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

[gmaxwell]

- There might be entities out there who want to fork Bitcoin away from the Core Developers. It's probably the same as the situation during 2017 when individuals behind major businesses, exchanges and miners signed the New York Agreement, WHICH they decided to hard fork Bitcoin to 2MB blocks behind closed doors.

Case in point is the entities playing both sides, like binance: https://x.com/gabrielabed/status/1970968696706540007

BRC-20 is the vast vast supermajority of spam tx volume, it's responsible for essentially all of the spam related utxo bloat.  They're responsible for the majority of spam related tx fees.  Binance is the only major venue that trades BRC-20 tokens and the largest trading venue for them.  Most BRC-20 transactions have binance as the sender and/or recipient.

So why is it the Binance creating a spam problem and then the chairman endorsing something that blocks their own traffic?  If they cared about "spam" of the sort being the knots advocacy they could immediately kneecap it by... stop generating it.

Of course, the blocking probably wouldn't even impact them because they have their own mining and relationships with miners, but limiting access to BRC20 might well make their own business of it more profitable.  But more over the overall arc of all of this if it were successful would be leaving Bitcoin more open to commercial influence by driving out more of the remaining OG cypherpunks who care deeply about things like privacy and anti-censorship.

[Wind_FURY]

I'm starting to believe that all the drama, and the current narrative of the anti-censorship crowd vs. the filter boys might merely be a "Red-Herring" to distract everyone from the actual motivation behind Knots' current move.

- There might be entities out there who want to fork Bitcoin away from the Core Developers. It's probably the same as the situation during 2017 when individuals behind major businesses, exchanges and miners signed the New York Agreement, WHICH they decided to hard fork Bitcoin to 2MB blocks behind closed doors.

Maybe, but that just goes deeper into the speculative and tin foil sphere. It is too late for this kind of attack now. The fork wars of 2017 were both a great and a bad thing for us. Now we have experience in dealing with it and given that we have successfully one once already it will be easier to win a second time. A second fork attack that fails would cement the status quo and essentially make this attack non viable for almost forever.

It may be speculative, but it's NOT improbable, nor is it in the "tin-foil hat" sphere. There will always be bad actors, AND STATE-LEVEL ACTORS that want to take Bitcoin down or co-opt Bitcoin into a weaker version of itself.

I'm sorry, ser. But THAT's simply the truth.

[apogio]

Below is my unpopular opinion.

Personally, I still don't understand the actual problem that all of these node implementations try to solve. It feels like all of these implementations seek for a problem to solve.
Pluralism is always a good thing and more node software implementations are needed, but I reckon they should indeed do something differently than Core.
I'm a Core user, I'm not dogmatic, I've put approximately 10hrs of study this week in an effort to realize why all this beef, but I'm literally thinking that it's just fluff.

Source:
https://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html

[mindrust]

Below is my unpopular opinion.

Personally, I still don't understand the actual problem that all of these node implementations try to solve. It feels like all of these implementations seek for a problem to solve.
Pluralism is always a good thing and more node software implementations are needed, but I reckon they should indeed do something differently than Core.
I'm a Core user, I'm not dogmatic, I've put approximately 10hrs of study this week in an effort to realize why all this beef, but I'm literally thinking that it's just fluff.

Source:
https://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html

It is a matter of showing (or not) support for the current bitcoin dev team.

If enough node users show dissatisfaction, it is a step towards something else, something bigger. Eventually leads to a hard fork to switch the current team.

Back then in 2017 people were running UASF nodes for this reason. We knew we didn't have the power to impose/set any network rules if the miners decided to do a hard fork but by running a UASF node we pretty much said to the miners and parties that signed the NY agreement:  "we don't agree with whatever it is you are trying to pull, do that and mine a chain nobody's using"

They got the message and backed down.

That's why Jamesson Lopp reacted in full alarm mode to Luke's Bitcoin implementation and his personality: "Do you want this flat earther to be your leader?"

