BIP-110 Soft Fork Started

[BitGoba]

Soft fork that will help to stop spam like inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, and large op returns at the consensus level is Started


BIP-110 explainer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5oLXesqDXE

[Ambatman]

I don't know I still believe if we start excluding UTXOs it would create a door to exclude more in the future
Under different umbrella
Maybe we would start censoring coins that are not KYC tied.

If I'm not mistaken this doesn't affect old UTXO before implementation
Which could make ordinals rarer thereby shooting their prices.

[gmaxwell]

This proposal would radically kneecap bitcoin's smart contract functionality and would destroy some people's bitcoins (anyone with timelocked coins that pay to outputs that can only be spent with the script functionality they hit with a chainsaw). It wouldn't even prevent the NFT traffic it's supposed to target since it would just change encoding to ones not blocked by it, which was demonstrated within days of the original post (ironically by embedding the proposal in the blockchain).  If it has any effect on it at all, I suspect it would, as Ambatman notes, just make tokens with the original encoding somewhat more valuable since no more in that encoding could be issued ("limited edition" effect).

The radical hobbling of bitcoin's more sophisticated smart contracting functionality would leave bitcoin users more reliant on centralized and trust requiring services, which diminishes Bitcoin's value proposition (after all-- if you can trust someone to handle your coins then trusting them to run all the transactions isn't that huge an additional leap)--  and the capricious invalidation of historically valid financial transactions and resulting coin loss is entirely at odds with the principles of Bitcoin and why most of us find it valuable.  It's true that there isn't that much use of sophisticated smart contracts today but the potential matters and the end result of that thinking is that Bitcoin should exist only as an ETF or MSTR shares because all other use than "holding" is comparatively uncommon.  I reject that position.  Uses that matter to few still matter to those few, and it's not ethically acceptable to diminish their property rights simply because they're few in numbers.  And the value in 'hodl' comes from the *potential* to use Bitcoin in other ways, even to those who currently aren't.

The proposal's proponents are apparently delusional: absolutely refusing to address the serious flaws like taking people's coins by just outright denying any issues had been raised.  They've adopted a hysterical position that Bitcoin is dead unless they get their way: Or in other words, it's okay to take some people's coins because the alternative is that all bitcoins will be worthless. ... in spite of the historical and ongoing evidence that the NFT traffic that they're obsessing about is not a significant problem, and certainly not one of magnitude great enough to justify aggressive market interference that would give people good reason to doubt Bitcoin's central properties.

Satoshi's original description of Bitcoin didn't lament that the problem with centralized currencies was that they were undemocratic, he pointed out that they were vulnerable to the judgement calls of others when they weighed the rights of the transacting party against other considerations.  That is a problem that can equally exist in the 'justice' of a mob as it does in the fist of a dictator.  He set out bitcoin as a system "secured in a way that was physically impossible for others to access, no matter for what reason, no matter how good the excuse, no matter what".  Sometimes we get caught up with how bad some authorities and governments are that we can miss that the real problem is some specific authority but that *any* third party has power at all over us when its otherwise avoidable.  Having a good master isn't freedom.  There are times when having something in control is unavoidable and in those cases it's better to distribute the power, but there are many other cases where there is no need to allow others to control us and Satoshi taught us how we could make money one of those cases.

I think this proposal is a DOA non-starter proposal premised on an ideological framework that is fundamentally incompatible with Bitcoin-- that third parties have a business passing judgements over the transactions of others, that a popular mob should get to decide to freeze coins, block transactions.

The authors of this proposal seem to think that the authoritarian structure of existing fiat monetary system got it right-- and that their issue is that it should be them passing judgement over people's transactions rather than, say, the American public.  But I think Bitcoin was created to escape that framework by moving those choices out of human hands as much as possible.  Bitcoin's bold direction comes with costs-- including the fact that people we don't like will use bitcoin for activities we strongly disapprove.  When we adopted Bitcoin we ought to have done so with the courage to know that those costs were worth it-- that the power to shut down others is too easily abused even if at times we might find it convenient to use ourselves.  Not because of any personal approval of any particular use, but because we know from history that the power to control others is inevitably and eventually abused no matter how good the intentions of those who wield it.  It's by the same token that hateful and bigoted speech is protected by law in the US-- not because the Americans collectively think that it's good, but because they recognize the alternative of trying to stop it it is ineffectual and comes at an unacceptable cost.

