RoninDojo bans connections to Knots nodes

[apogio]

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/11/29/jack-dorsey-aims-to-create-anti-censorship-bitcoin-mining-pool-with-new-startup/

and

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/12/01/jack-dorsey-backs-ocean-in-shifting-toward-decentralized-bitcoin-mining/?sh=5e213817346c

So yes he (or he with others) is throwing a lot of $ at the pool.

Considering how block / square want to know everything you do within the BTC ecosystem and everything else they control it's not a surprise they also want to control what TXs are mined.

-Dave

This is a quote from one of the articles you mention:

Ocean's debut comes as some legacy mining pools have been the subject of controversy for censoring certain transactions, as "censorship resistance" is considered by many Bitcoiners to be a cardinal principle of the largest and original blockchain.

I mean, it will be "censorship resistant", but at the same time, their decision to refuse to relay Whirlpool transactions, isn't it considered censhorship?

I'm all for adding more flexibility to the settings users can change but this sounds like a malicious centralized move. Not to mention that you don't need to ban other implementations such as Knots if you run a full node like bitcoin core. The only difference in Knots is some of the standard rules and there is a reason why they are called "standard rules", they are preference not a ban worthy offense. For example your node may decide not to relay txs with fee rate lower than 10 sat/vb but that doesn't mean your node should be banned!

According to o_e_l_e_o's original post, Knots is run only by 0.4% of the current nodes.

If you ask me, as I mentionned above, I agree that banning wasn't something I had in mind until now. I am ok with identifying if some of my peers constantly reject my transactions and manually banning them, but I don't really want to make a ban using a "wildcard" or something like that.

But Bitcoin is fantastic because anyone is allowed to do whatever they want with their nodes. Their nodes their rules.

[1714502529]

1714502529

[o_e_l_e_o]

The only difference in Knots is some of the standard rules and there is a reason why they are called "standard rules", they are preference not a ban worthy offense.

If one of your peers was rejecting all Segwit transactions, would you not drop them for a peer which was not placing arbitrary limits on completely standard transactions?

Their nodes their rules.

Exactly. If they are free to censor transactions from their nodes, then I am free to refuse to connect to their nodes.

As I mentioned, this is largely irrelevant at the moment since Knots are such a tiny fraction of all nodes, but it sets a terrible precedence. What you if end up with the majority of your peers censoring your transactions or refusing to relay all transactions? You compromise your own security, privacy, and ability to use bitcoin for no reason? Better to fight back against this kind of nonsense right now before it becomes more widespread.

[apogio]

Exactly. If they are free to censor transactions from their nodes, then I am free to refuse to connect to their nodes.

As I mentioned, this is largely irrelevant at the moment since Knots are such a tiny fraction of all nodes, but it sets a terrible precedence. What you if end up with the majority of your peers censoring your transactions or refusing to relay all transactions? You compromise your own security, privacy, and ability to use bitcoin for no reason? Better to fight back against this kind of nonsense right now before it becomes more widespread.

It is not irrelevant. One of the most important things in Bitcoin is that you can disobey to other nodes' rules if you disagree. The fact that it doesn't make a difference now shouldn't make us feel safer. What if JD and LD manage to convince a lot of people to use their node implementation? We implement our rules... We try to convince people that our rules are better. Otherwise we will end up in a centralised system, not very different than the one we currently live in.

[DooMAD]

Exactly. If they are free to censor transactions from their nodes, then I am free to refuse to connect to their nodes.

As I mentioned, this is largely irrelevant at the moment since Knots are such a tiny fraction of all nodes, but it sets a terrible precedence. What you if end up with the majority of your peers censoring your transactions or refusing to relay all transactions? You compromise your own security, privacy, and ability to use bitcoin for no reason? Better to fight back against this kind of nonsense right now before it becomes more widespread.

