I think after listening to both sides of OP_Return I'm more in a place of... Bitcoin doesn't give a shit about my opinion and that's probably a good thing. It will keep on ticking. Valid transactions will remain valid whether or not we want them. JPEGers will run out of money due to fees. Miners will mine blocks with the maximum amount of fees possible. Some people won't relay spam transactions. And everything will just continue to work regardless of what you or I think.
I'm still running Knots for now... But if Knots ever tries to fork off, I'll switch back to core. I might actually play around with the datacarrier size just to see what kind of mempool I construct.
OP_RETURN, Filters & Bitcoin’s Identity Crisis w/ nostr:nprofile1qqsrwseygwgtu5688flrkwudqnwws0mvj52tsx5e07emzg7qwthe77qv68ayf
We discuss:
- The OP_RETURN Drama
- Spam & Filters
- What Is Bitcoin
- Bitcoin Core
Watch it here: https://youtu.be/gjYrzi7xYo8
So I'm always willing to hear the other side. nostr:npub1xapjgsushef5wwn78vac6pxuaqlke9g5hqdfjlanky3uquh0nauqx0cnde does make a really strong argument. But it's interesting to me... He makes the argument that people can make a transaction and pay as much as they want for it and that's none of anyone else's business. And I agree with this point.
But that same argument can be made to the software. Why can I no longer change the setting of OP_Return that's running on MY personal hardware?
I understand his arguments that the filter isn't doing anything... But why are my choices being limited? Shouldn't I have the freedom to tweak the software the way I want? Instead I'm being told if I want any of the security updates that come with new software, I MUST accept less choice.
I don't believe that was addressed in the podcast.
Sometimes you just gotta... Even when you know you'll feel like crap two hours later 🤣😂
Dude making coffins would make millions on that hill.
And people will not relay transactions you want. Individual choice is beautiful.
Everyone wants to be early to an investment... But at the same time everyone wants things to work perfectly with no hiccups. Lightning isn't perfect, but it gets better every day. If you can't see the future of something... You can't be early.
Bought popcorn with #Bitcoin today at the farmer's market. Always feels good!
FULL TEXT FOR THOSE THAT DONT DO TWITTER/X
The turbulence that has arisen out of the OP_RETURN PR has taken a lot of energy from the whole Bitcoin community over the past several days. To a certain degree that is unfortunate but on the other hand I believe it is good because it brings to the forefront some fundamental issues with the community. As you all know we don't have a CEO or Board of Directors - we therefore can only be successful and follow a common path via community alignment. Bitcoin's biggest threat is not government bans or quantum computing but losing cohesiveness and direction. In others words, the only enemy is us. We use this latest issue as an inflection point upon which we learn how to all better engage, or we drive a schism - it is up to us.
I got up early today because I wanted to capture some thoughts about where we stand and what issues we really face. I sent this note out to the Bitcoin Dev mailing list earlier today but since that is a small group, I wanted to share the guts of that note with the broader audience and this is what follows:
1 .Those outside of the dev community are perplexed by the process and feeling discounted, unheard, and/or rejected. Most of the issues/PRs/BIPs that the dev community deals with are beyond the ability of the general population to understand, but occasionally there are ones that they grasp (at least somewhat) and for which they have opinion. I’ve certainly learned that when someone has an opinion it is really important to let them express it, otherwise, the pressure inside them builds and they erupt like a volcano. The Bitcoin ecosystem and its members are radically different today than 5-10 years ago – it is bigger, wider, and has broader interests now - it appears that process and communication mechanisms currently used by Core are not capable of reaching the community properly anymore. Note that communication means two-way as well.
When someone buys Bitcoin or starts working within the ecosystem, there is no membership guide, owner’s manual, or employee on-boarding process. It comes off very badly when someone trying to engage is told that they don’t count or aren’t using proper channels, especially when they don’t even know where to go learn the rules of engagement. That isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault, but I’ve been involved in Bitcoin since 2017 and even now am still learning new things about the engagement process, and there definitely have been several surprises and frustrations for me over the past handful of days.
2. The ecosystem is much more complex than ever before with people and companies developing products and services with assumptions of how Bitcoin will operate. Many of these are being done in stealth-mode as well. Some people are pouring their heart and soul (and money) into their projects and the expectation of a standard is often crucial. I am one of these folks, beyond what I do in mining (CEO of Barefoot Mining) and as a board member at Ocean, I have been working for two years on a project related to enhancing block space access. This proposed change in standardness may impact my project in a negative manner, and, it is certainly possible others might be in a similar position. Regardless, changes to standardness are HUGE. I spent most of my career within the Personal Computer space and learned the hard way that changes to a standards are a dangerous game. I expand a bit on this in this X post: https://x.com/boomer_btc/status/1917687830148526095
3. The proposed change also appears to be reduction in flexibility and configurability. In general, this is never a good thing. IMO, we should be going in the direction of giving people more choices and flexibility (although it is fine to make suggestions, set defaults, or provide general guidelines.) How someone configures their node and creates their mempool is akin to free speech within Bitcoin. The same goes for those like me that are miners and create our own block templates – this is also part of our free speech (and our business). In the end though, whether you are a user or a miner, the more choices you have, the more freedom of speech you have.
