U-P-G-R-A-Y-E-D-D's avatar
U-P-G-R-A-Y-E-D-D 1 month ago
Agree on pretty much everything you're saying, except the first sentence. Maybe this is just a semantics mismatch. I more or less agree on the lose-lose situation. A publicized CSAM attack could have a significant negative impact on price and public perception (at least for some time). BIP-444 seems to be a bit "clumsy" and opens up a potential can of worms. I think the proposal has room for improvement, both technically and rhetorically. Perhaps there's a way to scan new blocks for illegal content in OP_RETURN and immediately prune it? I think v30, as implemented, with no additional measures for mitigating the legal risks for full nodes, is the worst option. But coming back to the BIP-444 soft fork, my understanding of your argument is that what's important is WHY it's being done, and this makes it substantially different from the previous taproot soft fork that was done to improve technical capabilities. Is that accurate?
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npub1x9hg...6rta 1 month ago
Its the first emergency soft fork with a goal of preventing legal blowback. It normalizes consensus-level behavioral gating for “safety”. That’s an open door for later parameterization under new banners (AI-safety, “public health”, carbon, “foreign influence”, “exclude sanctioned payload types for safety”, “restrict non-KYC script paths for safety”, etc). Lawmakers can simply point to “Bitcoin already excludes Y”, and press for Z (e.g., “exclude sanctioned payload types”, “restrict non-KYC script paths”). You’ve demonstrated precedent and capability. Even a temporary soft-fork normalizes the idea that “Bitcoin can move for safety”. Political attack surface increases either way - Fail path: “You refused; now we must legislate.” - Pass path: “See? You acknowledged duty of care. Now make it permanent and broader.”
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