Block Size Wars, BIP-110, and Bitcoin Consensus with Samson Mow | Bitcoin Infinity Show #21

0:00 Samson, a warm welcome to the summer nighttime super spooky edition of the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Nice to have you here. Great to be on, Knew. Yeah, today we're going to talk about drumroll BIP110, which we almost never talk about on this show. And the mandatory signaling is about to start here in a couple of weeks from now. This is recorded on the 25th of July. So I'd like your view and some people think you're being inconsistent and I'd like to address that too. And first of all, I'd like to hear your complete version of how you view the block size wars and specifically the BIP-148, how that played out and what impact it had.

0:44 And has there been history revisionism and stuff after that? So can we talk a little about BIP-148 first and how that played out? Sure. so which aspect of it like the activation or how it started yeah all of it and and like the the crux of it that i want to get to is some people said that the miners started signaling and they just randomly started changing their minds and this new york agreement and all this stuff what's the timeline here and how much impact did the uasf actually have in in changing people's mind or making the miners scared enough to change their minds?

1:26 Well, the block size war is super long and complicated and convoluted topic. But I think the crux of what you want to know is did 148 activate Segwit? Did it conclude with 148 activating? And this was a sticky point, I believe, on a Spaces a few days ago where Mr. Hoddle and Mechanic were all on with me and we were trying to explain. Mechanic was saying 110 is the same as 148. It's a UASF and it's going to work because BIP-148 worked. And we tried to explain that BIP-148 didn't activate actually. BIP-91 did. And then SegWit BIP-141 came along with it. But there were three BIPs and activation mechanisms all kind of floating around at the same time. But what people forget is that this was all about activating SegWit. And tangentially, it was about a block size increase to appease the big blockers. And we can debate and discuss that part there separately, again, for hours. But the consensus was that we wanted SegWit. Everyone wanted SegWit. There was hash rate behind it, a significant amount, something 80% of the network and then a large amount of nodes were signaling too. And 148 was just like a, I think like 10% of nodes. But again, that's another topic too. We should discuss like the node signaling is indicative, but it is not a mechanism by which anyone should place their full trust in

3:02 because there is no economic cost to creating a node, very minimal economic cost to creating a node and signaling for something. And even minor signaling is not fully, you can't actually be sure a minor is going to do what they say they will according to their signaling because they could stop at the last minute too. So there's a ton of complexity here that it makes it very hard to change consensus. And I guess the point is SegWit won and we got SegWit, but it was more that 148 push it over the line. And it was able to push it over a line because there's really just one large holdout, which was Jihan, who at the time was at Bitmain. So you really only had to put pressure on one guy to let it go. And even within Bitmain, there were parties that supported and were against the blocking of Segwit as well. So it was a very, very messy landscape. And I think 148 was just a nudge to push people to get out of the way and allow this thing to activate. But this thing that was activating had massive amounts of support. And it was not a rush thing. It had developers behind it. It had exchanges, miners, mining pools, the whole gamut of Bitcoin ecosystem, big Bitcoin, all behind it. And that's how it worked. It was sort of a last ditch effort. A lot developers didn't support it. Some developers did support it. But at the end, it didn't activate,

4:33 it pushed BIP91 to activate. What did BIP91 do? That's the one that lowered the threshold for what was needed to actually activate Segwit. Or am I misremembering this? Yeah, I think that was it. It was a proposal from James Hilliard. But effectively, it was a face saving maneuver that allowed the holdouts to give in without giving in. So they didn't want to see Bit148 succeed and that they were actually going to lose. So they chose something else to activate, which is Bit91. But it was a bridge between all the different proposals and it allowed them to activate without causing a split, which was also not very true too, because then they decided to split anyways.

5:21 Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so what matters in Bitcoin is nodes with incoming transactions, right? Those are the ones that where the signaling actually matters. But I think a perspective that people miss in this is that it's not just about incoming transactions right now at this moment. But if you're signaling, like for BIP 110 now, for instance, I think most of the people signaling for it are willing to die on this hill, meaning that they will never include their transactions in a non-compliant block in the future. Now, if that leads to a hard fork, I mean, Luke's perspective is that it's now the corporate coin that is forking off and the side is saying that Luke coin will be the fork.

