Google Mailing list reply to Greg Maxwell

[philipma1957]

yeah running nodes is easy peasy

I5 intels with a 2tb ssd and 16gb ram do the trick.

[pliego]

What worries me here is how easily the long-term health of the network gets sidelined in favor of short-term neutrality. UTXO growth isn’t some abstract concern, it has real consequences for node costs, decentralization and who can realistically keep validating the chain....

That has become such a irreverent argument that people keep making. And at this point I am ignoring most of them.

Not your keys, not your coins. Not your node, well it's not your node then it's just not your node. You have to broadcast your TX through someplace else. That's not even a privacy concern anymore.

Computers that can sync and run a node are being thrown out by many companies at this point because they they can't run a node. You can get them for just about nothing in most places.

So then it goes to in poorer countries you can't get computers that can run a node. Outside of the fact that you can get used PCs in a lot of places that can for under $100 which admittedly can be a lot of $. Then run a SPV wallet like the original white paper suggested. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf section 8

Running a node is not needed for BTC, and unless you are doing it properly can actually be more of a privacy concern then running a SPV wallet.

Most of the people do that anyway running you are not running a node on their phones. And most hardware wallets are going to be SPV anyway. If it matters that much to you then you would find a way. But for the most part most people don't want to run a full node.

How many people using a Trezor or such go though the hassle of running their own node or just run the trezor suite and connect to wherever.

Quoting myself here but:

....

Outside the cost of electricity which for the most part is nominal, nodes are free. Saying people are spending money to run them is disingenuous at best. Yes you can if you want to but there is no reason to. Also, time to set one up is well under an hour for anyone with any PC knowledge.

With Win10 kind of going away there are 10's of 1000s if not 100's of thousands of PCs out there that are fully capable of running a node FOR FREE IN MANY LOCATIONS if not then well under $30. We are talking 6th gen intel machines with 1TB drives.

Hell I made money labor day weekend here by filling a van with about 100 of these PCs for a company that was getting rid of them and taking them to the e-waste facility. Paid to load them into the van and then paid $0.40 a lb at the scrap yard. Everyone was happy, they got rid of their e-waste for very little money, I got paid, and the scrap yard made money. Why did this happen? Because nobody wanted those PCs. Too old and slow. Kept a bunch of them and have been installing umbrel on them. instant node amongst other things. Cost $0.00

OT but important to mention it's kind of sad, but there was an effort to send these machines to people who needed them. But the cost of shipping them was more then the cost of what you could get ,once again get 9 and 10 year old machines for locally. I even tried to donate them to some other places I knew but no takers. But that is another discussion for another day.


-Dave

Hardware is not a valid argument. Some people come back and say that in poorer 3rd world countries even free or just about free hardware is too expensive. Which would be a fair argument if they should be running a full node. If you don't have the money to do it properly or the knowledge of the complete risks of doing it on older hardware will less reliable internet and power and so on. You should be using a SPV wallet. Like BTC was supposed to be run for most people.


I am in IT, I also like BTC Due to those 2 facts I help a lot of people with BTC related things.

Some of the people I help have 7 figures + of USD in BTC.
And I can tell you zero - none - nada - null of them run their own nodes. (and no I don't have 7 figures of USD in BTC or anywhere close to it, if I did I would be on a beach in the Caribbean right now having a drink out of a coconut not talking on the internet)

But anyway, some of them I file under tinfoil hat paranoid lunatics even they don't want to run their own nodes.

I'm sure PepeLapiu is making some sort of argument about spam or dick picks or whatever right now but since I have them on ignore I'm never going to see it. Talking to people like that is like talking to BSV fans but instead of following Craig like cult members follow their leader they are following Luke instead. Sooner or later they will too loose most of their BTC.

Since I just picked up a couple of 4th gen i7 machines out of the trash the other day I think I'll go spin up a couple more .30 nodes. I actually want to try it on a 2nd gen I7 I found but it has a bad power supply.

-Dave

the 'hardware is too expensive' excuse is officially dead. If you can find an i7 in the trash that runs a node, the decentralization argument based on cost is just noise. Most people treat running a node like a holy crusade, but in reality, if you aren’t doing it for a specific privacy reason, an SPV wallet is exactly what the doctor ordered for the average user

[PepeLapiu]

the 'hardware is too expensive' excuse is officially dead. If you can find an i7 in the trash that runs a node, the decentralization argument based on cost is just noise. Most people treat running a node like a holy crusade, but in reality, if you aren’t doing it for a specific privacy reason, an SPV wallet is exactly what the doctor ordered for the average user

What exactly do you think separates bitcoin from the other zillion shitcoins out there? What makes bitcoin decentralized?

