Thank you for the even-handed explanation. X has become a minefield of, unfortunately, interpersonal conflict on this issue. I didn't have a firm grip till reading your explanation.
Thanks Michael. I agree, the stakes are high, and X has become full of ad-hominem attacks, making it difficult to go through the actual arguments. I took my time writing this because I care about both sides, but still want to stay rational. 👊
I appreciate your explanation which tried to present both sides of the BIP-110 debate fairly. I am on the BIP-110 side for the following reasons: 1) this soft fork effectively returns things to how they were prior to 2023 when the inscription hack began exploiting vulnerabilities introduced with Taproot. 2) for the first decade or more of Bitcoin’s history, the community and core devs were strongly opposed to spam and didn’t have a defeatist attitude of “you can’t stop all spam, so no point trying to limit it”, and spammers knew it. So this re-asserts that stance so the people polluting the blockchain will get the message. 3) I run a node and do not want to relay spam, or store it forever on my node – something you did not address at all in your analysis. And putting it in Op Return is not the “best” place for it despite the idea that it can be pruned. I actually use my node, so can’t prune it for it to function correctly with my wallets. 4) “Fees will price out spam” is flat out false – the blocks are now mostly filled with spam, so it hasn’t been priced out and there’s no evidence it ever really will be. 5) the fact that BIP-110 doesn’t have overwhelming support I chalk up to the fact that the easy Core talking points, many of which are in your analysis, make sense at first glance and lots of people aren’t taking the time to dive deeper. So the FUD about a chain split makes them lean toward not supporting BIP-110. But essentially no one is so convinced that spam is good and desirable and the BIP-110 changes bad that they are willing to commit to a User Rejected Soft Fork opposing BIP-110. Even the loudest voices against BIP-110 all claim to "hate spam" and that "bitcoin is money", but didn't speak up for the months leading up to the Core v30 release which blew open the OP Return limit, so here we are.
Thanks for responding and great points! I have close friends on the BIP-110 side myself, and it's ok to disagree on some things. I'll try to respond to most of your points and figure out where we agree and disagree.
1. I am not sure if this is entirely correct. Indeed, the exploit was found in 2023, but it stems from witness data (2017) and Taproot (2021). It doesn't exactly make things how they were before, it also breaks things and possibly forces spam to worse places like the UTXO set. I believe Ordinals already found a way to be BIP-110 proof.
2. Arbitrary data has been in the chain since Satoshi's genesis block. I think there has always been an understanding that it is impossible to fully stop, but you are right about the defeatist attitude. Core is more about directing it, while BIP-110 is about signaling, which I also mentioned.
3. I feel your point, but we’ve been storing Satoshi's genesis block since 2009. Spam is subjective and Bitcoin is a permissionless network. You are relaying arbitrary data that may have meaning to someone else. As mentioned, spam can be disguised as a hash and be indistinguishable from a normal transaction. I am also unhappy with arbitrary data being a jpeg, but instead of witness data, those can also be inserted in an output disguised as a normal transaction, affecting the UTXO set for all nodes.
4. You are right here, fees don't fully price out spam, but they filter what is valuable enough for someone to pay for. The problem is there aren't many financial transactions, and the mempool is at 1 sat/vbyte. Btw, BIP-110 only raises the cost by perhaps 0.5% with workarounds, which is not really meaningful.
5. I am sincerely interested in the deeper points. I don’t think the ones in here are particularly easy talking points or necessarily pro Core. I took substantial time to write this, keep it concise, and be fair to both sides, as I care about both sides, but at the same time need to stay rational.
Thanks Root. Those are fair responses, and for my 5th point I didn't mean to imply that I thought you hadn't looked into this deeply. It was more that I believe there are many others in Bitcoin who haven't and simply bought into the easy talking points. I've had conversations with people at a local Bitcoin meetup where they parroted the "you can't stop spam" line, and hadn't gone beyond that. In the end, besides what I explained above, the fact that this is by definition a temporary soft fork makes me more willing to support it than not, since any potential "breaking of things" will be undone in 1 year. Appreciate all you do!
If BIP-110 does cause a chain split, doesn't that mean that Bitcoin owners will own Bitcoin on two parallel chains? Once that happens, the price of Bitcoin on those two chains will go their separate ways. One will quickly wither away and the other will dominate. Bitcoin owners can sell their Bitcoin on either or both chains whenever they want. Isn't This what happened with Bitcoin Cash, so it's nothing new? Isn't this also how market forces decide which chain survives and which one becomes essentially worthless? Yes, that process would probably sap some energy from the winner for a while, but it should come back once the loser is decided. You didn't say anything about this process, so am I wrong or what?
