What is your take on Bitcoin Knotz? Bitcoin node and wallet by Luke Dashjr

[stwenhao]

every node runner would become potential targets of the criminal justice system

Only full archival nodes. Pruned nodes won't be harmed in any way. And in the future, even UTXO set may become pruned, and then, the effort to prove, that a given UTXO exist, will be moved from nodes to users.

From the start Bitcoin was created by Satoshi as a monetary network first and foremost and should not be turned into another shitcoin like Ethereum, solana, pepecoin, fartcoin, etc.

I think non-monetary use cases will be more and more popular. I guess it is inevitable. The only thing you can do, is to prepare for that. And by "being prepared", I mean for example "being ready to prune UTXOs, and require SPV proofs for UTXOs from future users".

There is no need, and no sense for bitcoin to do the same.

Many humans are stupid, and many spammers will stick to the worst possible schemes, no matter if you want that, or not. And then, the only option will be to turn something, that is currently "optional", to something, that will be "required by consensus".

I guess the main chain will be spammed. And then, the only way to avoid spam, will be joining some subnetwork, built on top of Bitcoin, which would have stricter rules, where all scripts would be committed to some valid public keys, and always spendable, where the effort to store data will be shifted into end users, and where more and more rules will encourage more efficient use of blockchain space.

you cannot prevent any data to be stored on your node

You can. For example, there were proposals, to introduce UTXO expiration: https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/dust-expiry-clean-the-utxo-set-from-spam/1707

If there will be more spam, then there will be only more such proposals. And after enough people will be mad, there will be chains, built on top of Bitcoin, with 1:1 peg, which will really enforce such rules.

[Wind_FURY]

The coming changes to Bitcoin Core would force node runners to host all kinds of garbage including images of child pornography and other useless or even illegal material. That is no exaggeration. Since it is against the law to host CP on your computer every node runner would become potential targets of the criminal justice system, through no fault of their own. Which is why I switched to Knots long ago.

That's the sort of FUD that has been used before, BUT intent truly matters. I don't believe that it would happen to be as simple as what the FUD suggests.

This would provide governments with a legal justification to shut down bitcoin completely or at least outlaw it in their respective country.

Good luck proving that there was actual intent in court. Ethereum and Solana could be bigger targets, no?

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Those who argue that bitcoin should be completely free and wide open to anything, and that anything goes on the bitcoin network as long as you pay the network fees, are complete fucking retarded imbeciles. From the start Bitcoin was created by Satoshi as a monetary network first and foremost and should not be turned into another shitcoin like Ethereum, solana, pepecoin, fartcoin, etc.

There are millions of existing chains that shitcoiners can use for that garbage. There is no need, and no sense for bitcoin to do the same.

You can filter them if you want, but if none of those transactions are breaking the consensus rules, then we simply can't censor them.

[stwenhao]

I don't believe that it would happen to be as simple as what the FUD suggests.

Let's see: 0.1 sat/vB, 1 MvB per block, 100k sats, to fill a full block of data. Seems to be quite expensive, if you consider alternatives. But seems to be cheap, if you consider, that you don't have to register anywhere, and you just send 10 huge transactions, pushing around 400 kB of data in each. And then, all full archival nodes will store it for decades. Unless someone will be sued, and people will start implementing some protections, like ZK proofs for data, without sending them in plaintext.

Is storing data difficult? I don't think so. Anyone can make P2WPKH address, and extend it into P2WSH, by pushing more data, without affecting signatures. For example:

Code:

OP_2DROP OP_2DROP ... OP_2DROP
OP_CODESEPARATOR
OP_DUP OP_HASH160 <pubkeyHash> OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG

And then, people can sign it, just like a regular P2WPKH, just by using Bitcoin Core, and feeding it with "scriptPubKey" of just their address behind OP_CODESEPARATOR, so signing will work without any modifications. And they can also push any data they want, on top of that, and change it on the fly. Maximum stack push size will still remain 520 bytes, so everything is very similar to Ordinals. The only difference, is that if the content is unsigned, then it can be replaced (which means "free relay"). And because the signature can contain implicit commitment to the pushed data, and mining pools started accepting out-of-band transactions, which they won't broadcast before getting a single confirmation, then it means a lot of potential to abuse things.

Of course, instead of 520-byte data push, people could use anything, for example OP_0. But then, it can be controlled on relay level, and it will work most of the time, if commitments inside signatures will be validated. And also, if a given transaction will have a single confirmation, then it won't be so easy to change it, and replace with alternative version, which would take less space (not to mention, that we have opcodes like OP_SIZE and OP_DEPTH, to enforce a given data length).