I'm telling you, what makes bitcoin separate from all others is decentralization. Because there are 90,000+ bitcoin nodes and 24,000+ of them listening nodes.

Bitcoin is not decentralized because of mining. Less than a handful of mining pools decide for over 90% what goes into a block while the individual miners are mere employees to the mining pool.

Yes the miner can switch from one pool to an other. But mining pools operate as a cartel. They are extremely centralized. And the individual miner doesn't decide what goes into a block, or even cares if the pool finds a block or not. It's all extremely centralized at the pool level.

Bitcoin is not decentralized because of devs. Less than a handful of core devs decide what gets into your node software.

The only part of bitcoin that is decentralized is the nodes. Bitcoin is unique in that no other shitcoin is node decentralized. And that is very very important because nodes are what regulates the network.

We won the block war because we said nodes are more important than scaling on chain. Because we said without a large amount of nodes regulating the network, bitcoin is dead.

But just like during the block wars, these shitcoiners are trying to tell you running a node is useless.

Well, they don't directly tell you that running a node is useless. They tell you your node policy can't stop spam, they tell you the consensus change of your node with BIP-444/110 can't stop spam. They tell you the UTXO set your node maintains can't stop spam.

They are basically telling you that miners, devs, and top bitcoiners actually run the show, and that nodes must bend to the will of miners and devs.

That's all shitcoin talk. Nodes run the show. Nodes validate what miners do. Mining pools and devs are mere employees of the system and nodes that run for free, and in fact at a cost, are the true regulators of the network, keeping us decentralized.

Don't buy into the bullshit that nodes are basically meaningless. Without nodes, bitcoin us just an other centralized shitcoin.

[DaveF]

.....

the 'hardware is too expensive' excuse is officially dead. If you can find an i7 in the trash that runs a node, the decentralization argument based on cost is just noise. Most people treat running a node like a holy crusade, but in reality, if you aren’t doing it for a specific privacy reason, an SPV wallet is exactly what the doctor ordered for the average user

Yup and if you really want privacy, create your TX locally, and then use a free VPN does not matter how slow, and use any of the dozens of sites that you can broadcast a TX from.

-Dave

[PepeLapiu]

.....

the 'hardware is too expensive' excuse is officially dead. If you can find an i7 in the trash that runs a node, the decentralization argument based on cost is just noise. Most people treat running a node like a holy crusade, but in reality, if you aren’t doing it for a specific privacy reason, an SPV wallet is exactly what the doctor ordered for the average user

Yup and if you really want privacy, create your TX locally, and then use a free VPN does not matter how slow, and use any of the dozens of sites that you can broadcast a TX from.

-Dave

Yup, based on Greg Maxwell et al, running a node is basically useless. Your mempool and policy are useless at doing anything. They can't stop spam. The consensus rules you run on your node are also useless at stopping spam. And the UTXO SST you maintain are also useless at stopping spam.

Nodes are meaningless. Unless you hope for a bit of pricacy.
The 90,000+ nodes are meaningless at doing anything. Go back to sleep, and trust core to keep your node decentralized.
Fuck!

So here is what I learned from Greg Maxwell:

- My mode is useless at stopping anything at the mempool/policy level with Knots filters. Spammers will get around that.

- My node is useless at stopping anything at the consensus level with BIP444. Spammers will get around that too.

- My node is useless at excluding the spam UTXOs from my UTXO set with The Cat. Spammers will get around that too.

My mempool, my filters, my consensus rules, and my UTXO set are all completely useless based on what the great Maxwell told me.

Devs, please build me a node without filters, mempool, consensus rules, or UTXO set. It appears all those things don't do anything at all.

At what point will you people realise you are being gaslighted?

[gmaxwell]

Thas become such a irreverent argument that people keep making. And at this point I am ignoring most of them.

The fun part is where they were claiming that they just wanted to manage their own node-- in accordance with their own personal autonomy-- and then just a little bit later we see "oh yeah and confiscate hundreds of bitcoin from third parties too!".

Some of us knew all along what this was about-- so I hope those who didn't can forgive the initial rejection of the censorship crusade.  It was always based on the inevitable end results, they just were not equally apparent to all.  In my case I know the players for over a decade, it was always going to go here and it will just get more insane so long as people keep feeding it oxygen.

