Cyph3rp9nk's avatar
Cyph3rp9nk cyph3rp9nk@getalby.com 2 months ago
By @udiWertheimer i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a sloppy low quality propaganda piece. first of all: sharing private messages is not cool. for many obvious ethical reasons. but one reason that is often overlooked is that sharing private messages often puts them out of context and makes it easy to construct a false narrative without understanding the conversation with that, let's look deeper into the article published by "the rage": the rage: "dashjr... proposes the implementation of a multisig quorum on bitcoin that grants a designated group of people the ability to retroactively alter data that is hosted on the blockchain" there is no discussion of "altering the data that is stored on the blockchain" anywhere in the screenshots provided. luke discusses a hypothetical mechanism that would allow knots node operators to avoid downloading "spam" that's already in blocks. imagine a hypothetical knots client that syncs blocks with a delay of eg 1 hour. when it downloads a block (late, on purpose), it pings luke's server and asks, "hey, is there any spam in this 1 hour old block?". luke's server responds with a list of transaction IDs that contain "spam", and provides a "zero knowledge proof" that proves to knots nodes that those "spam" transactions are valid, without having to download them. this is the magic of zk proofs and we don't need to get into how it works. suffice to say that the reason bitcoin nodes download transactions is to verify that they're valid, and if there's a way to verify without downloading them then the node can continue functioning without having to download the "spam". so now knots have a mechanism to avoid "spam" on their computer while still validating the chain. this doesn't remove the "spam" for the chain. it is still available on clients that don't run knots (70%+ of the network). core nodes continue to function as normal, with "spam" and with no issues, and continue to be in sync with knots nodes. the only difference is that the knots nodes can avoid ever downloading "spam", while staying on the same network the rage: "luke dashjr plans hard fork" this isn't true and it's a misunderstanding of what luke is saying. his messages do not describe a plan to hard fork bitcoin. he's referring to a technicality, saying that whenever knots nodes use a mechanism like the hypothetical knots node i described above, every time they avoid downloading a transaction they technically hard fork. but just technically, not really. it doesn't split the network, and those hypothetical knots nodes remain fully compatible with core nodes. core nodes can continue to verify, their chain is not censored, and they're fully synced with knots nodes. the rage: “right now the only options would be bitcoin dies or we have to trust someone,” dashjr writes. The proposed solution would require a consensus change, activating a bitcoin hardfork. the quote about "we have to trust someone" is taken out of context. luke is literally saying in the convo that thanks to zk proofs and his proposed solution, they would NOT need to trust anyone. the second part about a consensus change is made up. nothing in the screenshots suggests a consensus change. and i explained above that the "hard fork" bit is just a technicality. in this hypothetical design, there would be no chain split, and core nodes would remain compatible and uncensored. the rage: dashjr reveals that public letters are being drafted by third parties to seemingly support the sanctioning of illegal content on the entire Bitcoin network. the leaked conversation does not AT ALL mention a public letter that supports sanctioning illegal content "on the entire bitcoin network". luke is asked by his conversation partner a legal question, whether or not an op_return relay network will be perceived by authorities as illegal. luke replies that he can't answer that question because he's not a lawyer, but his understanding is that a group is working on a formal letter that addresses that legal question. as far as I can tell that hypothetical letter is a simple "legal opinion", not a letter that calls for sanctioning transactions on bitcoin. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 fyi, they hypothetical design of a knots node that i provide above is just that: hypothetical. the leaked dms don't go into implementation details at all so i had to fill in the blanks. luke might've had some other design in mind. but my description is conceptually correct, and the article's isn't. you can go back to the leaked screenshots and re-read them and tell me if anything there contradicts the hypothetical design I offered (nothing does). also, an important point is that the entire leaked convo is hypothetical. people are allowed to have hypothetical conversations. that doesn't mean there's some conspiracy. everyone I know that discusses this issue in private has brought up all kinds of weird ideas to me that doesn't mean they actually plan to implement them. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 my conclusion is that this article is a hit piece, and not a particularly good one. the most charitable explanation i can come up with is that the author misunderstood the leaked messages and wrote the incorrect article based on that misunderstanding but honestly it really seems that this isn't the case, it seems like the author was employing a lot of motivated reasoning to arrive at the conclusions in the article. the goal was to make luke bad, and his words were manipulated for maximum effect this isn't the first time "the rage" is doing this. last time it was a fake news article claiming that google is about to ban self-custody wallets from the android app store. it was based on the author's borderline malicious interpretation of the google store rules, to make them look like they're against self-custody. that was incorrect, but the fake news article got so viral that google itself had to issue a clarification saying that they have not and will not ban self-custody wallets from the android store. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 perhaps most disappointing was seeing many big names from the "anti-knots" camp jumping on this and declaring that luke is working on a hard fork, that "they knew it" and that soon we will be getting "airdrop fork coins" to sell. all of those things are false. this is, as always, a nothing burger. it's pretty obvious to me that this proposal never gets implemented, and even if it did, it does not censor the network and does not split the network, and remains fully compatible with core. it's actually, dare i say it, a pretty good hypothetical solution (to a problem that doesn't matter). i wish they'd implement it. but they probably won't. do better everyone.
