Hey thank you for your explanation. Sorry I guess I was focussing more on the mechanics of the underlying layer. As in, the validity of the blockchain isn’t compromised.
I hope I’m no misunderstood here, I think people should be angry as hell that their wealth and their life raft is being undermined by a select few. It’s a fiat manoeuvre, and I hope more people do something about it. These changes clearly go against the whitepaper, go against the intended design, and go against the entire valuation model of btc history and its present use case.
I do want to push back on something though - It’s a default v30 setting, not a necessary one. So from that 12% you mentioned - because propagation relies on paths, how many of those v30 users run disabled defaults, or filtered inscriptions, or use custom configurations. The software version number doesn’t generate the spam, the mempool policy does. I think most people will be aware of the policy (except newbies who following instructions on a site). And I don’t see the incentive for most nodes to run v30 on its default settings, so why would they?
Plus miners also have to choose to include the junk once they’ve received it. My understanding is that miners will ignore any junk that doesn’t at least pay more than the real transactions. So any spam has to outbid the market, which also reduces the chances of it being included in the block. This is what happened in different hype periods with the satoshi dice spam in 2013/14, opreturn graffiti spam in 2015/16, block size war spam waves, 2020/21 consolidation spam, and the 2023/24 Ordinals + BRC20 inscription mania (which I imagine is actually worse than v30 will be?). And bitcoin recovered every time, institutional adoption grew, and real payments reclaimed blockspace.
Spam is expensive to sustain, hype burns out, junk creators run out of money, normal transactions set the long term fee floor, the block size cap prevents unlimited bloat. So the junk always collapses under its own cost. I guess my point is that I don’t think (and am hopeful) that nowhere near that 12% is actually participating in spam. And that there are a number of hurdles to pass to get there.
I imagine you know all of this sorry, I’m more saying this so if anyone else reads the thread, they don’t just panic into doing nothing or bailing out of btc.
Everyone should run a node and ensure it’s not v30 on default settings. Because it doesn’t just mean you refuse to participate in undermining the btc network - it means you actively fight those that do, because you break the propagation paths. The more path breaks there are, the less spam there is. Plus you gain the other benefits of running a node.
Right now I prefer Knots, because the more traction that clear alternatives to Core get, the easier it becomes for newcomers to see that they do have options. Choice strengthens decentralisation. Which weakens the power plays of the future.
I guess my main point is that if you don’t agree with devs, then the worst thing you can do is give up on btc. If you care about sound money, if you care about decentralisation, you can fight back by running a node on your terms.
It’s like selling a dip. Don’t let emotions ruin your ability to defend what yourself.
Much respect to you 👊🏼✊