It's negligible if you compare current UTXO size (about 11.3GB[1]) with current blockchain size (above 700GB). But it's significant when we consider RAM usage (especially during IBD), especially if you don't use storage with fast random I/O to compensate low RAM capacity.

I see. So now that UTXO bloat was used as an excuse to implement core 30 and blow up the op_return limit, we are now back to pretending UTXO bloat is not a problem?

You are not seeing the big picture here. There are literally millions and millions of these dust UTXOs that would need to be moved. This would cause a massive spike in miner fees, which would inflict a very large additional cost to spammers, therefore impleding on their business model.

There is no incompatibility here,  long term management of the UTXO set size is important (at least until people are willing/able to take the bandwidth hit of utxo tree at least).  But a one time removal of a lot of utxo -- via a blacklist which would be about 40% of the size of the removed utxos doesn't really matter.  As ABCbits pointed out for 40% of the *current* is very small compared to the future utxo set.  Many/most outputs would also likely just be recreated, so then you have the size of the old outputs in the chain, the blacklist, and the new outputs. So in effect doubling the runtime usage for pruned nodes and trippling it for archive nodes.  Good job.

Moreover, even if it *did* work at reducing the utxo set size in a meaningful way-- so what?  Bitcoin has costs to operate and these are terms we must be willing to accept.  It doesn't do any good to make Bitcoin more efficient if doing so erodes or outright undermines its moral and political purpose for existing by establishing that anyone's coins can just be taken if there is a angry mob demanding it.  Decisions like op_return sizes to discourage making outputs that go in the set don't have similar tradeoffs (and has been actually demonstrated, nothing bad has happened).

Any proposal must be weighed in light of its costs and a one time reduction (if it is even that) in the current utxo set size weighs very poorly against diminishing people's confidence that their coins just can't be taken by an angry mob-- and I think anyone that can't see this is suffering a mental illness that makes them deranged about 'spam', and we should stop being polite and call it what it is.

In terms of moving the outputs, -- you're not reading or comprehending what I wrote.  The proposal author seems to think that the only way out is for the NFT people to move their coins BEFORE the snapshot, some might do so because they make an error in believing the proposer and if so I fail to see why you think the resulting network disruption would be a virtue (though I have to wonder if the anti-spammers *want* this effect because they are failing to convince people currently...).   But regardless, the proposer is wrong.  The NFT spammers don't need to move their tokens in advance to preserve their tokens they only would need to move them to preserve their Bitcoin-- the tokens will work regardless and they'll be able to transact them at any point in the future even if their outputs were deleted by this proposal.

I explained how in my prior message, just repeating it here won't help.  If you can't understand it, I'm happy to answer clarifying questions.

[d5000]

Wake TF up buddy. + long rant

I'm awake (some would say I'm also "woke" or so blah blah).

I think you miss that I'm not looking to "triumphantly" prove the point that the Knots side was wrong. Perhaps you forget that I would have changed the default OP_RETURN policy to somewhere between 256 and 1024 bytes if I was "in charge" of Core

My opinion on the subject is mainly based on thoughts on the big incentive picture, having read the mailing list discussion and many threads here on Bitcointalk about the subject, even hearing that conference video with BitcoinMechanic and Luke. And I see no pro-spam incentive change due to Core 30's changes. And I actually had expected a little spam wave as you can see in this post you have probably read and understood but purposefully are ignoring to sustain your fake angriness. I am glad I was wrong

And the "evil attack" your FUD is based on can happen with all techniques, including fake public keys. As this would be probably a massive short selling attack too, costs for the dust would not matter at all.

I also am open for measures to mitigate spam. For example, as I have written, I would be all in for tools where every node, for themselves, can decide which UTXOs to delete (e.g. Stampchain spam, and also, if they want, to prune OP_RETURNs as early as they have their TXID, merkle tree and a proof).

But all the "BIPs" which have been proposed would only have generated chaos with confiscated coins and so, instead of really fighting the spam. The BIP proposers have a very superficial way to look at the subject. They should read a bit about game theory but also about Bitcoin's technology.

Another question related to your CSAM FUD: Are the Bitcoin SV developers now in jail? Their chain allegedly is full of illicit stuff. But it is still listed at Coingecko, Coinmarketcap et al. as if nothing happened.

[DaveF]

Thas become such a irreverent argument that people keep making. And at this point I am ignoring most of them.

The fun part is where they were claiming that they just wanted to manage their own node-- in accordance with their own personal autonomy-- and then just a little bit later we see "oh yeah and confiscate hundreds of bitcoin from third parties too!".