X (formerly Twitter)
Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) on X
i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a ...

Replies (26)

Default avatar
Sun of the Moon 2 months ago
@L0la L33tz
Cyph3rp9nk's avatar Cyph3rp9nk
By @udiWertheimer i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a sloppy low quality propaganda piece. first of all: sharing private messages is not cool. for many obvious ethical reasons. but one reason that is often overlooked is that sharing private messages often puts them out of context and makes it easy to construct a false narrative without understanding the conversation with that, let's look deeper into the article published by "the rage": the rage: "dashjr... proposes the implementation of a multisig quorum on bitcoin that grants a designated group of people the ability to retroactively alter data that is hosted on the blockchain" there is no discussion of "altering the data that is stored on the blockchain" anywhere in the screenshots provided. luke discusses a hypothetical mechanism that would allow knots node operators to avoid downloading "spam" that's already in blocks. imagine a hypothetical knots client that syncs blocks with a delay of eg 1 hour. when it downloads a block (late, on purpose), it pings luke's server and asks, "hey, is there any spam in this 1 hour old block?". luke's server responds with a list of transaction IDs that contain "spam", and provides a "zero knowledge proof" that proves to knots nodes that those "spam" transactions are valid, without having to download them. this is the magic of zk proofs and we don't need to get into how it works. suffice to say that the reason bitcoin nodes download transactions is to verify that they're valid, and if there's a way to verify without downloading them then the node can continue functioning without having to download the "spam". so now knots have a mechanism to avoid "spam" on their computer while still validating the chain. this doesn't remove the "spam" for the chain. it is still available on clients that don't run knots (70%+ of the network). core nodes continue to function as normal, with "spam" and with no issues, and continue to be in sync with knots nodes. the only difference is that the knots nodes can avoid ever downloading "spam", while staying on the same network the rage: "luke dashjr plans hard fork" this isn't true and it's a misunderstanding of what luke is saying. his messages do not describe a plan to hard fork bitcoin. he's referring to a technicality, saying that whenever knots nodes use a mechanism like the hypothetical knots node i described above, every time they avoid downloading a transaction they technically hard fork. but just technically, not really. it doesn't split the network, and those hypothetical knots nodes remain fully compatible with core nodes. core nodes can continue to verify, their chain is not censored, and they're fully synced with knots nodes. the rage: “right now the only options would be bitcoin dies or we have to trust someone,” dashjr writes. The proposed solution would require a consensus change, activating a bitcoin hardfork. the quote about "we have to trust someone" is taken out of context. luke is literally saying in the convo that thanks to zk proofs and his proposed solution, they would NOT need to trust anyone. the second part about a consensus change is made up. nothing in the screenshots suggests a consensus change. and i explained above that the "hard fork" bit is just a technicality. in this hypothetical design, there would be no chain split, and core nodes would remain compatible and uncensored. the rage: dashjr reveals that public letters are being drafted by third parties to seemingly support the sanctioning of illegal content on the entire Bitcoin network. the leaked conversation does not AT ALL mention a public letter that supports sanctioning illegal content "on the entire bitcoin network". luke is asked by his conversation partner a legal question, whether or not an op_return relay network will be perceived by authorities as illegal. luke replies that he can't answer that question because he's not a lawyer, but his understanding is that a group is working on a formal letter that addresses that legal question. as far as I can tell that hypothetical letter is a simple "legal opinion", not a letter that calls for sanctioning transactions on bitcoin. