Understanding why so many bitcoiners are angry at core.

[PepeAss]

If you block a lot of ways of pushing data, then people will start doing it in inefficient ways

You are referring to the "harm reduction" policy. In that we have to create more and more ways to carer to spammers in order to entice them not to use the "worst ones". The problem with this is that when you remove the narrative around it, the " harm reduction" policy looks identical to the "pro-spam" policy:

- Remove the definition of bitcoin as money in their documentation
- Refer to spam as "use cases we have today" instead of the obvious attack it really is.
- Insult and denigrate people who only like bitcoin and not NFTs and other nonsense like is done in this video: https://youtu.be/EgmIh-rgqNA
- Reject new filters and anti-spam measures
- Blow open existing filters and anti-spam measures.


When you look at how they are applied without their narrative, pro-spam and harm reduction are identical and will absolutely result in more spam.

Currently, BIP-110 blocks P2PKs

Please do tell me. When was the last time a tx with P2PK outputs was used for a genuine monetary transactions, and not dust spam outputs?

raw multisigs, and some timelocked transactions.

All of which are being used only for spam purpose.

Trying to block more things will only affect old users, who wouldn't be able to spend their coins properly

Nothing in BIP110 prevents anyone from using their own coin in a monetary manner.

The network does not keep the private keys. It also doesn't have to keep the transactions. All that is needed, is knowing the UTXO set, and proving, that it is correct.

You are suggesting we should ignore spam, compromise around spam, work around spam. I disagree. Passivity is what core told us to do for the last 4 years and it's clearly not working.

[ABCbits]

raw multisigs, and some timelocked transactions.

All of which are being used only for spam purpose.

Relevant xkcd comic,


Source: https://xkcd.com/285/

As for timelock, i'll remind that LN use timelock. Does that mean you consider TX created by LN as spam?

P.S. Who are you? Are you friend of OP or AI agent run by OP?

[PepeAss]

As for timelock, i'll remind that LN use timelock. Does that mean you consider TX created by LN as spam?

BIP110 kills LN ?!?
OH NOOOOOO!!!

:eye_roll:

P.S. Who are you? Are you friend of OP or AI agent run by OP?

Ask your mom, she knows.

[ertil]

As for timelock, i'll remind that LN use timelock. Does that mean you consider TX created by LN as spam?

In general, when you have any UTXO, which is owned by two or more people, then you often have a timelocked transaction, signed by someone else. And then, if that transaction contains anything, which is blocked by BIP-110, then guess what: it will be blocked. And then, guess who will get these coins instead: a second party, which won't be blocked. Or it will be a coin flip, if both transactions will be valid only after BIP-110 expiration: then, the user, who will broadcast it faster, will be able to get it.

Which means, that BIP-110 opens a new attack vector for LN users:

1. Open a channel with someone.
2. Set up a channel closing transaction, which would be invalid under BIP-110, but valid now.
3. Move coins inside LN, to have zero coins on your side, and all coins on another party's side.
4. Wait for BIP-110 to activate.
5. Publish an old channel state on BIP-110 chain.

Then, another party will try to broadcast a transaction, which will be invalid under BIP-110. And then, you can just patiently wait for your timelock to expire, and get all coins from that channel.

Of course, BIP-110 proponents will tell you, that in the worst case, no coins will be blocked, because both transactions will be valid after BIP-110 expiration. But in multi-party setups, it simply doesn't matter: if a channel is closed by another party, then who cares, that your transaction will be valid, and can be broadcasted later, if another party already moved the coins?

To stop that attack, you have to make sure, that no LN client will ever sign anything, which would be rejected by BIP-110. Otherwise, some people will lose some coins, just by using any LN client, which doesn't check BIP-110 rules. Fortunately, only coins from BIP-110 chain will be lost, everything else will be unaffected, so it is not a problem, as long as this is only activated by some minority.

[beryybe]

Great write-up. It really feels like the original vision of Bitcoin as peer-to-peer electronic cash is being systematically eroded to turn it into a bloated playground for jpegs and tokens. The fact that the core maintenance doesn't care about the blockchain size explosion and dismisses everything as "free market" is a huge red flag. If nodes become too expensive for regular people to run because of all this arbitrary data, decentralization goes out the window. Definitely something to think about regarding BIP110.