He reacted because node signalling is "something"

[apogio]

That's why Jamesson Lopp reacted in full alarm mode to Luke's Bitcoin implementation and his personality: "Do you want this flat earther to be your leader?"

He reacted because node signalling is "something"

The fact that I can clone the Bitcoin Core repository from GitHub, alter 4-5 lines that I disagree with and run my own code doesn’t mean it requires a new repository and a new software.

I will 99% of time prefer software that follows:
(a) proper code reviews
(b) serious product lifecycle
(c) multiple reviewers and developers

Knots looks more like a whim to me. I mean looks like unnecessary noise against the Core devs. I don’t have any reason to show my support to the Core devs. It happens naturally! I don’t know them, but I respect their work. I mean, come on… It’s seriously difficult not to acknowledge their contribution.

I happen to have a technological background which allows me to understand that you can, right now (or even 10 years ago) include arbitrary data to the blockchain anyway. It’s a pity that many people fail to understand that.

You know, it feels strange. I can totally understand and want Bitcoin to be a currency-only blockchain. But Bitcoin is just a database, no matter how hard it is for people to realize that.

TL;DR
My opinion is that:
(a) Knots is noise, not because people don’t like Luke, but because it doesn’t actually offer something significant.
(b) Core is a much more proper open-source software. More reviewers, better commit structure etc.

[mindrust]

Apparently J-Lopp disagrees. You probably need to reach him and tell him why he wasted his energy on a Luke Dashjr hit piece that tracks his presence on the internet all the way back to 2005.

He definitely reacted like his life depends on it.

[joker_josue]

Knots looks more like a whim to me. I mean looks like unnecessary noise against the Core devs. I don’t have any reason to show my support to the Core devs. It happens naturally! I don’t know them, but I respect their work. I mean, come on… It’s seriously difficult not to acknowledge their contribution.

Now you said it all, in this excerpt and in your entire comment.

They are looking for a problem - where there isn't one, instead of looking for a solution that minimizes the impact of the changes made in 2017 (if I'm not mistaken on the date).

In the end, it's just noise from some developer who didn't like the way most developers think. He thought about using his influence to create new software, just because he wanted to.

[gmaxwell]

Well I think it's more than that... Luke-jr-- already long since burned out on Bitcoin-- lost his coins due to being hacked and his only recovery plan was to start a mining pool company, so he was thrust back in against his own desires.  He created it at the height of the first ordinals and BRC20 floods,  when that trash traffic was being a particularity nuisance.   Spam became a big part of their message and reason for existence.   But as most predicted, fees eventually depleted that traffic and while it still exists it's not a big deal now, not something most bitcoin users were particularly concerned about anymore.

Luke-jr's fixation on meddling with other peoples transactions isn't new, and as a new involuntary no-coiner he has less incentive than ever to not just burn the house down if it doesn't go his way, and his ability to see reason or reasonable tradeoffs is no doubt more compromised than ever by the absolutely delusional believed that some bitcoin core developer stole his coins... when no such contrived theories are required to explain the expected outcome from consistent poor security practices that continue to this day.

And so the diminished public concern about the NFT traffic to him looked like an awareness problem, rather than just not currently being a big deal (the later of which I think is the correct read).  And so they sat out to manufacture an issue (or in their view inform the public) with floods of paid advocacy, etc.  And other people with their own grievances real or imagined have signed on along with others who just want to see bitcoin burn.

I think much like the first blocksize war this is doing bitcoin a great service of flushing out people who are unprincipled, easily influenced, or just sloppy in their thinking.

[mindrust]

Interesting, judging by the merits apogio’s post get, I can see that the majority favors his opinion against mine (or should I say J-Lopp’s?)

But that wasn’t my experience in 2017 when NYA was a threat. I remember we were encouraged to run a node, a UASF one and many btc maximalists were supporting it. Lots of UASF hats were sold during those days.

That has 2 possible explanations.

