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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @fourrules 8 Sep \ parent \ on: Murch and Chris have a conversation - What is Going on Here??? bitcoin
A sybil attack via Bitcoin Core policy defaults compared to a bad actor with an alternative implementation is like the difference between being stabbed in the eye and stabbing yourself in the eye.
If someone tries to stab you in the eye you can engage in countermeasures. If you stab yourself in the eye then who is there to deploy countermeasures?
why do you keep saying alternate implementation? the same implementation can have different policies. A bad actor does not need to deploy an alternate implementation to do this. They could run their Bitcoin Core nodes in blocksonly mode with -whitelistrelay, which would allow them to "filter" by only transactions that come from nodes they like.
If you can use filters to do what you say they can do (stop "spam"), then a government can use them to stop any particularly disliked transaction. If a government cannot do this, then neither can a group who wishes to stop spam.
You still haven't answered this question.
If someone tries to stab you in the eye you can engage in countermeasures. If you stab yourself in the eye then who is there to deploy countermeasures?
I like your eye stabbing metaphor. Nice rhetorical touch. Let me tell you how I use this metaphor: Bitcoin is a permissionless network. There are no sides. There are only valid transactions and invalid transactions. As far as I see it, all transactions are enemies trying to stab me in the eye. Every single transaction in Bitcoin is something I have to contend with, it's a transaction that might want blockspace more than me. It's my enemy. I put up with it because in order to use this network, I have to follow the rules. But I'm not happy about it.
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There are valid transactions, and invalid ones, and between them there are users and a policy layer, with defaults. That is the case today, and you're advocating removing that layer, pretending it has never existed or had a meaningful impact on the monetary value of the network, when it obviously has because so many other blockchains emerged to service the demand for spam.
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I understand the arguments you're making.
I hate spam.
I just don't think that Bitcoiners have a leg to stand on... when the demand/fee for blockspace is so low. If users don't care more about Blockspace... why should the spammers? We lose credibility with half-empty blocks.
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I don't agree that we lose credibility at all. I'm comfortable with SoV and allowing the Lindy effect to do it's thing until the incumbents are out of ammunition. This is a war of attrition, but our advantage is that it's possible to go from collectable to SoV to MoE, but you cannot go backwards once you lose the property or collectible and SoV, which they arguably have.
Monetary transactions cannot compete with spam if they are tolerated and facilitated, for the same reason that proof of work must be arbitrary work without any intrinsic value that competes with the core purpose of securing the network. Spam will always pay more in transaction fees than ordinary transactions, because to the sender it's not spam, it's only spam in the eyes of everyone else, so there must be a zero tolerance policy that all content is spam, only monetary transactions are not spam.
Empty blocks with transactions on L2 is a sign of a healthy network at our current stage of evolution.
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why do you keep saying alternate implementation? the same implementation can have different policies. A bad actor does not need to deploy an alternate implementation to do this. They could run their Bitcoin Core nodes in blocksonly mode with -whitelistrelay, which would allow them to "filter" by only transactions that come from nodes they like.
100%. I think of blockspace as an information battlefield... based on fees and energy. If you want in the blocks you have to 'outbid' your adversary. How else could a similar "fair" system function???
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Because defaults matter, and you'd need an alternative implementation to change defaults.
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