Removing OP_return limits seems like a huge mistake

[tvbcof]

From my perspective (going back a long ways) real sidechains such as liquid ARE 'bitcoin'.

I didn't mean that in the sense of anything negative, I mean you don't need to wonder about anything that complicated. The NFT/shitcoin stuff could just use some other much cheaper chain or whatever.  They don't because reasons that I discussed upthread-- sidechains wouldn't help those reasons, they'd hurt. The value to the shitcoiner is that it's expensive to make their tokens.
...

Yeah, OK.  In a upthread search for what you mention, and other research and consideration, I'm now feeling neutral if not slightly favorable to the action.  I find some of the details and actions (e.g., methods of limiting discussion) objectionable, and I've a lingering feeling that there are things on the horizon which remain among 'insiders', but it continues to be the case that I have more confidence in most of the 'insiders' than in most of other of the players to further my interests.  For things like this, I usually favor pragmatism over idealism.

I disagree with taking controls away from the 'little people' (those who cannot patch and compile code to get what they have, rightly or wrongly, chosen to do.)  One argument could be that it gives favored and/or paying efforts such as Citrea more business confidence.  I don't believe that it is probably a good trade-off for the 'ethos' of freedom of choice, especially insofar as there is still a hope that Bitcoin gains some strength from the efforts of the non-commercial/enthusiast userbase.

From an elitist point of view, the herd probably can be guided in the 'wrong' direction, but I don't like the looks of mitigating this 'threat' for the comfort of the business world.  Especially in service to players to prefer to pilfer value from Bitcoin on the cheap vs. peg out one-to-one as real sidechains do.  (Yes, I see an argument that a cheapskate doing things in a less destructive way, and soaking up some demand at the consumer level, is preferable to some other options so it is not irrational to gently guide things in that direction.  Lots of them are working on/with interesting technology with helps with Bitcoin's shortcomings after all.)

A big benefit of a spat such as this is to incentivize small-scale support (nodes and miners.)  Certainly that seems to be happening where I'm at.

Ultimately I see the best defense against spammer-class miscreants (who don't get bored and wander off on their own) as giving the Bitcoin community some ability to fuck with them and degrade their performance expectations.  If an element of capricious unknown complicates development, and especially discourages 'serious' commercial use by well capitalized entities, that isn't to me necessarily a bad thing (even though it would probably work against me financially.)

Good luck with things.  I'll finally, after 15 years, get off my ass and build out some capability so I can help you or fight you as seems right at the time.  After a 180-degree shift back in the early days, I've always favored massive transaction fees (at variance with most of the community) which is one of the reasons for my warming to your efforts.

[gmaxwell]

Core developers are taking payments to submit pull requests. That is the state of development for Bitcoin at the moment. I have a feeling as time goes by we’re going to discover more and more bad behavior. People are tired of the way things have been going. There’s too much money behind Bitcoin for developers to be so easily paid for.

A fact you might have already known if you'd like, you know, actually read the links in the discussion above:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/28130#issuecomment-1656714337

There is no bad behavior in that, it's a fine example of how even if you don't know how to code yourself you can still get changes made to run yourself or share with others.

The worst behavior around bitcoin core is the hesitance to forcefully tell people who act like you to go fuck themselves.

[takuma sato]

Obviously removing OP_return limits is a bad idea, but I don’t think Blockstream left the community many other options. After backstabbing miners by not living up to promises made in the New York agreement and instead crippling Bitcoin, toxic maxis thought they were untouchable. It seems chasing away those who wanted to grow the Bitcoin ecosystem bought them a few years, but they’re seemingly now being overwhelmed with people sick of their idiotic approach to scaling Bitcoin. Is removing OP_return limits a bad idea? Yes. Is this exactly what core developers deserve? Also yes. Until they actively push to raise the blocksize limit to 2mb and fulfill their 2017 obligation that was made in a compromise to get segwit activated, I cannot respect the Blockstream team or anything they do.

