OP_RETURN history summarized and compromised Core devs and spam supporters exposed via their actions and statements

The OP_RETURN Limit Removal: Gaslighting or Technical Necessity?

ridic todd showed how to burn 100 bucks inscribing a chunk-dust-opreturn-txt just to strut around and dunk on the core waw guys (aback included) 🦃

Todd had to write his own Bitcoin client to spam the chain. That proves how well filters work.

My objection is you keep whining about Bitcoin being money and yet you have zero financial conviction to support your movement.

My understanding is that if there is CSAM already on the ledger then here in the UK running a node is highly likely to make you liable to criminal prosecution. Running Knots will not remove this potential liability as you will process those images during the initial download. The only way I can see this being resolved is by having a hard fork.

Lopp & Todd maybe lovers? Cute couple.

"Gamble with me or else you don't believe that Bitcoin shouldn't be used for gambling." Nice.

We are all speculators. Every single use of money is speculation. Your cope is weak.

If a country can jail you for a random blob of data on a node you should probably move countries. Hard forking is just asking for an attack vector. You will always be able to embedd csam into the chain. Letting the state define random data as csam is the error.

Speculation by not knowing the future is not gambling. Not knowing whether or not I will be alive at the end of the week is not the same as taking out a three Bitcoin bet that I will survive till the end of the week. One of those things has a perverse incentive. Your misapplication of logic is weak.

You never can know the future. When I use money I am speculating that the money I’m using is best spent on that good or service at that moment. I could get hit by a car and break my leg the moment after buying a lift ticket to ski. Or I could buy something that goes on sale the next day. Read your Austrian economics. If people want a change to bitcoin consensus and they are unwilling to put their money on the line, I will never take them seriously. Allowing people to socially attack bitcoin without holding their feet to the fire by expecting them to put funds on the line is more damaging to bitcoin than anything this current debate is about.

And I am telling you money≠action. Human action is the only thing that tells you what someone values. They are running nodes with specific software. That action is telling you their intention and their preference. All a one Bitcoin bet means is that I have enough Bitcoin that I can frivolously take a stupid wager with another person. That doesn't tell you anything about my preference. Maybe reread some Austrian economics.

Also, they are putting their money on the line by running a node and using that as the source of truth for their Bitcoin transactions.

I can spin up 100 hosted nodes for like 1500 bucks a month. Put out an emergency bip with a trigger less than a year away and I won’t even have spent a bitcoin. I do not take node count that seriously. If the proponents of a change aren’t willing to bet some portion of their future wealth on that change I am unwilling to take their side seriously. The fact that they have used the threats of the state and demanded an absurdly fast emergency timeframe is suss as fuck.

Show me the incentive (Citrea & Lopp), I'll show you the outcome. (Greed, Core3.0) 🌻

Like always, Great work. 🌻

Bitcoiners run nodes for selfish reasons to protect their sovereignty. using nodes as a measure of support is not a great method. Right now 29 is the majority of nodes followed closely by 30.2, and then knots. My guess is that the majority of 29 and under releases will migrate to 30. I haven’t upgraded to 30, because I’m lazy and historically I don’t update my node right away. If I was a militant knots user I would have moved over to that software at the earliest point I could.

If you think that’s the argument you are lost. The idea that running a node is a good enough commitmet vs putting money into a futures contract is laughable. My node costs a trivial amount annually. Even if you wanted to use node count as a proxy, it hardly helps your case as v 30.2 is higher than all knots releases. The bip-110 nodes count is minimal. But even if all knots nodes go that way(they won’t) we still see a situation where a minority support your position. Bitcoin is anarchy so run whatever node you want but don’t expect anyone to take you seriously if you won’t put your money where your mouth is.

I'm confused. Is how many nodes are running the software a good metric or not? You seem to be contradicting yourself here.

I’m saying it doesn’t matter. People run nodes for selfish reasons. Bitcoin is anarchy and nodes are cheap to run.

So to be clear, someone who goes through all the time and effort of setting up multiple node instances costing themselves $1,500 a month just to keep up the illusion of a minority supported position is not signaling preference. They are simply LARPing unless they also engage a known spammer and adversarial actor in a wager? Did I get that right?

But prior to this contention you wouldn't have said unless you're betting on Bitcoin Core by wagering people on Wall Street with Bitcoin bets you don't actually believe in Bitcoin?

No im saying that it’s trivial to spin up nodes which may give the misinformed minority some small sense of victory seeing node count grow. If you are socially attacking Bitcoin consensus creating an illusion of greater support would seem like a logical move. The plan as I have seen it unfold. 1️⃣Creating a sense of emergency✅ 2️⃣Invoke the narrative of protecting the children✅ (infer the opposition is depraved) 3️⃣report the growing node count with regularity as an appeal to democracy✅ This is what politics does. These are the tools of statists.