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to abuse the chain space, and flood it with non-financial transactions. Fortunately, the main barrier is now technical skills, because spammers would produce way more spam, if they would know about some more serious loopholes.

but if none of those transactions are breaking the consensus rules, then we simply can't censor them

Again: do you think, that all standardness limits should be lifted, and anyone should be able to deploy any soft-fork, at any time? Because non-standard transactions are valid. And they were rejected for decades.

[d5000]

You can. For example, there were proposals, to introduce UTXO expiration: https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/dust-expiry-clean-the-utxo-set-from-spam/1707

That's actually very interesting, thanks for the link. I don't think this will ever get implemented, as it is "confiscatory" (as they said in the discussion), but it shows how one could deal with the problem in an emergency, e.g. if the UTXO set size should skyrocket because Stampchain becomes the main method to store data and node costs explode ...

Unfortunately, it would also not stop any really malicious attack. The attacker would simply insert his data into UTXOs with an amount slightly above the dust limit. It would only make the attack a bit more costly, but as we have seen with the halving block, lots of spammers are eager to pay astronomic transaction fees, so a couple of $5 UTXOs should not be a problem for them.

Perhaps it could be useful for Core to anyway maintain (and gradually improve) a set of BIPs for such "emergency mechanisms", which could be implemented rapidly in case to be necessary but would not be "normally" implemented. This could of course also include things like an emergency mechanism for quantum computing threats.

[stwenhao]

I don't think this will ever get implemented

I think it will. I saw too many altcoins to believe, that people are sane.

The attacker would simply insert his data into UTXOs with an amount slightly above the dust limit

Then, it can be applied on all UTXOs older than N blocks, regardless of used amount. People will only go further, without taking any steps back.

a set of BIPs for such "emergency mechanisms", which could be implemented rapidly in case to be necessary but would not be "normally" implemented

There are already some things like that. One example is signet: highly centralized network, but also highly stable. If decentralized mainchain will be spammy, then people may switch for more centralized solutions for a while, not because they are better, but because they won't have any other choice, if running a regular node will demand too much resources. There are already users, which cannot synchronize the chain in two weeks, and it takes them longer. It will only be worse over time, as it will take terabytes to store the chain, and as it will become filled with more complex transactions.

This could of course also include things like an emergency mechanism for quantum computing threats.

We already have one optional path for that: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5557305.0

Feel free to improve it, if you have any ideas. It is P2WSH, so you can use any Script you want, and combine it with your own requirements.

[headingnorth]

The coming changes to Bitcoin Core would force node runners to host all kinds of garbage including images of child pornography and other useless or even illegal material. That is no exaggeration. Since it is against the law to host CP on your computer every node runner would become potential targets of the criminal justice system, through no fault of their own. Which is why I switched to Knots long ago.

That's the sort of FUD that has been used before, BUT intent truly matters. I don't believe that it would happen to be as simple as what the FUD suggests.

It isn't FUD when it is true.  Bitcoin 30 will allow child pornography to be hosted on the bitcoin network
with no way to prevent it. That is a fact. Images and videos of child porn will be as easy and simple
to upload as any monkey jpeg. Worse, once on the network it will be there forever with no way to take it down.

It doesn't have to be a pervert. Someone with malicious intent or simply hates bitcoin could do a lot of harm
by introducing such material to the network.

"Intent" only matters for going after individual node runners, and only applies to certain western countries
 like the US. Intent is a legal concept that doesn't apply to most countries of the world. There doesn't need
to be "intent" for any government (including the US) to shut down or outlaw bitcoin in their country if they so chose to..

You don't need to prosecute any individual person to outlaw bitcoin itself.

[d5000]

It isn't FUD when it is true.  Bitcoin 30 will allow child pornography to be hosted on the bitcoin network
with no way to prevent it.

Do you need me to tell you a harsh truth?

This is already possible. The attacker can just use Stampchain. It's easy as there are all tools at his disposal. Bitcoin v30 does not change anything here.

And as @ABCbits has wrote elsewhere, it did already happen. A decade ago actually.

Then, it can be applied on all UTXOs older than N blocks, regardless of used amount. People will only go further, without taking any steps back.

I really don't believe that could really become consensus in its original form. That would confiscate all old UTXO holder's coins ...