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 fyi, they hypothetical design of a knots node that i provide above is just that: hypothetical. the leaked dms don't go into implementation details at all so i had to fill in the blanks. luke might've had some other design in mind. but my description is conceptually correct, and the article's isn't. you can go back to the leaked screenshots and re-read them and tell me if anything there contradicts the hypothetical design I offered (nothing does). also, an important point is that the entire leaked convo is hypothetical. people are allowed to have hypothetical conversations. that doesn't mean there's some conspiracy. everyone I know that discusses this issue in private has brought up all kinds of weird ideas to me that doesn't mean they actually plan to implement them. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 my conclusion is that this article is a hit piece, and not a particularly good one. the most charitable explanation i can come up with is that the author misunderstood the leaked messages and wrote the incorrect article based on that misunderstanding but honestly it really seems that this isn't the case, it seems like the author was employing a lot of motivated reasoning to arrive at the conclusions in the article. the goal was to make luke bad, and his words were manipulated for maximum effect this isn't the first time "the rage" is doing this. last time it was a fake news article claiming that google is about to ban self-custody wallets from the android app store. it was based on the author's borderline malicious interpretation of the google store rules, to make them look like they're against self-custody. that was incorrect, but the fake news article got so viral that google itself had to issue a clarification saying that they have not and will not ban self-custody wallets from the android store. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 perhaps most disappointing was seeing many big names from the "anti-knots" camp jumping on this and declaring that luke is working on a hard fork, that "they knew it" and that soon we will be getting "airdrop fork coins" to sell. all of those things are false. this is, as always, a nothing burger. it's pretty obvious to me that this proposal never gets implemented, and even if it did, it does not censor the network and does not split the network, and remains fully compatible with core. it's actually, dare i say it, a pretty good hypothetical solution (to a problem that doesn't matter). i wish they'd implement it. but they probably won't. do better everyone.
X (formerly Twitter)
Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) on X
i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a ...
View quoted note →
Default avatar
npub1ah3a...l76e 2 months ago
On a site node you now trust ZK proofs in that scenario, but (lol) Monero is not auditable because we would need to trust ZK proofs and other more basic mathematical assumptions? Learn to become more consistent. In other words. Get a reality check.
1 replies ↓
Grace and Truth's avatar
Grace and Truth graceandtruth@nostr.fan 2 months ago
If the leaked conversation was even legit in the first place. Maybe it was, as the conversation did seem to go over the reporter's head. But these days you wouldn't even need to set up two phones and send Signal messages back and forth to get those screenshots - you can generate whatever you like.
1 replies ↓
ghostnode's avatar
ghostnode 2 months ago
I’m by no means a fan of Udi. I think he’s some government plant or mossad. However, after speed reading through this it appears he has a far more reasonable and balanced opinion than a lot of people and explains it decently.
1 replies ↓
Биткойн.БГ's avatar
Биткойн.БГ nostr@bitcoin.bg 2 months ago
>>> luke's server responds with a list of transaction IDs that contain "spam", and provides a "zero knowledge proof" that proves to knots nodes that those "spam" transactions are valid, without having to download them. >>> A "zero knowledge proof" solution, that proves transaction is valid without having to download the "spam" part of it, is an excellent idea. Every node operator can define their own definition of "spam" and choose the authoritative server(s) providing the list of txid containing the "spam". This will bring to life new competing full node implementations that will stay 100% compatible with current network protocol. #Bitcoin future is bright!
hasky's avatar
hasky hasky@getalby.com 2 months ago
how can man possible altered data on the blockchain while all the data on the blockchain encrypted ,? can man do that on the blockchain ?
Akashi Hyogo's avatar
Akashi Hyogo 2 months ago
I personally was on core side but knots side looks better and batter every day.
