(FROM X/TWITTER)
by
Chris Guida | ⚡🪢 #NoCoreV30
@cguida6
(in response to Calle, >quoted)
Hi Calle!
Cool to see you posting thoughtful reasoning instead of insults and other noise. Hopefully this can serve as a jumping-off-point for continued dialogue between the knots and core sides of this debate.
>I'll preface this post with first disqualifying any malicious attempts to misrepresent the motives of either camp. Everybody wants to improve Bitcoin as money. Money is Bitcoin's use case. It's not a data storage system. If you think otherwise, there are countless shitcoins to play with.
Awesome! Glad we agree on this 🤝
>I am very confident to say that there is not a single known method to prevent spam in decentralized anonymous open networks other than proof of work. This is what Satoshi realized when he designed Bitcoin and it's why only transaction fees can reliably fight spam without sacrificing any of Bitcoin's properties.
Well, no, it’s actually the opposite of that. Satoshi introduced standardness filters in late 2010, because he realized that proof-of-work was *not* sufficient to prevent spam on bitcoin.
>Let me explain. Spam prevention is a cat and mouse game.
Yes, but since fighting spam is easier than on other systems,
-it is [almost] trivial for the cat (the people who fight against spam) to win. This is what happened the last time there was a spam attack from shitcoins ( The cat just has to be credibly persistent in countering every move the spammers try, and the spammers quickly become demoralized and move to other chains.
>As a system's architect, your goal is to make the life of a spammer harder (increase the friction).
Exactly, and this is precisely what spam filters on bitcoin do: they increase the friction for spammers, which is why we see, for example, 99% fewer large opreturns than we’d see if there were no opreturn filter: (via OrangeSurfBTC)
I’m glad that you appear to be finally acknowledging that the knots position has never been: “the goal of spam filters is to block 100% of spam, and the filter doesn’t work if a few spam transactions slip through”. This is, of course, a silly strawman, and I’m glad to see you rising above such nonsense.
>This is why, on the web, you see captchas, sign-ups, or anything that can artificially slow you down. Slowing down is key. This is why Satoshi turned to proof of work.
…and also spam filters which, again, he implemented in 2010, since PoW by itself was not sufficient.
>The fact that you need to update your filters is critical and that's where it ties back to Bitcoin: Suppose you have a mempool filter for transactions with a locktime of 21 because some stupid NFT project uses that. You maybe slow them down for a few weeks, but then they notice it and change their locktime to 22. You're back at zero, the spam filter doesn't work anymore. What do you do? You update your filter! But where do you get your new filter from?
>You need a governing body, or some centralized entity that keeps updating these filters and you need to download their new rules every single day.
I’m sorry, but you are just assuming that the spam filters need to be authored and distributed by one entity. This may be true for adblockers and email spam filters, but bitcoin is different because proof-of-work makes spam filtration on bitcoin easier (but not *free*!) than on systems that don’t have a per-action fee required.
Since spam filtration on bitcoin is easier than on other systems, it’s much easier for the cat to win. Again, see the opreturn battle of 2014 for what happens once we go a few rounds against the spammers: they just flee to other blockchains because building on bitcoin means that bitcoin’s dev team will be “at war” with them (see: why Vitalik quit bitcoin: 
Since the cat and mouse game is much more biased towards the cat on bitcoin than in other systems, *decentralized* filter authorship, distribution, and deployment works just fine, where it would not work on other systems.
>That's what ad blockers in your web browser do. They trust a centralized authority to know what's best for you, and blindly accept their new filters. Every single day.
If you think bitcoin noderunners will “blindly” trust some centralized authority, you don’t know bitcoiners. This is another significant difference between spam filtration on bitcoin vs adblockers. If the government starts issuing filters for OFAC transactions, do you *really* expect a large percentage of bitcoin noderunners to comply? Come on, man.
>I hope you see the issue here. Nobody should even consider this idea of constantly updating filter rules in Bitcoin. This would give the filter providers a concerning level of power and trust.
Bitcoin Core already has this “power and trust”. Democratizing access to filter authorship, as in this BIP proposal (https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/o3JZhiOa2PQ/m/Pvg6ZQvSAQAJ),
-solves the problem you are worried about, by making Core no longer the arbiter of policy on bitcoin. How do we make sure a central authority isn’t dictating policy? By allowing noderunners to filter whatever transactions they like. That’s in alignment with bitcoin’s ethos.
