Caution for Bitcoin Knots users and non-users

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin Knots released their latest version four days ago: https://github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin/releases/tag/v29.3.knots20260508

By default, the Knots node will enforce the BIP110 soft fork. If you don't know what this is, it is a proposal that reduces the flexibility of Bitcoin by limiting OP_RETURN outputs to 83 bytes and capping other data-heavy scripts. The justification is to reduce "spam".

At first, people were told to run a Knots node, because they wanted to "block spam" on their own nodes. Now that this was proven futile, they want to change the protocol rules of Bitcoin.


For Knots non-users: Be very wary on developers who silently try to enable a soft fork that is highly controversial and clearly receives no support or attention by most Bitcoin users.

For Knots users: If you support this change and soft fork, please understand that if majority of hashrate does not mine on your protocol rules, you will no longer follow the Bitcoin chain. You will end up on forked chain, like Bitcoin Cash.

[Smartprofit]

Luke Dash Jr. positions himself as an ideological defender of blockchain purity. As far as I understand, he champions the concept of Bitcoin as pure money. 🙋

However, Bitcoin isn't just a technology, it's also an economy ... Above all, an economy!

Currently, miners are experiencing financial difficulties. Each new halving (the next one will be in 2028) effectively doubles the cost of Bitcoin mining. Meanwhile, transaction fees are currently critically low. How can BIP110 be implemented in such a situation? This innovation will ruin most miners! The Bitcoin network will become centralized and much less secure than it is now.

It seems to me that if some organization (I don't know who exactly is behind Luke) plans to destroy Bitcoin now, then BIP110 is a logical first step in that direction. 🤷

[PrivacyG]

It seems to me that if some organization (I don't know who exactly is behind Luke) plans to destroy Bitcoin now, then BIP110 is a logical first step in that direction. 🤷

There have clearly been some attempts to destroy Bitcoin and to put it into more influential hands.

Remember when some company I forgot the name of wanted to hire Bitcoin Core developers and there was this anger all over the Internet that they may be trying to steer them to particular interests that are not Bitcoin related but rather political?  This is not new at all and every few years at most we get at least one more such attempt.

BIP110 is I would argue one of the worst attempts yet.  It is surrounded by gaslighting, victimization and deception.  Every time I see a new pro Knots topic around Bitcoin Talk it is the same manipulative tactic of crying out loud that they are being censored followed by twisting words and facts in order to make BIP110 seem like the 'savior' of Bitcoin.

There is no 'innovation' here.  It is exactly what you call it, an attempt to centralize the Bitcoin network, to lower its Security and to put Bitcoin in the wrong hands.  Because if the majority listen to Luke, BIP110 succeeds and what Luke considers spam will be gone, it will offer the perfect illusion of a 'now clean Bitcoin network' he needs in order to continue with the next step.

I wonder who lays behind him as well because he has one straight path he does not even want to CONSIDER the possibly wrong way to do it.  To Luke there is no way but his way.  Which is a very dangerous road with very grave consequences.

[DaveF]

Not my work (obviously) but:
https://jlopp.github.io/knotzi-death-march/

For those too lazy to do the math it's ~ August 8th when they fork.

It seems to me that if some organization (I don't know who exactly is behind Luke) plans to destroy Bitcoin now, then BIP110 is a logical first step in that direction. 🤷

There have clearly been some attempts to destroy Bitcoin and to put it into more influential hands.

Remember when some company I forgot the name of wanted to hire Bitcoin Core developers and there was this anger all over the Internet that they may be trying to steer them to particular interests that are not Bitcoin related but rather political?  This is not new at all and every few years at most we get at least one more such attempt.

BIP110 is I would argue one of the worst attempts yet.  It is surrounded by gaslighting, victimization and deception.  Every time I see a new pro Knots topic around Bitcoin Talk it is the same manipulative tactic of crying out loud that they are being censored followed by twisting words and facts in order to make BIP110 seem like the 'savior' of Bitcoin.

There is no 'innovation' here.  It is exactly what you call it, an attempt to centralize the Bitcoin network, to lower its Security and to put Bitcoin in the wrong hands.  Because if the majority listen to Luke, BIP110 succeeds and what Luke considers spam will be gone, it will offer the perfect illusion of a 'now clean Bitcoin network' he needs in order to continue with the next step.

I wonder who lays behind him as well because he has one straight path he does not even want to CONSIDER the possibly wrong way to do it.  To Luke there is no way but his way.  Which is a very dangerous road with very grave consequences.

Luke lost a lot of his coins. Makes you wonder if this is just a burn it all down for spite kind of thing.
Might not even be doing it consciously. I know people who have ruined generational businesses because they made business decisions with emotions instead of just math.