Cyph3rp9nk's avatar Cyph3rp9nk
By @udiWertheimer i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a sloppy low quality propaganda piece. first of all: sharing private messages is not cool. for many obvious ethical reasons. but one reason that is often overlooked is that sharing private messages often puts them out of context and makes it easy to construct a false narrative without understanding the conversation with that, let's look deeper into the article published by "the rage": the rage: "dashjr... proposes the implementation of a multisig quorum on bitcoin that grants a designated group of people the ability to retroactively alter data that is hosted on the blockchain" there is no discussion of "altering the data that is stored on the blockchain" anywhere in the screenshots provided. luke discusses a hypothetical mechanism that would allow knots node operators to avoid downloading "spam" that's already in blocks. imagine a hypothetical knots client that syncs blocks with a delay of eg 1 hour. when it downloads a block (late, on purpose), it pings luke's server and asks, "hey, is there any spam in this 1 hour old block?". luke's server responds with a list of transaction IDs that contain "spam", and provides a "zero knowledge proof" that proves to knots nodes that those "spam" transactions are valid, without having to download them. this is the magic of zk proofs and we don't need to get into how it works. suffice to say that the reason bitcoin nodes download transactions is to verify that they're valid, and if there's a way to verify without downloading them then the node can continue functioning without having to download the "spam". so now knots have a mechanism to avoid "spam" on their computer while still validating the chain. this doesn't remove the "spam" for the chain. it is still available on clients that don't run knots (70%+ of the network). core nodes continue to function as normal, with "spam" and with no issues, and continue to be in sync with knots nodes. the only difference is that the knots nodes can avoid ever downloading "spam", while staying on the same network the rage: "luke dashjr plans hard fork" this isn't true and it's a misunderstanding of what luke is saying. his messages do not describe a plan to hard fork bitcoin. he's referring to a technicality, saying that whenever knots nodes use a mechanism like the hypothetical knots node i described above, every time they avoid downloading a transaction they technically hard fork. but just technically, not really. it doesn't split the network, and those hypothetical knots nodes remain fully compatible with core nodes. core nodes can continue to verify, their chain is not censored, and they're fully synced with knots nodes. the rage: “right now the only options would be bitcoin dies or we have to trust someone,” dashjr writes. The proposed solution would require a consensus change, activating a bitcoin hardfork. the quote about "we have to trust someone" is taken out of context. luke is literally saying in the convo that thanks to zk proofs and his proposed solution, they would NOT need to trust anyone. the second part about a consensus change is made up. nothing in the screenshots suggests a consensus change. and i explained above that the "hard fork" bit is just a technicality. in this hypothetical design, there would be no chain split, and core nodes would remain compatible and uncensored. the rage: dashjr reveals that public letters are being drafted by third parties to seemingly support the sanctioning of illegal content on the entire Bitcoin network. the leaked conversation does not AT ALL mention a public letter that supports sanctioning illegal content "on the entire bitcoin network". luke is asked by his conversation partner a legal question, whether or not an op_return relay network will be perceived by authorities as illegal. luke replies that he can't answer that question because he's not a lawyer, but his understanding is that a group is working on a formal letter that addresses that legal question. as far as I can tell that hypothetical letter is a simple "legal opinion", not a letter that calls for sanctioning transactions on bitcoin. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 fyi, they hypothetical design of a knots node that i provide above is just that: hypothetical. the leaked dms don't go into implementation details at all so i had to fill in the blanks. luke might've had some other design in mind. but my description is conceptually correct, and the article's isn't. you can go back to the leaked screenshots and re-read them and tell me if anything there contradicts the hypothetical design I offered (nothing does). also, an important point is that the entire leaked convo is hypothetical. people are allowed to have hypothetical conversations. that doesn't mean there's some conspiracy. everyone I know that discusses this issue in private has brought up all kinds of weird ideas to me that doesn't mean they actually plan to implement them. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 my conclusion is that this article is a hit piece, and not a particularly good one. the most charitable explanation i can come up with is that the author misunderstood the leaked messages and wrote the incorrect article based on that misunderstanding but honestly it really seems that this isn't the case, it seems like the author was employing a lot of motivated reasoning to arrive at the conclusions in the article. the goal was to make luke bad, and his words were manipulated for maximum effect this isn't the first time "the rage" is doing this. last time it was a fake news article claiming that google is about to ban self-custody wallets from the android app store. it was based on the author's borderline malicious interpretation of the google store rules, to make them look like they're against self-custody. that was incorrect, but the fake news article got so viral that google itself had to issue a clarification saying that they have not and will not ban self-custody wallets from the android store. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 perhaps most disappointing was seeing many big names from the "anti-knots" camp jumping on this and declaring that luke is working on a hard fork, that "they knew it" and that soon we will be getting "airdrop fork coins" to sell. all of those things are false. this is, as always, a nothing burger. it's pretty obvious to me that this proposal never gets implemented, and even if it did, it does not censor the network and does not split the network, and remains fully compatible with core. it's actually, dare i say it, a pretty good hypothetical solution (to a problem that doesn't matter). i wish they'd implement it. but they probably won't. do better everyone.