That solves nothing. If you double the blocksize, so what, you make it cheaper to send transactions, and you also allow further spam and make it more difficult to maintain nodes. You also start a clusterfuck of hardfork drama again. And we don't even have anywhere near full blocks. People are not using BTC massively for transactions, they use it as a store of value. One of the worst things for store of value is these hardfork dramas, remember the price crashing when that was going on back then on the various attempts at forking the chain. If there is demand for transactions, then the fees will go up, and those that pay more will have a priority. The demand for transactions will organically eventually arrive in the future as physical cash is removed. If fees are too high for small transactions, then LN was supposed to fix this. If not, then oh well, what can you do. What I don't understand is just allowing further spam because "people will find alternatives to spam".
I think those that argued BTC should just stay with legacy addresses without no layers of complexity were probably right. Trying to make Bitcoin cheaper has brought all these new exploitable angles.

[BayAreaCoins]

There is no bad behavior in that, it's a fine example of how even if you don't know how to code yourself you can still get changes made to run yourself or share with others.

I am a good example of not knowing how to code and still being able to make changes (without hurting anyone or changing any existing rules (not gentlemen agreements)).

This is an example of money being used to influence individuals to make code changes in a $1.8 trillion dollar network that affects others directly.  It feels like a slippery slope... Paying for code is fine, but paying for propaganda and influence with the code is ehhhhh.....

If paying off Bitcoin Developers is now fundamentally acceptable for people that do not code, I will beat the $100 per hour rate that Peter was paid for ANY assistance in supporting Bitcoin Testnet being a free market for testing.

The worst behavior around bitcoin core is the hesitance to forcefully tell people who act like you to go fuck themselves.

I know the feeling.  That last email you sent on the mailing list about Bitcoin Testnet inspired those exact thoughts as well.


Regardless if OP_Return is a mistake or not... it should not be merged in with this much noise going on IMO.  

This all feels sketchy and probably needs to slow down.

OPnet.org can do everything Citrea.xyz wants to do with no BIP(?)

[achow101]

OPnet.org can do everything Citrea.xyz wants to do

Citrea can already do everything they want to do with no changes made to Bitcoin Core or anyone else.

The thing that kicked off all of this drama is that a Core dev read Citrea's whitepaper, saw the construction that they were going to use, and said "wow that's dumb, you can do better if the OP_RETURN limit was higher". The whole point is that the current construction would insert 2 unspendable outputs into the UTXO set and they were doing this in order to work around the OP_RETURN limit. And the discussion started with the thought that if the limit were lifted, Citrea could be convinced to just use a single OP_RETURN instead.

with no BIP(?)

There isn't a BIP; this isn't a BIP-able change.

[BayAreaCoins]

OPnet.org can do everything Citrea.xyz wants to do

Citrea can already do everything they want to do with no changes made to Bitcoin Core or anyone else.

The thing that kicked off all of this drama is that a Core dev read Citrea's whitepaper, saw the construction that they were going to use, and said "wow that's dumb, you can do better if the OP_RETURN limit was higher". The whole point is that the current construction would insert 2 unspendable outputs into the UTXO set and they were doing this in order to work around the OP_RETURN limit. And the discussion started with the thought that if the limit were lifted, Citrea could be convinced to just use a single OP_RETURN instead.

Are you sure that Bitcoin Core contributor(s) didn't write or help write Citrea's whitepaper? "Put it on paper and we will get it pushed live" type of deal.  Because it is absolutely giving that vibe.

Do you or anyone you know have a financial interest in Citrea?

There isn't a BIP; this isn't a BIP-able change.

Ah, duh.  Gotcha.


I have a front row seat for Testnet... I saw some REALLY weird things go on with v3 to push out a rushed/sloppy v4 for the block rewards.  Then to find out Citrea is using v4 and users need 10 whole TBTC to help test their product... it just feels "weird".  Lopp attacking a network to assist a private company to enable them to hopefully have plenty of coins in the network to test their startup and then these changes to Bitcoin itself... Eh... Am I tripping or...?

It's pretty smart, needless to say.

I'm seeing all types of unusual shit from yall, like GMaxwell suggesting a premined Testnet that sells to pay devs (which maybe fine, but needs to be talked about).



Also, I'm a supporter of removing OP_return.



Fuck em, ram that code down their throat...  