I bet on Bitcoin everyday, since I buy it everyday. I don’t believe the changes to consensus with an emergency temporary soft fork are warranted and I don’t believe people like Luke Dash Jr are anything but toxic freaks. Luke has routinely expressed his disdain for freedom and I’m not about to fall into line because some group of people are claiming bitcoin faces an emergency over some stupid JPEGs.

Creating a sense of emergency is not anything that was done by the not side. It was the core developers not acknowledging valid criticism of blowing open the OP_RETURN field. That sort of "pipe down, plebs." created a sense of emergency. I personally am an advocate for removing standardness of OP_RETURN and removing the witness discount as a way to let the free market decide on what is important on the blockchain. Inscriptions would be full price and no plaintext data can be saved or relayed (unless submitted directly by a miner) BIP110 is what happens when people with authority moderate valid opposition.

See, that's what people are saying when they run their BIP 110 nodes just not from your perspective. They don't believe that people like Lopp and Adam Back are anything but toxic freaks. As they have routinely expressed their acceptance of spam. And they are not going to go along with the status quo because of spam being allowed on the blockchain. No one is forcing you to run that node. Do whatever you want.

-110 doesn’t stop spam it just incentives uglier spam with more utxo bloat. It’s a virtue signal and like all virtue signals should be avoided. -Spam is not an emergency The arguments put forth are disingenuous at best.

This is a reasonable take. I didn’t see it this way but I can see why some people would. I agree with your overall concept, though I think miner direct submission are a threat in general, though maybe with waning significance if mining decentralizes the way I think it will.

Issue#5 - BIP-110 Fixes This

10 days, 4.5 million transactions, and a clear verdict

This is just 10 days of running it, I would disagree with your premise. Saying spam isn't an emergency is like saying using fiat is not an emergency. Sure temporally, not immediate but inaction compounds the future consequences.

This is interesting, though the direct miner submission route negates the need for potentially more sophisticated evasion so it’s unclear how a future state when no large transactions are possible looks like. I assume that when110 compliant spam arrives it will be more damaging to the utxo set assuming the demand for spam is still high. Spammers are clearly okay with spending lots of money for their nonsense I somehow doubt that they will avoid spamming just because they have to break their stuff up across more transactions. One analysis I would like to dive into is what this post v30 spam is exactly made up of. Are we seeing large single files or batched smaller files. Is this systemic spam or novelty based on a new capability. I still don’t think this represents an emergency. I would need more data but I’m glad the analysis is taking place.

Free market on the blockchain, what?!🤔 It’s a monetary blockchain, u mean a free market of money? Other stuff generally doesn’t belong here, right? 😡

.!.

I'm here to read Jameson Lopp's stupid response to every post made by Matthew Kratter (Bitcoin University).

objections are the immune system of a decentralized protocol. consensus is the only art where the critics are also the builders.

class is in session 😎

Great material. Although a pruned node as "castrated" is a fairly strong position. Pruned nodes make snapshots and never have to do IBD again. The white paper included pruning for a reason and in the long, long run all nodes will eventually be pruned. Electrum servers and lightning channels are "extensions to" not "features of" bitcoin. Totally optional by providing enhancements and features such as block explorers and light client connectivity, but not a requirement.

