The ETF era Bitcoin Drama - 2025 Part TWO!In this post I will give a brief overview of some of the more vocal, and known people weighing in and the key players around the change.
But first let's define some things. Consensus vs Policy. Consensus refers to the rules that all nodes follow to validate transactions and blocks, ensuring agreement across the network. Policy, on the other hand, involves the specific rules that nodes use to determine which transactions to accept into their
mempool, which can vary between different nodes and does not affect the validity of blocks. The blocksize debate cir 2017 was consensus. This one is policy.
What is
OP_RETURN? OP_RETURN is a script opcode in Bitcoin that allows users to embed arbitrary data in a transaction output, marking it as unspendable. It was introduced in Bitcoin Core version 0.9.0 in 2014, though I believed Satoshi had plans for something like this from the beginning. It was originally added in part because of the same argument we are having now. To allow people to put data in a transaction, and to make that data prunable so less good options would be used, specifically creating "fake UTXOs" to store data which CANNOT ever be deleted. These fake UTXOs have to be loaded in memory, and put a burden on the node potentially increasing the level of hardware needed, thus driving out the less expensive nodes.
Peter Todd - One of the more divisive and well known contributors and developers for Core. Famous for his adversarial thought, but also someone who has pushed MANY controversial ideas and BIPs. Famously he would like to modify Bitcoin's consensus rules to include a
tail emission like Monero. Perhaps even more controversial than this proposed change to policy. Todd has submitted more than on Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) suggesting the "datacarrier size" restriction of 80 (and before that 40) bytes be removed entirely to allow any sized op_return.
Jameson Lopp - Another long time early bitcoinner, contributor, and eventually VC. In this drama he was key to pushing the change, and recently
admitted it was on behalf of one of the companies he is an investor in "Citrea". Ironically Citrea does not even need the data in the blockchain, but
ONLY IN THE MEMPOOL though this means it's stored on full (archival) nodes forever anyway. And not only did Citrea only ask for 160 bytes (another 2x basically) but the CEO also said they would rather Core back down and not do any change because of the contention. Lopp has been VERY abrasive, and arguably arrogant during this drama mocking those who were against it all the way along.
Luke Dashjr - An original Core dev, and longtime bitcoin OG. Perhaps the 2nd most prolific contributor to Bitcoin Core as well as the lead maintainer of the fork Bitcoin Knots. Luke is ANOTHER lightning rod. Perhaps the most autistic of all the devs (no offense to any of us neurodivergent folk here. I am among you.) and perhaps one of the most black and white thinkers I have ever witnessed. Luke does nothing on the medium setting. He is a hardcore Catholic, has disliked almost all recent popes, and has 11 children. He has been VERY loud during this debate, and tends to say things in such polarized ways that people can accuse him of being contradictory. Most recently saying things like "It has never been possible to put images on the blockchain until v30" which makes his opposition howl in laughter. What they do not see is his take on even this is VERY deep and actually has reasoning behind it. He considers using a hack to store image data as illegitimate and therefore "not possible" without abusing the protocol. He is such a powerful adversarial thinker than Blockstream hired him to sit in the room during meetings just to speak up when he had an issue. He is now employed by Ocean. A mining pool that is working hard to stop miner centralization and works to put individual miners in the drivers seat for what they include in a block. He has focused overly on the CSAM (child porn) angle in the debate, but this too fits his worldview.
Adam Back - A reference in the whitepaper! Often put forward as Satoshi himself, though he denies this (and I do not think he is Satoshi). Inventor (some refute this) of proof of work to help eliminate spam (sound familiar?) in email. He seemed to work out his position on this in public on X. This confused many. As one minute he seemed pro filters, and the next anti. He has ended up on the Core side, and has done a LOT of level headed apologetics for that position and some interviews. One of the cooler heads in the debate, though he also get a little nasty on X and says harsh things about Dashjr. But this is understandable sionce Luke is a bit difficult to process, and as I said EXTREMELY binary. Back concedes that justr doing a bump to 160 would have made the most sense, and does not try to argue 100k was a good idea. He also is very protective of the core devs and afraid this controversy will make some of them flee.
Nick Szabo - Oddly NOT a reference in the whitepaper. And one of the most fitting candidates to be Satoshi (he also denies it). Inventor of BitGold which was ALMOST bitcoin. Szabo reappeared on X after a 5 year hiatus. Some think this issue may be why. This is speculation. Szabo is a polymath. He is a cryptographer, a Juris Doctor (a law PHD), a prolific and respected writer on economics, the history of money. He is the inventor of "smart property" as well as "smart contracts". He isa STRONGLY right leaning Libertarian (as far as I would guess) and has been quite vocal on this issue. He has landed firmly in the Filters camp, has
suggested people run Knots as "hopefully a temporary measure" and advised at least not to upgrade to V30. His comments on this have been mostly in the arena of second order effects, enlarging bitcoin's attack surface as well as the legal implications of the change.
Jason Hughes (bitcoinmechanic) - Another employee of Ocean. Hughes is a very well spoken communicator and passionate spokesperson for filters and running Knots. He does not have the cryptography background of many others. But his layman's take matches a lot of the other Bitcoin community who tend more to the philosophical, and economic positions (like Jeff Booth, or Tomer Stoughlite - also Knots camp). In a recent debate at the Bitcoin conference in Lugano
he received a 45 second standing ovation after making his point. The look on Peter Todd's face was priceless.
Hughes has more than once said he does not agree with Luke 100% but obviously they agree on most of it.
Gloria Zhao Bitcoin Core's lead maintainer. Gloria is the person that merged the PR. She is a fairly recent graduate from Berkley, and though she has some impressive history there is some controversy around how she was appointed (Chaincode plays a role here and claims of nepotism as she was someone's girlfriend??) and
recent clips from an interview on the WBD podcast which really show her in a negative light. Showing her as on the pro NFT camp. She has taken a LOT of heat and mockery. Some of it absolutely brutal, and sometimes misogynist. Though there is an overage of White Knighting from others, and even if you make a good argument against her you are labeled a misogynist.
Greg Maxwell Well known, loquacious and generally extremely opinionated OG dev. He has weighed in several times with his typical fiery screeds. He has been viciously critical of Luke Dashjr
barely hiding his disgust at Luke's extremely strong faith. He has argued here on this forum as well as in google groups and github for the core side. He seems to have coined the term "distributed authoritarianism" during this debate. Definitely worth dipping into for some of the hardest hitting pro core arguments.
Matthew Kratter - Prolific Youtube Bitcoin vlogger.
https://www.youtube.com/@Bitcoin_University Perhaps the loudest voice amongst the "podcasters" (a term used by the core folks as a dig, saying this argument is between qualified developers, and podcaster morons). Kratter has likely lost some of his audience by sticking on this topic so doggedly for weeks (if not months). He has always made quite good Maxi centric short videos for some time, and has agressively been making points about the problems with "blowing open" (a Knots side label for the 100k increase) OP_RETURN. Worth watching, and hopefully he can get back to vlogs that are not around this topic someday.
OK! I could go on and on, as you all know. And there are MANY MANY voices on both sides from names many of us will recognize. There was a recent discussion (pro Knots) between Jimmy Song and Guy Swan that is worth watching. The debates at Lugano hosted by Stephan Livera (very pro core) might be worth watching... and then there is the endless list of X/Twitter shittalkers and jackasses. But I think the list above gets the bulk of the real key voices.
Next in my series will be a summary of the two arguments. I will try to be balanced.
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