So in the Core vs. Knots debate, I have decided to move back to Core after migrating to Knots. While I understand the technical arguments to a large degree, the primary reason is that the Knots camp became more toxic than the Core camp. Or to put it another way, Knots tried harder to loose the hearts and minds of its user base. Primarily, however, I'm not going to support another "Bitcoin Cash" style fork. To summarise the original argument as best I can. Knots was supposed to be "We can't stop spam completely, but we can try imperfectly to do so" Core was "We can't stop spam, let's mitigate it as best we can" The best solution was always for both parties to work together. That didn't happen and was never likely to happen. I prefer an imperfect compromise over a perfect irrelevance. None of these views are technical arguments, nor am I heavily vested in the argument or the outcome, but I thought I'd share my view publicly. N.B. I use Bitcoin as my self sovereign asset base, and money where ever possible, but I've intellectually moved onto other things. In the words of the dear departed Douglas Adams: "So long and thanks for all the fish 🫑"

Replies (37)

El Guirri's avatar
El Guirri 1 month ago
Was this the goal? Wreck the idea of it being freedom money through enshittification by corrupted core, cause schism, create division until one has degraded Bitcoin and people lose interest in it because it doesn't adhere to founding principles which the core driver of adoption. I find the argument of "not technical enough to chime in" has been weaponised. Who needs to be technical to understand it's core premise was money, not a database? Narratives
Yeah, Andy Back telling us we weren't technical enough was a big turn off. And yes, enshitification is a real thing. Despite this, to paraphrase a quote from Winston Churchill: "Decentralised protocols are the worst form of protocols, except for all the rest"
El Guirri's avatar
El Guirri 1 month ago
Am not saying it isn't. It's just tainted money which does seem to be a historical norm anyway. Well done on the childish ending to your reply, always improves discussions. I personally wasn't too bothered to dig into the whole debate until I had to set up new node and had to endure watching the last 5% take 5 or 6 times as long as previous 95%. I dunno what quite to say other than well done! For something so potentially profoundly important, one would hope the kids don't piss in the pool, that's all.
sounds like Chatty is getting the upper hand. so long, Mike... growing up before the rest of us. I hate goodbyes. Even though you're probably just posting notes about something else, it still feels like we have to mourn a bit...
Bitcoin is not in a perfect state rn far from it. But that does not change the fact that knots has been a bad faith movement built on lies from jump street. I'm honestly surprised and disappointed to see how many maxis were stupid enough to fall for it. Feels bad man. Pain is the greatest teacher I suppose,
Bitcoin will always be my money. My latest interest is photography, I failed to buy a new camera today, so I had time to reflect on the Bitcoin argument. Can I still pop by and say "Hi" now and again?
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El Guirri 1 month ago
I agree with that but also think the division caused in the community should be enough to signal that these additions to the Blockchain are simply not desired by many. The argument that the solution is trial by fire of adoption in the market is understandably rational from a game theoretic perspective but am not sure it's the most positive approach. To me, it simply results in an irrational distraction from the original intent of the cypherpunk movement. Sometimes, the simplest of tools have the most profound impacts
I think this is bullish. I think we won the Bitcoin thing, despite the internal disputes. I think government over reach around the world makes NOSTR social media adoption inevitable. I'm focusing on the "other stuff" of NOSTR, which will make it more than a twitter alternative.
With photography? Jk, it's cool, just reflecting on my own insecurity. You seem to have reached the elusive bitcoin zen state, and I'm just jealous.
Because we had a family of ducks a while ago and now we have a family of Woodpeckers. I wanted to observe them closely without disturbing them. In business terms, I saw an opportunity and I made my move πŸ˜‚
But bad faith, emotional, fear mongering(which is what the knots movement is entirely based on) makes it near impossible to have constructive discussions about how to improve this. Luckily Bitcoin is built on math and physics and the bullshit artists will get washed out shortly. Then we can return to having actual good faith discussions about how to best proceed. On a positive note, because of all this, hopefully some people will learn a thing or two about what nodes actually do, what miners actually do, and how Bitcoin actually works like the grand, ongoing social experiment that it is. Bitcoin should emerge stronger than before. And scammers and idiots getting wrecked, well that's always a good time 😘
I will get back to getting my amateur license at some point. It's not that hard, I gather. Started studying the material a couple months back but stalled out
Um, the reason the backend of the chain takes significantly longer is because "assume utxo valid" no longer applies past a certain block height. Your node only fully validates the very recent chain history.
El Guirri's avatar
El Guirri 1 month ago
Again, no disagreement but there's 2 sides and core silenced and quite frankly, in many of the discussions I've seen were less than constructive. Of Bitcoin just evens out through math, physics and concensus but considering all sides here, seems a little disingenuous to call one side scammers and idiots. Seems a little por and kettle to me
I had been using Knots since before the datacarriersize kerfuffle and yea, finally moved over to Core v31 a few weeks ago. Too many features I was liking coming out, and no reason to be using Knots anymore. I do like more configuration file settings available but Core's defaults are sane. Decentralize mining and we can talk about policy filter efficacy. Til then, you might be able to entice me with a block size reduction. 110 is just noise from larpers.
El Guirri's avatar
El Guirri 1 month ago
Indeed. Stack, spend, build shit and ignore the noise
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