FWITW here’s my take on the Core vs. Knots storm-in-a-teacup. It feels like yet another manufactured crisis aimed at seizing control of the codebase — starting around two years ago with hundreds of millions of dollars burned on transaction fees to spam the network with superfluous data. Tellingly, that activity came to an abrupt halt right around Trump’s election, and now 1 sat/vB transactions prevail as if nothing happened. Despite this, panic is being stirred, with calls to abandon Bitcoin Core for a client maintained by a single developer, who wants to decide which transactions are “good” and get through, and which are “bad” and get memory-holed. It will be telling if the drama continues now that Core has backtracked a bit. If it does, it’s a clear sign this fight isn’t about halting ‘spam’ at all, it’s about control of the codebase. And on that subject: this episode only reinforces the urgency of ossifying the codebase against anything beyond essential maintenance and security fixes, ideally before the original cypherpunks retire. In my mind the deepest confidence and respect must go to those who not only bootstrapped Bitcoin, but also stood firm in defending it during the Blocksize Wars.