That is exactly right! In case of a chain split, I expect the BIP-110 chain to become a minority group splitting away from Bitcoin, at least this is what the current hashrate signaling and prediction markets are telling us. I mentioned Bitcoin Cash as an example, and how it is only trading at only a fraction of Bitcoin. It’s very similar, though technically Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork and BIP-110 is a soft fork. I tried to keep it concise, but you are right about the whole process, and market forces will decide which chain survives. It is still a messy process to go through though, with some people ending up on the losing side.
But they won't end up on the "wrong" side, they will end up on "both" sides. If they then decide to sell one or the other, or both, that is their decision to make. I think most people, like me, will sell neither, while others will "take the money and run" by selling the BIP-110 chain, and then possibly use that money to buy more Bitcoin on the legacy chain. Yes, that will probably hurt the price of Bitcoin briefly, but we don't know that.
Correct me if I am wrong, but all of this assumes a chain split, which is not necessarily in the cards. The BIP-110 soft fork could just be quietly adopted by the node runners as the default. I think lots of people, possibly most, don't understand or care about any of this, so they will just run whatever they consider to be the default software. Node runners are a bit more savvy than most, but not necessarily really up on the details. Also, BIP-110 is currently not the default, so the legacy is currently getting the benefit of that in terms of adoption.
Ultimately, I think it is important for the community of node runners to have their vote for what they wan't. As you have said, the core team wen't their own way for their own reasons, some of which are suspect. The node runners need to reassert themselves as the people who decide these things, and not leave it up to a few devs, or miners, both of whom have their own incentives that are not necessarily in line with the long term benefit of Bitcoin, whatever that is...
Some of us believe that the future of Bitcoin is to be sound money. Others see it as an opportunity to support their own business activities, or even political beliefs. Democracy is a messy process that often produces the "wrong" results, but the means of self correction is vital, and having it is presumably better than not having it in the long run.
Thank you for the even-handed explanation. X has become a minefield of, unfortunately, interpersonal conflict on this issue. I didn't have a firm grip till reading your explanation.
Thanks Michael. I agree, the stakes are high, and X has become full of ad-hominem attacks, making it difficult to go through the actual arguments. I took my time writing this because I care about both sides, but still want to stay rational. 👊
I agree with your position, Root. I wish Core had done it differently but 110 isn't the answer to that.
Great to hear! And thanks for sharing. 👊
Excellent explanation.
Thanks, truly appreciate the comment. It took some time to make it this concise and be fair to both sides.
I appreciate your explanation which tried to present both sides of the BIP-110 debate fairly. I am on the BIP-110 side for the following reasons: 1) this soft fork effectively returns things to how they were prior to 2023 when the inscription hack began exploiting vulnerabilities introduced with Taproot. 2) for the first decade or more of Bitcoin’s history, the community and core devs were strongly opposed to spam and didn’t have a defeatist attitude of “you can’t stop all spam, so no point trying to limit it”, and spammers knew it. So this re-asserts that stance so the people polluting the blockchain will get the message. 3) I run a node and do not want to relay spam, or store it forever on my node – something you did not address at all in your analysis. And putting it in Op Return is not the “best” place for it despite the idea that it can be pruned. I actually use my node, so can’t prune it for it to function correctly with my wallets. 4) “Fees will price out spam” is flat out false – the blocks are now mostly filled with spam, so it hasn’t been priced out and there’s no evidence it ever really will be. 5) the fact that BIP-110 doesn’t have overwhelming support I chalk up to the fact that the easy Core talking points, many of which are in your analysis, make sense at first glance and lots of people aren’t taking the time to dive deeper. So the FUD about a chain split makes them lean toward not supporting BIP-110. But essentially no one is so convinced that spam is good and desirable and the BIP-110 changes bad that they are willing to commit to a User Rejected Soft Fork opposing BIP-110. Even the loudest voices against BIP-110 all claim to "hate spam" and that "bitcoin is money", but didn't speak up for the months leading up to the Core v30 release which blew open the OP Return limit, so here we are.
Thanks for responding and great points! I have close friends on the BIP-110 side myself, and it's ok to disagree on some things. I'll try to respond to most of your points and figure out where we agree and disagree.
