Bitcoin's new Core sanctioned use case.

[PepeLapiu]

Disclaimer: this thread belongs in the general Bitcoin discussion forum where every bitcoiner needs to be made aware of this information. Do not move this thread to a section with fewer views.

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So it's important to understand that until core 30, the only supported and sanctioned use case of bitcoin was money.

Some people would say that you could always send a CSAM jpeg, and that it was done as early as 2012.

But what they fail to tell you is that in order to do that, you would have to do several things in order to trick the system into believing your transaction was a genuine bitcoin monetary transaction.

In some cases, you would have to use fake pubkeys, or fake scripthash, so the system would think it's a real bitcoin transaction.

In some cases, you would have to break your file into several pieces in order for the system to accept it as real bitcoin transactions.

In most cases, you would have to put a very small amount of bitcoin to skirt the dust limit in order to fool the system into thinking you are sending a genuine bitcoin transaction.

You'd have to use services like OpenRelay of SlipStream which specialize in catering to spammers, because your spam was never a supported use case of bitcoin.

And SlipStream was very likely to reject your spam if it's illicit or illegal content. These miners certainly were not willing to fill their blocks with CSAM and take on the reputational and legal risk this would create.

But none of that is required since core 30. Because, by blowing up the op_returm filter, core made file sharing a supported and sanctioned use case of bitcoin.

If you are a child pornographer, you don't want to have those files on your computer, as that would be a huge legal risk to you. Since core 30, you can upload that filth to bitcoin and transfer your legal risk to 90,000 bitcoin node runners.

And you don't have to use fake pubkeys, you don't have to break your file into tiny pieces, you don't have to go through a spam miner like Mara's SlipStream anymore. You don't even have to worry about the dust limit anymore.

You can upload your file to 90,000 nodes and use bitcoin exactly as core 30 designed it for you to use.

Core 30 effectively is forcing every node on the system, all 90,000 of them, to host any file anyone wants to throw at them.

Core needs to go. We need to start fighting spam harder.

And here is the worst part:

Until core 30, a scan of your drive would never reveal that you have some jpegs on your drive. Because it's all broken up, obfuscated, and hidden in fake pubkeys or fake scripthash.

But since core 30, when illicit material is posted on chain, and if you run a node, a simple scan of your drive will spot the file. So some anti-virus you are using could flag you as a child pornograapher. It's no longer broken up, hidden, or obfuscated. It's now a contiguous file that can be reconstituted as a single child p**n jpeg.

And core 30 did this without the support of the community, without a fork, without a care in the world for consensus or legal/moral/social risk to the 90,000 nodes.

Core needs to go!

[NotATether]

I think this would require a legislative reformation, as it was definitely possible to do this before Core 30, so there must be a legal system in place to protect node runners from liability coming from user generated content.

In the US there is section 230 ((b)? I don't remember), which immunizes internet providers such as Google and the ISP from the actions of their users, so perhaps it should be expanded.

[Antona]

The technical details you laid out are concerning. Before spamming was hard and obfuscated. Now it's streamlined, even if the risk is low, the fact that the protocol change makes it easier and transfers liability is a bad look nodes aren't free storage for junk.

[alani123]

From a technical perspectives, a file scan matching files in a drive with hashes of CSAM wouldn't correspond to anything uploaded on the Blockchain because the Blockchain doesn't store its contents in plaintext.

It would be a stretch to claim that any prosecutor would give a node runner trouble for simply storing a file in an obfuscated way.

I agree in the ethics and absurdist nature of allowing unlimited raw data to be included but I don't see the legal context making any sense.

The claim that it will truly sabotage bitcoin makes many assumptions.
First that someone will sue bitcoin node runners and secondly that courts will act in a very stupid way and even then that node runners will blindly accept a court ruling and self censor.

Interestingly though history teaches us that node runners aren't always interested in preserving the network. See for instance how ETH node runners preferred hosted cloud services inclstesd of running nodes on own servers. And what if one day Amazon decides to ban running BTC nodes for instance? Surely BTC will survive because it remains decentelized but some service providers might have downtime or degraded service.

[IsraelK]

Disclaimer: this thread belongs in the general Bitcoin discussion forum where every bitcoiner needs to be made aware of this information. Do not move this thread to a section with fewer views.