Let's see how it goes.

[achow101]

Are you sure that Bitcoin Core contributor(s) didn't write or help write Citrea's whitepaper?

No, but I would be surprised.

"Put it on paper and we will get it pushed live" type of deal.  Because it is absolutely giving that vibe.

The whole point of their paper is that they can do exactly what they want without making any changes. They literally describe what they want to do, why they can't do it in just OP_RETURN, and what they are going to do to work around it. I didn't see anything about asking for a change to the network rules or that they were expecting network rules to change. AFAICT, even with the limit removed, they may not change their construction to use a single OP_RETURN although it seems like they are open to that idea.

[BayAreaCoins]

Are you sure that Bitcoin Core contributor(s) didn't write or help write Citrea's whitepaper?

No, but I would be surprised.

"Put it on paper and we will get it pushed live" type of deal.  Because it is absolutely giving that vibe.

The whole point of their paper is that they can do exactly what they want without making any changes. They literally describe what they want to do, why they can't do it in just OP_RETURN, and what they are going to do to work around it. I didn't see anything about asking for a change to the network rules or that they were expecting network rules to change. AFAICT, even with the limit removed, they may not change their construction to use a single OP_RETURN although it seems like they are open to that idea.

Do you or anyone you know have a financial interest in Citrea?

Here is a tip for your time responding to that last post:  https://blockstream.info/tx/beed9e6a333fd40fe7e278e39ea78b90f2e3225033dc778781700adcc1ef3b80

Thank you.

[gmaxwell]

BayAreaCoins you seem to have the idea that bitcoin developers are a free shitcoin development business for you.  They are not.  Testnet is for testing, v4 was created because v3 got traded for money, v3 got created (and was left intentionally defective) because v2 got traded for money, etc.  If third party usage of testnet gets in the way of the uses its authors created it for, they will continue to just switch to different rules at their own convenience.  You just don't get any say in the subject, it's not up for debate, and you've certainly been well informed of this all along by many people.  For testnet there isn't even a sense that the system was created for the benefit of others, it's not, it's just a test, and it is intended to have no more value than monopoly money.  Of course, you're free to make whatever shitcoins you want including derivatives of the Bitcoin software-- the bitcoin devs are kind enough to give away the software they've written under terms that allow you to do so, something under which they are under absolutely no obligation to do so, and might be wise to reconsider if they're not treated with professionalism and kindness.

Likewise, there was nothing about my suggestion actually "paying devs".  The reason testnet should probably be massively premined is to assure developers always have ready access to coins and to completely undermine the economics of any attempt to invest in it speculatively because that usage has consistently gotten in the way of using it for testing -- in other words to assure that it remains worthless as it is and has always been intended by its creators.  If the idea I suggest works there is never any value, if it fails at least the trouble of switching to the next version might be compensated from the profits of dumping premined coins on the market. Win Win.  Your aggressively negative response is probably the best evidence that the proposal would be effective and that prior proposals would not that anyone could possibly have wanted.  --- not that anyone specifically has the goal of pissing you off, but you've been insistent on creating and driving usage that is at odds with the creators intention for testnet and changes that make it less useful for your purposes make it more useful for the authors purposes.  Bitcoin developers have hosted a lawn party, you built a sand castle on the bank of their wave pool, under a "no sand castles here" sign-- it literally says "test" in the name--, you don't get to throw a fit when they turn the waves on.  

As far as your question, I'm not aware of any bitcoin core contributor that has any financial interest in citrea and I asked around a bit-- but also it's kind of a dumb question because this change should be of no meaningful financial benefit to citrea: They're already stuffing their data in fake outputs. Assuming there is ever a meaningful amount of that particular traffic (which itself is a big assumption) the benefit would be to all future users of bitcoin in reducing the amount of unprunable utxo bloat.  It's also a dumb question in that the whole premise of Bitcoin is that people adopt it for their own interests, the gauge under which it should be judged is does it help or harm others.  Lets imagine it were amazingly helpful for them (though I don't see how), so what?  If anything that would be a point in its favor.  It would be another issue if it were the only reason to do it, but as I mentioned up thread I commented in support of this proposal without any idea what citrea was, I don't consider it particularly relevant except as a concrete example of one thing that currently uses fake outputs that would probably switch.