Either there is some hypocrisy going on, node signaling was good practice 10 years ago and it is not now because nowadays Luke Dashjr destroyed his remaining reputation and nobody likes him anymore;

Or maybe it was always meaningless to run a node but many bitcoin maximalists got fooled into doing it thinking we could accomplish something against the miners and big corps.

Since everyone has a different perception of reality, maybe it was me who couldn’t hear the voice of reason in the past, maybe some people here merited apogio’s post were also advising against node signaling.

(Btw if i remember this right, UASF nodes were also Luke’s idea)

I still wonder though, if Luke and his node implementation don’t pose any threat, why all the fuss? The community could have ignored him and his followers.

[apogio]

I still wonder though, if Luke and his node implementation don’t pose any threat, why all the fuss? The community could have ignored him and his followers.

As I said, it's not that I have a specific problem with Luke. This is a major difference (I believe) between me and the users who merited my post.

I don't consider Luke, nor Knots a danger for Bitcoin. I will elaborate using my personal situation as an example:

I am running 2 full nodes and a pruned node. Let's call the full nodes "archival nodes", because in reality that's what they do, keeping the entire history stored.
The pruned node is just for minimal wallet purposes.
The archival node A, is my main Bitcoin Core node.
The archival node B, is an experimental node, where I've downloaded Bitcoin Core and changed a few lines, just for fun. You know, just me being a nerd until I destroy something with my experiments, which is what normally happens.

I guess I'm not a danger for Bitcoin, am I?

If I started a huge campaign, trying to convince people that my 100 lines of code can make Bitcoin Core better and that everyone should run it, it's their choice to select my implementation over the original. It's also Core's responsibility to decide whether what I'm saying is correct or wrong and either adopt it, or choose to ignore it, or even "fight" it, explaining why they believe it's wrong.

All this zymosis (we use this word in Greek, I hope it makes sense here, it means "mental effort to create knowledge") is good for Bitcoin.

And your opinion is well respected, but I'm sure you can't neglect that I find it very difficult to trust someone's opinion when:
1) his product's commit history is just a straight line of his own commits.
2) his overall behaviour seems toxic (but let's keep this aside because it's subjective).
3) he allegedly lost their entire stash because of his own mistake, but he started blaming Core devs for this. That's a tragic event of course, but this is precisely what bitcoin is about. Your money is your responsibility.

This numbered list doesn't mean to say, once more, that Luke is bad. It's indended to support my argument that I don't even consider Knots a strong, valid proposition for the future of Bitcoin.

[Bestcoin-fan]

The totally insane proponents of that totally disastrous solution, essentially completely destroying a simple, yet effective, time-tested method of fighting spam – OP_RETURN – they are completely incompetent, corrupt scoundrels and idiots!

Trying to lead the worthy Bitcoin down the disastrous path of the fruitless BSV fork!!

Honestly, it’s simply impossible to express in words how much I HATE all those scumbags – supporters of, essentially, the DESTRUCTION of our great Bitcoin!!

[ABCbits]

But that wasn’t my experience in 2017 when NYA was a threat. I remember we were encouraged to run a node, a UASF one and many btc maximalists were supporting it. Lots of UASF hats were sold during those days.

I think you mixed 2 different stuff. IIRC NYA is related with SegWit2x soft fork, while UASF is related with miner/pool not signaling SegWit readiness.

(Btw if i remember this right, UASF nodes were also Luke’s idea)

I don't remember Luke's stance about SegWit UASF. But AFAIK UASF idea initially come from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1805060.0.

[mindrust]

But that wasn’t my experience in 2017 when NYA was a threat. I remember we were encouraged to run a node, a UASF one and many btc maximalists were supporting it. Lots of UASF hats were sold during those days.

I think you mixed 2 different stuff. IIRC NYA is related with SegWit2x soft fork, while UASF is related with miner/pool not signaling SegWit readiness.

