Bitcoin Forum

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Is this actually true, or is it mere FUD?

In general, perhaps if anyone has strong conviction on which side of the fork they believe truly is "the Real Bitcoin", then they should probably sell all of their coins from the fork that they say is "wrong" and HODL the coins from the side of the fork that they believe is "right".

It's laughable, but during the block size debate Mike Hearn showed his conviction/sold all of his Bitcoin, and THAT truly deserves some respect.

There has been speculation of talk about fork since 2 days now but at this point, if this speculation turn out to be true, then he is a retarded person that has successfully found an opportunity to do what he has planned on his mind since 2011 that he began his journey on this knot.
If as a node runner, you don't want to be involved in whatever what is relay from node to node and you feel safe with knot, do it but don't become a dictator and psychopaths that want to fulfill personal dreams.

This isn't the first fork, he can do all he want but no reasonable person that respect Bitcoin core implementation will want to hard fork Bitcoin. Looking at the node fight since last month, Luke is no longer protecting the protocol as he has brainwashed some people, the sad part is that even some then core supporters are blindly following him but maybe now that hard fork talk is going around, they will get the real message and come back to run core.

There are many ways to study the upcoming upgrade with OP_RETURN even if you don't like it but seeing this, this is no longer about network protection, it's about personal dream of controlling the network.

Aside from that I think this is probably indeed fake news, the "solution" is basically what we were talking about in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5559343.0), only with a "multisig committee" which decides what to remove or not, which would be extremely problematic.

But if this really becomes a problem, wouldn't it then better to simply allow all full nodes to ignore all non-financial data? Most of them can be identified. The protocol would have to be changed in a way that nodes can accept a hash or ZK proof of any OP_RETURN data, Taproot envelope and fake public key protocols (around 50% of fake public keys can be detected).

In theory this could even be built without any hard fork, as there could be still archival nodes working with the "old" protocol.

However, it could not stop more advanced forms of spam, like encoding data in addresses / public key hashes (which is computationally costly but can be done).

I still don't get if an Hardfork saves Bitcoin how is it still Bitcoin?
What would be created once a core principle is changed is another coin entirely. They can deceive themselves it's Bitcoin but it's not.


If it is, then it shows how much core are keen on OP_Return limit removal.

Wouldn't this just make archival nodes current Full nodes
And introduce a semi full node those who filter non financial data before light nodes?
Full nodes centralization increases.

Yes, that can be seen this way. However, "completely full" nodes (=archival nodes) would not be anymore necessary for network security and stability. Their only utility would be to serve the OP_RETURN etc. data to those needing NFTs. So centralization would be not really an issue because no "normal node" with only the finality to transact "financially" (even if this involves complex smart contracts) depends on these archival nodes, and NFTs have normally centralized elements anyway (they don't really make sense).

I believe that there might be entities behind this "issue" that are using the "issue" as a sort of Red-Herring, but their real motivation is to fork Bitcoin away from the Core Developers.

Definitely there will be those people who want to take over the development process. Plus Michael Saylor sending an indirect message that he supports Knots gave me a reminder of the NYA.

I think sometimes these people forget that block zero has a message in OP_RETURN. What they want to do is make this message disappear?
They might even say that the "historical" remains, and only changes from point X onwards. But that goes against their own idea.

As I often say: you should never change the rules of the game in the middle.

Bitcoin was built and designed to work this way. These things don't make sense to change. Just against the idea of ​​increasing the block, as well as against the idea of ​​"deleting or ignoring" OP_RETURN. _{(Although I don't have any decisive power/influence.)}

Besides the spam that has been appearing on the Bitcoin blockchain, there's no need to change OP_RETURN. The problem is Taproot Witness - do they want to change that?
They're interested in solving this problem by setting the same OP_RETURN limit—80 bytes—for Taproot Witness. Simple, easy, and still guarantee the freedom Bitcoin has always had!

This problem was created by the devs, because they thought that Bitcoin "was falling behind" (the numbers always showed the opposite), now they gave space for crazy people to invent things.

I'm thinking there is somewhere between zero and no chance this would happen. Nobody is gonna use Lukecoin. However, it is great clickbait -- highly appealing for nerds like ourselves.


Satoshi's message in the genesis block isn't actually stored via OP_RETURN, its stored in the coinbase data. Even if it was in OP_RETURN it couldn't ever be deleted because it is hardcoded into the software.

This is obviously fake news. Luke Dashjr has no intention of forking Bitcoin. It would be better if Bitcoin Core dropped this change removing the spam filter.Nothing should change because theres no consensus in the community.

