Okie dokie then.
Are you for bigger blocks also?

Certainly today's bandwidth capacity and hard disk prices would permit such. And I am saying that in all honesty.
Bigger blocks could very well help with network congestion and still leave some space for stuff like ordinals.
So if we want to allow JPEGs on the Bitcoin Blockchain, might as well make more space for them instead of just allowing them while space is so limited and they cause so many issues.

Gambling can be a vice and can be abused. If both people in a marriage give in and push each other, likelyhood of abuse just grows.
However, in many cultures gambling is done socially. I think the exception here can be that in social conditions the aspect of gambling that is done just for fun instead of Greece can be maintained more easily. So I would say try to keep it social and if not possible just maybe cut it off completely.

Nice analogy. Let's bring it to the same terms as ordinals function.
So each email has a 25MB limit for attachments.
But let's say someone finds a special string of text that if included to an email, can allow for unlimited bundles of 25MB attachments, essentially allowing for unlimited storage per email.

Of course, Google would want to limit what this string of text allows for, because this was never part of intended functionality and therefore is classified as a vulnerability that needs to be patched.

What I don't understand is why everything has to be about Luke. Even when the man does something right, people come after him with such hatred. Got to love the guy don't you?  

Using holes in the code to exploit it counts as a vulnerability by definition. If Luke is actually trying to fix this he deserves recognition.


It's definitely weird how long this took. For sure certain devs were stalling and some just didn't pay attention. We have to be thankful that this issue is brought up again because it affects every Bitcoin user very negatively.

I am not sure who contributed to the CVE entry, might have been Luke.
Doesn't mean that the vulnerability isn't there though.

It's a real issue and needs to be addressed appropriately as with any exploit in bitcoin's code.

There were two op codes mentioned as examples, but otherwise the unlimited data being added to transactions is mentioned as an exploit. Arguably the CVE is a little too broad. But there's certainly potential solutions. The point is to actually get the devs to do something. The only supporters of unlimited data in transactions that I see for now are the ones that keep exploiting this issue to upload images of cats on bitcoins Blockchain to make their "NFTs", the rest know that it was an unforseen consequence of recent updates. Getting it fixed makes sense for every normal Bitcoin user that needs to use block space to transact cash value.

Well with inscriptions essentially being recognized as a vulnerability to Bitcoin I don't know how long they still have. Is it a viable investment strategy to bank on something that's likely to be removed from the next update bircoin's software will receive? Probably not. Investors already consider Bitcoin volatile, but to bank on an unintended feature based on exploits is too much for any type of investor that would care of a public company.

Though out its existence, Bitcoin has never been attacked by miners contributing to an increase in the difficulty and then dropping their hashrate (or the opposite). If that was to become a recurring problem however, it's not like there are't viable solutions. Many altcoins had this issue with profit-hopping miners 10 years ago. It was fixed with solutions like Kimoto's gravity well. Bitcoin being the biggest crypto doesn't really face this issue. Yes miners have power to cause issues with the difficulty but I don't see how that's relevant to inscriptions taking too much space in blocks.

CVE-2023-50428
Via: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-50428


Good to see this issue finally receiving some attention. Hopefully abuse of this vulnerability in bitcoin's code will be addressed soon. What are your thoughts on the matter?

Every day I spend on this debate I keep thinking that those talking about censorship are either concern trolling (perhaps even unbeknownst to themselves even) or have a personal gripe with Luke for some reason.

Some people beef to put whatever beef with whatever Luke might have done to sadden them in the past aside for a second and consider some of the facts for once.

First of all, banning inscriptions from Bitcoin on a protocol level is not a Luke Dashjr issue. It's a Bitcoin Core issue.
There needs to be a discussion about this entirely independent of who Luke is and what he has done, because regardless of his opinions, this issue isn't concerning him. It's concerning everyone using Bitcoin.
Think about it, when SegWit and later Taproot were introduced, were Ordinals a use the developers had predicted?
Some examination of historical evidence leads to the contrary conclusion. SegWit developers probably had never predicted that certain OP_codes could have allowed for large data inclusions in transactions, and therefore hadn't considered the fee discounts would be getting abused to that extent.
Likewise for Taproot developers, who released OP_return without setting good spam limits.
Since these started getting abused, naturally developers of Bitcoin have become concerned and are now considering imposing some limits. This is only natural and follows the course that Satoshi set. Given the nuance of Bitcoin as a piece of software, many mistakes had to be corrected on the fly historically.


Now, what Luke is doing with OCEAN as a pool, is to merely offer miners a choise on what transactions they confirm.
Especially given that many pools openly receive off-band payments in a centralized way, only to confirm certain transactions... Payments that are more often than not not stared with miners, there are some very concerning trends on how pool operators have power over actual miners. OCEAN pool sets out to change that by eventually allowing people to pick their own block templates on how they confirm transactions.

So mining with ocean, arguably there will be absolutely not even a possibility for transaction censorship, as miners will be absolutely fee to pick what gets confirmed, as opposed to any other pool, where only the operator decides.

Edit: I am not affiliated with OCEAN in any way but from listening to the staff talks, I feel like they aren't even very fond of blocking ordinals at the protocol level. If you ACTUALLY pay attention to what Luke says, he has acknowledged multiple times that people can keep putting data in the Blockchain as they wish, he just says that they should be paying block fees for that space normally, without being allowed to abuse certain features to get discounts. And that's very likely to also end the ordinals craze.

