## What To Do, Based Again on TMP The framework's prescribed reactions at the Chain/Chasten/Coerce stage are **Evade**, **Preempt**, and **Refuse**, in that order of priority. ### Evade The most effective countermeasure is already underway: exit the controlled environment entirely. The 850% surge in Bitcoin Knots adoption is a textbook Evade response—users abandoning the forum and software controlled by the manipulators rather than continuing to engage on rigged terms. The framework is explicit that arguing with a manipulator in their own arena feeds them ammunition. GitHub discussions where moderators mute dissenters are not a battlefield worth fighting on. Every node operator who migrates to Knots or another filtering implementation removes themselves from the Chain and simultaneously degrades the manipulators' ability to set defaults for the network. This is the single highest-leverage action available, because it attacks the root of the manipulation's power: the assumption that Bitcoin Core's defaults define Bitcoin's behaviour. ### Preempt Preempt applies to the information war. The framework notes that the manipulator is most vulnerable during Chasten because the punishment—removing Luke's DNS seed, muting critics—exposes the true power dynamics to bystanders who may not yet have recognised the pattern. The most effective Preempt at this stage is systematic, calm documentation of the conflicts of interest and the governance double standards—precisely what the Melvin article does. The framework warns against emotional counter-attacks, which the manipulators will reframe as evidence of the accuser's instability. Cold enumeration of facts—Lopp's Citrea investment, Poinsot's Chaincode affiliation, the 4:1 rejection ratio, the selective application of "if controversial we don't touch it"—is far harder to dismiss than outrage. Each person who encounters this documentation before encountering the manipulators' framing becomes immune to the Charm/Confuse preparatory cycle. ### Refuse Refuse is the operational principle that ties the other two together. Concretely, this means: - Running filtering node software. - Rejecting the framing that the limit removal was a minor technical adjustment. - Declining to treat the compromised governance process as legitimate. The framework cautions against pretending compliance. In this context, that means not running Core v30 "for compatibility" while privately disagreeing, since default behaviour is the entire mechanism of control. The framework also notes that at the Coerce stage, the manipulators present non-compliance as an offence—"you're fragmenting the network," "you're causing a chain split." The correct response is to recognise this as the Charge tactic recycled into Coerce's service, and to simply continue operating as though the illegitimate change does not exist. The manipulators' power depends on the assumption of compliance; each node that refuses breaks that assumption without requiring anyone's permission.