6:07 regardless of what you think about that, isn't it true that all of these people, if they mean what they say, they will never include their transactions in a block that is not valid according to BIP 110, meaning that miners potentially lose 15% of their customers because miners sell the service of finding block space to their customers, which are the node runners, right? The Bitcoiners who pay them in fees and rewards for finding block space for them. Is there anything in that view that you sort of disagree with or am I on to something there? Well, you're right.

6:47 But the question is how much of the economic power rests with the pleb nodes, right? Like it definitely is a part of the network. But if the vast majority of the network is not rejecting these non-compliant blocks, then yes, they will fork off into a minority chain. And you can say that the miners serve them, but the miners serve the entire network. So the question there is, are the pleb node runners the entire network? And I would say the answer is no, very obviously, right? The network is bigger than any one subgroup. It is everything that, yeah, it is everything. And it's the people that you might dislike.

7:29 It might be your enemies. It might be people that say the things you don't like or have a different opinion than you. But the network is bigger than a small subgroup. Yes, of course. It's just a matter of like evaluating how big these groups are and how much economic impact they will have in the future. Because at some point, I think you agree with that at some point signaling makes sense. there is a certain threshold where it makes very little sense to not signal. Since all BIP-110 blocks are compliant with all the other rules, then it's, well, Mechanic calls it a milk chocolate fork, which I like that expression because it really doesn't do very much.

8:11 Some claim it sets a bad precedent, but don't you think that precedent was set by BIP-148 already? Like, what are your thoughts around that? Well, let's backtrack a little bit. So there have been technical people that have evaluated BIT 110 and they said that Notts doesn't even follow the specification. So from a purely technical standpoint, it would be difficult to be compliant with BIT 110 if even the BIT 110 client doesn follow the rules set out in the BIP So this is a more systemic issue which is Bit is not a technically viable proposal There are developers, and regardless of your feelings of what individual developers have said or done or their interpersonal relationships, there are a lot of developers working on Bitcoin Core.

9:03 And you cannot just make your own fork with one or two guys that don't have that much experience in Bitcoin. And I guess the counterpoint, the 110 supporters will go up in arms and say, well, Luke is a genius and he knows everything. But Luke is still one guy, right? He has had brilliant insights like the ability to implement SegWit as a soft fork. but that's not enough to maintain a one trillion dollar monetary network you need a lot of developers and a lot of eyes on the code and i don't think it's anywhere viable the way it is now that's why it is not taken seriously in the development community and it's just a non-starter to begin with what was the second part of your question bit 148 was the bad precedent and it was It was a precedent, right?

9:53 Yeah. So I want to know the full picture of the similarities and differences between these things. Because if you're claiming that BIP-148 sort of pushed Yihan over the edge to then start signaling for BIP-91. I mean, all of these things, I guess they are trying to push people to act in a different way. So what's the dangerous precedent that would be set by BIP-110? Maybe that's the way to formulate the question. Right. So I just posted earlier this morning that BIP-110 is effectively pioneering a 1% attack. You rent 1% of network hash rate and the cost of that is effectively zero until fork day or mandatory signaling period because you're still mining Bitcoin and you're getting paid for it.

10:43 And then the other cost is spinning up 3,000-ish nodes. And if you're doing light nodes on a VPS, that's like $10 to $15 a node, which is something like $15,000 a month. So the cost of this new attack is very low. And I don't think it should run. It should work because if it did work, it would signal that anybody could attack the network, right? Anybody could push for drive chains and do the same thing. You just need an angry mob to amplify the sunk cost of that or covenants. And I'm not against any of these things, but I think it should be done with consensus, which is ultimately the crux of the issue.

11:25 Now, going back to 148, it was all about SegWit. And there was consensus that SegWit was the next upgrade the network needed and the malleability fix was needed, too. So there was consensus there. And Bit148 just pushed it across the line, as I said. Now, was Bit148 the best thing possible? No, because the best thing possible is that there is no drama. And I think this is why a lot of core developers at the time were also against it, because, you know, we're edging into slippery slope territory, right? We're trying to push something through. But the only other way would just to be, you know, let this drag on for a few more years, right?

