it was basically irrelevant until a few weeks ago .. must improve over the next 1-2 years though.
This thread of responses is an excellent collection of accounts to mute.
It's certainly not a serious project.
Core is the reason everyone turned to the only other option. You've only yourself to blame.
Buddy, there are half a dozen other options. Actual standalone Bitcoin client implementations that aren't based upon Core.
Core is/was the reference implementation, if you want to make arbitrary changes, fork it yourself but donāt touch Core.
This. If Core wouldnāt have pushed and merged code arbitrarily despite all the contention about the issue, we wouldnāt be here.
This article will be a case study in a few years.
It's a great example of how to take most things out of context and focus on sentimentality.
They focus everything on Luke, but the problem isn't Luke, the problem is Core, and we need alternatives, there's no other way.
By the way, node execution is going to get interesting. Let's come back here in five years and look back on this.
based on what you've wrote:
Do people want him in a leadership role? Probably not (a no from me).
Do people trust his work in regards to security? Probably not (a no from me).
So why are people installing Bitcoin Knots and the number of them are increasing? I'd imagine it's a very simple answer: because most people are signaling that they don't want the op_return increase change, and if they have to install knots to signal that, even if most people read that post about the current leadership and maintainer of it, and have the opinion that knots maintainer is bad and they'd try to stay away from him, they'd still install knots, not because of knots, but simply because they don't agree with that single change coming in Bitcoin Core 30, let alone dealing with inscriptions.
I'd imagine people would say, as a response to not use knots, is "if you don't want us to use knots, or whatever other similar node, and not continue advocating for it and increase the conversions to it, then don't move forward with this change, and never do unless there's a really good reason, which is doubtful".
That's how I see things, and I'd imagine most on the non-core side with this upcoming update, from what I understood in all of this.
From Giacomo (X) :
> Luke sent the FBI after his fellow Bitcoin Core contributors
False statement. You provided no source to verify it, and I know the opposite to be true.
>Knots is a dangerous "solo dev" project that does not have the necessary level of peer review
Misleading statement, unless the same is also said about LibreRelay and Bitcoin Knobs, and much more emphasis is put on Btcd.
> He became much more vitriolic toward Bitcoin Core and now makes outrageous claims that it's compromised and trying to destroy Bitcoin
Qualified as your personal opinion, but logically contradicted by your own examples of him being *way* more vitriolic in the past with many (cf the Voorhes and Silk Road cases you listed, contrast them with his tolerance of libertarian claims more recently): by any metric I can think of, Luke has gotten way less vitriolic over time. In general, I'm not sure using dev political opinions to dismiss software (which is 99% of your pamphlet) is the game you want to play, in order to defend Core. Be my guest in case.
> abused his position of maintainer of the Gentoo Bitcoin Core package to enable his custom blacklist rules by default
This statement is contradicted by the following claim by Luke's own statement "it did not occur to me at the time that the spam filter was even included". You provided no source to verify otherwise.
> There is also controversy around Ocean's Datum protocol which is a competitor to Stratum V2
Misleading statement. DATUM *will be* a competing protocol to Stratum V2, once the latter will actually realize the miner-side-template-production. I think as of now OCEAN/DATUM is literally the only case of minin-side-template-production active on any pool. Even then, it will be a competing protocol, but not competition to his pool: Luke confirmed OCEAN will support SV2 as well once it gets traction.
> When you get into Luke's personal opinions on bitcoin mixing (further down) this particular decision will make more sense. [...] This is relevant to my earlier point about Knots breaking the Whirlpool mixing protocol. He doesn't care because he thinks mixing is wrong and people shouldn't do it.
False statement. Luke publicly stated support for coinjoin transactions in many occasions, and you provided no source of him saying otherwise, even if you claim you do in the first part of the mention. Indeed, Knots has always been relaying *all* coinjoin tx by Whirpool. It just happened that, for no good reason that I know of to this very day, some weird type of NON-coinjoin txs by Whirpool (tx0s) contained Op_returns uselessly larger than Core's historical limit (which was still Knot's limit).
> Luke appears to be a geocentrist. "By the way, the Sun really orbits the Earth, not vice-versa."
Misleading statement, since it insinuates this view is as unpopular as the others listed below (monarchy, masturbation, sedevacantism, etc.), at least among scientifically literate people. It's not. This seems to me to be a honest mistake based on your own parroting of the common "midwit-science" pop-view, naively misinterpreting pre-Einstein (but actually pre-Mach) Galilean relativity. In modern General Relativity, geocentrism is *literally* just as valid as any other reference frame choice (you just adjust the curvature and/or metric). Even if Newtonian physics, geocentrism is a valid choice as long as the Earth rotates to account for centrifugal forces.
> Where has a large portion of the social and technical community's time and attention been spent? I tend to agree that Luke & Co have been rather poisonous as of late.
False statement, offered without evidence, but also clear logical contradiction in the context of the panphlet. As explained (and paradoxically very well illustrated by your STASI-like dossier), Luke has been significantly *less* vitriolic and controversial than ever in the recent years and months. If large portion of the social and technical community's time and attention been spent supporting or attacking the claims of somebody with very low people-skills, who was traditionally ignored by most due to his unpopular opinions and eccentric personality, that's clearly caused by something else. I have theories.
