Transcription
This is Matthew Crers, Bitcoin University. Today I want to answer the question, who's going to run Bitcoin Core 30?
As I've pointed out in videos this week, Bitcoin Core 30, version 30, which is coming out in October, I believe. I believe it's a CSAM relay service. CSAM, of course, stands for child sexual abuse material. It's unfortunate that Bitcoin Core's actions have forced many of us to have to approach this topic because it's a very disturbing and disgusting topic.
But what Bitcoin Core devs did is they recently ripped out a decade-old filter from the upcoming version 30 of their node software. So, if you download and run the software with its default settings when it's released in early October, your node will be automatically relaying large unconfirmed oper transactions up to 100,000 bytes that contain illicit images and videos that are not only illegal in probably every country on Earth, but that make any normal human being want to vomit in disgust.
Now, why do I think that there's going to be CSAM on Bitcoin? Because the exact same thing happened to BSV when they blew open their opReturn. As we can see from this article, after BSV node op developers and miners lifted the opReturn data size limits to 100 kilobytes, activity immediately took off as users started posting text, videos, and even pictures. Unfortunately, among these posts was apparently a piece of illegal content involving alleged child exploitation material. So it seems quite likely that if you give people a place to put this stuff and you allow that much non-monetary data on Bitcoin in a very open spot like opReturn, that this is going to happen.
This is what happened to BSV, which is a failed fork of Bcash, which is a failed fork of Bitcoin. But there are many similarities in the code. So we can expect this to happen.
Now, Bitcoin Core devs apparently believe that it's necessary to relay CSAM in order to improve things like mempool fee estimation, block propagation, and mining pool centralization. This is what happens when a bunch of young technocrats are so focused on technical minutia that they completely miss the forest for the trees. They're ripping out a filter here. It's the old Chester fence thing. If there's a filter, if there's a fence standing there in the woods, you might want to ask why people put it there and what its function is before you rip it out.
So, that leads to the question, who's actually going to run this new version of the software? That's something I asked Brian Armstrong, who's founder and CEO of Coinbase. Hey, Brian Armstrong, when you upgrade Coinbase to Bitcoin Core 30, will you be relaying large unconfirmed oper transactions that contain CSAM, or will you move the mempool setting back to 83 bytes, or will you run Bitcoin Knots instead? That's another way to avoid it. It's the same question I asked Jesse Powell at Kraken, and that I asked the Gemini guys when they upgrade, if they're going to be relaying this stuff. It's a question that I asked Blockstream earlier in this week.
The thing is, no Bitcoin mining company either in America is going to be running Bitcoin Core 30 out of the box either. Mara, for example, has a policy where they will not mine illegal images that are submitted to their direct submission service, which is called Slipstream. So, it's unlikely that they're going to want to accept these images for the P2P network either. Neither will Riot, neither will other American mining companies, I presume.
So, that leads to the question, back to the question, who's going to run Bitcoin Core 30? Now, there's an easiest solution that will allow these companies to run Bitcoin Core 30. They can just change the default setting and reduce data carrier size back down to 83 bytes before running it. Now, unfortunately, this will not be a permanent solution though, because Bitcoin Core devs, in their infinite wisdom and foresight, have already announced that they'll be removing this configurability from future releases.
So then the question becomes, since no Bitcoin company in the world is going to be able to legally or ethically—and there's the really important point to notice, this isn't a legal thing, this is also just a basic thing that basic normal human beings don't want to have anything to do with—so, since no Bitcoin company in the world is going to be running this software, why is it even being shipped? Who's the customer here? It's certainly not going to be me and everyone else who has already dumped Bitcoin Core and is running Bitcoin Knots instead. And now we have the network at approximately 18% of the network, 18.2% of the network has abandoned Bitcoin Core and is running Bitcoin Knots instead.
If you want to learn how to run Bitcoin Knots instead, I'll put a link to this video. And if you look in the description notes below, I have all these ways of, uh, you can run a Bitcoin Knots node and help to protect the network from CSAM.
As I, uh, as Beaution, uh, writes here, and as I quoted him, "The responsible thing to do is not to do this change. Bitcoin Core will regain the moral high ground." That seems quite obvious.
As Giacomo points out, "When an honest man discovers he's mistaken, an honest man or woman discovers discovers that they're mistaken, he he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest." This is a lesson that's very important to earn to learn very early in life.
And it looks like Adam Back has come around finally, and it's wonderful to see these tweets. Adam writing here that, "Bitcoin is owned by humanity. The protocol developers are stewards and need consensus from users to change it materially. Bitcoin is about money. Spam has no place in the time chain." Thank you for saying that, Adam. What defaults the bit, what defaults the Bitcoin Core project puts in the reference client matter in this.
And then he goes on to cite just how much pollution is taking place in the time chain. In May, there, there were 88 million JPEGs in the chain. Now, four months later, there are 105 million JPEGs, a 20% increase. In May, $7,000, $7,000 Bitcoin worth of fees had been paid at 100,000 Bitcoin. That's $700 million, or an average of $8 per JPEG. And they're primarily in Taproot inscriptions. This is another problem that we're going to have to address once we finally get this opReturn problem solved. The problem of, of this, uh, hack that was done to inscriptions that also allows you to put disgusting stuff in the chain.
As Rockstar Dev points out here, "Spam has no place in the time chain. 100% agree." I think he's agreeing with Adam here. "If you're a developer with the power to change protocol and don't know how to steward it towards the future when where humanity is using Bitcoin as money, consider relinquishing the responsibility you carry."
And I think unfortunately, the people who are pushing this forward at Bitcoin Core, I don't see how they can remain there after this fiasco. I thought this was fairly tragic, but, uh, uh, you don't want to laugh at memes like this too much, but, "Core devs excited to launch Bitcoin's next update." I believe this is the submarine that, unfortunately, exploded on its way to the Titanic.
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