(Btw if i remember this right, UASF nodes were also Luke’s idea)

I don't remember Luke's stance about SegWit UASF. But AFAIK UASF idea initially come from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1805060.0.

I probably did confuse 2 different events like you said however my logic in general still stands I believe. I should probably go back to those topics and re-read them to refresh my memory just to be more precise next time I talk about that part of historical events again. Almost 10 years huh

[Wind_FURY]

Below is my unpopular opinion.

Personally, I still don't understand the actual problem that all of these node implementations try to solve. It feels like all of these implementations seek for a problem to solve.
Pluralism is always a good thing and more node software implementations are needed, but I reckon they should indeed do something differently than Core.
I'm a Core user, I'm not dogmatic, I've put approximately 10hrs of study this week in an effort to realize why all this beef, but I'm literally thinking that it's just fluff.

Source:
https://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html

Plus what's funny is, the filter boys want filters because it's "going to be easier for the network" not to deal with "spam". What they do not tell you is when a user runs Knots, the node will be force to validate the "spam" from scratch because those transactions were not allowed to enter its mempool, and therefore never validated them nor did they cache them.

THAT actually could mean slower block verification, and slower block propagation for Knots.

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[stwenhao]

because it's "going to be easier for the network"

It won't be easier. It can only be harder. If you have OP_RETURN, then a given output is automatically discarded, marked as unspendable, and then, only full archival nodes have to keep it.

But when users push data through public keys, through hashes of public keys, or even through private keys, then it is not easier to process, but actually harder, because each and every OP_CHECKSIG call, will trigger a more complex procedure, than just "skip it, and mark is as invalid". Which means, that OP_RETURN is definitely easier to handle, than even "<randomData> OP_CHECKSIG OP_NOT". Because a single OP_NOT is what can be done, to make everything spendable again.

What Knots should do instead, is to simply handle a subset of the mainnet traffic. If they want to enforce their rules on everyone, then it would only hurt them, if they fork the chain. There are ways to prune transactions and blocks, without any forks, and after that many years of experience, Luke should simply know, how to do it correctly, if he would seriously want to enforce his rules. So, the hard-fork way is just stupid, and if they try it, then they will only hurt themselves.

[Ambatman]

Plus what's funny is, the filter boys want filters because it's "going to be easier for the network" not to deal with "spam". What they do not tell you is when a user runs Knots, the node will be force to validate the "spam" from scratch because those transactions were not allowed to enter its mempool, and therefore never validated them nor did they cache them.

  Spam is always subjective ^{OpenTimestamps}, imagine introducing subjectivity into a system that's supposed to be objective.
The truth is humans would always find a way to abuse a system
Even with an Hardfork there's no assurance that malicious attackers won't adapt.
Once these path is taken there's nothing stopping more from coming
Till it becomes worse than the type of centralization existing in the government.

Hardfork shouldn't be the answer if they want what's best for Bitcoin.

[gmaxwell]

That has 2 possible explanations.

UASF was about a *consensus* rule.  Participants that differed over it would have just formed different currencies and gone their own way.  There was never a question of any of that being effectual, -- unwise? perhaps-- but not ineffectual.

This isn't the only difference-- e.g. UASF was about users demanding the freedom to make new transaction types, rather than an anti-freedom of trying to shut down the transactions of others-- but it's the one that categorically changes the substance of the discussion.  

And plenty of people who were fine with the changes, didn't support creating disruption for their sake, myself included.  

It is elevated to the point of absurdity in that in fact before any bitcoin core change was made you could simply go out and make these oversized OP_RETURNS-- the original thread here on the subject is full of examples.  So the teeth gnashing is over something that effectively already happened, that bitcoin core devs cannot control,  and which did not cause the end of bitcoin or whatever.

This is so because the issue in question is *relay policy* rather than consensus.  Relay policy does not govern miners, pretty much the opposite if anything.  Consensus governs miners, sure.  But that isn't the question here.  That is why this is different.

