Did I think BIP-110 would succeed? No.
Did I hope that it would? Absolutely.
Something that is now clear to me is that Bitcoin can only get wider, more permissive, less restrictive - not narrower, or more focused, because people will cry about censorship, filtering, and some variation of "don't tell me what to do, Daddy". People want Bitcoin to do more, not less, and I think developers are cursed with this notion, like moths, gravitating to the Super App. I leave nostr for a while and come back to Amethyst which now has close to 50 (!) primary menu options now. The ratchet on Bitcoin only goes one way.
The gloating going on today is nauseating. We can argue over how this was approached, the mandatory bit flip, but what I hoped we would agree on is whether it should be done or not, in principal.
The main issue is that Bitcoin is becoming something other than just a monetary system. Every little tweak, and update, and expansion of its capabilities, limits, and restrictions, will cause issues down the line - guaranteed. Anyone who has done any work on any system knows that every change is a risk introduced.
I'm for ossification unless it's survival is at risk. Why expand Bitcoins capabilities? It is a system that embodies a finite asset whose value is determined by how hard it must be fought for by computational power. Why does it also need to store pictures and arbitrary data? It dilutes its purpose, goal, and available manpower.
People on nostr are here because they champion the idea of not being banned, restricted, or made irrelevant by some decision. Free speech. And it embodies this by letting you post notes to now thousands of nodes. Well, hello, what do you think happens when the number of nodes goes down? More or less likely to be blocked, or banned, or restricted?
Bitcoin is heading towards being 1 terabyte in size, and you guys are gloating over having the right to accelerate that. Less nodes will be available to service that growth. This is also aside from the 100's of GB of monthly network traffic it already demands. I'd have to drop R12k on a system that can do an IBD on Bitcoin today. Yeah, real accessible. Don't trust, verify - if you can afford to.
The duality of Bitcoin people is stunning. I've been genuinely shocked at how many people came out to mock 110 today, forgetting what it stands for. The same people who champion Bitcoin's virtues can't see how this will be slowly undone by this "wider Daddy" approach. Bitcoin "Unlimited" (BCH) got kicked to the kerb because it wanted to go wider, but we can't see it happening here. Frogs, boiling away. I wonder how BCH would have gone if done today?
Maybe you didn't like the approach, or the misfits involved, but I think if you're on the same side as people who want to graffiti Bitcoin and use it for other purposes, some of whom openly hate Bitcoin, you might want to reassess. Should Bitcoin be a monetary system, or a global immutable database for everything? BSV answered that question - you cannot be both.
Bitcoin is money, not a wall you draw dicks on.
Rob
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