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0 sats \ 13 replies \ @028559d218 OP 11 Jun \ parent \ on: Influencers out in Storm: Is *This* the Hill to Die On? bitcoin
Then what exactly... is the entire point of Knots or forking Core?
Comprehensive configurability, and some form of highly symbolic protest but unfortunately mostly by people that have no idea what they are doing.
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some form of highly symbolic protest
Is this really good for Bitcoin though?
mostly by people that have no idea what they are doing.
That's what I thought... but I wasn't sure
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The drama isn't good for bitcoin either, so it doesn't really matter. It's already toxic.
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Bitcoin's "actual" drama is low... really low. It's the social media/Twitter effect of making the drama appear 'worse' than it really is. It makes people think 'is this ok' when they should just be... using bitcoin imo
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I'm not sure if I agree with "low drama". The development community has been under stress for a while, but thus far it hasn't caused irreversible bad decisions, at least not in Bitcoin Core.
Historical perspective: I felt similarly in the "blocksize wars" era1, the effect of which still resonates sometimes in narratives today2. The opinion of developers doesn't matter much for those that remain on the status quo side - after all, nothing changes - but it matters a lot if you're on the "alt" side3 and people will chose a losing side, which can be disastrous, to them. However, you can't stop anyone that wants to fork off, so therefore you can only "let them".
In more recent times, we saw for example a particular rage quit where some of the things that were said, especially about people that were just trying to establish what consensus was or voice their opinion about the proposals made, were coming close to character assassination. All because the process of extending script, from idea to activation is a bit fuzzy and it goes super slow.
Deteriorated personal relations between developers (and especially groups of them) could become a significant obstacle if you consider an ideology like "there should be only Core"4. If that truly is going to remain the main direction (it has been implicitly and sometimes explicitly since the start), then even though I recently accepted Murch's proposal to "agree to disagree"5 regarding banning people from the bitcoin github org, and let it go for the time being, I may have to come back to that and try to convince some key people to the current moderation rules to loosen them.
I think that if you extend the scope beyond the protocol as it is today, not all is guaranteed to be great. If the conservative, properly engineered Bitcoin protocol we have today is to remain that way and it's source of truth remain Bitcoin Core, then as bitcoiners, we must find a way where the polarization that is all too common in western societies at large is overcome in favor of consensus. For consensus you have to communicate though and I hope that a smallest denominator (=consensus rules) can remain common to everyone that is validating them right now, and those that enthusiastically validate them in the future.
Footnotes
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Leaving the hyperbole at the door, do we really believe that Gavin or Mike were actual bad guys? And vice versa, do bcashers really believe gmax or sipa are evil? It's what current statements on twitter/nostr and sometimes even here on SN would make one believe, especially newcomers! ↩
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which is why I quipped about the XEC (=Bitcoin ABC) guys in my original comment: they've found themselves on the losing side of a contentious fork twice but when I spoke to a few of them not too long ago, they were full of what almost looked like religious energy, similar to some of the filter champions, convinced that their way is the only right way. ↩
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Thank you for your comment.
I'm not sure if I agree with "low drama". The development community has been under stress for a while, but thus far it hasn't caused irreversible bad decisions, at least not in Bitcoin Core.
I used to watch Matt Kratter almost every day... wake up, get a coffee and watch. Because he has made some great content, especially for relative beginners.
But he has IMO fallen into the "we need to filter" trap pushed by social media influencers. He doesn't talk about the downsides. He doesn't use nuance. It's all... Black and White and he encourages his users to 'run knots' without stating any of the downsides or risks of what that could entail. He preaches "us vs them" because they're "all corrupt" and "bought off"... and "running knots" is the only "solution". It's nuts.
And then there are other people, prominent folks, who go around saying "core is captured" and "they are corrupt" "bought off by the VCs" "compromised" etc etc...
And I felt like the overall presentation by Core members + Merch was extremely thorough, sober, technically logical and reasonable. "Murch" did a really great job IMO. I don't necessarily understand everything or even agree... but the presentation was very very thorough.
I DON'T get that from the filter crowd. Quite the opposite it's emotional pleas.
Historical perspective: I felt similarly in the "blocksize wars"
I wasn't "here" for the blocksize wars. But looking back... doesn't it just seem so obvious?
Deteriorated personal relations between developers (and especially groups of them) could become a significant obstacle if you consider an ideology like "there should be only Core"
My non-technical understanding of this... is that Knots isn't another "implementation". It is a fork. "Implementations" would be other blockchains (BCH BSV for example) whereas knots is a 'client'... a forked client? Twitter is so noisy and influencer-oriented it's hard to get any valuable information typically. So I understand that people cannot work in that environment. I also get that 'feedback' is valuable and 'community engagement' is too...
But there's a fine line. It's hard to find that balance and it shows the challenges of "decentralized" software development where eventually somewhere somehow decisions have to be made.
I think that if you extend the scope beyond the protocol as it is today, not all is guaranteed to be great. If the conservative, properly engineered Bitcoin protocol we have today is to remain that way and it's source of truth remain Bitcoin Core, then as bitcoiners, we must find a way
The pro-filter people... don't really talk about consensus. They talk about mempool policy. Many of the pro-filter voices on Twitter for example... could not explain the difference between mempool policy and consensus. They don't look at mempool.space. They don't coinjoin. They don't use Lightning. They want to "stop the Spam" because "core is corrupt" because "core wants spam"...
But I think they would have a hard time explaining "the spam" as it actually presents in mempool.space on a day-to-day basis.
It's very much "us vs them because they are corrupt" lol
which is why I quipped about the XEC (=Bitcoin ABC) guys in my original comment: they've found themselves on the losing side of a contentious fork twice but when I spoke to a few of them not too long ago, they were full of what almost looked like religious energy, similar to some of the filter champions, convinced that their way is the only right way.
Increasing the block size is "logically" delusional. Blockchains don't scale? No decentralized chain can contain every transaction for every coffee or every candy bar for 8 billion people across the entire Earth for hundreds of years... it's impossible. In addition we have periods now of +spam and/or half-empty blocks how people could advocate 'bigger blocks' thinking that's 'a solution' < 15 years into Bitcoin. It's like ideology over practicality especially obvious now... that Lightning works pretty good and facilities with usage for apps like Stacker News.