----------------------------------------------

So it's important to understand that until core 30, the only supported and sanctioned use case of bitcoin was money.

Some people would say that you could always send a CSAM jpeg, and that it was done as early as 2012.

But what they fail to tell you is that in order to do that, you would have to do several things in order to trick the system into believing your transaction was a genuine bitcoin monetary transaction.

In some cases, you would have to use fake pubkeys, or fake scripthash, so the system would think it's a real bitcoin transaction.

In some cases, you would have to break your file into several pieces in order for the system to accept it as real bitcoin transactions.

In most cases, you would have to put a very small amount of bitcoin to skirt the dust limit in order to fool the system into thinking you are sending a genuine bitcoin transaction.

You'd have to use services like OpenRelay of SlipStream which specialize in catering to spammers, because your spam was never a supported use case of bitcoin.

And SlipStream was very likely to reject your spam if it's illicit or illegal content. These miners certainly were not willing to fill their blocks with CSAM and take on the reputational and legal risk this would create.

But none of that is required since core 30. Because, by blowing up the op_returm filter, core made file sharing a supported and sanctioned use case of bitcoin.

If you are a child pornographer, you don't want to have those files on your computer, as that would be a huge legal risk to you. Since core 30, you can upload that filth to bitcoin and transfer your legal risk to 90,000 bitcoin node runners.

And you don't have to use fake pubkeys, you don't have to break your file into tiny pieces, you don't have to go through a spam miner like Mara's SlipStream anymore. You don't even have to worry about the dust limit anymore.

You can upload your file to 90,000 nodes and use bitcoin exactly as core 30 designed it for you to use.

Core 30 effectively is forcing every node on the system, all 90,000 of them, to host any file anyone wants to throw at them.

Core needs to go. We need to start fighting spam harder.

And here is the worst part:

Until core 30, a scan of your drive would never reveal that you have some jpegs on your drive. Because it's all broken up, obfuscated, and hidden in fake pubkeys or fake scripthash.

But since core 30, when illicit material is posted on chain, and if you run a node, a simple scan of your drive will spot the file. So some anti-virus you are using could flag you as a child pornograapher. It's no longer broken up, hidden, or obfuscated. It's now a contiguous file that can be reconstituted as a single child p**n jpeg.

And core 30 did this without the support of the community, without a fork, without a care in the world for consensus or legal/moral/social risk to the 90,000 nodes.

Core needs to go!

Bitcoin Core 30 did not “sanction file sharing,” remove consensus rules, force nodes to host files, or make illicit data suddenly contiguous or easily discoverable. Nothing changed at the consensus layer. OP_RETURN limits, block size limits, and validation rules are the same. What changed was relay policy, not what Bitcoin is or supports.

[PepeLapiu]

What changed was relay policy, not what Bitcoin is or supports.

That's right. The relay policy is not something each node gets to decide for himself. The relay policy is a centralized policy decided by core devs and imposed on all their nodes.

That is in sharp contrast with Knots. Knots doesn't have a centralized policy they force down your throat. They have easily configurable filters, placed in a tab easy to find. And they give you plenty of filters. You can turn all your filters off if you want, or dual them all up.

With core spamware, they give you very little configurability, and you have to dig down into config files to change what little they allow you to change.

With core, they control your node based on their centralized policy. With Knots, you control your own node.

Bitcoin Core 30 did not “sanction file sharing,”

Yes they did. Before core 30, you could not upload a picture or any sort of file onto 90,000 nodes and force them all to host and share your file. You could obfuscate your file into broken pieces, and hide it in fake pubkeys, or fake scripthash, or you could pay a spam miner like Mara to post your picture for you. Because that was never a supported or sanctioned use case on bitcoin


But since core 30, you don't have to hide behind any obfuscation method, you can now send a genuine jpeg or any other sort of file, without obfuscation, without the need for a dust limit, and without a spammy 3rd party like Mara.

remove consensus rules, force nodes to host files, or make illicit data suddenly contiguous or easily discoverable. Nothing changed at the consensus layer.

What changed is the core enforced centralized relay policy. Core makes it acceptable to.share files on bitcoin. This is a use case that was never supported or sanctioned befote core 30.

The core centralized relay policy is now this - it's okay to upload your pictures, any pictures at all. The 90,000 nodes will now be forcesld to do.that for you.