But lets say hypothetically a fork really happened I think the old side that fights to keep Bitcoin just as money and a monetary protocol would win. The other side, that wants to allow spam and add other uses to Bitcoin and turn it into a crypto blockchain like Ethereum or Solana, would lose. Some big names already showed support for the Knots crew, like Michael Saylor, and the Binance CEO

If Luke wanted to perform a fork he has the knowhow to do something like eCash XEC and create a new experimental coin with all the features he likes. He's good much of an ideologue to do that though. He would never fork bitcoin although he has enough of a following to profit massively from it.

Hell, even the idiot Craig Wright has amassed enough of a following. Luke is also quite popular with some bitcoin nostalgics and purists lately. He's doing a good job for certain things so no wonder. The pressure he has received from core makes him look like a martyr which just ends up giving him more attention.

I think while Luke is a honest person who speaks his mind a little too openly sometimes, he's not going to do anything that harms bitcoin. It's like his life's work. He wants to see it do well. Although he was hacked and lost all his stash before the pump...

He came out in the open to reveal what he had in mind for bitcoin, this doesn't make him a good person, it also doesn't mean that he had the best interest of bitcoin in mind, i can't seem to figure out why he intend  to do this but i doubt that he is like Nakamoto himself, i smell power hungry, this person want to forcefully sit on a throne where he can start to pull the string all by himself, he lacks the control and he doesn't like it.

Do you then actually believe that that website could be sued for Libel? The wrote,



I believe not. First of all the miners will not support such a proposal if it means their revenue could go down. Second of all the exchanges will actually drop Core - the reference implementation, and list Knots, a fork, as "BTC". It would cause instability within the community and therefore the price of the asset. They won't allow that in my personal opinion.

But it's a game of incentives. Let them do their hard fork, and let's see which side of the fork the miners, the economic majority, and the people like Saylor believe they are more incentivized.

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They can do it like how Roger Ver team did with Bitcoin Cash. There will be hashrate fight and miners will split in first days, weeks or months of hard fork until time they gradually realize that it is best to stay with Bitcoin blockchain, not a fork chain called Knot chain.

It happened with Bitcoin Cash blockchain and there will be some first uncertain months in mining community and the market too. Eventually Bitcoin will win like how it beat Bitcoin Cash down so far.

It will be similar to many failed and even dead fork coins.

I think there are too many cues that the article in "The Rage" is indeed made up. See also this Coindesk article (https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/09/27/luke-dashjr-denies-hard-fork-claims-as-bitcoin-governance-debate-heats-up) from yesterday, he has denied it several times and even Ordinals guys are supporting him.

The biggest evidence for me is that Luke-Jr does understand the main point of the debate. He's a long time developer, not an amateur like 99% of the shitstorm participants who don't know how blockchains work. He knows that you can already store whatever illegal material you want in the blockchain, using several protocols (see below). His problem instead is (as he has said in the mailing list discussion) that an OP_RETURN increase could set a precedent communicating that "Bitcoin is a data storage". But on the other hand he never proposed a "real" solution, beside of his well-known Ordinals filters which are not very efficient because the NFT guys can change their protocols - and that would perhaps even make "legacy NFTs" more "scarce" and valuable ...

I also honestly do not think Luke-Jr would propose such an anti-Bitcoin measure like a trusted multisig federation. If he proposed something radical probably he'd propose a mechanism to delete all non-financial data (which I maybe would even support, but even then there would be ways to store arbitrary data).

No. The problem is not that the devs want to encourage Ordinals or NFTs. I never saw that justification in the mailing list discussions.

Instead, they want to tackle two things: First, a too big difference between the "real" mined transactions (because many miners now accept non-standard transactions) and the standardness values (this increases network traffic and validation cost due to the compact block mechanism becoming less efficient). And second, a proliferation of more harmful UTXO-set polluting protocols like Bitcoin Stamps (Stampchain), who use fake public keys to store pics and other stuff with up to dozens of kB (64, to be precise). There are 1.2 million Stampchain inscriptions already (both NFTs and SRC-20 tokens) and it's not the only protocol of this type (albeit probably the most popular one). OP_RETURN was introduced already to discourage this kind of protocol, but they popped up again following the Ordinals craze.

It isn't possible to know if Stampchain would have been invented if Ordinals hadn't become popular, but Stampchain was developed only a short time after Ordinals (I think Ordinals came in late 2022, and Stampchain in early 2023). And I guess that due to the NFT craze in 2022/23, someone would have invented something like this anyway, or used an older protocol (fake public keys protocols appeared in 2014/15).

I don't think Core members have fabricated that fake news either. That probably is just a troll (or a media outlet?) wanting to benefit from the "debate".