>It would turn Bitcoin into a centrally planned system, the opposite of what makes Bitcoin special.
Yes, and Core deciding policy for everyone is exactly this “centrally planned system” that you fear so much.
>This is why filters do not work for decentralized anonymous systems.
Yes they do. Again, see the 99% reduction in large opreturns caused by the opreturn filter. You would have to be in deep denial to look at that chart, with a giant cliff at exactly 80B, and say “filters don’t work”. Anyone with eyes and a brain can tell that filters work. The question is not “do they work”; the question is: how *much* do they work?
>They require a central authority.
You are just making this up
>Until now, these rules were determined by Bitcoin Core, but they have realized that these rules do not work anymore.
This has more to do with Core fumbling fullrbf than with filters “not working”.
>Transactions bypass the filters easily and at some point, carrying them around became a burden to the node runners themselves. Imagine you're using an outdated ad blocker but instead of filtering out ads, it now also filters out legitimate content you might be interested in. That's what mempool filters do, and that's why Bitcoin Core is slowly relaxing these filters.
You can’t be saying that cat jpegs are “legitimate content” bitcoiners “might be interested in”?
>This has been discussed for over two years, it's not a sudden decision.
Yes, and the people trying to fight for bitcoin core to have sensible defaults have been insulted and ignored rather than having their concerns addressed.
>The goal of this change is not to help transactions to slip through more easily.
But that is definitely the effect!
>The goal is to improve your node's prediction of what is going to be in the next block.
I don’t need my node to predict exactly what will be in the next block, and it’s impossible for it to do this anyway.
>Most people misrepresent this part. They say "it's to turn Bitcoin into a shitcoin" but that is just a false statement at best, or a manipulation tactic at worst.
Actions speak louder than words
>Let's tie it back to proof of work and why fees are the actual filter that keeps Bitcoin secure and prevents spam reasonably well: Satoshi realized that there is no technique that could slow down block production and prevent denial of service attacks in a decentralized system other than proof of work.
Again, you are just making this up. Filters have been around since the days of Satoshi. Yes, the fees make spam filtration *much easier*, but they don’t make it automatic.
>Fees prevent you from filling blocks with an infinite number of transactions. All the other options would introduce some form of trust or open the door for censorship – nothing works other than proof of work.
You just keep asserting this with no evidence.
>He was smart enough to design a system where the proof of work that goes into block production is "minted" into the monetary unit of the system itself: You spend energy, you get sats (mining). This slows down block production. How do you slow down transactions within those blocks? You spend the sats themselves, original earned form block production, as fees for the transactions within the block! This idea is truly genius and it's the only reason why Bitcoin can exist.
Yes, but again, transaction fees are *necessary, but not sufficient* for bitcoin to stay money. Otherwise there would have been no reason for Satoshi to implement filters.
>All other attempts of creating decentralized money have failed to solve this step. Think about it: without knowing who you are, whether you're one person pretending to be a thousand, or a thousand people pretending to be one. Bitcoin defends itself (and anyone who runs nodes in the Bitcoin system) from spam by making you pay for your activity.
Yes, bitcoin is amazing, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to protect it.
>People sometimes counter this by saying: the economic demand for decentralized data storage is higher than the monetary use case. First of all, I think that's just wrong.
The logic here is very straightforward: Data spam pays an upfront fee, then enjoys bulletproof integrity and availability guarantees for the rest of eternity. A finite quantity (the upfront fee) divided by an infinite quantity (the amount of time the data is hosted) is zero. This is why payment txs can never fairly compete with data txs.
>There are way cheaper ways to store data (there are shitcoins for this), and the value of having decentralized neutral internet money is beyond comparison.
None of these “cheaper ways” have the same immutability and availability guarantees as bitcoin block space. What service will host my data for the rest of eternity, and cannot be censored by anyone? The idea that Lightning channel opens and closes for merchants just trying to accept payments in a sovereign way will ever be able to outcompete the data storage use case, *on a level playing field in terms of sats/vB*, is laughable.
The only reason bitcoin has managed to stay money thus far is because of bitcoiners’ hostility to spam and spammers.
>However, there's a much deeper concern here. If you truly believe this, I ask you: what is Bitcoin worth to you? If you think Bitcoin can't succeed as money (i.e. be competitive), why do you even care?
I don’t understand the point of this question. I think bitcoin can succeed wildly as money *if we fight to make it good money*. It will not automatically be the best money ever invented. Agents in the economy need to actually take action and make it happen, by building it and protecting it.