[BayAreaCoins]

it's kind of a dumb question

If you think it is dumb, then don't waste your time on it.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to respond.  https://blockstream.info/tx/2d4471734295140e8c584cd71a44c60379b0a72f07f2c8a079656eec53afdf4f

I'll respond to your message in a bit.

Bitcoin developers have hosted a lawn party, you built a sand castle on the bank of their wave pool, under a "no sand castles here" sign-- it literally says "test" in the name--, you don't get to throw a fit when they turn the waves on.  

I love this btw.  

[Bestcoin-fan]

You know, I think the greatest ever, excellent genuine Bitcoin BTC should not be spammed with any non-financial data in its Blockchain.
Personally, I have just successfully migrated from Core to Knots full node.

I compared various (hidden in Core but visible in Knots) node's settings and kept almost all (including Anti-Spam) setting to Knot's Defaults.

I think Knots shows a more open, responsible, honest approach by giving the right and freedom to the community to decide what types of transactions can be on the BTC blockchain.

[l8orre]

interesting - can this lead to a hardfork?

[BayAreaCoins]

As far as your question, I'm not aware of any bitcoin core contributor that has any financial interest in citrea

https://youtu.be/EKQvDfmQkt8?t=13210

Jameson Lopp openly saying that he has a financial interest.  

There are others too that I know.

I'm not going to ask you a question I don't know at least partially know the answer to.  I just want to see your answer.

No, but I would be surprised.

I would not.  

I thought it was REALLY weird that y'all found a Testnet project before I did... then the mailing list people quoting page 16... right...

[xyzzy099]

As far as your question, I'm not aware of any bitcoin core contributor that has any financial interest in citrea

https://youtu.be/EKQvDfmQkt8?t=13210

Jameson Lopp openly saying that he has a financial interest.  

There are others too that I know.

I'm not going to ask you a question I don't know at least partially know the answer to.  I just wanted to see your answer.

No, but I would be surprised.

I would not.  

I thought it was REALLY weird that y'all found a Testnet project before I did... then the mailing list people quoting page 16... right...

Jameson Lopp is not, as far as I know, a Bitcoin Core contributor.

[BayAreaCoins]

As far as your question, I'm not aware of any bitcoin core contributor that has any financial interest in citrea

https://youtu.be/EKQvDfmQkt8?t=13210

Jameson Lopp openly saying that he has a financial interest.  

There are others too that I know.

I'm not going to ask you a question I don't know at least partially know the answer to.  I just wanted to see your answer.

No, but I would be surprised.

I would not.  

I thought it was REALLY weird that y'all found a Testnet project before I did... then the mailing list people quoting page 16... right...

Jameson Lopp is not, as far as I know, a Bitcoin Core contributor.  

Shit, you are right.  Weird...  I'm wrong a lot of the time and I appreciate being correct. <3 Ty

https://blockstream.info/tx/8b2109bb5a4fb20d9f96e15e349759ba83bbe387c868b960712ca3e4c01e5085

It seems Lop hasn't openly contributed anything directly on this table: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors.  

Payment from third parties through Contributors doesn't seem like an uncommon practice.  Peter getting paid off in OGNasty's screenshot seems to not be the first time something similar has happened. https://web.archive.org/web/20131120061753/http://pastebin.com/4BcycXUu  I don't know if this is real, but Greg, you are mentioned in there funneling around Bitcoins too.

I wonder if Contributors feel like these payments are private and do not feel the requirement to disclose them.  I assume this is a "Gentlemans Agreement" at this point(?)


There is some debate on what makes a person a "Bitcoin developer": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5513595.msg64645672#msg64645672 (this post is merited by Greg). (This user also uses my website: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5516607.msg65357908#msg65357908... stwenhao signature for the Testnet4 blockchain puzzle actually came from us and then the extra coins where sent back to us.)


Greg, I've not forgotten you.

I'll PM a thread with my full response to your message.

