I think only nostr:npub1ph0g09s8rvumc2vvmdzawmk34cd4tk26zzrqrhaxp5nr79rennkqkmyl6h might know Willie Nile.

I believe Nostr can grow stronger and faster if small businesses here actively support one another-especially those that introduce real products and accept Bitcoin and sats. When we build an ecosystem where people can truly buy with Bitcoin, not just talk about it, Nostr becomes more than a protocol-it becomes a working system.

If we support each other, Nostr can evolve into the place where people come specifically to discover and purchase unique goods with Bitcoin-something they won’t easily find on other platforms.

nostr:npub1key55ax33gkl50uqemvl4khrtqrhzm7wzpc7fhseutt5ddkcwcrqgxlt3h DC

Whether you are pro-Knots or pro-Core, why would you listen to anyone who wants to change Bitcoin but isn’t financially invested in it? This negates any argument whatsoever from him in my mind.

Isn't that your post from stacker mostly?

Both sides are still talking past each other Calle… you wrote well and articulated Core’s argument but I have yet to see any engagement with the real concern here, namely that Core pushed through an unpopular and poorly understood product with worrisome defaults (whether they’re actually good or bad is not the question) and a stated intention to eliminate choice altogether in the near future.

Again, whether the concerns are justified or not is a separate matter. Most of us are not technical enough to understand. We just want civil debate so we can side with the people who seem most reasonable and sane. Core came across as arrogant and unwilling to listen while their supporters have engaged in ad hominem attacks and just generally compounded Core’s behavior.

Knots has, in many cases, come to appear cult-like. Mechanic’s key arguments seem lost in the whirlwind (Knots supporters have missed the nuance) and I don’t see Core supporters engaging with Mechanic’s logic. As he says, Core is arguing “filters don’t work” but Mechanic is not basing his argument on that point. He even agrees that Core is technically correct.

I and others just want to see a civilized discussion (like you’ve put forward here, Calle) that actually acknowledges the perspectives put forth by either side.

This is a long post that hopefully bridges some gaps between technical people (devs) and non-technical users and how they look at spam prevention in Bitcoin. I hope that it clarifies why I think that there is such a huge misunderstanding between both camps.

I'll preface this post with first disqualifying any malicious attempts to misrepresent the motives of either camp. Everybody wants to improve Bitcoin as money. Money is Bitcoin's use case. It's not a data storage system. If you think otherwise, there are countless shitcoins to play with.

Alright, let's get into it.

I have worked on anonymous systems for over a decade. I have read tons of research on spam detection, rate-limiting, and I've implemented spam prevention techniques in the real world.

I am very confident to say that there is not a single known method to prevent spam in decentralized anonymous open networks other than proof of work.

This is what Satoshi realized when he designed Bitcoin and it's why only transaction fees can reliably fight spam without sacrificing any of Bitcoin's properties.

Let me explain.

Spam prevention is a cat and mouse game. As a system's architect, your goal is to make the life of a spammer harder (increase the friction). This is why, on the web, you see captchas, sign-ups, or anything that can artificially slow you down. Slowing down is key. This is why Satoshi turned to proof of work.

Let's contrast this to other methods for spam prevention. This is not an exhaustive list but it illustrates the design space of this problem, other methods are often derivatives of these:

CAPTCHAS are a centralized form of proof of work for humans: Google's servers give you a hard-to-solve task (select all bicycles) that will slow you down so that you can't bombard a website with millions of requests. It requires centralization: you need to prove Google that you're human so that you can use another website. If you could host your own CAPTCHA service, why would anyone believe you're not cheating?

LOGINS with email and passwords are most popular way to slow down users. Before you can sign up, you need to get an email address, and to get an email address, you often need a phone number today. The purpose of this is, again, to slow you down (and to track you to be honest). It only works well when emails are hard to get, i.e. in a centralized web where Google controls how hard it is to get an email account. If you could easily use your own email server, why would anyone believe you're not a bot?

The next one is the most relevant to Bitcoin:

AD BLOCK FILTERS are another form of spam prevention but this time the roles are reversed: you as a user fight against the spam from websites and advertising companies trying to invade your brain. Ad blocking works only under certain conditions: First you need to be able to "spell out" what the spam looks like, i.e. what the filter should filter out. Second, you need to update your filters every time someone circumvents them. Have you ever installed a youtube ad blocker and then noticed that it stops working after a few weeks? That's because you're playing cat-and-mouse with youtube. You block, they circumvent, you update your filters, repeat.

The fact that you need to update your filters is critical and that's where it ties back to Bitcoin: Suppose you have a mempool filter for transactions with a locktime of 21 because some stupid NFT project uses that. You maybe slow them down for a few weeks, but then they notice it and change their locktime to 22. You're back at zero, the spam filter doesn't work anymore. What do you do?