[DaveF]

As for timelock, i'll remind that LN use timelock. Does that mean you consider TX created by LN as spam?

In general, when you have any UTXO, which is owned by two or more people, then you often have a timelocked transaction, signed by someone else. And then, if that transaction contains anything, which is blocked by BIP-110, then guess what: it will be blocked. And then, guess who will get these coins instead: a second party, which won't be blocked. Or it will be a coin flip, if both transactions will be valid only after BIP-110 expiration: then, the user, who will broadcast it faster, will be able to get it.

Which means, that BIP-110 opens a new attack vector for LN users:

1. Open a channel with someone.
2. Set up a channel closing transaction, which would be invalid under BIP-110, but valid now.
3. Move coins inside LN, to have zero coins on your side, and all coins on another party's side.
4. Wait for BIP-110 to activate.
5. Publish an old channel state on BIP-110 chain.

Then, another party will try to broadcast a transaction, which will be invalid under BIP-110. And then, you can just patiently wait for your timelock to expire, and get all coins from that channel.

Of course, BIP-110 proponents will tell you, that in the worst case, no coins will be blocked, because both transactions will be valid after BIP-110 expiration. But in multi-party setups, it simply doesn't matter: if a channel is closed by another party, then who cares, that your transaction will be valid, and can be broadcasted later, if another party already moved the coins?

To stop that attack, you have to make sure, that no LN client will ever sign anything, which would be rejected by BIP-110. Otherwise, some people will lose some coins, just by using any LN client, which doesn't check BIP-110 rules. Fortunately, only coins from BIP-110 chain will be lost, everything else will be unaffected, so it is not a problem, as long as this is only activated by some minority.

Well as of now they are up to 5 blocks this signaling period so it's not a real worry that that the 110 blockchain is going anywhere so I don't think any LN client really cares.

I'm going with the PepeAss account is really Pepe himself but he got arrested for something and he had to smuggle a phone in to prison using his prison pocket:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prison_pocket

And that is where he is sending messages from.

Everyone don't forget to ~ his new account and give it some negative trust just to be sure nobody else follows him off the 110 cliff.

-Dave

[Dogedegen]

Fair point but they did come back. Back in 2017 the ICO hype was at its peak but it died. But also it did not disappear. It changed face and came back multiple times under different names creating the same useless garbage to sell to newbies.
In any case I hope you are right about the Ordinals Attack being dead...

Well if you consider any kind of content storing as a variant of Ordinals then of course it is going to come back, but I don't think that it is going to come back in the same way that it did. There would have to be very bullish times, much more than even before for something like this to happen because most people who touched ordinals or NFTs in the past cycle have lost a lot of money.

If I create any kind of system, service, product that creates a lot of UTXOs to work you will consider it an attack?

Why are you generalizing what I said? Did I say "any" system that creates UTXO?
What I said is pretty simple:
Bitcoin is a payment system, if you want to make 1 payment or 1 trillion payments, that is fine. Nobody should ever be allowed to prevent that since that is against the principles of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is NOT a cloud storage. That means if you create a system that injects arbitrary data into the chain just because you want to use it as your personal cloud storage, that is an attack whether you are using 1 UTXO or 1 trillion of them.

I am not generalizing, I am asking a question for clarification. While Satoshi may have intended Bitcoin to be a payment system, that is not what it is because it is so much more than that. Satoshi has not envisioned everything that Bitcoin could be, and how could he? Nobody could do that. We have knowledge today on many topics that during his time we though was not possible. The thing is not about what Bitcoin is or is not because it is clearly going to be subjective, it is about what it can be used for. I can store data in payment transactions effectively using it both as cloud and payments at the same time. There is nothing you can do to prevent this without making Bitcoin completely centralized. That was the point I was aiming at..

It's actually the opposite. You are trying to redefine Bitcoin to fit the way you want to use it. Otherwise as I said before, the system has been preventing such abusive transactions from very early days because the consensus among bitcoiners has always been that bitcoin as a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system" should not be used for cloud storage.