It is not irrelevant. One of the most important things in Bitcoin is that you can disobey to other nodes' rules if you disagree. The fact that it doesn't make a difference now shouldn't make us feel safer. What if JD and LD manage to convince a lot of people to use their node implementation? We implement our rules... We try to convince people that our rules are better. Otherwise we will end up in a centralised system, not very different than the one we currently live in.

Game-theory and the 'alignment of incentives' still appears to be steering the network correctly at the moment.  Economic pressure is now acting against those running the Knots client.  Action and reaction.  It's a self-governing network and this is what self-governance looks like.  You're absolutely free to disagree, however, there's a catch.  Deviate from what's in the best interests of the network, expect consequences.  People will find a way to freely transact, even if it requires removing obstacles from their path.  Ergo, avoid being an obstacle to freedom and the network won't act against you.

I'd rather not test the theory that this holds up to larger scale disputes, but it seems to have effectively quelled this one.

[apogio]

Game-theory and the 'alignment of incentives' still appears to be steering the network correctly at the moment.  Economic pressure is now acting against those running the Knots client.  Action and reaction.  It's a self-governing network and this is what self-governance looks like.  You're absolutely free to disagree, however, there's a catch.  Deviate from what's in the best interests of the network, expect consequences.  People will find a way to freely transact, even if it requires removing obstacles from their path.  Ergo, avoid being an obstacle to freedom and the network won't act against you.

I'd rather not test the theory that this holds up to larger scale disputes, but it seems to have effectively quelled this one.

To be honest, my main problem at the moment is that Bitcoin becomes unusable due to high fees. So, in this regard, I don't see Knots as the enemy here. Their decision not to relay Whirlpool transactions is not a direct hit against Whirlpool, but rather an effort to stop ordinals. The problem is, they will indirectly harm various tools that protect our privacy...

[DooMAD]

To be honest, my main problem at the moment is that Bitcoin becomes unusable due to high fees. So, in this regard, I don't see Knots as the enemy here. Their decision not to relay Whirlpool transactions is not a direct hit against Whirlpool, but rather an effort to stop ordinals. The problem is, they will indirectly harm various tools that protect our privacy...

Hence the adage:  "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"

It's simply not a viable approach.  Think of it like war.  The more you escalate, the more collateral damage you potentially cause, the larger the number of people who get caught in the crossfire.  In the end, it's mostly innocent people who suffer. 

[pooya87]

The only difference in Knots is some of the standard rules and there is a reason why they are called "standard rules", they are preference not a ban worthy offense.

If one of your peers was rejecting all Segwit transactions, would you not drop them for a peer which was not placing arbitrary limits on completely standard transactions?

Automatically yes but never hard-code such a rule to ban a certain implementation because of its "changeable preference".

As a full node or a light client, we connect to full nodes for many different reasons not just to push transactions. Which means having the most options to connect to is better.

We also have little ways of knowing why a node rejected a transaction we just sent it. It may be a bad signature, it may be an overloaded mempool that has dynamically increased the fee rate or it could be a standard rule aka preference that the user changed. For example a bitcoin core node can reject a transaction containing an OP_RETURN output that is 10 bytes while a bitcoin Knots node can accept an OP_RETURN output that is 500 bytes just because the user can easily change those limits. They are not hard-coded.

It's up to the developer of your client to have already handled all these cases automatically and in a general way not a hard-coded case-by-case way through their user-agent just because they had a fight with that other developer on Twitter 

[o_e_l_e_o]

Automatically yes but never hard-code such a rule to ban a certain implementation because of its "changeable preference".

It's not hard coded:

For users with bitcoind installed by Dojo (via docker), bitcoind will now periodically scan connected peers and ban those that are detected as Knots. This feature can be turned off by setting BITCOIND_CRON_JOBS=off in docker-bitcoind.conf.

If Knot users stop censoring Whirlpool transactions by changing their OP_RETURN limit, then Dojo users can very easily choose to connect to Knots nodes again by changing this setting.