You update your filter! But where do you get your new filter from? You need a governing body, or some centralized entity that keeps updating these filters and you need to download their new rules every single day. That's what ad blockers in your web browser do. They trust a centralized authority to know what's best for you, and blindly accept their new filters. Every single day.

I hope you see the issue here. Nobody should even consider this idea of constantly updating filter rules in Bitcoin. This would give the filter providers a concerning level of power and trust. It would turn Bitcoin into a centrally planned system, the opposite of what makes Bitcoin special.

This is why filters do not work for decentralized anonymous systems. They require a central authority. Until now, these rules were determined by Bitcoin Core, but they have realized that these rules do not work anymore. Transactions bypass the filters easily and at some point, carrying them around became a burden to the node runners themselves. Imagine you're using an outdated ad blocker but instead of filtering out ads, it now also filters out legitimate content you might be interested in. That's what mempool filters do, and that's why Bitcoin Core is slowly relaxing these filters. This has been discussed for over two years, it's not a sudden decision.

The goal of this change is not to help transactions to slip through more easily. The goal is to improve your node's prediction of what is going to be in the next block. Most people misrepresent this part. They say "it's to turn Bitcoin into a shitcoin" but that is just a false statement at best, or a manipulation tactic at worst.

Let's tie it back to proof of work and why fees are the actual filter that keeps Bitcoin secure and prevents spam reasonably well: Satoshi realized that there is no technique that could slow down block production and prevent denial of service attacks in a decentralized system other than proof of work. Fees prevent you from filling blocks with an infinite number of transactions. All the other options would introduce some form of trust or open the door for censorship – nothing works other than proof of work.

He was smart enough to design a system where the proof of work that goes into block production is "minted" into the monetary unit of the system itself: You spend energy, you get sats (mining). This slows down block production. How do you slow down transactions within those blocks? You spend the sats themselves, original earned form block production, as fees for the transactions within the block!

This idea is truly genius and it's the only reason why Bitcoin can exist. All other attempts of creating decentralized money have failed to solve this step. Think about it: without knowing who you are, whether you're one person pretending to be a thousand, or a thousand people pretending to be one. Bitcoin defends itself (and anyone who runs nodes in the Bitcoin system) from spam by making you pay for your activity.

People sometimes counter this by saying: the economic demand for decentralized data storage is higher than the monetary use case. First of all, I think that's just wrong. There are way cheaper ways to store data (there are shitcoins for this), and the value of having decentralized neutral internet money is beyond comparison.

However, there's a much deeper concern here. If you truly believe this, I ask you: what is Bitcoin worth to you? If you think Bitcoin can't succeed as money (i.e. be competitive), why do you even care? If you're not willing to pay fees for the use case that we all believe Bitcoin is designed for (money), and you believe that no one is willing to pay for it, how can it even persist into the future?

You can't have it all. If Bitcoin is money (which I believe it is), then we need to pay the price to keep it alive. There is no free lunch.

Either we centralize, or we pay the price of decentralization. I know where I stand.

Peace.

Hey Siggy it’s Bill from the meet ups, are you going to Robbie the fire Bernstein tonight? It’s in st. James

for an hour, I've been looking for my glasses, and I have them on my eyes...

A while ago I had the choice iPhone or android as a gift… I chose iPhone because Android felt like too much of a change.

Now I’d give anything to undo that decision 🫣.

Our dog got hit by a car today. He got some stitches and is on some meds but all in all he’s pretty damn lucky. No ruptured organs or broken bones. A good reminder to love what you have before it’s gone 💜

IBIT is BlackRock’s most profitable ETF ever, and Uncle Larry Fink LOVES it.

BlackRock makes more money when bitcoin pumps, and you’re bearish, anon?!?

I believe there’s a real chance global markets melt up over the next two years, driven by liquidity, tech optimism, with a final wave of speculative euphoria… before ending in a dramatic blow-off top. What may follow could be a deep, two-year global depression as governments & corporations confront their unsustainable debt & broken policy.

By 2030, much of the global system resets into a blockchain-based monetary network: stablecoins for transactions, Bitcoin as the universal savings asset… a pristine transparent collateral beyond the reach of any single nation.

The Great Reset:

where financial collapse converges with technological evolution & Bitcoin becomes the global standard.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump has announced that the United States now fully owns and controls a 10% stake in Intel.

New baby is here.

Mom is resting and doing well.

Baby is doing well.

Another perfect birth. No hiccups or unwanted interventions.

There's nothing for Bitcoin to fix in this room.

#babytwoishere #lightofgod

Stacking nature.

The sweet things my husband texts me

Hey thanks man! 🥰

I finally get to say something I’ve always wanted to say for the first time in 16 years:

Day 2 off nicotine 😆

This has been my favourite episode since Danny took over.