1. I am not sure if this is entirely correct. Indeed, the exploit was found in 2023, but it stems from witness data (2017) and Taproot (2021). It doesn't exactly make things how they were before, it also breaks things and possibly forces spam to worse places like the UTXO set. I believe Ordinals already found a way to be BIP-110 proof.
2. Arbitrary data has been in the chain since Satoshi's genesis block. I think there has always been an understanding that it is impossible to fully stop, but you are right about the defeatist attitude. Core is more about directing it, while BIP-110 is about signaling, which I also mentioned.
3. I feel your point, but we’ve been storing Satoshi's genesis block since 2009. Spam is subjective and Bitcoin is a permissionless network. You are relaying arbitrary data that may have meaning to someone else. As mentioned, spam can be disguised as a hash and be indistinguishable from a normal transaction. I am also unhappy with arbitrary data being a jpeg, but instead of witness data, those can also be inserted in an output disguised as a normal transaction, affecting the UTXO set for all nodes.
4. You are right here, fees don't fully price out spam, but they filter what is valuable enough for someone to pay for. The problem is there aren't many financial transactions, and the mempool is at 1 sat/vbyte. Btw, BIP-110 only raises the cost by perhaps 0.5% with workarounds, which is not really meaningful.
5. I am sincerely interested in the deeper points. I don’t think the ones in here are particularly easy talking points or necessarily pro Core. I took substantial time to write this, keep it concise, and be fair to both sides, as I care about both sides, but at the same time need to stay rational.
Thanks Root. Those are fair responses, and for my 5th point I didn't mean to imply that I thought you hadn't looked into this deeply. It was more that I believe there are many others in Bitcoin who haven't and simply bought into the easy talking points. I've had conversations with people at a local Bitcoin meetup where they parroted the "you can't stop spam" line, and hadn't gone beyond that. In the end, besides what I explained above, the fact that this is by definition a temporary soft fork makes me more willing to support it than not, since any potential "breaking of things" will be undone in 1 year. Appreciate all you do!
If BIP-110 does cause a chain split, doesn't that mean that Bitcoin owners will own Bitcoin on two parallel chains? Once that happens, the price of Bitcoin on those two chains will go their separate ways. One will quickly wither away and the other will dominate. Bitcoin owners can sell their Bitcoin on either or both chains whenever they want. Isn't This what happened with Bitcoin Cash, so it's nothing new? Isn't this also how market forces decide which chain survives and which one becomes essentially worthless? Yes, that process would probably sap some energy from the winner for a while, but it should come back once the loser is decided. You didn't say anything about this process, so am I wrong or what?
That is exactly right! In case of a chain split, I expect the BIP-110 chain to become a minority group splitting away from Bitcoin, at least this is what the current hashrate signaling and prediction markets are telling us. I mentioned Bitcoin Cash as an example, and how it is only trading at only a fraction of Bitcoin. It’s very similar, though technically Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork and BIP-110 is a soft fork. I tried to keep it concise, but you are right about the whole process, and market forces will decide which chain survives. It is still a messy process to go through though, with some people ending up on the losing side.
But they won't end up on the "wrong" side, they will end up on "both" sides. If they then decide to sell one or the other, or both, that is their decision to make. I think most people, like me, will sell neither, while others will "take the money and run" by selling the BIP-110 chain, and then possibly use that money to buy more Bitcoin on the legacy chain. Yes, that will probably hurt the price of Bitcoin briefly, but we don't know that.
Correct me if I am wrong, but all of this assumes a chain split, which is not necessarily in the cards. The BIP-110 soft fork could just be quietly adopted by the node runners as the default. I think lots of people, possibly most, don't understand or care about any of this, so they will just run whatever they consider to be the default software. Node runners are a bit more savvy than most, but not necessarily really up on the details. Also, BIP-110 is currently not the default, so the legacy is currently getting the benefit of that in terms of adoption.
Ultimately, I think it is important for the community of node runners to have their vote for what they wan't. As you have said, the core team wen't their own way for their own reasons, some of which are suspect. The node runners need to reassert themselves as the people who decide these things, and not leave it up to a few devs, or miners, both of whom have their own incentives that are not necessarily in line with the long term benefit of Bitcoin, whatever that is...
Some of us believe that the future of Bitcoin is to be sound money. Others see it as an opportunity to support their own business activities, or even political beliefs. Democracy is a messy process that often produces the "wrong" results, but the means of self correction is vital, and having it is presumably better than not having it in the long run.