X (formerly Twitter)
Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) on X
i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a ...
View quoted note →
jostric's avatar
jostric 2 months ago
If technical details is what she is lacking then that would imply that her story wasn't intentional slander and that it was simply ignorance in her interruption of the alleged text messages. I give her the benefit of the doubt she's not scammer, she does a lot of good reporting on global concerns in regards to privacy to which most of the Bitcoin community sadly ignores. The Urdi's interruption of the Luke's messages is pretty nuanced in details, assuming this favorable interruption is correct. Luke's intentions is to remove CP while still maintenaning the transactions are still valid using Zero Knowledge Proofs thus avoiding the need to fork the network. Now is this technically possibly? I don't know, is the proposed solution free of contraversy? Probably not, does it reintroduce trust, yes technically clients would need to trust the people determining the filter. But one thing is for sure ego makes it hard to admit when we are wrong, so it's unlikely for L0ala to continue this dialogue.
1 replies ↓
jostric's avatar
jostric 2 months ago
OP_Return data is prunable, so maybe Udi's interruptation of Luke's message a little out there idk
1 replies ↓
L0la L33tz's avatar
L0la L33tz L0laL33tz@cashu.me 2 months ago
more than happy to get into the technicalities, sharing here from a conversation i had on X (slightly modified to make sense) ⬇️ a hf is always a chainsplit, but not every chainsplit is a hf. the reason that Luke says it is "technically" a hf that is "buried" so "should be fine" is that the zkps would be introduced retroactively. if the zkps were introduced in real time, core nodes would be served blocks they can't understand and fork. when introduced retroactively, everyone has the same blockchain, but knots nodes would replace certain data that doesn't affect the utxo set -> this is what Luke describes as technically a hf that he considers safe to do. however, if knots became the reference client and the majority of peers would be serving blocks that replaced datacarriers with zkps, it *would* cause a chainsplit for syncing nodes, as a core node peered with only knots nodes couldnt understand what it was getting -> equivalent to receiving the zkp blocks in real time and rejecting them. As long as its the minority, it would simply ban those nodes and look for new peers that it is able to talk to. fyi, luke does not use the word "chainsplit" in the messages, but he is defacto proposing the mechanisms that would technically cause a hf because it *is* a consensus change, but it wouldn't cause an immediate chainsplit – not because of any agreement, but because of the retroactive introduction of the zkps that do not touch the utxo set, as long as nodes not running the alternative client can get their blocks from somewhere else. I think it's absolutely fair to argue about whether to even call that a hf if it is only a hf in certain scenarios, which we did not do in the article as we merely focused on what Luke said, and to Luke, it is a hf *because* it is a consensus change. I agree that we should have put that in perspective and are working on a follow up article on that, but I don't agree that that makes our article “fake news”. Second, a chain split here becomes even more likely due to Luke’s argumentation that his proposal should be backed by the law – even though the following scenario would require a separate upgrade that goes beyond removing data. the important part here is normalizing the trusted committee and the risks that it bears in light of this idea being lobbied to be adopted in connection with legal implications, setting the precedent for Governments to make all kinds of other demands to the committee – e.g., please modify the client so users can remove transactions that violated sanctions, remove txs that do not comply with KYC, etc – which then causes a chainsplit as you are modifying the utxo set. anyone who doesn't comply would