Big pools imposing block lists that government decided upon based on arbitrary criteria without asking their miners is deeply unethical.

Miners CHOOSING to opt out of accepting transactions that utilize a bug in Bitcoin to upload trash data in bitcoins Blockchain for cheap is not comparable. This is actually quite dangerous as a false equivalency. Miners are free to chose what transactions they confirm and oftentimes have put profit over actual bitcoin's wellbeing. I can't see why some people buy into propaganda. Big mining pools would rather leave the status quo as is and keep profiting off this bug. And you are here taking their side against the good Samaritan's that are actually not after unethical profits and just want to improve Bitcoin.

I am sure this is well established already, but exchanges already act in the same exact fashion as mixers.

When a user wants to deposit, they are given a unique address, with the possibility also to receive a new one each time they deposit for most exchanges. Then when they want to withdraw, the withdrawal is processed from a hot wallet that serves a big chunk of all the withdrawals in the exchange. So it's not obvious who requested the withdrawal to outsiders.

In fact, by looking at publicized documents such as what prosecutors wrote on Binance's indictment, many parties with unknown or even malicious intent were using the exchange for these purposes, and the exchanges even through their KYC checks, didn't push for further checks or restrictions.

So when we consider what makes a mixer good, the volume it carries is a basic factor. Given that exchanges carry a big portion of all the volume in crypto transactions, they're perfect for mixing purposes as they make it super easy for anyone's transactions to get lost among the rest. And it is a fact that big exchanges have played this role in the past. KYC is easy to bypass by rich criminals actually and they do it very often when they want to utilize premium services, just using fake data and limiting their transfers each time.

So really the issue once again here is centralization.

I don't think casinos offer better chances at winning at first. If that was the case it could be exploited easily.
If someone wants to be certain that his rolls are fair and worries too much of things like this, then he can gamble on probably fair casino games.

I think the more realistic issue with luring in players is how easy it is to win on no-stake rolls and fun token rolls. In non provably fair games this can be a real issue.

I don't think they need to go public for now, as they already have enough funding to sustain development with the current team size for a while thanks to Jack Dorsey:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/ocean-jack-dorsey-funds-bitcoin-mining-pool

The pool launched with 0% fees right now but they can enable a small mining fee later to maintain some proceeds for the operations. But  it's very early days for OCEAN and they are still growing. Things do look very hopeful but I doubt they'd even be considering the possibilities of going public at the moment. Although anyone can ask the pool's team directly on their IRC.

Having a public pool as a listed company would certainly be interesting.
But for now the best way to earn from OCEAN is to mine there

The thing with slots is that they are hard to understand in depth. You can't be sure of the chances to win as they are not disclosed transparently for instance.

On the other hand it is indeed very easy to play as a game. You just bet and spin. Which is something you can keep doing forever so long as you have the money for it. Maybe that's kind of the trick they want to play on players though. Make it very easy and tempting to spin, while it is hard to understand how the game's mechanics work.

This has to be some of the weirdest astroturfing I have seen.

OP, of you own this site, you can make a simple announcement thread instead of this mess.
Secondly, your website is region blocking users. The linked casino seems to only be accepting users from certain regions, probably only the UK, and blocks everyone else. Honestly no reason to promote region blocking casinos in an international forum...

People hate Luke for do many reasons that I have completely lost count.
Frankly I don't even remember what he did in the block size wars time. Probably his stance wasn't as remarkable.
But most points in have heard against him date to years even before that, like more than 10 years ago.

Idk but people still in the Bitcoin community seem to have some long standing interpersonal hatred, it's kinda odd to observe tbh.

Every time something Luke talks about is brought up people will have to remind everyone of his religion.
Why? We are not in a Christian or religious debate forum. Literally nobody should care about this.

The discussion on how inscriptions abuse bugs in Bitcoin code is a very serious discussion on its own and whoever conflates it with irrelevant points and assassinations of character is actively doing a disservice to bitcoin's future.
And like, ok, I get that some people here have conflicting interests like for example someone running a competing pool to Luke' OCEAN now... But for Bitcoin users? Increasing bitcoin's transactional utility is literally good for everyone.

If anyone has gotten used to gambling through crypto casinos, it's likely that they've become accustomed to games like dice. With dice everything is crystal clear: You know your winning odds and how much you are going to win if you roll within your target.
However with slots, you never know your win chance. You don't know what increasing your wager or coins does to winning chances and it's generally all so opaque.

Instead of winning chances there's terms like volatility and RTP,  which make little sense unless to the individual gambler. Honestly dice was complicated enough, slots are just too much. Makes me think that it could be on purpose. Players of slots seem to be unlikely to look into these details due to how complicated it is.

Has that been your experience too?

It all depends on your income. If 100$ is something you can comfortably spend, go for it. It is enough only if you can afford it.
It can be too much also. Don't spend what you can't afford to lose in buying Bitcoin, because it can spend extensive amounts of time below your entry price. And maybe one day you will need some emergency funds.

Ask yourself, it you as a college student spend 100$ each month on investing will you be able to also spend on an emergency fund separately? Will you live comfortably even then? If so, ok. But I fear that it would be be so comfortable. For now maybe focus in the studies?