Any kind of use that does not break consensus rules is a valid use of Bitcoin. Any transaction that aligns with the rules is also a valid transaction. I can use it to play games on chain, I can use it to create UTXOs for whatever reason I want, payments, storage, timestamping, whatever I want as long as my transactions are valid transactions. So yes people are free to decide how they will use Bitcoin under the existing consensus rules. Anything else is wrong and a centralization, because you want to impair the free decision making of others.

And the answer to all of them is also the same: it won't scale. Bitcoin is a payment system and its blockchain is a ledger for payments not for anything else.

This is not true and the data does not support this. It is for everything that aligns with the consensus rules.

You can create a thousand filters and you will still not be able to block the inclusion of arbitrary data or stuff that you consider spam, because there is always another way this is how information theory works.

That's an entirely different argument and it is irrelevant here. It is like saying because the thieves can always find a way to break the door/lock and get into our home then we should not bother with adding security measures to make it harder for them! Just leave the door open and hope that after they came in, they get bored and got out on their own after doing minimal damage.

It is not, that is the main argument. Preventing data inclusion does not work and leads to people including data in ways that cause more damage. He explained it much better than I can. Please read some information how information theory works. It is not possible to prevent the inclusion of arbitrary data in a decentralized network. There are facts, it is not even a debate. You can make it harder but you can create much more damage by doing it.

If you block existing ways of pushing data, then worse ones would be used instead. You know why OP_RETURN was invented in the first place? Because previously, worse methods were used. Going into BIP-110, and trying to block more and more UTXOs, would only do more harm than good. If you want to prevent data inclusion, then you need to apply that solution globally, to every transaction, no matter if it is a payment or not. Why? Because data pushes can be done inside public keys, signatures, and a lot of other payment-specific fields.

Also, if you wonder, what would happen, if many things will be blocked, then you can read this: https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/encoding-art-into-the-satoshi-value-field-and-the-unfilterable-floor/2604

Great write-up. It really feels like the original vision of Bitcoin as peer-to-peer electronic cash is being systematically eroded to turn it into a bloated playground for jpegs and tokens. The fact that the core maintenance doesn't care about the blockchain size explosion and dismisses everything as "free market" is a huge red flag. If nodes become too expensive for regular people to run because of all this arbitrary data, decentralization goes out the window. Definitely something to think about regarding BIP110.

Do not post misinformation, Core are the main reason why Bitcoin exists and is very decentralized.
If you block a lot of ways of pushing data, then people will start doing it in inefficient ways, for example by storing them as coin amounts in satoshis. What then? Would you want to block sending specific amounts, to stop that kind of spam? The cure cannot be worse than the disease, if it is, then it is simply not worth it.

Currently, BIP-110 blocks P2PKs, raw multisigs, and some timelocked transactions. Trying to block more things will only affect old users, who wouldn't be able to spend their coins properly, while spammers will happily switch from one method to another, which won't be filtered. And they will do that faster, than developers will release a new version. Also, the fact, that users won't update immediately, will only make the attack stronger, because you can always create The Greatest Spam Filter, and users can simply refuse to upgrade.

[PepeAss]

Well as of now they are up to 5 blocks this signaling period so it's not a real worry that that the 110 blockchain is going anywhere so I don't think any LN client really cares.

The miners don't run Bitcoin, the miners don't decide on the rules to enforce on themselves. Just absurd.
The claim that only "mining nodes" and "economic nodes" matter, that's pure big blocker trope.
The big blockers were handed their own ass, get ready for core to get the same treatment.

The small guys go first, not second.

If you want to wait for the big guys to tell you what's up, may I suggest waiting for the next FOMC meeting.

Well if you consider any kind of content storing as a variant of Ordinals then of course it is going to come back, but I don't think that it is going to come back in the same way that it did. There would have to be very bullish times, much more than even before for something like this to happen because most people who touched ordinals or NFTs in the past cycle have lost a lot of money.

So your solution to the malware problem is "let's just wait until the world runs out of idiots".
Really? Seriously?

[Alphakilo]

Well as of now they are up to 5 blocks this signaling period so it's not a real worry that that the 110 blockchain is going anywhere so I don't think any LN client really cares.