As far as being pointless to run a node:   Your node protects you, my node protects me.  If yours isn't protecting anything-- you're not using it to check confirmation of your transactions, not securing a wallet, etc. then it isn't doing much in terms of protection except perhaps setting the stage for you to use it if needed.  Assuming it's being used, then in terms of disagreements over the network it still only helps with respect to consensus rules.  If there is no dispute over consensus rules (as in the case here)  then it doesn't help in that case.  If you don't *use* the node to control, manage, audit your bitcoin then it doesn't provide protection-- why should anyone care if it will be on a different currency in the event of a dispute over consensus rules? (other than an assumption that you are using it to control your funds and economic activity).

A node can still be useful if it's protecting nothing, e.g. providing more capacity to serve archival copies of the chain or helping speed relay up at the tip.  But in that case it's not any kind of armor against consensus rules being changed-- anyone can setup capacity on amazon or whatever, no one wanting to fork consensus is going to think "oh but where will we get capacity to serve archival copies of the chain?".  ... and of course, if you're participating in filtering inconsistent with what is actually being mined you're just hurting relay performance if anything.

As far as to why people care instead of just ignoring it?  In fact most people *are* just ignoring it.  Most developers are ignoring it.  But some people care about other people getting bamboozled,  and the last fantasist running on a campaign of lies that the community just ignored ended up causing an enormous amount of damage in part because so many regarded him as just a joke and ignored him, allowing him to build up a large well financed campaign.

[joker_josue]

In addition to the individual protection that the @gmaxwell talked about, running the node gives strength to the correct Bitcoin chain.

Because the main chain will always be the one with the most nodes to be executed. Because this is the one that miners want to follow in order to be able to maintain the current gains.

In the end, Bitcoin Core will always be considered the promoter of the correct Bitcoin node.

Past attempts have shown that.
Can anything change in the future? Yes, but I have some doubts.

[gmaxwell]

Because the main chain will always be the one with the most nodes to be executed. Because this is the one that miners want to follow in order to be able to maintain the current gains.

Ehhhhh... by tomorrow anyone with an amazon and google cloud account and a bit of money to blow could spin up more nodes than the current entire network following whatever rules they want.

Of course, with no user behind these nodes they're irrelevant, and nothing in bitcoin works by counting nodes.  So attackers don't bother (mostly, their are spies that run thousands of 'nodes'), but they easily could if it mattered.

[d5000]

Because the main chain will always be the one with the most nodes to be executed. Because this is the one that miners want to follow in order to be able to maintain the current gains.

This is a bit inexact.

If there was a mechanism where your node would say "hey, I'm a node, I have X Bitcoins, and I will only accept the Bitcoins of version Y or with feature Z!" (and telling always the truth!) then your hypothesis would be correct. Of course that doesn't exist, and it would also be against the censorship resistance / privacy ethos.

The real power lies in those people that hold and accept Bitcoin, not in those that run a node. Because in the case of the fork, they can choose which chain's coins to accept and which chain's coins would be sold (see ETH/ETC for an example that got really serious with a fork, where Vitalik was able to abuse his extreme holdings of ETH to roll back some transactions). Even those running a SPV wallet and to some extent also those holding / accepting Bitcoins on exchanges or custodial wallets, are more "powerful" in this game than those who only run a node and have no Bitcoins on it.

I think "node signalling", however, is not entirely useless. The evolution of node versions and software packages can give some hints on what the people who hodl and accept Bitcoin are also thinking about certain features, above all the "power users" (who tend to have relatively large holdings). Technically @gmaxwell is correct, this only makes sense really for consensus changes like Segwit. But even in the case of standardness/default values it is one indicator, alongside things like the "sentiment" in social media, which can in the future in theory lead to ideas which would break consensus (see this rumour / idea of the multisig federation hardfork deleting "illegal data"), and then the "sentiment" would become also technically relevant because an UASF would be again possible.

All these indicators can be manipulated and sometimes be misleading, but together they can give you a picture of the reality sometimes.