>If you're not willing to pay fees for the use case that we all believe Bitcoin is designed for (money), and you believe that no one is willing to pay for it, how can it even persist into the future?
With mempool filters…
>You can't have it all.
I don’t know what this means, but we’ve been “having it all” since Satoshi introduced spam filters in 2010, so I guess you are wrong.
>If Bitcoin is money (which I believe it is), then we need to pay the price to keep it alive.
Exactly, mempool filters are the price.
>There is no free lunch. Either we centralize, or we pay the price of decentralization. I know where I stand.
False dichotomy. Decentralized filtering is the way. Let the cat-and-mouse game commence!
>Peace.
Peace man!
BitMEX Blog - Cryptocurrency Trading Insights & Market Analysis
Stay updated with the latest cryptocurrency trading insights, market analysis, and industry news from BitMEX. Expert commentary on Bitcoin, crypto ...
I’m glad that you appear to be finally acknowledging that the knots position has never been: “the goal of spam filters is to block 100% of spam, and the filter doesn’t work if a few spam transactions slip through”. This is, of course, a silly strawman, and I’m glad to see you rising above such nonsense.
>This is why, on the web, you see captchas, sign-ups, or anything that can artificially slow you down. Slowing down is key. This is why Satoshi turned to proof of work.
…and also spam filters which, again, he implemented in 2010, since PoW by itself was not sufficient.
>The fact that you need to update your filters is critical and that's where it ties back to Bitcoin: Suppose you have a mempool filter for transactions with a locktime of 21 because some stupid NFT project uses that. You maybe slow them down for a few weeks, but then they notice it and change their locktime to 22. You're back at zero, the spam filter doesn't work anymore. What do you do? You update your filter! But where do you get your new filter from?
>You need a governing body, or some centralized entity that keeps updating these filters and you need to download their new rules every single day.
I’m sorry, but you are just assuming that the spam filters need to be authored and distributed by one entity. This may be true for adblockers and email spam filters, but bitcoin is different because proof-of-work makes spam filtration on bitcoin easier (but not *free*!) than on systems that don’t have a per-action fee required.
Since spam filtration on bitcoin is easier than on other systems, it’s much easier for the cat to win. Again, see the opreturn battle of 2014 for what happens once we go a few rounds against the spammers: they just flee to other blockchains because building on bitcoin means that bitcoin’s dev team will be “at war” with them (see: why Vitalik quit bitcoin:
Since the cat and mouse game is much more biased towards the cat on bitcoin than in other systems, *decentralized* filter authorship, distribution, and deployment works just fine, where it would not work on other systems.
>That's what ad blockers in your web browser do. They trust a centralized authority to know what's best for you, and blindly accept their new filters. Every single day.
If you think bitcoin noderunners will “blindly” trust some centralized authority, you don’t know bitcoiners. This is another significant difference between spam filtration on bitcoin vs adblockers. If the government starts issuing filters for OFAC transactions, do you *really* expect a large percentage of bitcoin noderunners to comply? Come on, man.
>I hope you see the issue here. Nobody should even consider this idea of constantly updating filter rules in Bitcoin. This would give the filter providers a concerning level of power and trust.
Bitcoin Core already has this “power and trust”. Democratizing access to filter authorship, as in this BIP proposal (https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/o3JZhiOa2PQ/m/Pvg6ZQvSAQAJ),
-solves the problem you are worried about, by making Core no longer the arbiter of policy on bitcoin. How do we make sure a central authority isn’t dictating policy? By allowing noderunners to filter whatever transactions they like. That’s in alignment with bitcoin’s ethos.
>It would turn Bitcoin into a centrally planned system, the opposite of what makes Bitcoin special.
Yes, and Core deciding policy for everyone is exactly this “centrally planned system” that you fear so much.
>This is why filters do not work for decentralized anonymous systems.
Yes they do. Again, see the 99% reduction in large opreturns caused by the opreturn filter. You would have to be in deep denial to look at that chart, with a giant cliff at exactly 80B, and say “filters don’t work”. Anyone with eyes and a brain can tell that filters work. The question is not “do they work”; the question is: how *much* do they work?
>They require a central authority.
You are just making this up
>Until now, these rules were determined by Bitcoin Core, but they have realized that these rules do not work anymore.
This has more to do with Core fumbling fullrbf than with filters “not working”.
