I stand with Bitcoin. Core's governance seems like some issues for them to figure out, but that'll happen any time you get a company involved. I don't think there's anything too nefarious, but systems can evolve problematically even with the best of intentions. The good news is, Core isn't the only game in town.
Just saw Eric Voskuil the other day post a chart about libbitcoin 4's performance on a Raspi 5 compared to Core v31. It's admittedly with txindex=1 and txospenderindex=1 (to match libbitcoin's native functionality with it's mmap approach rather than leveldb), so it's not quite fair to compare to how people usually run Core, but for a raspberry pi I'm pretty surprised.
There's also utreexod and florestad on the horizon.
At the end of the day the gentleman's agreement that was mempool policy filters was never going to last. Filters work when nodes all agree, and miners either agree, or are too decentralized to do anything to override it. As long as something like slipstream is possible, or things like LibreRelay exists, it only makes sense for a default filter policy to be open (and for the configuration to opt-into tighter policy to be available in the name of configurability), because the alternative is leaving node runners with a poor view of what is coming down the pike without any benefit being derived from it.
I've not seen any indication that spam can sustain expensive fees for any prolonged amount of time -- there's just no feedback loop you're going to get from selling dickbutts. People will create it, their sats will be gone, and that is that. Bitcoin is stronger than this, and certainly doesn't need to be getting dragged into this silly game of whackamole over the games of trifling fools.
It's incredibly sad to see such low effort click bait on nostr - and some zapping this "car crash".
No, @Luke Dashjr is not a bad actor (except for blocking me on Twitter, which he can't do here on nostr. Muahahaha). He's a bit special but was often right on things where my initial impulse told me that he was wrong and most definitely wants Bitcoin to succeed more than most anything else, so I would vouch for him not being a bad actor 100%.
Is Luke being abused by a bad actor in this case? Is Mechanic a bad actor? I don't know. The debate about CSAM on the blockchain feels a bit like that. We had that debate many years ago, apparently nasty stuff is in the blockchain but my bitcoin tools don't show it to me and I wouldn't download tools that would parse the blockchain for images. The argument that you would need special software for the prior cases but not for the future cases is stupid as - guess what - you will always need "special software" to view images in something that's not purpose built for images. A "blk04169.dat" won't accidentally get opened with image software and with "special software" you can even find images in actual transactions that nobody put images in in the first place.
To discuss filters in the context of what is legal in your jurisdiction is a slippery slope and can only harm Bitcoin.
So do I stand with Core in this debate? Actually no, not yet at least. But luckily it's not that binary neither. I won't run knots but I won't update my full nodes any soon neither. Policy filters are a 🖕 to people abusing or attacking Bitcoin and node operators should not get policy filters taken away precisely to avoid this heated debate. Policy filters are an escape valve for things that some would like to see as consensus rules but can't quite convince all to go that route. Let people filter out big OP_RETURNs if they want to. Set the default to 100kB and see what happens. Welding close this escape valve was Core's error and now they get the heat.
Yes, filters don't work but they send a message. Your dick pics are not wanted here. If Core wants them, let the individual miners at least send that statement clearly.