12:13 So there's nothing that's purely black and white and there's something that was right and something that was wrong. Bit148, I could see both sides of it. Yes, it is not an ideal precedent. The best way would be to build consensus and everything is done logically. But some things are not logical. And Bit110 supporters might twist that and say, well, yeah, it's the exact same situation because Core did this and this and this. And therefore, we need to, you know, socket to them and put them in their place by pushing this through. But I don't think there is enough broad consensus and there is no technical community around this that supports it in any way.

12:55 And it seems to me that a lot of the large economic nodes are also saying no, too. So it is technically the same mechanism, but without all of the other context and surrounding mechanisms that made it possible for BIP-148. Okay, I think the rebuttal to the drive chains and covenants thing is that this is a temporary tightening of the rule of the existent rules. So once again, the milk chocolate soft fork thing, it's temporary. It expires after a year and it's just temporarily making some, there are some tightenings of some rules here and there.

13:38 And I guess we'll figure out after a year if that was a good idea or not. But that whole thing, that's the precedent it sets, I think. I think it's hard to make the argument that it would set a precedent to push through drive chains and stuff, which is not just the tightening of the rules, right? It's adding stuff. And sort of the point of this is that these minor soft forks that just tells the network that we're not really going to tolerate this kind of behavior, that's a much easier thing to push through. And also this movement, I mean, it started with the Knotts movement and the Core V30 and the threat of Core V30 changing the mempool policy without the consensus of the plebs.

14:23 And everything that followed is just downstream of that. So it has built momentum over quite a long period of time, like at least a year, I'd say, when this whole debacle started. So I don't think it's just a random angry mob. I mean, this is real people and quite a few of them. And Start9 has had their record sales and almost every server they sell is for plebs who want to download NOTS and signal for WIP 110. So what do you say to that? Well, there are definitely real people and that's why I'm trying to engage, but it's not really going anywhere. I spent the last week talking to everybody and, you know, trying to explain things and talk sense into people.

15:07 But I think it does look like an angry mob. Nobody wants to listen. Everyone is angry. And there is this just zero nuance out there. Like, you know, people are slandering Blockstream and Adam and everyone else that they disagree with. And I don't see any of the mobs saying, hey, you can't really say that. You know, you're just making things up at this point. They're just encouraging it and all bandwagoning on these attacks. so it really looks like an angry mob every single person that has spoke out or has been somewhat neutral even jimmy song who said you know i'm neutral he was attacked too for not being on the mob train how who else like lynn alden massive amount of smears attacks nasty things said this morning plan b 100 trillion plan b not the plan b network the 100 trillion plan b he posted that you know he is also against 110 and i scrolled through his comments and it's the same thing like either you're corrupt, you're part of big Bitcoin, you're a suit coiner, anything to divide from who we, the mob or 110 supporters is, is thrown out there. It's a very intentional thing that anger groups do, which is to segregate and divide. It's us versus them. And that's also why I try very hard not to say you guys and they, I say bit 110 supporters, because I don't think this divisiveness is useful you know it's it's very hard to to not say that but uh i think you know i'll do my little bit and withhold from that but yeah like yes there it is real people it is real

16:43 nodes but you're you're just seeing if uh your node with the will hold out against the vast economic power of everyone else. And I think maybe there is no way to talk this out. You just have to run it through and let it run its course and then people will see. But yes, you're right that it has been building up for a long time and you're right that people are angry. And I can see exactly why they're angry because yes, it was frustrating that a number of core developers wanted to push this change through when everyone was saying don do it and that people were upset about the ordinal So you kind of just had this tinderbox of stuff ready to blow up and then they tossed a match in there They could have easily deferred it for I don know a year two years three years five years, and done it later. But they chose to do it right at that time. And I don't think that was the right choice. Talking to some people in core, like not everybody in core is on X, and they speak out. But talking to some people and hearing through the grapevine, there were dissenting voices that said, yeah, they probably shouldn't do that. So it's not a monolith where they're all conspiring to destroy your node and infect you with spam and to push you out of the network because it's hard to run a node. But at the same time, this is a reactionary thing, and it lacks the due care and process that you would think is required for sound money,