then violate the law as we've seen in the prosecution of Roman Storm, who was not bound by law to implement KYC/AML but allegedly had the means to do so, so he was charged with conspiracy to violate sanctions and launder money. for context, note that for Storm this argument is much much weaker, as it only pertained to implementing KYC on a frontend. you are then in the dilemma of what a miner would do: would they mine on the original chain that can violate sanctions, or on the chain that doesn't? by lobbying for the adoption of this idea you are quite literally asking for a hard fork to happen that splits the network into a "legal" chain and an "illegal" chain – which is Luke's entire prerogative for removing CSAM. this would apply the same justifications as it does to CSAM: if this doesn't happen, "bitcoin dies," as relaying the transaction of a terrorist is arguably just as bad as relaying CSAM if we logically follow Luke's argumentation. this is the "slippery slope". an important point here is that the Government could already ask miners to censor transactions – but retroactively removing txs would be much more attractive to them, because censoring on miner level does not invalidate txs, but retroactively altering the utxo set does. This is important because AML/CFT detection rarely happens in real time, so these txs are hard to prevent. I agree that this too should have been better explained in our article and will be included in the follow up, but again it dont think it qualifies our reporting as “fake news”, especially as a publication that covers in depth how things like the application of the BSA is being considered by the US Government on a regular basis. As frank corva can tell you and has stated publicly in response to our reporting (and we have reported extensively on), looking for ways to stop illicit activity on bitcoin is currently one of the main issues discussed in politics. To briefly address what Udi says as this wasn't written in response to him: with Luke's proposal node operators would still "download spam" but could remove it from their copy of the chain, the delayed syncing is possible but inconvenient, calling the messages "not a plan" is semantics, the technical distinction of hf vs. split is correct in certain scenarios, the zkps would require trust that the zkps are valid bc there's no other reliable way to detect CSAM, I'm not aware of a "technical" hf that wouldn't violate consensus, maybe don't try to use things that udi writes as a gotcha. As a side note to the commenter above you, assuming that someone is stupid because you don’t understand the information they are presenting doesn’t exactly make you look intelligent.
2 replies ↓
Cykros's avatar
Cykros psyche_eros@iris.to 2 months ago
@L0la L33tz apologies for the undue assumption, you're clearly not as out of the loop as it seemed, so yea, I'll eat crow on that one. It is curious though that you're standing by hard forks = chain splits when clearly some nodes could indeed choose to essentially run this new sort of blind hardforked node without a chainsplit. If it got close to a critical mass there'd be room for some discussion, by at that point, we'd be talking about a majority of node runners expressing an intolerance for the spam, and other opportuties arise. While I'll retract my undue, emotionally driven assault on your intelligence though, I do stand by both the opposition to leaking private comms and the scare clickbait reporting. If it's a conversation you wanted, perhaps discussing the technical details with luke could have yielded an intellectual discussion. Choosing instead to just sew panic was a bad look. Anyway, again, you're right, my characterization was unfair. Sorry.
Chris Neal's avatar
Chris Neal ChrisN@primal.net 2 months ago
“Do better everyone”. A great reminder to not get caught up in the hype and drama. It can be fun to rage and get excited, but it’s not whats good for the bitcoin community. We really need to be looking at the incentives of media sources that embellish and pump antagonistic narratives. Where we spend our attention matters.