Because Bitcoin was designed to break from the permissioned model of transacting its whole design isn't particularly compatible with doing so, and as a result any proposal like this will have unintentional side effects-- like confiscating coins from people and activities that aren't being targeted or failing to actually block the targets, as we see here.  I don't, however consider this itself to be a bad thing:  The fact that attempts to influence bitcoin in this way fail due to collateral damage helps us all make better choices when expedience might otherwise challenge our judgement and convictions.
 

[d5000]

The title of the thread is misleading. There is no accepted BIP-110.

It's only a couple of strange guys running an alternative client with some invented "softfork proposal", maintained by essentially a single guy.

Knots, the only client which gives users the opportunity to signal for that "softfork", has a ~20%~14% share, still almost unchanged down from 18-19% since the start of the "OP_RETURN wars", and probably manipulated to the upside.

So even if all Knots users signal for the softfork, they would not come even close to activation.

As @gmaxwell wrote, the proposal is immature, would break things, and wouldn't even achieve what it seeks to achieve (BRC-20 would probably simply change to a Runes-ish protocol).

If Luke doesn't re-get his sanity again, then his client thus will fork away in 2027, creating another BCash.

[Satofan44]

Soft fork that will help to stop spam like inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, and large op returns at the consensus level is Started

Change the title of this thread or you are spreading misinformation. This proposal is not a BIP.

Because Bitcoin was designed to break from the permissioned model of transacting its whole design isn't particularly compatible with doing so, and as a result any proposal like this will have unintentional side effects-- like confiscating coins from people and activities that aren't being targeted or failing to actually block the targets, as we see here.  I don't, however consider this itself to be a bad thing:  The fact that attempts to influence bitcoin in this way fail due to collateral damage helps us all make better choices when expedience might otherwise challenge our judgement and convictions.

It is too late for any proposal that retracts functionality like this except perhaps in cases where the existence of the entire protocol was technologically at stake due to some fundamental issue or exploit -- it is definitely not going to happen due to abstract threats and issues, which may or may not materialize anyway especially when the proposed solution doesn't even solve it. If we were to translate this to the quantum computer FUD that comes regularly, it is akin to proposing to replace ECDSA with RSA in order to solve the potential quantum threat of the future.  It does not actually accomplish anything, but it makes some stupid people feel good.

If Luke doesn't re-get his sanity again, then his client thus will fork away in 2027, creating another BCash.

That would probably be for the best, as you have seen with many actors in the past -- as soon as they stayed too long they started causing damage to Bitcoin. Luke's contributions in recent years are practically non existent and given what he has been up to in the past year or so, he has been a net negative for Bitcoin. It would be for the best if both luke and Knots go away to their own shitcoin, and this would reinforce the existing client consensus on layer 1.

[DaveF]

These people seriously don't understand how BTC works.
There is just about 0% chance that any fork that takes peoples coins (like this one) is ever going to happen.
If it does the value of BTC would fall off a cliff.

So the miners, who mine to make money will keep mining with BTC clients that don't support it.
Exchanges, who well exchange crypto and fiat to make themselves their profits would run BTC clients that don't support it.
People who don't want their funds taken because someone wants to change the rules would run BTC clients that don't support it.

So this useless fork would fork off and die.

.....
It's only a couple of strange guys running an alternative client with some invented "softfork proposal", maintained by essentially a single guy.

Knots, the only client which gives users the opportunity to signal for that "softfork", has a ~20% share, still almost unchanged since the start of the "OP_RETURN wars", and probably manipulated to the upside.

So even if all Knots users signal for the softfork, they would not come even close to activation.
.....

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5569653.msg66221904#msg66221904

If you run a node just do something similar and block them.

-Dave

[Donneski]

I totally agree with the people saying this doesn’t belong at the consensus layer. If someone doesn’t want to relay inscriptions or large OP_RETURNs, that’s already solvable with node policy.

Given the current signaling and where Knots sits economically, this isn’t getting anywhere near activation anyway. We’ve seen how these alternative-client pushes usually end and I don’t see this one being any different.

[ABCbits]

I can't see the video since youtube says "Video unavailable", but the "BIP" itself already discussed on BIP ?: Reduced Data Temporary Softfork.

~September 1, 2026
Maximum Activation Height

Block 965664. Activation requires 55% miner signaling (1109/2016 blocks).

The activation threshold will be 55% (1109 out of 2016 blocks in a single difficulty-adjustment period).

I don't expect mining pool support this "BIP", either because their income will be reduced or they aware about the UTXO exclusion. And IIRC, 55% also much lower than threshold to activate SegWit and Taproot in past.