18:14 for money for a thousand years or a hundred years. What you just said, like, we want to push it out. Like, okay, so who is we? But we want to push this out and see how it goes for a year. Well, Bitcoin is a $1 trillion network. And I think most of us believe it's going to become a $10 trillion network and a $100 trillion network. So you don't really... throw something out there to see how it goes for a year, especially when it's so contentious. I can see you want to see how it goes, but the evidence is showing that nothing is going to matter with this software because it's done more to incentivize people to bypass the filters and anti-spam mechanisms than anything else has. There are so many new proposals out there and proof of concepts to load data up into Bitcoin. And I think it's probably going to get worse.

19:09 And if anything else, this whole thing has made it worse. Yeah, I mean, there are, of course, good people and bad people on both sides of this. And I don't think that the BIP110 group is the only mob that is angry. There's a lot of angry people on the core side too, and a lot of arrogance and a lot of dismissive comments and stuff. And I think that has fueled the anger on the other side. Like I try to speak to people from both camps and from neutral camps and whatnot and try to keep the discussion as civil as I can. I also try to not attack people, but attack ideas. And I hope that that is what it comes off as on Twitter. As you know, I do believe in the fork and I do think it's a good idea. So what's the actual technical argument then because from what I know it's it's flipping a bit flipping a bit to signal and then there are these eight seven or eight limitations on on sizes of different things and and that's it so so so what is the the the actual technical problem why why wouldn't it work well we're talking circles a lot like discussing with people that support it like it's pointed out that those changes don't do anything because they can be bypassed. And then they say, well, it's not about stopping spam. It's about sending a message. But then you sent the message. Why try to push through a contentious fork? And then the argument is, well, they should just flip the bit and do what we say. But then that sets a bad precedent. And then that an angry mob, or if you don't want to

20:40 call it an angry mob, you can say a small group of people that is not representative of the network can dictate change and consensus changes, that's a bad precedent. And it also erodes neutrality, which is some transactions are no longer good for the network. And that's a slippery slope too. It's the same idea that people speaking out against the filters early on were saying, like, if you can filter this, well, why can't you filter blacklist address or other things? And then extending on that, if you can convince developers to do something to be partial to something in the network, that's also bad, too, because then what the government should say, well, you change something for this reason to stop spam and bad images.

21:29 Well, we want you to also change something for this and implement a blacklist into Bitcoin at the consensus level. I don't know. There's this world of really bad things that can happen when you start going down this path. But the crux of the issue, I think, is who is we when you say we want to just test it and we want this and we want change? Because everyone that is running a node, knowingly or unknowingly opted into the rules of the network, which is, to be blunt, and it's going to draw heat to store and relay data, all data, Bitcoin data and other data. Now, I don't like spam. I still am of the opinion that there should be work done on minimizing data.

22:13 And I think more important than op return is limiting UTXO bloat and UTXO dust. But, you know, my opinion is just that I am not a core developer and I'm not sponsoring or hiring core developers. So I'm limited in what I can do other than just complaining. Okay, but the op-if thing, for instance, where 99.98% of the op-ifs are not even executable. They're like, they can only, op-if was made to put an if statement into a Bitcoin transaction, right? And have two different outcomes. But 99.98% of them don't do that at all.

22:56 So it's just 99.98% spam and provably so. So why is that a bad thing to limit that? Like if we if we made a mistake and I think in hindsight that taproot was a mistake because it led to all of this crap, then then why why shouldn't we be able to express that and and and revert the change somehow or try to fix an obvious bug? because it is a consensus change and consensus changes are taboo effectively you don't want to be making consensus changes changes anyway like whether it's op if or the block size or the supply of bitcoin the 21 million you have to have massive overwhelming consensus to make a consensus rule change and it's the process too like this bypasses the traditional development process and yes, you can do whatever you want. I get that argument too. Like, why can't we do this? You can do this, but do it in your own fork and, you know, see if it has consensus. If it does, then maybe you can get this over time, but not by quote unquote mechanics example, which is I'm throwing a grenade on the wedding party floor and you better just get out of the room because it's going to blow up in 30 minutes. That's not how you make consensus changes to the network.