But perhaps it can be done with a recovery mechanism, similar to Tadge Dryja's post quantum recovery mechanism where you have to show that you're able to create a TXID with your private key before you can spend an old UTXO? We're of course only talking about the UTXO set, so the data would still be in the blockchain files.

Thinking about that, this may not be a bad idea at all.

[stwenhao]

Thinking about that, this may not be a bad idea at all.

Well, current nodes store all UTXOs, so that if you move any coin anywhere, all nodes know, how to handle it (even if they are pruning blocks, they are not pruning the UTXO set).

In the future, some nodes may have only a subset of the UTXO set, and just keep some hashes of UTXO, stored in a merkle tree, or something similar. And then, if they will no longer store all UTXOs, then users will need to provide transactions in the current form, but also include a proof, that a given UTXO is really there (because nodes will no longer keep it). Then, things can be resistant to spam, even if spammers will put them directly in the UTXO set.

So, there are ways to fight with spam, if you want to. But solutions like that, can be also inconvenient for regular users, so it is good to delay them, as long as spam is not yet serious, and is still below a certain level.

[Wind_FURY]

The coming changes to Bitcoin Core would force node runners to host all kinds of garbage including images of child pornography and other useless or even illegal material. That is no exaggeration. Since it is against the law to host CP on your computer every node runner would become potential targets of the criminal justice system, through no fault of their own. Which is why I switched to Knots long ago.

That's the sort of FUD that has been used before, BUT intent truly matters. I don't believe that it would happen to be as simple as what the FUD suggests.

It isn't FUD when it is true.  Bitcoin 30 will allow child pornography to be hosted on the bitcoin network
with no way to prevent it. That is a fact. Images and videos of child porn will be as easy and simple
to upload as any monkey jpeg. Worse, once on the network it will be there forever with no way to take it down.

It doesn't have to be a pervert. Someone with malicious intent or simply hates bitcoin could do a lot of harm
by introducing such material to the network.

"Intent" only matters for going after individual node runners, and only applies to certain western countries
 like the US. Intent is a legal concept that doesn't apply to most countries of the world. There doesn't need
to be "intent" for any government (including the US) to shut down or outlaw bitcoin in their country if they so chose to..

You don't need to prosecute any individual person to outlaw bitcoin itself.

But the context on what YOU'RE posting IS FUD. You're merely debating the theoretical. There's not even an actual case against Ethereum and Solana node runners, networks where they ENCOURAGE NFTs, networks where it's BEST to spread child pornography.

People in Bitcoin like to spread FUD though. I'm actually not sure why it isn't an issue in Ethereum, or in other networks where there's an actual market for NFTs.

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[bitmover]

It isn't FUD when it is true.  Bitcoin 30 will allow child pornography to be hosted on the bitcoin network
with no way to prevent it. That is a fact. Images and videos of child porn will be as easy and simple
to upload as any monkey jpeg. Worse, once on the network it will be there forever with no way to take it down.

This is just  FUD.

Bitcoin network also allows for anyone to write fake news and or hate speech in OP_RETURN messages. This is not a reason for the criminal justice to go against thousands/millions of people who run a node. This makes zero sense.

Maybe blockexplorer which display that material could be somehow harmed, but they can just hide sensitive information in their services front-end (which is not a big deal anyway)

[Wind_FURY]

It isn't FUD when it is true.  Bitcoin 30 will allow child pornography to be hosted on the bitcoin network
with no way to prevent it. That is a fact. Images and videos of child porn will be as easy and simple
to upload as any monkey jpeg. Worse, once on the network it will be there forever with no way to take it down.

This is just  FUD.

Bitcoin network also allows for anyone to write fake news and or hate speech in OP_RETURN messages. This is not a reason for the criminal justice to go against thousands/millions of people who run a node. This makes zero sense.

Maybe blockexplorer which display that material could be somehow harmed, but they can just hide sensitive information in their services front-end (which is not a big deal anyway)

Plus there people who might be taking advantage of this drama to attack the Core Developers. Perhaps the big blockers?

 - Bitcoin, as originally designed by Satoshi, is a public, permissionless, and OPEN network for everyone to use. "Filtering" transactions because it's a use case that those people don't like reduces Bitcoin to a sort of like campus intranet that has a boomer administrator.

      

[NotATether]

You're far too late to worry about it. More than 1 decade ago someone already push Wikileaks cablegate data on Bitcoin blockchain[1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bw9xg/data_in_the_blockchain_wikileaks/

The difference is that you are much more likely to get prosecuted or at least deplatformed for hosting something illegal like malware or csam than  a leaked cable.

