God damn it

If anyone wants to help us get the circular economy going in our town @Joyce Dawn has put together this initiative!

Geyser | Bitcoin Crowdfunding Platform

A Bitcoin crowdfunding platform where creators raise funds for causes, sell products, manage campaigns, and engage with their community.

Narrative evolution in the political battle to undermine Bitcoin as a monetary network: 1. There's no such thing as "spam" in Bitcoin. Transactions are either valid or invalid. 2. OK spam exists and it's a problem but it'll get priced out by genuine monetary activity. 3. OK the trend in the opposite direction is clear, but the proposed solution of filtering spam at the mempool level does nothing at all as miners can still include this stuff in blocks regardless. (And despite the fact that spam filtration is something we've always done, it's somehow now "censorship" as of spring 2023). 4. OK filtering actually works extremely well and is basically forcing some BitVM schemes to use fake pubkeys instead of OP_RETURN which - for the sake of *maybe* preventing a few KBs of UTXO bloat a year - we need to aggressively resolve *now* by forcing nodes to relay giant OP_RETURNs by breaking the datacarriersize filter in the hopes that BitVMers use OP_RETURN instead. 5. OK yes, this is total and utter submission to the attempts to optimize Bitcoin for data storage as opposed to monetary activity as per every other meaningless crypto but hey, we are just Bitcoin Core and you can run something else if you don't like it - isn't open source wonderful?! 6. OK if large numbers of Bitcoiners actually start running something other than Core we'll simply ignore the message being sent loudly and clearly - that a growing % of people running nodes have no interest in becoming free relays for spammers and miners and that in a sane world, the default implementation puts the priorities of monetary users above scammers and even miners. 7. OK we will invoke disaster scenarios that must come from spam filtration - centralized mining, bad fee estimation, poor block propagation - combine with other fear tactics about "Knots being maintained by one guy". 8. Respond to all debunking of the above disaster scenarios with simple assertions that those who disagree "occupy something other than reality". Rest on laurels of deeply established trust of Core that it is extremely painful for people to question. Contrast all this with the "filter-boi" side which have not needed to twist themselves into Knots trying to justify the unjustifiable - 1. Spam filters work, they optimize Bitcoin as a payment network rather than a generic database. 2. If you let filters fall into disrepair or maliciously break them then Bitcoin fails the same way cryptos always do - nodes become an abused and disregarded commons while we pretend we're decentralized.

I use GrapheneOS. Can't be making life too easy now can we. Need a couple apps to just not quite work right for that extra spice.

Thank you to everyone who has switched to Bitcoin Knots.

Happy father's day!

Name something more delicious than steak tartare.

To this day, there are still people claiming that we think spam filters can stop 100% of spam. I have made mistakes in this discussion because I'm so often technically out of my depth. But I don't want to be doing this thankless, miserable fight if I have to lie to myself to maintain my stance. So you can argue that I'm doing it for clout or followers or that it's somehow related to my paycheck from OCEAN all you want (it isn't) - but far more simple an explanation is that spam-apologists will just go along with those they perceive to be experts and never bother thinking things through. Otherwise how could anyone possibly be making that argument? Like I'm not aware that > 80 byte returns are of course consensus valid and thus can and do end up in blocks? I see it from giants in the space, people with write access to Core. They have genuinely never considered the role that spam filters have played and created this absurd standard where filters must be as effective as consensus or be discarded one-by-one no matter how much the community pushes back against them for doing it. Trying to point out how crazy this is gets you relentlessly mocked (yes obviously a lot of pro-filters are relentlessly mocking Core and their apologists right back) or more revealingly called "bots" or "LLMs". This happens in "official" statements even and formal write-ups about the decision making process behind merging 32406. People disagreeing with Core are spam/bots/Nazis and LLMs. Honestly, many accusations have been thrown at Core devs for being - while comp sci experts - lacking in necessarily related fields like economics in particular. But it isn't that - what's lacking is genuinely the ability to look at your own motivations and ask yourself if you're truly being honest with yourself or lazy in your assessment in an effort to cherry pick whatever is necessary to end up back in alignment with those with the most influence and control. Everyone is aware of the psychology at play here, and it's why - in any conflict where you don't have a vested interest - people naturally side with the underdog. This is why when people completely outside the loop of Bitcoin hear some story like "Hijacking Bitcoin" and they so readily believe it because underdogs are logically almost always fighting for something out of principle while the people they oppose have power that they wish to maintain. No this doesn't make the underdogs correct in every circumstance. Stubbornness and narcissism play a role there too unfortunately. Regardless, it's a sensible heuristic. Why is a pool with < 1% of the hashrate trying to change the way mining works almost entirely fighting some un-winnable war against a smug, entrenched elite with 98% market share? Yes it can be nefarious, yes I can be a fed or I can just be wrong. But I'm not. And it's hard for me to see people who want to antagonize anti-spammers as anything more than cowards supporting that complacent status quo that clearly is leading us down the path of eroding what makes Bitcoin unique vs your average crypto.

Lol

If you want to work on Knots - Open Sats offers grants!