24:13 But the actual change, some of the actual changes I think are viable, but they should be run through the standard development process and making sure nothing breaks. I don't think that same level of due care is in place with the current 110 client knots and even the specification itself. So, yeah, I think I agree we should limit some of these things, but I disagree with the method to limit. And I said to Luke and others, if you want to do this in the right way, I'm happy to do what I can to build consensus and bring people together. So last year at Plan B Lugano, we, a bunch of us all sat in a room for six hours trying to talk things through and figure out if there's something that can actually be done.

25:01 Because I think there is appetite for something that limits spam and data. And at the end of that, I thought it was going in a good direction. Jimmy thought it was going in a good direction too. But then it seems like it wasn't fast enough. It wasn't good enough. And then we saw 110 come out and people pushing for that with a mandatory day. So I guess my point is I would be happy to work in something that is not harmful to the network and to contribute time and resources to building consensus. But where I draw the line is when you say there's a mandatory date, because who are you to say there's a mandatory date? And what about other people that are not on X?

25:43 Like, you should be able to run a node and be living in the mountains somewhere for a few years and come back and everything's good. There should be no need to pay attention to what happening on X who said what who said what on which podcast and you know all these things Bitcoin is supposed to be boring it supposed to be stable and it supposed to be neutral Yeah but some of those arguments can be applied to the recent updates of Core 2 Like, was it 30.1 that had that bug that when you moved an old address, the coins were at risk of being lost and stuff like that if you hadn't done a proper backup? So, I mean, I guess that argument goes both ways. So, all right, you say we a lot here, and I guess that's sort of representative of some type of community.

26:33 I don't know what we were referring to, but this is happening and this is now playing out. So who's to say what we want at all in Bitcoin and what we should strive for and what we should not strive for? I mean, there are plenty of opinions about that. Right. But the great thing is that Bitcoin is not governed by opinions. It's governed by the consensus rules. So that's the ultimate arbiter of all emotions, anger, opinions, technical or otherwise. So it's great. The system works. I think people will just have to wait. Lynn Alden said it best. Sometimes you just have to wait till things play out. You can't argue it out and discuss it.

27:18 yeah so nothing stops that train i guess well so so how does this play out because right now first a couple of statements just to see if you agree with them minors are not really incentivized to signal until they have to because if if if this is going to actually if the fork is happening in that scenario if you're a minor you're sort of incentivized to wait until mandatory signaling begins so that you can flip the bit at exactly the point where you can get an advantage over other miners because you were the first to flip the bit. Do you agree with that to begin with? No, because I used to run a mining pool. You don't want to flip something at the last minute.

28:03 That is actually quite horrible. If you look at the announcement, I think from Foundry, It was saying, you know, we're going to let our miners in our pool vote because we don't want to make decisions for them, which is valid. But the thing that they missed is they set the voting period up until the deadline, which is sort of like what you're saying about flipping the bit at the last minute. So if they all vote up until the deadline and then they signal for it, then what happens when it's mandatory? Like they didn't say, you know, we're going to, you know, we're going to we're going to start start mining these bit 110 compliant blocks at that time. Right. It's not clear what the action is after that moment happens.

28:45 And then what software are they going to use? Because there is no bit 110 compatible core fork, to my knowledge. They would have to change two knots. So there's just a ton of things that you have to do to be prepared to support whatever it is you're signaling for. And that doesn't exist. And the risk of a minority fork here is it's highly probable that you're going to end up with a minority fork. So what happens in that case? There are so many different eventualities that I don't think anyone has planned for. Because even as one pool foundry, if you flip the bit at the last minute and everyone else doesn't flip the bit at the last minute, you'll be mining on a minority fork.