Akashi Hyogo's avatar
Akashi Hyogo 2 months ago
Looks like I have fallen for that hit piece
Cyph3rp9nk's avatar Cyph3rp9nk
By @udiWertheimer i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a sloppy low quality propaganda piece. first of all: sharing private messages is not cool. for many obvious ethical reasons. but one reason that is often overlooked is that sharing private messages often puts them out of context and makes it easy to construct a false narrative without understanding the conversation with that, let's look deeper into the article published by "the rage": the rage: "dashjr... proposes the implementation of a multisig quorum on bitcoin that grants a designated group of people the ability to retroactively alter data that is hosted on the blockchain" there is no discussion of "altering the data that is stored on the blockchain" anywhere in the screenshots provided. luke discusses a hypothetical mechanism that would allow knots node operators to avoid downloading "spam" that's already in blocks. imagine a hypothetical knots client that syncs blocks with a delay of eg 1 hour. when it downloads a block (late, on purpose), it pings luke's server and asks, "hey, is there any spam in this 1 hour old block?". luke's server responds with a list of transaction IDs that contain "spam", and provides a "zero knowledge proof" that proves to knots nodes that those "spam" transactions are valid, without having to download them. this is the magic of zk proofs and we don't need to get into how it works. suffice to say that the reason bitcoin nodes download transactions is to verify that they're valid, and if there's a way to verify without downloading them then the node can continue functioning without having to download the "spam". so now knots have a mechanism to avoid "spam" on their computer while still validating the chain. this doesn't remove the "spam" for the chain. it is still available on clients that don't run knots (70%+ of the network). core nodes continue to function as normal, with "spam" and with no issues, and continue to be in sync with knots nodes. the only difference is that the knots nodes can avoid ever downloading "spam", while staying on the same network the rage: "luke dashjr plans hard fork" this isn't true and it's a misunderstanding of what luke is saying. his messages do not describe a plan to hard fork bitcoin. he's referring to a technicality, saying that whenever knots nodes use a mechanism like the hypothetical knots node i described above, every time they avoid downloading a transaction they technically hard fork. but just technically, not really. it doesn't split the network, and those hypothetical knots nodes remain fully compatible with core nodes. core nodes can continue to verify, their chain is not censored, and they're fully synced with knots nodes. the rage: “right now the only options would be bitcoin dies or we have to trust someone,” dashjr writes. The proposed solution would require a consensus change, activating a bitcoin hardfork. the quote about "we have to trust someone" is taken out of context. luke is literally saying in the convo that thanks to zk proofs and his proposed solution, they would NOT need to trust anyone. the second part about a consensus change is made up. nothing in the screenshots suggests a consensus change. and i explained above that the "hard fork" bit is just a technicality. in this hypothetical design, there would be no chain split, and core nodes would remain compatible and uncensored. the rage: dashjr reveals that public letters are being drafted by third parties to seemingly support the sanctioning of illegal content on the entire Bitcoin network. the leaked conversation does not AT ALL mention a public letter that supports sanctioning illegal content "on the entire bitcoin network". luke is asked by his conversation partner a legal question, whether or not an op_return relay network will be perceived by authorities as illegal. luke replies that he can't answer that question because he's not a lawyer, but his understanding is that a group is working on a formal letter that addresses that legal question. as far as I can tell that hypothetical letter is a simple "legal opinion", not a letter that calls for sanctioning transactions on bitcoin. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 fyi, they hypothetical design of a knots node that i provide above is just that: hypothetical. the leaked dms don't go into implementation details at all so i had to fill in the blanks. luke might've had some other design in mind. but my description is conceptually correct, and the article's isn't. you can go back to the leaked screenshots and re-read them and tell me if anything there contradicts the hypothetical design I offered (nothing does). also, an important point is that the entire leaked convo is hypothetical. people are allowed to have hypothetical conversations. that doesn't mean there's some conspiracy. everyone I know that discusses this issue in private has brought up all kinds of weird ideas to me that doesn't mean they actually plan to implement them. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 my conclusion is that this article is a hit piece, and not a particularly good one. the most charitable explanation i can come up with is that the author misunderstood the leaked messages and wrote the incorrect article based on that misunderstanding but honestly it really seems that this isn't the case, it seems like the author was employing a lot of motivated reasoning to arrive at the conclusions in the article. the goal was to make luke bad, and his words were manipulated for maximum effect this isn't the first time "the rage" is doing this. last time it was a fake news article claiming that google is about to ban self-custody wallets from the android app store. it was based on the author's borderline malicious interpretation of the google store rules, to make them look like they're against self-custody. that was incorrect, but the fake news article got so viral that google itself had to issue a clarification saying that they have not and will not ban self-custody wallets from the android store. 🔸🔸🔸🔸 perhaps most disappointing was seeing many big names from the "anti-knots" camp jumping on this and declaring that luke is working on a hard fork, that "they knew it" and that soon we will be getting "airdrop fork coins" to sell. all of those things are false. this is, as always, a nothing burger. it's pretty obvious to me that this proposal never gets implemented, and even if it did, it does not censor the network and does not split the network, and remains fully compatible with core. it's actually, dare i say it, a pretty good hypothetical solution (to a problem that doesn't matter). i wish they'd implement it. but they probably won't. do better everyone.
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Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) on X
i read the luke dashjr hit piece. it's wrong. basically the entire article is wrong. i'm (obviously) not on luke's side, but guys this is just a ...
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