According to Luke Dash on Twitter (X)

We have never seen where an Hardfork defeated Bitcoin and despite how many are against core
It would be stupid in my opinion to support an Hardfork
Once one core protocol has been changed what stops more from being changed
It starts looking more centralized than it appear
So yeah, I don't see how majority would support an Hardfork.

Let's just say Bitcoiners are rigid in a good way.

Thanks. Just checked and found out that the rage is a form of a news outlet.
Then who's fanning the flame? Because the reaction made it seem like the source is very reputable and respected individual.

The minute we need to trust someone with Bitcoins survival, the whole decentralized dream collapses. A statement like that coming from a figure like Luke isn't just questionable, it sounds like a transparent fabrication. Every single hard fork has been a failure and just a viable, not widely adopted alternatives to the original Bitcoin. It's nothing more than a desperate attempt to spin off another shitcoin from Bitcoin's original protocol.

Even if true this has zero relevance on anything. Such a fork has a 0% chance of succeeding. You can safely ignore it.

Only uninformed idiots and shitcoiners would even consider ideas of any kind of "committee". With all the coin and token shenanigans that are going over there in favor of the project team or insiders there is no wonder that many users would entertain such stupid ideas.

It creates a lot of work, does not solve anything and creates a large number of new problems. A net negative idea.

Maybe, maybe not. However, the lack of accountability is one of the primary reasons why there is so much fake news and junk articles like this one. Once journalists can end up in jail for writing such lies then these stories will stop appearing.

https://talkimg.com/images/2025/09/28/UQ5W8d.png (https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/09/27/luke-dashjr-denies-hard-fork-claims-as-bitcoin-governance-debate-heats-up)
Coindesk (https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/09/27/luke-dashjr-denies-hard-fork-claims-as-bitcoin-governance-debate-heats-up)

on the other hand Dash  has strongly denied such type of nasty claims. He has clearly called them fabricated & meaningless propaganda &  has insisted that no such kind of hard fork is being proposed by him nor other.

As far as I can tell, he has insisted that the leaked messages were misinterpreted by some quarters in order to destabilize the market and that he has not advocated any changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules.

I can confirm from multiple reliable sources that this material is true, it's also not inconsistent with what Luke-jr said to me on a phone call.  Because he and his associates at Ocean Mining have delusionally convinced themselves that bitcoin is over unless they get their way then they will accept *any* concession including, apparently, outright backdoors in Bitcoin that would just let trusted third parties take coins.

It's also my personal experience of over a decade that Luke-jr is extremely prone to lie when pressed or caught in a corner,  always in the form of a contrived self-benefiting redefinition of common English terms or other such technicalities,  so him simply replying "liar" and evading should have no weight for anyone.

It is also the obvious and almost unavoidable progression of filter proponent arguments.   Policy rules in Bitcoin can stop some junk traffic that almost no one is trying to make, but they're ineffective against motivated traffic.  This isn't a navel gazing speculation, it's what we've learned in practice as significant hashpower implemented full-rbf, reduced minfee, bypassed op_return limits, and sometimes bypass maximum standard transaction sizes--- all overriding default choices in Bitcoin Core and many requiring outright patching the code.  So if you've decided blocking traffic is a life or death thing, then obviously you'll progress on to things like legal threats, centrally managed 'filters', and trusted parties able to edit the blockchain.  These are just where you get from that line of thinking.

The alternative is to accept that Bitcoin is an open system and was designed from day one to be one.  At no point in Bitcoin's history did Satoshi or the following developers ever block transaction activity that was ongoing-- sure policy stuff was implemented to cover up implementation weak spots, but existing traffic wasn't blocked by it because we always knew that policy doesn't stand against actual demand.  When policy fell behind, it just got bypassed.  The inconsistency between policy and what is actually getting mined has been harming bitcoin by upping centralization pressures.

Resource usage is managed through the block weight limit and through market competition to access to that limit.  Free market management isn't perfect, for sure, but the alternatives at least when fully developed are incompatible with the ethos of Bitcoin.  I don't like NFTs, shitcoins, etc. but people using Bitcoin in ways I don't like is just a natural consequence of it being an open system.  In practice it appears that resource limits and the resulting fees are usually/eventually sufficient to limit it.

In any case, I sincerely wish them well with their fork:  the more fools pay for it the more I'll make dumping mine.  I have no interest in owning censorship enabled bitcoin and I doubt most of you will either.