Side note: Ultimately, as a miner I am in the business of creating block space – at least that is my view, and contrary to popular belief, miners are not always motivated to simply pick transactions that generate the highest block reward in the immediate block, and as time goes by this will become even more common and apparent. I’ve spoken a lot on this recently in public forums, so I won’t dwell on it here.
4. Finally, there is the issue of an OP_RETURN change, if it encourages more spam, and if we are just caving into an inevitability. I am against the proposed change and, even if that is true that the spam will ultimately find a way, I feel we are acquiescing way too early. Enough has been said on this topic in other forums so I won’t go further.
I saw that post on X and I really think this is a, "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
Bob's argument is: "I may not agree with spam in the OP_Return but I'll defend your ability to allow/block as much as you want."
It's a really great post.
I love weight lifting. Nothing beats feeling stronger at the end of a workout. Then eating a ribeye steak with bacon on the side. Chatting with the wife about how our day went, then reading a chapter or two of a book before heading to bed.
nevent1qqsqwtdy8vcyy84tc80qqfdvqyyfaf4y3pe9ktnjzr4hrk8u9ddt2pgppamhxue69uhkztnwdaejumr0ds9jl0cs
Still can't bring myself to buy MSTR...I don't have 401K though.. I'm talking my positive cash flows. Orange coin or bust.
I never messed with the settings before I did the default, so I’m not sure what happened. I’ll wait and see what they say first before doing the restart. Perhaps you could mention someone else that you know here that could help? I messaged nostr:npub1q8gth72n0mcl6rwls905rsvfvuu0dgaq7cq028rc9d7c3ygnp4xq84awvk already
Unfortunately I don't know any of the devs for that. I've posted on their community board before for help though. I don't have their lifetime support though since I did a DIY survey.
Makes sense, if you used non-default settings. If you had used default settings that's where something might've happened within the OS and a full reboot might fix it.
Mine were all default so changing to Knots didn't disrupt my electrum server.
#asknostr nostr:npub126ntw5mnermmj0znhjhgdk8lh2af72sm8qfzq48umdlnhaj9kuns3le9ll
I went to reinstall in dev mode Knots, and I’m now having issues with my Electrs connection. Here is the log:
2025-05-01T15:29:46-04:00 Error: electrs failed
2025-05-01T15:29:46-04:00
2025-05-01T15:29:46-04:00 Caused by:
2025-05-01T15:29:46-04:00 0: bitcoind RPC polling failed
2025-05-01T15:29:46-04:00 1: daemon not available
2025-05-01T15:29:46-04:00 2: JSON-RPC error: transport error: unexpected HTTP code: 401
2025-05-01T15:30:02-04:00 Starting electrs 0.10.9 on x86_64 linux with Config { network: Bitcoin, db_path: "./db/bitcoin", db_log_dir: None, db_parallelism: 1, daemon_auth: UserPass("bitcoin", "
2025-05-01T15:30:02-04:00 [2025-05-01T19:30:02.514Z INFO electrs::metrics::metrics_impl] serving Prometheus metrics on 127.0.0.1:4224
2025-05-01T15:30:02-04:00 [2025-05-01T19:30:02.514Z INFO electrs::server] serving Electrum RPC on 0.0.0.0:50001
2025-05-01T15:30:02-04:00 [2025-05-01T19:30:02.596Z INFO electrs::db] "./db/bitcoin": 222 SST files, 54.086088916 GB, 6.740308364 Grows
2025-05-01T15:30:04-04:00 [2025-05-01T19:30:04.002Z INFO electrs::chain] loading 894769 headers, tip=00000000000000000001066f18a4a5ac9b764f61bf89ef0ba00c0ce04a4278a0
2025-05-01T15:30:04-04:00 [2025-05-01T19:30:04.934Z INFO electrs::chain] chain updated: tip=00000000000000000001066f18a4a5ac9b764f61bf89ef0ba00c0ce04a4278a0, height=894769
2025-05-01T15:30:05-04:00 [2025-05-01T19:30:05.187Z INFO electrs::db] closing DB at ./db/bitcoin
And you've stopped the service and restarted correct?
I switched all my nodes to knots yesterday.
Gotta believe in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Node runners can choose their path. I'm actually really excited to see how this affects what people run in the future
Can't tell if the Bitcoin core drama is worth being interested.
I run both knots and core. I can see an argument for switching everything to knots. But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'll have to snag a coffee bar with my order 😂🤣
Still got some tea tree in the works sir?
Talked to a group shilling Microsoft copilot:
"What does this even do? You're asking for $30/month/user you better be giving me $60/month of value/user."
*Crickets*