It is not just law enforcement involved here - it's also platforms' terms of service.

There is no legal precedent for this yet, but what happens if some litigious person in the mold of Craig Wright tries to sue users he/she doesn't like with this pretense?

Knots does not stop the spam from entering the blockchain, but it prevents it from being stored on your node which can remove you from liability in cases like what I mentioned.

This only works if the spammer is kind enough to use OP_RETURN or the Taproot/Ordinals method.

If he uses a collection of fake pubkeys (Stampchain ...), then you cannot prevent any data to be stored on your node. Not only will it be stored in the blockchain data (which you can prune later), but also in the UTXO set which you need to validate transactions.

That's why I consider this "incentive problem" so critical, and judging from the Bitcoindev discussion it was one of the main reasons triggering the decision, alongside with the problem that standardness "violations" are currently happily added by miners and thus there is danger that there's no "common mempool policy".

There was a proposal to implement a check that pubkeys must be "real" (i.e. be on an elliptic curve), which means additional ressources needed for tx validation, but it could be worth it if it really was a solution to the problem.

This would however make the spam only more expensive for the spammer as he can grind through "real pubkeys which contain his spam data", so if he still wanted damage he could. Even Luke-Jr seems to have admitted (he didn't answer anymore to that thread in the discussion) that the additional validation effort wasn't worth it.

My hopes in this field lie basically in new methods to store blockchain, where you could store a set of proofs without storing the complete data. Haven't heard if there was progress on this though.

Public key validation would work if those were being used to store the spam, but what happens if it's address hashes a la base58 or bech32? Verification becomes impossible as the key is not even known.

The primary way to defend against spam is to increase the transaction fees. However, given that we have just on-boarded fractional sat/vbyte transactions, the only way something that is going to come about is naturally via transaction congestion.

Which means to say, the more active users there are making transactions, the less spam will be mined on-chain, because spam transactions are inherently larger and competition for block space will push the fee rates up.

The other method we have is to enforce transaction (not block!) pruning as an optional command-line option, by using a bloom filter to completely ignore Bitcoin eater addresses, invalid keys, OP_RETURN.

By the nature of bloom filters, a tiny amount of "word-addresses" that have known private keys will also be excluded, preventing the relaying of their transactions and also preventing them, and any descendants, from being verified successfully in case they are already in a block. I guess in that case they would be filtered out via RPC call unless another command line option makes it return those transactions in the RPC output as well.

And also frontend applications built on top of bitcoin can simply refuse to display harmful & potentially illegal transactions for legal liability cover.

[Satofan44]

It isn't FUD when it is true.  Bitcoin 30 will allow child pornography to be hosted on the bitcoin network
with no way to prevent it. That is a fact. Images and videos of child porn will be as easy and simple
to upload as any monkey jpeg. Worse, once on the network it will be there forever with no way to take it down.

This is just  FUD.

Bitcoin network also allows for anyone to write fake news and or hate speech in OP_RETURN messages. This is not a reason for the criminal justice to go against thousands/millions of people who run a node. This makes zero sense.

Maybe blockexplorer which display that material could be somehow harmed, but they can just hide sensitive information in their services front-end (which is not a big deal anyway)

Kind sir, don't you know that companies that run the internet infrastructure regularly get criminally indicated for the hate speech, child pornography and other illegal content that others post online?   The FUD is so stupid that is quite boring, they need to find something new and more interesting.

The difference is that you are much more likely to get prosecuted or at least deplatformed for hosting something illegal like malware or csam than  a leaked cable.

It is not just law enforcement involved here - it's also platforms' terms of service.

There is no legal precedent for this yet, but what happens if some litigious person in the mold of Craig Wright tries to sue users he/she doesn't like with this pretense?

Nothing really. You are trying to apply laws of the old system towards something so radically different from the systems that the laws are designed for. Nobody can prevent anyone from storing anything malicious in Bitcoin. How well did it work out for preventing the storage of such data on the internet, something which is much less decentralized? Nodes don't decide what to store, neither do miners decide what to mine (so far, in most cases). At best they could force miners to try to censor these types of transactions in the future but it doesn't do anything regarding historical data. In any case, if necessary technological solutions will be deployed to tackle the stupidity of the legal systems.