Some of us knew all along what this was about-- so I hope those who didn't can forgive the initial rejection of the censorship crusade.  It was always based on the inevitable end results, they just were not equally apparent to all.  In my case I know the players for over a decade, it was always going to go here and it will just get more insane so long as people keep feeding it oxygen.

We are all kind of guilty since we do keep responding. But, since theymos does not just nuke these threads as soon as reported, they do have be be replied to otherwise people that actually matter might start thinking that the crap these people post is accurate.

Makes you wonder if it would just be better to remove the BIPs like the one linked in the OP entirely along with the entire thread in the Google discussions. Make it like it never existed. They could scream censorship all they want but I think most people would just consider it cleaning up some junk that has no value, kind of like they want to clean up the UXTOs. They could then go play on the knots forum and put in pull requests on the knots github.

-Dave

[gmaxwell]

Another question related to your CSAM FUD: Are the Bitcoin SV developers now in jail? Their chain allegedly is full of illicit stuff. But it is still listed at Coingecko, Coinmarketcap et al. as if nothing happened.

You might well be talking to a Bitcoin SV developer-- in the private BSV spaces/chats they're now talking about how they're responsible for the "knots vs core schism and impending hardfork"-- they're a bunch of fantasists so I wouldn't give it too much weight but at least it's something they wish they were behind.  Certainly it's sus that other than Luke-jr (who has been far out in left field about censoring transactions all along but also thoroughly unable to get almost anyone else to join him) all these new proposals and most of the major advocates are freshly minted nyms or otherwise very new bitcoiners.

[DaveF]

Another question related to your CSAM FUD: Are the Bitcoin SV developers now in jail? Their chain allegedly is full of illicit stuff. But it is still listed at Coingecko, Coinmarketcap et al. as if nothing happened.

You might well be talking to a Bitcoin SV developer-- in the private BSV spaces/chats they're now talking about how they're responsible for the "knots vs core schism and impending hardfork"-- they're a bunch of fantasists so I wouldn't give it too much weight but at least it's something they wish they were behind.  Certainly it's sus that other than Luke-jr (who has been far out in left field about censoring transactions all along but also thoroughly unable to get almost anyone else to join him) all these new proposals and most of the major advocates are freshly minted nyms or otherwise very new bitcoiners.

The funny thing is that when (IMO not if but when) there is the hardfork only the knots followers are going to loose. The people like luke and such will probably take all their followers for a ride like the BSV people riding their coin to nothing. The rest of us will sell off our forked coins, take the money and be happy they are gone. That is assuming we could even sell the coins since luke would drop back to 300k blocks so who knows how long things would take to confirm.

-Dave

[PepeLapiu]

The funny thing is that when (IMO not if but when) there is the hardfork only the knots followers are going to loose. The people like luke and such will probably take all their followers for a ride like the BSV people riding their coin to nothing. The rest of us will sell off our forked coins, take the money and be happy they are gone. That is assuming we could even sell the coins since luke would drop back to 300k blocks so who knows how long things would take to confirm.

-Dave

You are so wrong here, it's not even funny.
Here is what's happening. For the last 3 years of this ongoing spam attack, core has done absolutely nothing about spam, and even Zhao is on record calling spam "use cases we have today" she feels Satoshi did not plan for. They are all saying they don't like spam while doing nothing about it and actively fighting every attempt to fight the spam.

- The Knots filters don't work
- The USAF fork won't work
- The Cat won't work.
- Luke's filter was too controversial 2 years ago.
- The op_return filter didn't work.

All bad excuses to reject attempts to fight spam. And going as far as taking out filters. Also OpenRelay and SlipStream are services offered specifically to push more spam on bitcoin.

It doesn't take a 2 digit IQ to know all this will absolutely result in more spam. And it's just a question of time before someone fills the chain with illicit material.

It could be done by a state actor bent on smearing BTC. It could be done by a large holder who wants to bet on a price drop and cash in. It could be done even by someone on my side eiger to show you all the danger of your ways. But it's a certainty it will happen. It's not an "if it happens" but a "when it happens".

And there is a chance that all our attempts fail, Knots, the USAF, The Cat, all can fail. But all that does is provide us with  "told you so" giant foam finger for when it happens, and you'll all be begging for Knots v2.0, USAF v2.0, and The Cat v2.0.

You have to be out of your freaking mind if you think the lost trust in core will be gained back. And you have to be seriously delusional to think spam and the UTXO set will magically get better on their own without doing nothing about it.