Sep 23, 2025 Ā· 5:23 PM UTC
This clown weighing in on the āseriousnessā of anything is the most ironic thing Iāve witnessed in 2025. So farā¦
fucktasthropy is a word
This is a fucking awesome essay by Jameson. It helps to explain why another guy I greatly respect, nostr:nprofile1qqsqfjg4mth7uwp307nng3z2em3ep2pxnljczzezg8j7dhf58ha7ejgpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqgewaehxw309aek2mnyd96zumn0wdnxcctjv5hxxmmd94lnue , is always urging caution and doing your own research about the infrastructure of Knots development. This essay is a nice first stop on that research journey IMHO. Thanks for taking the time - well done sir!
core is cancer
And Knots is built on core...
12/9/25 - new bitcoin core cancer merge by Luke š¤š½
anyone can understand im talking about the entity, not the codebase
bad people make good code?
Luke still fixes anduses the code from bad people for knots..??
Cool.
you are talking like we are in 2015 or something. and nothing ever happened.
you can easily understand core stands for public "core devs", that have control over the repo. that are actively harming and lying about things they do that makes no logical or technical sense. just bunch of brain gymnastics to justify what they did every time.
if you ever read or watched one of these - responding to a counter against their claims, you can see their bullshit. just read, watch, listen what everyone said about everything, then and go verify yourself. and be honest to yourself.
But they are the ones actually doing the work, not knots.
I don't like the idea of a fork .. if you want to deliver a small specific feature which you believe is good ..why not just create an add on ?
Fork is about ideology .. it is NOT a feature debate !
I never knew fork is about ideology until I see your post š
You can start a distribution with specific features .. Linux has thousands of distros to change the taste and flavor or meet certain features .. all are welcome ..
But if you fork the Kernel .. .. it is suddenly a new system .. splits are very hard to maintain in a large eco system .. eventually, the question boils down to " kill or be killed " .. besides it leaves the entire community torn ..
Fork may be fine where tech is going to change say 90 percent and older project is just not being maintained ..or you are launching a totally new project / protocol . ..
Good Morning , āļø everyone .
"But you should be informed of what you're getting into."
Bro, Bitcoin-Core could just revert that change and you wouldn't have to write such articles. But they didn't. It's all being a conscious decision.
I know Luke well enough, no introduction needed. The popularity of Knots is, after all, a reaction to the upcoming changes in the Core v30 release.
Taking your writing into account, one question still remains: how can the average Bitcoiner express their disapproval regarding Core v30?
RUNNING KNOTS
I highly value what you have done for Bitcoin, but this time you are wrong! I would be very sorry if this unfortunate debate left you with an irreparable bitter disappointment and you became an enemy of Bitcoin, like some other prominent figures among developers in the past.
Bitcoin is at its very core the right to choose for yourself. There is no excuse for taking away the right of a node operator to determine the settings of their own node.
Actually there is a logical explanation for removing useless configuration parameters, but you'll find that I am in favor of leaving them in place: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/33453#issuecomment-3318248192
>be dev
>fuk shi up
>"understand-it-all" writeup to cope
>????
>something satoshi, genesis block
Well informed, as the network trend suggests.
Ā«To compare and measure the complexity of knots, mathematicians compute their unknotting numbers ā the minimum number of steps it takes to transform a knot into a simple loop.Ā»
News feed collides on a knot š
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-simple-way-to-measure-knots-has-come-unraveled-20250922/
hey -- we want to send you a test zap, but couldnāt find a NIP-05 or ā” lightning address on your profile. u can set one up for free on rizful https://rizful.com ... then pls reply here and we will do a test zap.
We are informed! KNOTS!
The funny part is that Knots apologists come after Loop and said this article is an ad-hominem fallacy, meaning they didn't read the article itself.
The dishonesty of Luke for me was when he tried to hijack the Transifex account in order to develop Knots as a Core project, which is mentioned in the article.
Run Bitcoin Core people would me my NFA but if you want to run Knots after reading this, up to you...after all, your money, your rules.
A damning case for knots. Thanks for surfacing this information. I think Iāll start poking around Libbitcoin instead
Your critiques of Luke's security and development practices seem legit, but your ad hominems seem uncalled for. I'd say that just like wallets, more node implementation options is better than less. Undoubtedly there will be pros and cons to each implementation but users can decide and competition makes for better products in the end. Personally, I use core for transactions but knots for mining.
Regardless of which side you fall on this debate. It is at least worth reading this through.
This is cool.
Its everything about Luke.
And nothing bout Knots
*yawn*
Doesnāt he have exclusive access to the merge button?
A different viewpoint on why Core's changes are a threat to Bitcoin - https://youtu.be/kKnpYqCpUdk?si=pqAHJd-H_JzA6q2H
This is interesting š
Blowing open op return, is undesirableā¦ā¦.
V30 is undesirableā¦ā¦ā¦
But running V30 is certainly in your rights to do soā¦ā¦ā¦.
#Bitcoin seems to be running fine without V30 whatās the impetus for the change Mr Lopp?
Holy shit.