-Dave

[tvbcof]

Luke lost a lot of his coins. Makes you wonder if this is just a burn it all down for spite kind of thing.
Might not even be doing it consciously. I know people who have ruined generational businesses because they made business decisions with emotions instead of just math.

I'm sure it happens now and again that old timers dig themselves into a hole, often taxes associated, and become subject to legal pressures and other kinds of duress.  This would be especially pronounced if the subject were to undergo an unexpected loss or didn't plan appropriately for a reversal of some sort.  I saw such a thing happen a lot at the end of the dot.com bubble.

Sometimes there are individuals who are just by nature weird fuckers who get themselves into pain-positions as a feature of their innate proclivities.  Such a thing is not unheard of in Bitcoinlandia.

Sometimes I wonder if certain dynamics are at play in certain instances where people who should know better make weird decisions.  Seems like sometimes the fall-outs include residual chains with zombie-coins which are not even worth the time for real Bitcoiners to bother collecting up.

I have zero doubt that the antagonists of Bitcoin have the positioning and disposition to fully leverage any advantage they could get on any ecosystem participant.

[OcTradism]

Luke Dash Jr. positions himself as an ideological defender of blockchain purity. As far as I understand, he champions the concept of Bitcoin as pure money. 🙋

However, Bitcoin isn't just a technology, it's also an economy ... Above all, an economy!

With carelessness of Luke Dash Jr which happened many times, from his personal Bitcoin storage to his technical development works, I really have no intention to support his BIP and the coming soft fork. So far, very little people in Bitcoin community support Luke's BIP and if the soft fork actually happens, it will not result in a very strong chain.

Likely Luke's BIP, the fork will be similar to other failed forks before.
How many Bitcoin forks are there? You will be surprised.

[ABCbits]

Luke Dash Jr. positions himself as an ideological defender of blockchain purity. As far as I understand, he champions the concept of Bitcoin as pure money. 🙋

BIP 110 doesn't really achieve Bitcoin as pure money either, when it also makes certain type of address/TX (for monetary purpose) invalid.

Not my work (obviously) but:
https://jlopp.github.io/knotzi-death-march/

For those too lazy to do the math it's ~ August 8th when they fork.

Related website, https://mainnet.observer/charts/blocks-bip110-signaling/. Author of that page have doing analysis Bitcoin network and blockchain for many years, so it should be accurate.

[Ucy]

Well, the purpose of fees is to prevent spam and garbage data of any kind from getting through and affecting the use of Bitcoin for cash related transactions and for lawful purposes, but if that does not succeed, stronger measure should be adopted. Hopefully such measure allows legitimate data that may not necessarily be cash related but is very useful to the network/owner and does not occur frequently

[Smartprofit]

Not my work (obviously) but:
https://jlopp.github.io/knotzi-death-march/

For those too lazy to do the math it's ~ August 8th when they fork.

It seems to me that if some organization (I don't know who exactly is behind Luke) plans to destroy Bitcoin now, then BIP110 is a logical first step in that direction. 🤷

There have clearly been some attempts to destroy Bitcoin and to put it into more influential hands.

Remember when some company I forgot the name of wanted to hire Bitcoin Core developers and there was this anger all over the Internet that they may be trying to steer them to particular interests that are not Bitcoin related but rather political?  This is not new at all and every few years at most we get at least one more such attempt.

BIP110 is I would argue one of the worst attempts yet.  It is surrounded by gaslighting, victimization and deception.  Every time I see a new pro Knots topic around Bitcoin Talk it is the same manipulative tactic of crying out loud that they are being censored followed by twisting words and facts in order to make BIP110 seem like the 'savior' of Bitcoin.

There is no 'innovation' here.  It is exactly what you call it, an attempt to centralize the Bitcoin network, to lower its Security and to put Bitcoin in the wrong hands.  Because if the majority listen to Luke, BIP110 succeeds and what Luke considers spam will be gone, it will offer the perfect illusion of a 'now clean Bitcoin network' he needs in order to continue with the next step.

I wonder who lays behind him as well because he has one straight path he does not even want to CONSIDER the possibly wrong way to do it.  To Luke there is no way but his way.  Which is a very dangerous road with very grave consequences.

Luke lost a lot of his coins. Makes you wonder if this is just a burn it all down for spite kind of thing.
Might not even be doing it consciously. I know people who have ruined generational businesses because they made business decisions with emotions instead of just math.

-Dave

That's a very interesting thought! Yes, Luke really did lose 216 bitcoins in 2023 due to his own carelessness (I remember this story well, but only now realized it's connected to this particular person). 🙋

216 bitcoins is a huge sum of money for almost anyone... But for Luke Dash Jr., it was likely a huge psychological shock. He lost more than just a huge sum of money. He also lost his bitcoins, the physical part of the project he'd invested a lot of time and effort into. He also partially lost his reputation... It's extremely unprofessional for a Bitcoin developer to allow a hacker to rob him. It's a fiasco.