29:30 And then you're going to be mining bit 110 coins. What happens to your revenue and your cost? How are you going to pay your electrical bills and everything else? So there's just so much to it that you cannot just flip at the last minute. That's why in the block size wars, we were engaged with exchanges, miners, mining pools for two years talking to them. I don't really see anyone doing any talking with anybody. I see a lot of talking to people like, you know, you guys should do this. You guys should do that. But I just don't see any constructive dialogue at any level in the whole Bitcoin infrastructure ecosystem.

30:10 Okay, so let's dissect this a bit more. The game theory, the prisoner's dilemma scenario, where you sort of have to flip the bit because you think that your opponents are going to do that. Can Foundry accidentally have set off that prisoner's dilemma type scenario by letting their miners vote or hashmongers vote so that they are now signaling that they might flip the bit, making the other miners have to take that into consideration. And then maybe one of the other big pools actually flips the bit because of that.

30:51 Or is that just wishful thinking on my part? I think it's wishful thinking, and I'll get a bunch of hate for that too. But think of it from this way. There is no prisoner's dilemma because they're not your prisoner, right? If they were, that's kind of messed up too, right? You can buy a start nine node and you suddenly enslave the miners or hash mongers, as you say, that have invested tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in hardware, infrastructure, power purchase agreements, transformers, staff, everything like that. So the risk is like 1%, you know, like there's 1% chance that there's going to be a, that there's going to be something out of this.

31:32 And I need to flip a bit and signal this thing and prepare in two weeks, which I don't think anyone has prepared. And I think if the 110 supporters are serious, then they should be able to show some discussion with miners and pools that they are prepared for all eventualities, both successful activation, unsuccessful activation, and a fork coming out of that unsuccessful activation. And I don't think they can produce that. They're too busy screaming at people online to do anything actually practical to help their cause. But look at it this way. If you invested $10 million into a mining facility, why would you bother to do anything?

32:18 You need the Bitcoin to pay bills, to pay off debt if you're levered up and borrowed money. And yeah, you have electrical costs, ongoing electrical costs. You have to have massive faith in something magically happening to flip that bit. Otherwise, you'll go bankrupt. Well, I'd take the opposite view of that argument because all they need to do is flip a bit and then they mine all the transactions they mine are compatible with the BIP-110 rules and with the non-BIP-110 rules. There are no transactions that every node doesn't agree to is a valid Bitcoin transaction.

33:02 The only thing that happens when you flip the bit is that you exclude some transactions that 15% of the nodes or whatever it is, rough estimation, does not like. So that argument can be made from the opposite perspective, that you're more at risk by not flipping the bit because it's virtually free to just flip from a one to a zero. Yeah, it's true. But after you flip the bit, then what? What node software are you running? Right? How do you know that your blocks will be compliant if you signaled for this thing? You'd have to run Noughts, which is probably the best bet at that point, but still. This is a question from ignorance here, but can't you just set the parameters of your mining node to be compliant?

33:53 I'm not going to include any transactions that exceed these limits that Bit.1.10 doesn't allow for. It's changing eight things. it's not that simple. I mean, you should have been testing this on testnet or something. There's this zero body of evidence that anything will work according to the bit 110 spec and even the knots node. So Merch, I believe, found some bugs in there. And, you know, that's just one guy looking at it. You get a few other people looking at it and you'll probably find more. But there's just too much of a risk that everything is going to blow up if you signal for this. But weren't those bugs I mean, quite early on, someone looked at it.

34:35 I don't know if it was Merch or someone else. It was last week. Okay. I think Jon Attack is looking at it as well. and like yeah so yeah but that's not good enough you think someone's looking at it i mean you should be able to say clearly this has been tested on testnet it's activated and works fine and you can see after the after you signal and you're running this client everything is working just as intended like there is zero body of evidence other than people saying just flip the bit bro yeah i guess we'll reach the end of the line of that discussion because i i don't see the risk there but maybe it's because i'm not a developer but from what i understand of the bit it's just like limiting some data outputs and you should be able to like set those limits manually if you if if you're technical enough to run a mining pool then that should be trivial, no?