In short:

We really aren't that different.  I read your post to my GF and she goes "He sounds like you" and rolled her eyes   lol

Just like I don't have "any" say in things, which is fine.  You do not either.  You have absolutely no say in my private business and how we use cryptocurrency.

If Bitcoin is only used for what you and the creator wanted it to be used for, what code actions have you taken against organizations that hack hospitals and trade child porn?  (I remember GOATS bounty)

You don't control what people do with permissionless cryptocurrency, and I don't think you'd want to, but perhaps you do aspire to, and ramming this OP_Return change is just the start.

You have beyond no authority over me... I simply choose to follow the code or not.  I would follow your premined proposal, and that's partially why it is concerning, because it would solve my "Finding sellers" problem.  I'm a professional at worthless cryptocurrencies sir.  I am here to help, but my help may piss you off and help expose flaws (be it code or logic).  My website is like a house of cards in a daycare... I'd give my left nut for a sandcastle even remotely near a pool. <3

[d5000]

The whole Citrea issue doesn't change anything from the technical reasons for and against this change. And I also think there is no Citrea issue at all, because afaik Citrea only was brought up in a public mailinglist discussion, that's why Todd mentioned it in the PR discussion.

Personally seeing the resistance against a complete limit removal, I'm currently leaning towards a modest increase of the limit like propsed by @Ionko and @jaybny, up to 0,5-1 kB or so. This would be enough for sidechain/rollup proofs like Citrea's and other financial applications, but not enough for images with the exception of very small ones. Images would then probably still use the Taproot method, but they would use that anyway because it's cheaper and the Ordinals protocol is already established. And the "social consensus" still would be at least hint that at least from the perspective of Core OP_RETURN is not meant to be used for higher amounts of arbitrary data.

That would of course not provide most of the advantages of a complete removal (maintenance cost etc.) but perhaps help to nudge protocols like Citrea into a less harmful data storage mechanism.

I think Knots shows a more open, responsible, honest approach by giving the right and freedom to the community to decide what types of transactions can be on the BTC blockchain.

Fake address JPEGs FTW!  

interesting - can this lead to a hardfork?

No. This discussion is not about a protocol change. It's about standardness rules, basically default values, for the mempools. Every Bitcoin implementation can set these values as they like. One of the arguments for the change is also that it reduces maintenance cost.

The only way this could lead to a hard fork is if the developers of alternative clients like Knots feel encouraged if there are now many full node operators switching to their clients, and try to establish an own protocol change mechanism. I think however the devs of these alt clients are still responsible enough to not try this.

[nutildah]

Whats interesting/sad is there is absolutely no mention of Citrea in my X feed -- all the attention is on who is going to release the first OP_RETURN-based NFTs on Bitcoin, which incidentally has already been done since 2014.

Such a situation could be compared with the situation in 2013-15 when the first NFT/token protocols on Bitcoin were implemented, there were several systems in competition (Mastercoin/Omni and Counterparty, mainly); none of them "won" the "battle" decisively, and eventually they both faded away, at least none of them created any significant congestion or fee spike.

There was a lot of controversy with Counterparty in the early days thanks to luke-jr's objections, but what the Counterparty devs realized is they could implement workarounds regardless of what fields were limited in an attempt to stifle the protocol. Because Counterparty is responsible for some of the first NFTs ever made (before "NFT" was a term), it will never completely fade away as there will always be a collector's market for these things. And outside of Bitcoin Stamps, which started there before moving to a different platform, its usage of blockchain space has been relatively responsible. Yes, it is still highly niche compared to Ordinals, however.

You're probably aware of it already but there was also a way to make tokens on Bitcoin in an Ordinals-like fashion via "Colored Coins", going all the way back to 2012.

Jameson Lopp is not, as far as I know, a Bitcoin Core contributor.

I suppose it depends how you define Bitcoin Core contributor.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/ad5cd129f3cc72f2d2b140e182781bf3bb5dbacc/doc/release-notes/release-notes-0.15.0.md?plain=1#L818

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:
...
- Jameson Lopp

[BayAreaCoins]

I suppose it depends how you define Bitcoin Core contributor.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/ad5cd129f3cc72f2d2b140e182781bf3bb5dbacc/doc/release-notes/release-notes-0.15.0.md?plain=1#L818

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:
...
- Jameson Lopp

That is definitely a contributor... Thank god, I thought I was losing my mind for a second.

