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650 sats \ 0 replies \ @leaf 27 Sep \ on: Knots vs Core? Or Something More bitcoin
Nobody seems to have a problem accepting that there is a knowledge asymmetry between bitcoiners and nocoiners. Bitcoiners tend to accept that nocoiners, for whatever reason, don't get it. I imagine that many nocoiners have complained that bitcoiners are arrogant and are treating nocoiners as dumb.
I think I could uncontroversially use this quote in relation to nocoiners here: "It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf."
What some bitcoiners don't get, in my opinion, is there is knowledge asymmetry between bitcoiners themselves. Specifically, between the technical and nontechnical.
Many nontechnical people think they know more than they do, or think the little insight they do have makes them qualified on technical issues. The hard truth is it doesn't.
In my opinion, people generally underestimate the amount of knowledge required to do something like bitcoin development. It is gargantuan. Without that, you cannot understand the technical discussion, distinguish the strong arguments from the weak. And that assumes your mum popped enough tylenol when pregnant to give you the brain required.
So I say again, but about nontechnical bitcoiners: "It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf."
The good news is that I don't think people need to. There is a wide variety of bitcoin devs from different backgrounds with different views.
If a genuine questionable change was being pushed, we can rely on a subset of them (i.e. more than one) to raise the alarm.
This is why I'd say we want as many devs as possible: lots of funding, and reduce the pressures and demands on them so they can speak their minds. If bitcoin development is insufferable, you'll get less devs, less ethical devs, making a bad change less likely to get called out.
I'll grant you that this all depends on how it is implemented. Hypothetically, it could just be a service - I sincerely doubt that's what it would be.
For one thing, with SPV clients, I think this service essentially already exists. If someone is willing to trust someone else to validate blocks because they're squeamish about block data, they can just connect to a few nodes they trust with a light client.
There is no need for some complex solution where it's difficult to determine the risks and long-term consequences. Unless you wanted to muddy the waters and confuse the nontechnical. I can see the arguments now: "It is trustless though! Trust us!"
My other point is Why is this service suddenly required now? It's long been known there is illegal data in blocks. Nobody seemed to care a year ago. And with all the financial infrastructure etc. built up around bitcoin, I doubt anyone will.
So why is this narrative being amplified now? If we step back and interpret this in the full context of the knots drama, it seems fairly obvious to me. Ultimately, this is about control. The knots crew aren't getting the code changes they want, and are willing to create a false crisis, slander all other bitcoin devs, roll out lawyers, and more, if they think it'll give them the control they want.
I am not convinced.
The mere consideration of such a change where a small group are given any such power should be absolutely and utterly rejected by anyone interested in keeping bitcoin trustless and uncensorable.
There is a such an obvious slippery slope from supposedly trusted individuals removing illegal material to outright censorship of transactions they don't like.
And then there is the ocean lawyer contacting mining pools, which Adam Back corroborates https://x.com/adam3us/status/1971330468961542213
Few people seem to be discussing that part which is arguably worse...
I think the whistleblower was right to leak these messages and reveal what is obviously an attack on bitcoin.
People that don't want to discern what they're downloading would then be less likely to download changes they don't need. That's good.
I'd say a loss in trust in bitcoin due to issues will be a bigger factor, even if those issues were isolated.
Core has multiple major versions per year, that's worse than many js frameworks.
That's not a metric I'd judge a project's coding practices by. I think something like the number of bugs and their severity would be better.
the actual prescription is to prevent a politburo from impersonating Bitcoin
I doubt that would happen. They might fool the gullible, but few else, imo. Certainly not big miners or businesses who would have a lot to lose if bitcoin failed.
People just download blindly with zero discernment because the repo is trusted.
They trust that others are looking at the code, and you get that with one main repo.
It's unrealistic to expect most people to start doing code review and verifying the code for themselves.
but it's changed more like a fledgling javascript framework
As I understand it, PRs are often in review for months or even years, if thet get merged at all. That's hardly like the javascript community.
Regardless, if there were multiple code forks, I'd expect that to reduce code security/reliability, not increase it. The eyeballs would be split between repos and there would be more chance of a bug or questionable change getting through.
I think the worst case scenario is a new repository gets the same mind-share
I think the community will always want a repo with a lot of eyes on it, to manage PRs and ensure changes are well reviewed.
If you had loads of code forks, it would be tough to know what has and hasn't been thoroughly reviewed. That won't cut it on a project that requires absolute reliability.
I had a similar thought: that lots of people think there is some power from controlling the core repo. I think devs will eventually need to prove there isn't by creating a new code fork.
What would really prove there is no power in a repo is to give the keys to core to luke then code fork.
If we'd pose that they are powerless then just wait until influencers get the ear of what you call "real stakeholders".
Trump got elected despite a huge media campaign against him. And bitcoin won't have to achieve a similar feat since it's not a democracy.
Bitcoin stakeholders are liable to be intelligent and will have a huge financial incentive to get to the truth.
If stakeholders need the public's blessing - which I'm not sure they do - they will fight that battle.
Politics is a dangerous game for those that aren't relentlessly chasing power, and honestly, it should have no place in the reference implementation.
Not sure politics can be avoided.
I have been thinking about measuring consensus, and my feeling is that people aren't doing a good job of it currently.