[BayAreaCoins]

This proposal would radically kneecap bitcoin's smart contract functionality and would destroy some people's bitcoins (anyone with timelocked coins that pay to outputs that can only be spent with the script functionality they hit with a chainsaw). It wouldn't even prevent the NFT traffic it's supposed to target since it would just change encoding to ones not blocked by it, which was demonstrated within days of the original post (ironically by embedding the proposal in the blockchain).  If it has any effect on it at all, I suspect it would, as Ambatman notes, just make tokens with the original encoding somewhat more valuable since no more in that encoding could be issued ("limited edition" effect).

The radical hobbling of bitcoin's more sophisticated smart contracting functionality would leave bitcoin users more reliant on centralized and trust requiring services, which diminishes Bitcoin's value proposition (after all-- if you can trust someone to handle your coins then trusting them to run all the transactions isn't that huge an additional leap)--  and the capricious invalidation of historically valid financial transactions and resulting coin loss is entirely at odds with the principles of Bitcoin and why most of us find it valuable.  It's true that there isn't that much use of sophisticated smart contracts today but the potential matters and the end result of that thinking is that Bitcoin should exist only as an ETF or MSTR shares because all other use than "holding" is comparatively uncommon.  I reject that position.  Uses that matter to few still matter to those few, and it's not ethically acceptable to diminish their property rights simply because they're few in numbers.  And the value in 'hodl' comes from the *potential* to use Bitcoin in other ways, even to those who currently aren't.

The proposal's proponents are apparently delusional: absolutely refusing to address the serious flaws like taking people's coins by just outright denying any issues had been raised.  They've adopted a hysterical position that Bitcoin is dead unless they get their way: Or in other words, it's okay to take some people's coins because the alternative is that all bitcoins will be worthless. ... in spite of the historical and ongoing evidence that the NFT traffic that they're obsessing about is not a significant problem, and certainly not one of magnitude great enough to justify aggressive market interference that would give people good reason to doubt Bitcoin's central properties.

Satoshi's original description of Bitcoin didn't lament that the problem with centralized currencies was that they were undemocratic, he pointed out that they were vulnerable to the judgement calls of others when they weighed the rights of the transacting party against other considerations.  That is a problem that can equally exist in the 'justice' of a mob as it does in the fist of a dictator.  He set out bitcoin as a system "secured in a way that was physically impossible for others to access, no matter for what reason, no matter how good the excuse, no matter what".  Sometimes we get caught up with how bad some authorities and governments are that we can miss that the real problem is some specific authority but that *any* third party has power at all over us when its otherwise avoidable.  Having a good master isn't freedom.  There are times when having something in control is unavoidable and in those cases it's better to distribute the power, but there are many other cases where there is no need to allow others to control us and Satoshi taught us how we could make money one of those cases.

I think this proposal is a DOA non-starter proposal premised on an ideological framework that is fundamentally incompatible with Bitcoin-- that third parties have a business passing judgements over the transactions of others, that a popular mob should get to decide to freeze coins, block transactions.

The authors of this proposal seem to think that the authoritarian structure of existing fiat monetary system got it right-- and that their issue is that it should be them passing judgement over people's transactions rather than, say, the American public.  But I think Bitcoin was created to escape that framework by moving those choices out of human hands as much as possible.  Bitcoin's bold direction comes with costs-- including the fact that people we don't like will use bitcoin for activities we strongly disapprove.  When we adopted Bitcoin we ought to have done so with the courage to know that those costs were worth it-- that the power to shut down others is too easily abused even if at times we might find it convenient to use ourselves.  Not because of any personal approval of any particular use, but because we know from history that the power to control others is inevitably and eventually abused no matter how good the intentions of those who wield it.  It's by the same token that hateful and bigoted speech is protected by law in the US-- not because the Americans collectively think that it's good, but because they recognize the alternative of trying to stop it it is ineffectual and comes at an unacceptable cost.

Because Bitcoin was designed to break from the permissioned model of transacting its whole design isn't particularly compatible with doing so, and as a result any proposal like this will have unintentional side effects-- like confiscating coins from people and activities that aren't being targeted or failing to actually block the targets, as we see here.  I don't, however consider this itself to be a bad thing:  The fact that attempts to influence bitcoin in this way fail due to collateral damage helps us all make better choices when expedience might otherwise challenge our judgement and convictions.
 

So you don't think any action would send a message in the future to users?  "Hey, do that and we will rekt you at our discretion!  The creator didn't intend on it to be used like that."  Perhaps it may even fuel their fire.