You'd think he would have realized that filters don't work 11 years ago during the OP_RETURN Wars of 2014. It was interesting to learn from that Lopp article that was shared in another thread that Luke has been unilaterally imposing filters since 2012 by blacklisting Satoshi Dice addresses. About the scarcity thing: you're absolutely correct. However, I can't think of a single instance where something that was created in 2014 can't be created now. Same thing with the Ordinals mega-inscriptions, of course.


That's not his name & nobody calls him that. Seems like a Donator from 2013 who claims to have mined 50 BTC (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5546877.msg65556782#msg65556782) would know this. But the thing is you're a fraud. Now go away & stop embarrassing yourself.

This is so out of context and incomplete for us to judge what it really is at this point. All we can say right now is that Luke has a history of saying craziest things and if what they are describing is correct, this is yet another pathetic attempt at creating a forkcoin that is doomed to fail before it even starts.

That's what I already said in my post. Luke Dash Jr. and the filter boys can't risk destroying Bitcoin by pushing for their hard fork - if the leak is real. They could try, but from the viewpoint of what's making the network stick together - the INCENTIVES, then the there's a high probability that the entities that matter in Bitcoin Land will continue to support the Core Developers.

It doesn't matter, because doing it as a hard-fork is a bad idea. So, if anyone will try to do that, then it will be just yet another altcoin.

I don't know, why developers with that much experience think, that it can be done only as a hard-fork. It is quite easy to notice, that it can be done as a no-fork (not even a soft-fork), because any node, at any time, can always say "I don't have it", when asked about any block or transaction. And then, ZK-proofs can be provided in a different P2P message, for new nodes, which could handle it correctly.

I don't understand, why people do need any "multisig committee" at all. Because if you have ZK-proofs, then you can enable them for all transactions. There is no need to pick, which transaction should went through ZK-proof, and which one shouldn't. If the end goal is to make it easier to process the chain, then everything should be treated with ZK-proofs, because it is better to speedup everything, and not only some portion of the chain, and keep the rest slower, and handled in old, plaintext way.

But they can. It can be a no-fork. For example: some nodes are storing transactions in compressed form. And they didn't fork the chain to get there. If you can compress and decompress any transaction on-the-fly, then you can stay compatible with the protocol.

Also, refusing to provide a transaction or a block in plaintext, is a similar thing, as when you seed a torrent file. If one peer doesn't have it, then another peer will. The only problem is when nobody has it, but in case of payments, it could simply mean, that nobody needs it, and then that single coin can become unspendable in practice (and can be easily made spendable again, if anyone will find that data later).

So, the better approach is to push all transactions through ZK-proofs, no matter if they are payments or not.

It is not. Even when we run out of timestamps in 2106, then it could be also solved with a soft-fork. In that case, old nodes could see for example constantly reorged chain, while new nodes could see it smoothly going forward. But old and new nodes can live in the same network, if needed.

It doesn't, because it is in the coinbase input instead. The meaning of OP_RETURN was different then, because you could spend anything with "OP_TRUE OP_RETURN".

Also, no consensus rule forces you to store the content of the Genesis Block, because it is unspendable. You can just keep its hash, if you want to, or stick to the 80-byte header, if you want to be safe. But the content of transaction 4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b (https://mempool.space/tx/4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b) can be entirely removed, and you will end up in the same chain, as long as your node wouldn't allow changing the first block from 000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f (https://mempool.space/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f) to anything else.

Because the first transaction is unspendable, so it is never stored in the UTXO set in the first place. You need it only to prove, that the chain started in 2009, and not in 1970. But on the protocol level, the Genesis Block is hardcoded, so as long as SHA-256 is strong, you don't need to store it in your node.

It is clearly false, because otherwise, we wouldn't have any soft-forks. Also, in that case, we would have something more similar to BIP-17 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0017.mediawiki), instead of BIP-16 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0016.mediawiki). And then, instead of introducing any new opcodes, we would always wrap everything in the long chain of old ones.

Why not? For example: signet blocks have 1 MB max witness size, instead of 4 MB. Which means 250 kB legacy space in practice. And that change would be at least consistent with 300 kB blocks, proposed by Luke-Jr. So, if they would shrink blocks, it would be at least consistent. And fortunately, mining smaller blocks is a no-fork, because miners can mine even empty blocks, with only the coinbase transaction, if they want to. So, pools controlled by Luke-Jr, can decide to shrink blocks they produce, and contribute to the smaller total blockchain size.

I think it's the opposite-- them making a consensus incompatible fork would mitigate risks for everyone.   Much better to offer their censored bitcoin onto the market and let people voluntarily choose to adopt or reject it than continue to try to force their ideology onto many people who don't want it.  Otherwise no matter how much success they have they'll always think that their efforts would have worked better if not for that last bit of anti-censorship sentiment holding back their intended outcome, etc.  It's really win/win for everyone.