Therefore, it's entirely possible that Luke has developed a subconscious hatred for Bitcoin, and especially for the people who actually make money in its ecosystem. This hatred stems from deep resentment and manifests itself in his fight for the "purity" of the blockchain. Luke has effectively become a Bitcoin inquisitor.  He positions himself as a man possessing absolute knowledge. He commits very dangerous acts, but perhaps he himself is unaware of the subconscious motives behind his actions...

[Kruw]

This is important for users who want to spend their coins after the chain split occurs:

The signaling period to activate the BIP110 soft fork is currently underway, which enforces the new consensus rules after 55% of hashpower signals readiness. Even if this 55% threshold is never reached, Knots nodes will enforce the fork rules starting at block height 965664 (approximately September 1st). Then, a chain split will occur once a miner creates a block containing any transactions that spend deep Taproot trees, creates large OP_RETURNs (>83 bytes), or tx that contain some specific inscription style witnesses. Knots nodes will reject the block, while Bitcoin Core nodes will continue to sync to the original chain.*

However, a chain split introduces a footgun: Transactions you sign that spend coins on one network are valid on both chains. This would allow the recipient of a payment you made on the Core chain to rebroadcast it on the Knots network, draining the coins from your wallet there as well. Similarly, if you spend your coins on the Knots chain, then the recipient can rebroadcast that transaction on the Bitcoin Core network and take your coins on the main chain. This is called a replay attack.

Replay protection is the term for the various strategies to make your signatures only valid on the chain you intend to spend on. For the Knots chain, the only way to do this is to wait for miners to create new blocks and obtain a descendant of the newly generated coinbase output.** Because the same block does not exist on both chains, you can finally safely spend your existing UTXOs by combining the miner-descended coin as an input for that tx.

On the Core chain, it is much simpler to gain replay protection. Anyone can just create a transaction that is invalid under BIP110's new rules, and all descendant outputs from that tx (and all their future descendants, etc) can't be replayed on the Knots chain. Coinjoins make it easy to gain replay protection since all rounds will eventually contain at least one non-replayable coin as an ancestor.

*Assuming the Bitcoin Core chain has >51% of the total hashrate. If the BIP110 chain gains >51% of the hashrate, the Bitcoin Core chain will be reorged out of existence and there won't be a split.
**Miners are forced to wait 100 blocks before spending their coins. If the BIP110 chain does not include a change to the mining difficulty mechanism, chain progression may stall entirely.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I'm curious: what happens to Ocean miners? They all run Knots, IIRC. I wonder if Luke Jr double thought before moving in that direction. He lost 216 BTC a few years ago, now he's going to lose more money.

I just love how Bitcoin makes arrogance unaffordable.

On the Core chain, it is much simpler to gain replay protection. Anyone can just create a transaction that is invalid under BIP110's new rules, and all descendant outputs from that tx (and all their future descendants, etc) can't be replayed on the Knots chain. Coinjoins make it easy to gain replay protection since all rounds will eventually contain at least one non-replayable coin as an ancestor.

It's not clear to me why WabiSabi coinjoin eventually contains at least one non-replayable coin as an ancestor. Why can an attacker not broadcast the coinjoins in Knots chain?

[Kruw]

It's not clear to me why WabiSabi coinjoin eventually contains at least one non-replayable coin as an ancestor.

Eventually all transactions will inherit non-replayable histories, coinjoins (any kind, not just WabiSabi) are a convenient way to acquire replay protection without sacrificing custody.

Why can an attacker not broadcast the coinjoins in Knots chain?

If the coinjoin contains any input that has a BIP110 violating transaction as an ancestor, that means the descendants can't exist on the Knots chain. So, the coinjoin transaction created on the Core chain would be invalid on the Knots chain because the signed transaction would be attempting to create new coins "out of thin air".

[ertil]

It's not clear to me why WabiSabi coinjoin eventually contains at least one non-replayable coin as an ancestor.

Because if you put 300 coins in, and 300 coins out, then a single OP_RETURN is enough to split all coins between Core and Knots, for all of these users at once. If you would want to do that without CoinJoin, then each user would need a separate OP_RETURN instead.

By the way: I wonder, how many 84-byte OP_RETURNs will be used, only because of BIP-110. Because I guess it is the easiest way of doing that kind of things, which would be standard. There are some cheaper non-standard ways, like pushing some witness data into bc1pfeessrawgf, but because of standardness, it may be harder to do. Or maybe using some P2PK would also work, because it would then take 35 bytes for compressed public keys, and would also be blocked by BIP-110, because of being bigger than 34 bytes.