You think they would just find a workaround, and the old edition may be viewed as limited? "I got those hard-to-get old school NFT's..."

I hope you keep this same energy.

[ABCbits]

You think they would just find a workaround, and the old edition may be viewed as limited? "I got those hard-to-get old school NFT's..."

They don't have to find workaround, when they could continue abusing fake public key. There are protocol for it, such as Omni[1] and OLGA[2]. And personally i wouldn't worry too much about old NFT/token seen as limited when currently there are 117 million inscription[3].

[1] https://github.com/OmniLayer/spec/blob/master/OmniSpecification.adoc#6-embedding-omni-transactions-in-the-blockchain
[2] https://github.com/stampchain-io/btc_stamps/blob/dev/docs/PROTOCOLS.md#olga-format
[3] https://ordiscan.com/

[NotATether]

It's only a couple of strange guys running an alternative client with some invented "softfork proposal", maintained by essentially a single guy.

So to oppose this fork it's simply enough to continue running a Bitcoin Core node, right? Or perhaps several nodes maybe, if you really want to make a statement.

You think they would just find a workaround, and the old edition may be viewed as limited? "I got those hard-to-get old school NFT's..."

They don't have to find workaround, when they could continue abusing fake public key. There are protocol for it, such as Omni[1] and OLGA[2]. And personally i wouldn't worry too much about old NFT/token seen as limited when currently there are 117 million inscription[3].

[1] https://github.com/OmniLayer/spec/blob/master/OmniSpecification.adoc#6-embedding-omni-transactions-in-the-blockchain
[2] https://github.com/stampchain-io/btc_stamps/blob/dev/docs/PROTOCOLS.md#olga-format
[3] https://ordiscan.com/

The Omni layer was deprecated though, wasn't it?

Why not just do it in Taproot Assets? The devs there are literally crying out loud for people to drop their data there.

[DaveF]

It's only a couple of strange guys running an alternative client with some invented "softfork proposal", maintained by essentially a single guy.

So to oppose this fork it's simply enough to continue running a Bitcoin Core node, right? Or perhaps several nodes maybe, if you really want to make a statement.

You can also block the other lukecoin nodes
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5569653.msg66221904#msg66221904

Why talk to other nodes that will not give you all the mempool but instead are giving their censored opinion of what is a real transaction?


-Dave

[d5000]

So to oppose this fork it's simply enough to continue running a Bitcoin Core node, right? Or perhaps several nodes maybe, if you really want to make a statement.

Yep. But as currently there are already more Core 30 nodes than Knots nodes, I don't think their "signalling" will come anyway close to "dangerous" levels. Yeah, in theory all the 14% Knots nodes will probably eventually signal for that proposal. But that's probably too low for a miner to change their mind and support it.

BTW: Is there any way to know the client version of the miner of a certain block? I've looked into the coinbase strings but normally there's only info about the pool there.

Activation requires 55% miner signaling (1109/2016 blocks).

Shouldn't such a low threshold for softforks be banned by the protocol? That looks dangerous for me if a softfork is very contentious ... Not this one, because this will stall at 2% or so probably (Ocean's 1.5% plus some solo miners). But let's say something like covenants, this should be always ensure to have at least ~80% support ...

Is it even possible to ban a low softfork threshold?

The Omni layer was deprecated though, wasn't it?

If we're talking about NFTs, I think Omni didn't even support them. But BRC-20 style tokens can easily be swapped for Runes, which are even supported by the same software than Ordinals.

For NFTs I also think they should go for TA(ro).

[gmaxwell]

So you don't think any action would send a message in the future to users?  "Hey, do that and we will rekt you at our discretion!  The creator didn't intend on it to be used like that."  Perhaps it may even fuel their fire.

You think they would just find a workaround,

I don't just think they'd find a workaround, it was already worked around as soon as the proposal was made.  I think to the NFT people it would largely go unnoticed or just send a message that they're here to stay because efforts to 'rekt' did nothing-- or they'd just use it for free marketing like they've done with most criticism.

Worse, to other random people who aren't NFT junkies and it's less clear that it did nothing to the NFT junkies it would create a fear that bitcoin is unsafe because some day they could be targeted --  and not an unreasonable one since the NFT crap is somewhat uniquely able to evade: NFTs don't exist as far as the protocol is concerned, they exist entirely in the NFT software and the bitcoin network is merely abused as a way to publish data and there are an endless number of ways to publish data in Bitcoin.  A Bitcoin that can shut down NFT degens -- people who have had hundreds of millions in funding-- can absolutely shut down little old me or you.