It's progressing beyond gaslighting (confusion attack) into coercion at this point — it's more than just gaslighting. They are starting to accuse people of "unnecessary concern" (charge or accusation attack) as a form of chastisement. They are brigading (chain — a cult group attacking an out-group) and teetering on coercion. The threat level they present has moved into the stage of unquestionable control tactics, which means their real goal is to take our bitcoin away from us — by the main method that Bitcoin is vulnerable to: making self-custody and node running impractical for many users. - Accusations indicate that we should be getting suspicious. - Humiliation indicates that we should be starting to mount a counter-attack (BIP-110). This is just a cursory analysis of the threat model. Here is a more in-depth version, based on my *The Manipulation Protocol* paper: --- ## The Bitcoin Core v30 OP_RETURN Attack: A Manipulation Protocol Analysis The push to remove Bitcoin Core's 80-byte OP_RETURN limit and replace it with a 100,000-byte ceiling follows the two-phase manipulation structure with remarkable fidelity. ### Phase 1 Phase 1 tactics are clearly visible. **Charm** was a decade of accumulated trust in "Core developers" as neutral stewards of the protocol. **Confuse** manifests as the central rhetorical strategy: five distinct technical-sounding arguments (bypassability, UTXO harm reduction, mining centralisation, relay policy voluntariness, and content neutrality) were deployed in rotation, each containing logical flaws but collectively creating enough fog that casual observers could not follow the thread. Chris Guida's demonstration that filters achieved a 99% reduction in spam transactions directly refutes the "limits don't work" claim, yet the argument persisted through sheer repetition — the "Repetition as Truth" pattern the article documents. **Cornucopia** appears in the form of VC-funded Citrea's commercial interest being repackaged as a gift to Bitcoin's ecosystem ("rollup infrastructure," "scaling solutions"). **Conspire** is evident in the recruitment of prominent voices (Adam Back, Jameson Lopp) as proxies, with Lopp's undisclosed financial stake in Citrea representing a textbook case of proxy action laundered through perceived authority. **Charge** appears as the labelling of dissenters as technically ignorant, with Knots users branded "Knotzis" — a term designed to shame opposition into silence rather than address its substance. ### Phase 2 Phase 2 control tactics followed. **Chain** manifested as the GitHub moderation apparatus: Luke Dashjr and Bitcoin Mechanic were muted during active discussion, isolating the most credible opposition from the forum where the decision was being made. **Chasten** took the form of Luke's DNS seed removal in December 2025 — a public punishment intended to demonstrate consequences to anyone considering similar dissent. **Coerce** operated through the governance double-standard: Ava Chow's stated rule ("if controversial, we don't touch it") was applied to block restoration proposals while the original controversial change was merged over 4:1 community opposition. The implicit message: resistance is futile, compliance is the only path forward. ### The Dependency Structure The dependency structure holds. Without the preparatory fog of technical confusion and the social trust accumulated over years, the control tactics (muting critics, removing infrastructure, applying standards selectively) would have provoked immediate revolt. Instead, the community was slow to recognise the pattern, and by the time Phase 2 was underway, the 850% surge in Bitcoin Knots adoption was the primary counter-signal — users voting with their nodes rather than engaging a forum rigged against them. ### Diagnostic Implication The diagnostic implication from the framework is clear: the presence of Phase 2 tactics (censorship, punishment, selective rule enforcement) confirms that Phase 1 was already executed, whether observers noticed it or not. The financial conflicts (Lopp/Citrea, Poinsot/Chaincode, Todd's circular Libre Relay argument) are not incidental — they are the motive that the manipulation protocol was deployed to serve.

## What To Do, Based Again on TMP The framework's prescribed reactions at the Chain/Chasten/Coerce stage are **Evade**, **Preempt**, and **Refuse**, in that order of priority. ### Evade The most effective countermeasure is already underway: exit the controlled environment entirely. The 850% surge in Bitcoin Knots adoption is a textbook Evade response—users abandoning the forum and software controlled by the manipulators rather than continuing to engage on rigged terms. The framework is explicit that arguing with a manipulator in their own arena feeds them ammunition. GitHub discussions where moderators mute dissenters are not a battlefield worth fighting on. Every node operator who migrates to Knots or another filtering implementation removes themselves from the Chain and simultaneously degrades the manipulators' ability to set defaults for the network. This is the single highest-leverage action available, because it attacks the root of the manipulation's power: the assumption that Bitcoin Core's defaults define Bitcoin's behaviour. ### Preempt Preempt applies to the information war. The framework notes that the manipulator is most vulnerable during Chasten because the punishment—removing Luke's DNS seed, muting critics—exposes the true power dynamics to bystanders who may not yet have recognised the pattern. The most effective Preempt at this stage is systematic, calm documentation of the conflicts of interest and the governance double standards—precisely what the Melvin article does. The framework warns against emotional counter-attacks, which the manipulators will reframe as evidence of the accuser's instability. Cold enumeration of facts—Lopp's Citrea investment, Poinsot's Chaincode affiliation, the 4:1 rejection ratio, the selective application of "if controversial we don't touch it"—is far harder to dismiss than outrage. Each person who encounters this documentation before encountering the manipulators' framing becomes immune to the Charm/Confuse preparatory cycle. ### Refuse Refuse is the operational principle that ties the other two together. Concretely, this means: - Running filtering node software. - Rejecting the framing that the limit removal was a minor technical adjustment. - Declining to treat the compromised governance process as legitimate. The framework cautions against pretending compliance. In this context, that means not running Core v30 "for compatibility" while privately disagreeing, since default behaviour is the entire mechanism of control. The framework also notes that at the Coerce stage, the manipulators present non-compliance as an offence—"you're fragmenting the network," "you're causing a chain split." The correct response is to recognise this as the Charge tactic recycled into Coerce's service, and to simply continue operating as though the illegitimate change does not exist. The manipulators' power depends on the assumption of compliance; each node that refuses breaks that assumption without requiring anyone's permission.

Spot on!

Facts!

Citrea bad actors and compromised Core

Chaincode and Epstein.

Btw, this is [TMP](https://njump.me/nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqnyqqft6tz9g9pyaqjvp0s4a4tvcfvj6gkke7mddvmj86w68uwe0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujummjd3ujuer9wchsqgz2f6nyd984hlynths6un90p0v557k5wksdttew77nxqc9whjy08sxggm0g), current revision, that I re-ordered in a dependency graph.

110 LIVES RENT FREE IN YOUR HEAD LOPP THE CLOWN