>Transactions bypass the filters easily and at some point, carrying them around became a burden to the node runners themselves. Imagine you're using an outdated ad blocker but instead of filtering out ads, it now also filters out legitimate content you might be interested in. That's what mempool filters do, and that's why Bitcoin Core is slowly relaxing these filters.
You can’t be saying that cat jpegs are “legitimate content” bitcoiners “might be interested in”?
>This has been discussed for over two years, it's not a sudden decision.
Yes, and the people trying to fight for bitcoin core to have sensible defaults have been insulted and ignored rather than having their concerns addressed.
>The goal of this change is not to help transactions to slip through more easily.
But that is definitely the effect!
>The goal is to improve your node's prediction of what is going to be in the next block.
I don’t need my node to predict exactly what will be in the next block, and it’s impossible for it to do this anyway.
>Most people misrepresent this part. They say "it's to turn Bitcoin into a shitcoin" but that is just a false statement at best, or a manipulation tactic at worst.
Actions speak louder than words
>Let's tie it back to proof of work and why fees are the actual filter that keeps Bitcoin secure and prevents spam reasonably well: Satoshi realized that there is no technique that could slow down block production and prevent denial of service attacks in a decentralized system other than proof of work.
Again, you are just making this up. Filters have been around since the days of Satoshi. Yes, the fees make spam filtration *much easier*, but they don’t make it automatic.
>Fees prevent you from filling blocks with an infinite number of transactions. All the other options would introduce some form of trust or open the door for censorship – nothing works other than proof of work.
You just keep asserting this with no evidence.
>He was smart enough to design a system where the proof of work that goes into block production is "minted" into the monetary unit of the system itself: You spend energy, you get sats (mining). This slows down block production. How do you slow down transactions within those blocks? You spend the sats themselves, original earned form block production, as fees for the transactions within the block! This idea is truly genius and it's the only reason why Bitcoin can exist.
Yes, but again, transaction fees are *necessary, but not sufficient* for bitcoin to stay money. Otherwise there would have been no reason for Satoshi to implement filters.
>All other attempts of creating decentralized money have failed to solve this step. Think about it: without knowing who you are, whether you're one person pretending to be a thousand, or a thousand people pretending to be one. Bitcoin defends itself (and anyone who runs nodes in the Bitcoin system) from spam by making you pay for your activity.
Yes, bitcoin is amazing, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to protect it.
>People sometimes counter this by saying: the economic demand for decentralized data storage is higher than the monetary use case. First of all, I think that's just wrong.
The logic here is very straightforward: Data spam pays an upfront fee, then enjoys bulletproof integrity and availability guarantees for the rest of eternity. A finite quantity (the upfront fee) divided by an infinite quantity (the amount of time the data is hosted) is zero. This is why payment txs can never fairly compete with data txs.
>There are way cheaper ways to store data (there are shitcoins for this), and the value of having decentralized neutral internet money is beyond comparison.
None of these “cheaper ways” have the same immutability and availability guarantees as bitcoin block space. What service will host my data for the rest of eternity, and cannot be censored by anyone? The idea that Lightning channel opens and closes for merchants just trying to accept payments in a sovereign way will ever be able to outcompete the data storage use case, *on a level playing field in terms of sats/vB*, is laughable.
The only reason bitcoin has managed to stay money thus far is because of bitcoiners’ hostility to spam and spammers.
>However, there's a much deeper concern here. If you truly believe this, I ask you: what is Bitcoin worth to you? If you think Bitcoin can't succeed as money (i.e. be competitive), why do you even care?
I don’t understand the point of this question. I think bitcoin can succeed wildly as money *if we fight to make it good money*. It will not automatically be the best money ever invented. Agents in the economy need to actually take action and make it happen, by building it and protecting it.
>If you're not willing to pay fees for the use case that we all believe Bitcoin is designed for (money), and you believe that no one is willing to pay for it, how can it even persist into the future?
With mempool filters…
>You can't have it all.
I don’t know what this means, but we’ve been “having it all” since Satoshi introduced spam filters in 2010, so I guess you are wrong.
>If Bitcoin is money (which I believe it is), then we need to pay the price to keep it alive.
Exactly, mempool filters are the price.
>There is no free lunch. Either we centralize, or we pay the price of decentralization. I know where I stand.
False dichotomy. Decentralized filtering is the way. Let the cat-and-mouse game commence!
>Peace.
Peace man!