35:37 I mean, the block size increase was trivial too. And Jeff Garzik had an off by one bug too. Like I'm not a developer and I can say it sounds risky. I think if you brought on a few developers, they would probably be able to give you a far better answer about the technical risks because it is consensus rules. There are so many little edge cases here and there and how things interplay with one another. You're going into limitations of script. Like I'm not a developer and I can see the complexity there already. So, you know, take that as however you want to take it. But as a non-technical guy, well, OK technical web development, but that's different. But I'm not a core developer. I'm not a protocol developer. And I can say it looks kind of risky.

36:19 Then you have to objectively look at the body of developers out there. Like, why are they all against it outside of Luke? Yeah. I mean, OK. So to take the conversation in a slightly different direction here, when I had you on last year, I think we talked about, and I've seen you talk about this on other pods, like that this corruption in core is a real thing. So Hodlonauts articles, there's something there. Maybe you don't agree with all that's written in there, but you have been talking about similar things, that there are bad stuff going on. So in the case of... Pause, pause for a second. So I choose my words very carefully when I say things.

37:01 And I think a lot of nuance is just left when people take it at face value. I didn't say core is corrupt. I said there are structural problems and risk of groupthink. But that does not mean the whole of core is corrupt. That's like saying blockstream is evil. Like there are so many people at blockstream. There's like 100 plus people there. Researchers, business people, like are they all evil? It's just that same problem as before. The generalization, like us versus them, they are evil. We are good. It's not that straightforward. No, and I shouldn't have used the word corrupt. It's too strong of a word. But you have voiced that there are problems within core, like an incentive problems and stuff like this.

37:43 So if now there's a hard fork situation and you lose all the people on the BIP110 side, and there's quite a few good people there and good Bitcoiners, I think. I mean, Luke is the most obvious one that has almost single-handedly saved Bitcoin a couple of times. and we will most definitely lose him if there's a hard fork. I hope not. I hope he'll stick around. But, yeah. It doesn't look like that's possible at this point. So is there a risk there that if now there's a fork, regardless of who you think is forking off or not, that all the BIP-110 people and all the NOTs people virtually go to, So 15% of the network goes to a different coin.

38:31 And these are high integrity. I know a lot of people on this side, and there's a lot of high integrity Bitcoiners there and high integrity people in general. A lot of people who are deep into Austrian economics and stuff like this. And I know that on the other side, there is a lot of people who want to shitcoin on Bitcoin. I mean, almost all the spammers and scammers are on the other side. I don't see any spammers and scammers on the BIP-110 side. So what's the risk? There's a few. I don't want to name names, but if you search it, you know, you'll find them. Well, I can name a name.

39:12 Udi is pro BIP-110, but I think he's just trolling. Yeah, but he's trolling. He's just a troll. But there are other people that have suddenly come out in support of 110. I think it was, there's this guy, Michael Sullivan. He did some analysis and he really dug into all the sentiment and metrics on everything and published a bunch of charts. I hope that's his name. I didn't say it wrong. I think it's Michael Sullivan. But one of the things he found was that if you are pro 110, your engagement levels go up massively. Like the anti 110 posters don't see any engagement boost. And I can tell you, like as as an anti 110 voice now, there's no positive to it. It's all negative, all downside.

39:53 Anything you post, even if you don't mention 110, you just get people brigading and criticizing and calling you corrupt suit coiner, a pervert, everything. So there's zero upside to saying anything negative or neutral about 110, but there's a massive upside and engagement boost to being pro 110. So there are people that just last week flipped over and started speaking pro 110 and criticizing core and everything. And two of them have been doing altcoin projects. Two that I've seen were launching altcoin projects and one of them promoted ordinals before too. So it's not like it's all clean.

40:33 And I think there's another risk too, which is I see some bot accounts supporting it now too that are heavily into altcoins. So you have to also factor in the possibility in the game theory that some people supporting this just want an airdrop to dump. yeah i guess that's there's that aspect but the the thing about the engagement there how did it come to that though why what made the core side so impopular online why why is why is that why oh it if if it is as you say like with people calling you names and stuff and calling other people names what went wrong there what is it is it not at all on them like what's your analysis of mine?