Of course, they are of the view that people *want* their filtered vision, but if that's correct then their fork will be very successful.  The failure to pursue those avenues before now or not at all is kind of an admission that they know they're trying to force a thing on people that the people don't want, out of a sense of superiority.  I'd be happy to be proven wrong here.

I think most long time Bitcoiners who see bitcoin's value primarily coming from its relative independence from human judgement, its privacy, censorship resistance, etc. would *rather* choose preserving those properties over the widest public participation if it did come down to that.  But it won't because those same properties are what make Bitcoin worth having in the first place.  If you didn't want those, you'd just use paypal or whatever.

Yes. If they want to shoot themselves in their foot, then they shouldn't be stopped.

I wonder, what would happen, if some people would show them, that filters don't work, because filtering the private keys is hard. And storing data there is possible, even BitMEX knows about it: https://blog.bitmex.com/the-unstoppable-jpg-in-private-keys/

Another interesting thing is to try to apply ZK-proofs everywhere. Because even if some data "looks" random, then you can find many patterns, and reuse random values for different purposes. Which means, that they can say: "we don't filter that, because it is just a regular payment". And someone else can reply with "we have to filter that too, because this is used as a seed, to generate Super Mario Bros level in the MARIO protocol". Which means, that once filters will be deployed, they will be applied to more and more transactions, and finally, they will be applied everywhere.

Or signet. Because "multisig committee" is already implemented there, because signet miners have full control over what is included in the chain, and because it is the simplest implementation, which can combine Bitcoin and CBDC.

Also, deploying signet on top of mainnet is actually a soft-fork (and can be easily turned into a no-fork), so if they would be serious, then they would never think about any hard-forks for such use cases, because it is quite obvious, how to do them in soft-fork or no-fork ways.

That will be a sad moment, and that would definitely mean that they have successfully co-opted Bitcoin. Maybe you're right that it's going to be a "win/win" for everyone, BUT I personally believe that if truly Knots is adopted and actually starts a culture that "some censorship" is "OK" in Bitcoin, then the Bitcoiners in that future will probably look back and say that the anti-censorship crowd was right.


It will be very funny if the exchanges/economic majority give the ticker "BTC" to the Knots side of the fork, but the price of Core-BTC will be higher/more valued by the market, which could also mean higher hashing power. 8)

It is ridiculous if any big exchange gives that ticker to Knot while it is a shorter chain compares to Bitcoin original chain. Such exchanges will be known later as supporting scammers, I of course don't call Luke as a scammed now but history shows that months or years later the Segwit fork, people realized Bitcoin Cash is a scam and call Roger Ver as a scammer.

The BTC ticker only deserves to be assigned to a longest chain, not a shorter one, and I strongly believe that Knot chain won't win against Bitcoin original chain.

I just laughed when I read that part that says "save Bitcoin" because that was all they claimed for the precious forks of Bitcoin yet they all turn out to be shitcoins. Luke is just looking for opportunity to cash out, simple. A hard fork of Bitcoin does not produce any solution, just another shitcoin.

This is an exaggeration. The world is not black and white, it is most certainly not divided into two groups. Those who want filters and those that don't. It is very nuanced. I would like us to try block any spam as much as possible, but obviously not in the ways that are proposed here. They are terrible and go against everything that Bitcoin stands for.

This part is not even worth the discussion.

I agree.  A hard fork to Lukecoin could easily happen, but who would use it?  To really understand it I would recommend reading the bitcoin dev list.


For example, there are usually reasonably well reasoned discussions, e.g.:
https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/o3JZhiOa2PQ/m/Kpvxs7qUAAAJ?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer

Unfortunately there are many people who like to spit on the plate where they ate.

These are people who have made millions with Bitcoin, and now they think they have the right to want to rule how Bitcoin works.

Create Whatever crypto want is leave Bitcoin alone. Developers like this Bitcoin doesn't need..

So better "Knot Bitcoin" than "Not Bitcoin" (the fork)?
I agree.

On second thought, adding functionality always introduces new problems, the Knots controversy is a great example.
Mix this with a couple of Egos and then it's only about them, no more about the subject/solution.

I'm merely basing the post on what we have seen during the block size wars. It was a minority that had the miners bend to their will when some the most influential developers and individuals from the economic majority started to support the UASF.

  👀

Plus in case you forget, Luke Dash Jr. was one of the most influential/one of the most vocal supporters of the UASF. Although, I believe it was when Eric Lombrozo and some of the other Core Developers that made more impact when they started supporting the UASF.

Luke needs to be loaded into a cannon and shot into space.