Nutildah ftw:  https://blockstream.info/tx/732a6411f1519f8e3ed18d295e8b944d1dcd5fef3df36c276c33ca460271a581

As far as your question, I'm not aware of any bitcoin core contributor that has any financial interest in citrea

https://youtu.be/EKQvDfmQkt8?t=13210

Jameson Lopp openly saying that he has a financial interest.  

Greg, were you aware of this Bitcoin Core contributor's financial interest before these posts?

Think *really* hard.  Maybe you should "ask around".

Whats interesting/sad is there is absolutely no mention of Citrea in my X feed -- all the attention is on who is going to release the first OP_RETURN-based NFTs on Bitcoin, which incidentally has already been done since 2014.

https://opnet.org/

They make the most noise in Testnet.  (They will be in Dubia this month I think.)

[gmaxwell]

You're referring to someone who across bitcoins history submitted a couple trivial bug fixes, something well over a thousand people have done.  I wasn't aware of that and I don't think it's either interesting or relevant. Literally anyone in the world can post fixes and a great many have, so what? What you're trying to imply is some kind of conflict of interest among people who decide what changes go into the repository, but it doesn't follow because he isn't one of them.  You've also just completely evaded the point that there doesn't appear to be any reason to think this change is a financial benefit to citrea-- as they already do what they do by bloating the utxo set, which is fine for them but bad for bitcoin.

All it shows, like your invocation Goat above-- a fraudster that put up a bounty to fabricate evidence of unlawful conduct by me after I called him out and before he vanished with people's coins, who didn't even have the integrity to pay out to me when I tried to collect on it-- is that for whatever reason you're just absolutely desperate to smear people.  I'd forgotten about all that, thanks for the reminder of yet another time I helped save people from being defrauded, and yet another time someone criticizing me was ultimately just shown to be a pathetic scammer.
 

I'd give my left nut for a sandcastle even remotely near a pool.

Might be time to reconsider some of your life choices, perhaps listen to your wife more.  Who would want to give you an opportunity to you when they see how you act?
 

[BayAreaCoins]

I wasn't aware of that

Cool, thank you.

All it shows, like your invocation Goat above

Absolutely not.  I thought it was all gross.

I thought pool hopping was brilliant.  I enjoy "smart mining".  (Like the dude protesting in v4 by mining empty blocks, this causes me customer support tickets, but I still think it is kind of cool.)

You've also just completely evaded the point that there doesn't appear to be any reason to think this change is a financial benefit to citrea-- as they already do what they do by bloating the utxo set, which is fine for them but bad for bitcoin.

I will respond to every sentence you wrote regarding me or my business in the near future, don't worry.  If anyone evaded a question, it was achow101, but that's OK.

Again, I support removing OP_Return.  I didn't think I'd ramble on it further.

Slam that shit down their throat big dog.  <3


You do know y'all sound oddly in sync talking about Citrea regarding this, right?  (Not that it matters, it's just weird... all of this is just weird.)



I can *easily* get around this spam filter if I want. Perhaps email spam filters should also be removed(?)  

(reference my negative feedback from Midnightmagic about me bypassing my long term IRC ban.)


Bounty: 2,500 Bitcoin Testnet v4 coins

Provide proof that Greg was aware of these or other financial involvements before his post, claiming he was unaware.

As far as your question, I'm not aware of any bitcoin core contributor that has any financial interest in citrea

https://youtu.be/EKQvDfmQkt8?t=13210

Jameson Lopp openly saying that he has a financial interest.  

You're referring to someone who across bitcoins history submitted a couple trivial bug fixes, something well over a thousand people have done.  I wasn't aware of that

Greg, you are welcome to claim this bounty if you've thought about it further and you suddenly remember before someone else does.  

You are either ignorant or a liar, and I think both are unacceptable for a person in your position.  (But who cares what I think!)

not that anyone specifically has the goal of pissing you off

Same.