It is a pointless cat and mouse game. If they force miners to censor such transactions, those that really want to store this data will find ways to obfuscate it so that it looks like something else. Miners could eventually adapt, but so would criminals. This won't lead to anything serious.

[theymos]

Bitcoin 30 will allow child pornography to be hosted on the bitcoin network with no way to prevent it.

It's already possible right now to put a contiguous CP image into the block chain if you can mine a block, since large-data-containing transactions are nonstandard, not invalid. And you can put a non-contiguous image into the block chain right now very easily through various difficult-to-prevent and often very harmful methods, as others have mentioned. The Bitcoin Core change won't allow these things, and Knots doesn't prevent these things.

I can definitely see the possibility of political issues here. Although it's not a real difference, people will have much stronger feelings about a contiguous CP image in the chain than a non-contiguous image; a non-contiguous image is a lot easier to ignore. So when a contiguous image does inevitably end up in the chain, there's going to be a lot of fallout from that. If there's overwhelming pressure to censor certain block-chain data, such that a very large number of economic actors feel the need to do it, then that would be a centralizing force, both because it'd become difficult to independently verify the block chain anymore, and because someone will be identifying transactions-to-be-censored. (Again, someone putting a contiguous CP image in the chain will inevitably happen at some point regardless of the Bitcoin Core change, though the change might make it more likely to happen sooner.) Furthermore, it seems quite likely that after the change, when someone inevitably puts CSAM into the block chain, a narrative will develop that "those incompetent Core devs allowed this to happen! We warned them, but they didn't listen!" That just feels like a really easy-to-spread narrative, even though it's based on a completely false premise.

But I tend to think that it is in fact proper for the Bitcoin Core devs to ignore political considerations, and only consider technical arguments. It's not as if the Tor devs considered abandoning the idea of hidden services because some people would use them for evil, and this would make life more difficult for Tor devs and node-operators. If you want political money, use dollars.

However, I have to say that I'm not sure that I totally buy the technical arguments for removing these standardness limits, since direct onchain data storage is generally harmful. Even if nonstandardness doesn't hard-prevent anything, it slows things down a bit, and at least historically miners have used standardness as "good-practice guidance". I don't really want to use my node's bandwidth relaying wastefully-large transactions. But there are far more people-I-trust who support the change than oppose it, and I do acknowledge their arguments. It'd be difficult to argue for a softfork banning OP_RETURN data storage entirely, for example, since that'd just force people-wanting-to-do-that to do it in much more harmful ways. Also, Bitcoin Core has far more review than Knots, and Luke is sometimes a bit unhinged, so I'd be reluctant to recommend Knots for any production use. For now, I'm planning to run Bitcoin Core 30.0 with datacarriersize=1024.

[stwenhao]

For now, I'm planning to run Bitcoin Core 30.0 with datacarriersize=1024.

Why not 80, like it was? Sharing 80 bytes is enough to share a custom block header. Which means, that if someone thinks for whatever reason, that 32 bytes is not enough (or 64 bytes, if someone wants to use for example SHA-512, instead of SHA-256), then still: why allow more than that?

[theymos]

Why not 80, like it was?

It's just arbitrary. 80 felt a little restrictive to me. Especially since standardness is loosening for most of the network anyway, I don't find it too offensive if protocols use a little more onchain data than just a block header. But the really large transactions annoy me too much: I don't want to waste my bandwidth on those.

[gmaxwell]

people will have much stronger feelings about a contiguous CP image in the chain than a non-contiguous image; a non-contiguous image is a lot easier to ignore.

It makes absolutely no legal difference, it makes no functional difference.  You already noted anyone can do it by mining a block, which you can do at a fairly minor cost using nicehash or other similar services, but you don't even have to because as was demonstrated at the start of the discussion major miners (and likely a majority of hashpower even!) were already ignoring that op_return limit in their policy!  (and doing so THANKS to motherfucking luke and his outspoken stupidity causing miners to erroneously believe that the existing filtering policy was politically loaded and try to diminish their income!)  So it's already there, even before all this discussion.  The world hasn't ended.

What bitcoin core does doesn't matter when it comes to policy that keeps valid transactions out of the chain, what miner do matter.  In particular, even a small minority of miners not enforcing a policy makes it moot. And this is good because the fact that information is easy to spread and hard to stifle is what is protecting bitcoin from outrageous financial censorship.  Bitcoin core not relaying transactions which are readily mined only hurts Bitcoin by promoting centralization both in the form of direct miner submission which increases income for the largest miners, and harming block propagation which improves income for the largest miners.