The miners don't run Bitcoin, the miners don't decide on the rules to enforce on themselves. Just absurd.
The claim that only "mining nodes" and "economic nodes" matter, that's pure big blocker trope.
The big blockers were handed their own ass, get ready for core to get the same treatment.

The small guys go first, not second.

If you want to wait for the big guys to tell you what's up, may I suggest waiting for the next FOMC meeting.

Well if you consider any kind of content storing as a variant of Ordinals then of course it is going to come back, but I don't think that it is going to come back in the same way that it did. There would have to be very bullish times, much more than even before for something like this to happen because most people who touched ordinals or NFTs in the past cycle have lost a lot of money.

So your solution to the malware problem is "let's just wait until the world runs out of idiots".
Really? Seriously?

What is most important right now is to know where the underlying battle is coming from, and it is no less than from within the Bitcoin node itself.
The world government ultimately gets to decide on which software the economic nodes should run on and that's a fact.

[Micklef]

Around the turn of the decade, most of the original founding developers at core were replaced by newer, younger, less experienced developers.

In 2022 the documentation of core was changed. The description of "Bitcoin as  an experimental digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world." is changed. All mentions of bitcoin as money or currency have been removed. They simply removed the definition of "what is bitcoin" and replaced it with "what is bitcoin core". Some asked why the definition of bitcoin had to be replaced, why not have the two of them. The answer provided was basically that nobody really needs a definition of Bitcoin.

Later in 2022, the definition of -datacarriersize in the core documentation was changed so it applied only to raw OP_RETURN outputs. -datacartiersize is basically the variable that constrained the amount of arbitrary data. In 2022, it was changed to mean only arbitrary date in op_return outputs.

Early 2023, Cassey Rodamor exploited a bug he found instead of reporting it. The ordinal malware is launched on Bitcoin around February 2023.

Sep 4 2023 - Luke Dashjr submits a pull request. Effectively a way to filter out ordinals. It is rejected as too controversial, and also based on the new definition of -datacarriersize.. Had core implemented this filter in their next release, over 80% of the nodes would be running this filter today.

A PR requests that Segwit and Taproot inputs be included in the definition of -datacarriersize. It's rejected.

May 8 2024 - In a podcast, lead core maintainer Gloria Zhao says she doesn't think it's productive to discuss if jpegs in the chain are good or bad. This indicates she doesn't really have any objection to posting jpegs on the bitcoin blockchain.
source: https://youtu.be/VsUyjFkkp4E

Between the launch of ordinal malware and now, several other malware protocols are launched on Bitcoin: stamps, BRC tokens, runes, rare sats, you name it.

Every time, core devs and core taking heads repeat the sane nonsense:

- They paid their miner fees.
- Those are valid transactions.
- We can't stop them, and even if we could, that would be censorship.

And gradually, the narrative is being shifted. Core talking heads no longer claim Bitcoin is money, but rather, the users decide what Bitcoin is.

March 2025, a PR requests that -datacarriersize be expanded from 83 B to 100,000 B, or virtually no real limit. The PR is merged into core 30, amidst the controversy and push back from the community.

What was a limit of 83 bytes in a transaction since 2015, was now completely evicerated. First it was redefined as specific to outputs only, than it was blown open.

Since the malware attack started with ordinals in 2023, all excuses to do nothing about it have been used. Framing any attempt as censorship, or bound to fail. It's always the same excuses: bitcoinnis just a database, they can't be stopped, they might use more harmful ways to attack Bitcoin if we don't cater to them, the fees are the only filter allowed and acceptable, bitcoin is a free market everything, not just a free market money....

It's quite clear, to anyone who pays attention, that core has absolutely no desire to do anything about the increasing amount of malware on the Bitcoin blockchain. One would even wonder if it's not a coordinated attack, enabled from within core.....

Save Bitcoin from captured core, run BIP110 on your node.

. The bitcoiners will the angry with the core because of the large size of block chain, knowing fully well that Bitcoin is no longer cash couple with it ordinals. So in this case I think the both side are just protecting their interest and the anger will still persist.