For example, I think if there was a futures market on the knots drama somehow, it would have been immediately seen as nothing. And they'd probably have left the knots crew to shout and scream about it.
If you have one of these in your echo chamber, more than luck is needed
The joy right now is that bitcoin has technically savvy, ideological nutcases with large bags who would happily risk their entire stack and dump a fork coin if things get contentious.
My opinion isn't fully formed in this area so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I saw Lopp on some podcast talk about this recently and it was apparent he'd considered things I have not.
are you not worried at all?
I don't see any incentive to hide discussion. Although I think future devs may need to be anonymous for their own safety as the stakes get higher.
As for info for the masses, I think it probably doesn't matter what the masses think on contentious issues, because they're not stakeholders who have any control over what happens. Even if they can make it seem like they do.
the biggest problem I see right now is the complete focus on ad-hominem of people that are frustrated, and nothing about the process
I think this is where the analogy with politics makes a lot of sense. There is a lot more discussion of Trump's character than there is of his policies.
I'd expect discourse around bitcoin to mirror the quality of political discourse: some pockets of good analysis, but mostly uninformed junk and lies. And maybe that's fine if the real stakeholders can tell the difference.
You can read things and ask questions about what you see, voice concerns. I.e. even if you cannot understand all the code, you can see the discussions about the code.
To understand the arguments, you need to understand the full context, tradeoffs, and nuances. I'd say that basically requires you to be a dev.
A layperson trying to understand a technical debate is like them trying to understand a professional chess game. The moves themselves don't and never will capture the full ocean of possibilities underneath.
I've seen many times on software projects where management sides with the dev that most confidently or neatly presents their opinion. Or management think the little knowledge they do have makes their opinion just as valid as the devs and start making technical decisions.
There is no easy answer to this problem on software projects - and with bitcoin it is much much harder.
One of the best tools I've seen to allow management to know who to trust are 360 degree reviews. But those don't exist in open source dev and could be gamed.
But the problem we have today is that it isn't as transparent now as earlier
Still seems pretty transparent to me.
Most people aren't bothering to read that stuff anyway. Even with myself, while I try to verify a few things here and there, there is still a huge amount of stuff I am taking on trust.
That is a risk factor which can only increase trust and decrease the amount of people verifying the software.
Unless you become a bitcoin dev yourself (i.e. write code, learn cryptography and the nuances of how bitcoin works) then you are trusting the devs. And even then, not everyone has the brain to understand that stuff - it is crazy complex.
So most people have no choice but to trust the communications of the general dev community. They cannot verify things for themselves.
Is this a risk to bitcoin? Yes. The masses can be convinced of some bullshit about bitcoin and people associated with it - just like what happens in politics. The same strategies used to manipulate political opinion can and are being used to manipulate people's view of what's happening with bitcoin.
In bitcoin's case, seems like it only takes one well-known dev to push a load of propaganda to cause a significant portion of bitcoiners to lose the plot.
How is an “accusation of conspiracy” a problem if it isn’t true?
It's a problem because it makes being a bitcoin dev a horrible experience. If you want to improve bitcoin, you also have to accept death threats and people constantly trying to trash your reputation. This leads to less devs, less improvements to bitcoin, and means the chance that bitcoin achieves its full potential is reduced.
But hey, maybe we just let bitcoin stay as it is, it can enrich the Saylors of the world, and fuck the unbanked.
The current core devs have only been there since about 2021 correct?
Of those that have significantly contributed, they've mostly been around far longer than that.
What are they responsible for in that time from the user’s perspective?
It is very sad to me how the people who have fought tooth and nail to make bitcoin sound money, and who continue to do so, have people like you casually throwing around nonsense.
Your idea of what's going on amongst bitcoin devs is completely at odds with reality. That's what happens when you make pronouncements based something you read on social media. And then the devs waste their time refuting people like you one by one instead of actually improving bitcoin.
If you want to know who is attacking bitcoin, it's useful idiots like yourself. You've been successfully weaponised into an attack against bitcoin devs' reputation.
I don't think that it matters, because the problem isn't actual decentralization, but an accusation of conspiracy. And that's impossible to defend against
The impression I'm starting to get is that many bitcoiners got into it precisely because they're conspiratorially minded, not because of sound evaluation.
You can see this bias towards conspiracy across bitcoiners in big and small ways. Obviously you have Kratter's ranting about chem trails and mental telepathy, but it's evident in smaller ways such as people's reaction to the Kirk assassination.
I am a little conspiratorially minded myself. And there can be advantages to it. But it is a tendency that I recognise in myself and temper with various strategies.
It seems some percentage of bitcoiners don't have this self reflection or the ability to understand the technical big picture.
I imagine eventually this weakness will be exploited and they'll sell their coins cheaply - similar to how the bcashers lost their stacks.
Nanowar of steel - Helloworld.java https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yup8gIXxWDU
I don't think spam is meaningfully increasing the utxo set size - especially now that there are no new suckers for the brc token scam. That's different to big blocks where the utxo set would grow fast or even unchecked.
I'm no expert, and there are nuances, but I will say that I believe the block size increase with segwit may have been a mistake.
If I thought node cost and/or utxo set growth rate was a problem, I'd push for a blocksize reduction. I think there are quite a few devs who would support it. Far more than filters, where Luke is basically by himself.