I think it's doubly ironic to see promoters of bitcoin spinoffs that already have no such limits, and were in fact shitting on bitcoin 7 years ago, claiming that OP_RETURN being limited was some kind of commercial conspiracy to undermine bitcoin -- are out in force claiming that removing the limits (that their own favored chain doesn't have!) is a conspiracy to undermine bitcoin.  

Though anyone convinced that it makes a difference is free to write a few-lines patch to change the serialization to make any of the encoding non-contiguous.   Of course, no one is doing that because the "concern" is just fake.  The only normative parts of data encoding in bitcoin is the order that data going into the hash functions.   Otherwise software is completely free to do whatever it wants.  In Bitcoin core today all block data stored on disk is encrypted.   All data sent to other modern nodes is encrypted... and part of the reason for this is so that there wouldn't be any problems with idiotic scanning software that doesn't know what its looking at.

All where seeing here is just more desperate lying and goalpost shifting by dishonest attackers who are desperate to seize any meaingless fringe.    Up thread, the allegation was made that bitcoin core contributors were into shitcoins.  I challenged for any substantiation-- and I get just crickets.  Now the thread is going on about 'contiguous data' .

Meanwhile the *known* approaches which can reduce risks from illegal data (beyond the encryption stuff that is already done) like starting from a utxo snapshot, running pruned, and so are worked on by the very people being attacked through these lies and ignored or discouraged by supposedly concerned.

[NotATether]

It makes absolutely no legal difference, it makes no functional difference.  You already noted anyone can do it by mining a block, which you can do at a fairly minor cost using nicehash or other similar services, but you don't even have to because as was demonstrated at the start of the discussion major miners (and likely a majority of hashpower even!) were already ignoring that op_return limit in their policy!  (and doing so THANKS to motherfucking luke and his outspoken stupidity causing miners to erroneously believe that the existing filtering policy was politically loaded and try to diminish their income!)  So it's already there, even before all this discussion.  The world hasn't ended.

Given that the vast majority of blocks are produced by institutionalized mining, any mining company that attempted to do such a thing, perhaps through a bribe or similar, would quickly get caught and go viral on the internet, and most likely face additional consequences including potential criminal charges, depending on the country they're incorporated in.

[gmaxwell]

attempted to do such a thing

What do you mean by "do such a thing"?

Perhaps I wasn't clear:

Right now and since some time ago multiple major miners enforce no opreturn limits.  So whatever bad thing you think they are stopping are not being stopped by them, because you can connect directly to these miners and just give them a transaction.

Right now (and since uhh 2011?) you can just rent hashpower to point at your own bitcoin daemon and mine whatever block you want, the miners can't see what you're doing beyond the block header.  No one can tell whose devices were working on producing your block.

This is already the state of affairs.

The whole illegal content line of argument is even more foolish than the spam one, because it's a binary condition (is there something illegal or isn't there, volume of it is not particularly relevant) and necessarily done out of malice-- and so merely making it more complicated or somewhat expensive doesn't change the security consideration.

The theory that it matters at all is entirely based on the conjecture that e.g. the US would enforce the strict liability standard for unlawful content in a node-- that it doesn't matter if you put it there willingly, doesn't matter if you have the means to access it, doesn't matter if you even know about it, doesn't matter that it's hex encoded and inaccessible in the node software but via debug interfaces, doesn't matter that it's encrypted on disk and on the wire, and finally assumes someone is willing to risk prison handling the data to do it.   And under that sort of assumption it's very clear that none of this policy stuff can help, because the attacker can just rent hashpower and mine a block-- something you or I could do, and the attacker might well be an expressly bitcoin hostile state actor.

there are things that could help, but the filter advocates are doing their best to make sure they aren't complete developed.  I guess it's not a shock when you write about institutionalized mining and its vulnerability to arbitrary state control as if it were a good thing, apparently unable to see the gun pressed to your opponents forehead can just as easily be pressed to yours.

[1440000bytes]

The coming changes to Bitcoin Core would force node runners to host all kinds of garbage including images of child pornography
and other useless or even illegal material. That is no exaggeration. Since it is against the law to host CP on your computer every node runner
would become potential targets of the criminal justice system, through no fault of their own. Which is why I switched to Knots long ago.

This would provide governments with a legal justification to shut down bitcoin completely or at least outlaw it in their respective country.  

This is not true. Neither developers nor other users would be responsible for CP on bitcoin. It is the same with freenet and other p2p networks.