41:19 It's on them too. I said in another pod with Jake Rook that it takes two to clap. And, you know, the core devs are not innocent. Some of them, a lot of them, actually, I don't know, like counting off the top of my head, maybe 10 of them were instigating a lot of this and being pretty combative online and everything and taking a very dismissive and insulting tone to people. saying, you know, you're not, you shouldn't run a node, you're not an economic node, and you don't know anything. You know, there's tons of this. So it definitely takes two to start a war or it takes two hands to clap. But I think it's just the human psychology that we are looking, we're always looking for a big boogeyman to fight.

42:05 You always want to find the giant so you can be David and slay Goliath. And, you know, Core is an easy target because they're very bad at communication. they're yeah they're just very bad at communication but it's not all of them it's just a few that happen to be on x and are snarky and arrogant but if you look there's like hundreds and hundreds of developers and a lot of them just quietly work on testing and bug fixing and just doing boring things so it's the same for i say i would say blockstream and it's been the same with blockstream since forever like if you look at the block size wars they need to demonize some big group that has capital, but that you can demonize every group. Like you're starting to, you're starting to see people demonize the treasury companies. When Dylan Leclerc came out and said, you know, I'm against it. Well, now they're going after MetaPlanet. So it's just anyone that speaks out, your whole organization is lumped into that big boogeyman category. And the perfect example of This is the concept of big Bitcoin, right?

43:09 It's like us versus them and they are big and, you know, we're going to win because we're righteous and we're the small underdog. Yeah, but hold on. Dylan Leclerc is on the board for UTXO management I think he on an advisory board but regardless he works for Bailey and he has worked for Bailey for a long time And UTXO management owned by Bailey is one of the companies funding the Taproot Wizards Like they are the spammers. So I think critiques of Dylan Leclerc's opinion are based on that. Like, why are you telling us what you think? Nobody cares because you are the spammer. Like literally. not literally though like this is another thing that happened in the block size wars which was you get people attacking any organization that has someone on the on the on the board so i think axa invested in blockstream and the builderberg group has invested in axa so they kind of draw this line down like you know you know that meme the crazy guy with all the lines on the board It's like, yeah, there's a connection over here.

44:17 Therefore, obviously Bilderberg is controlling Blockstream, right? But that's not how governance works. Like each company has its own board of directors with independent directors. And it's not like they can just do whatever they want. The directors have to make a decision. And it's not like an investor could come in and say, hey, do this. Of course, there are cases where investors, you have activist investors that might try to do something and influence things. But at the end of the day, that's not how it works. The board itself has to produce the governance for the entity. And Dylan is just an advisor to UTXO. So that has nothing to do with his opinion. He's saying he runs a node. He's a sovereign individual running a node and he's against this.

44:58 But, you know, I guess if you don't work for any company, then you're pure of heart and mind and you can say what you want. But if you work for a company or you make money somehow, then you're evil because someone is pulling the strings in the background. Okay, I mean, that's the extreme view, but there are incentive problems with big Bitcoin. Like if shitcoiners fund core developers, core developers will be more apologetic to shitcoin narratives. Like, I don't see how that couldn't be the case. And this consortium thing with strategy, like with Coinbase and BlackRock and all of this stuff.

45:39 I don't see how you can't see that as a clear incentive problem. Okay, we'll get into that. But first, it's the demonization of everyone that is working for another company that I think is a very big problem. So I've said, the people have said in my comments that you're a spammer, right? And I say, I'm not a spammer. And they say, you're forcing me to store spam on my node. I'm like, no, I'm not. And the reason is because I don't support BIP 110. But the anger is misdirected. Why are you angry at me? I'm just another guy running a node. Be angry at the Ordinal's guys, right? Yes, David Bailey funds them and invested in them.

46:21 But the real people you should still be angry at are the guys doing it, right? Like ultimately David Bailey, maybe he is directly promoting it, but, you know, he's not the one spamming you either. So you got to be angry at the right people, first of all. Yeah, but if you're funding the thing, you are the guy spamming. Like if they didn't have any money to spam, they couldn't spam. And also platforming and creating the whole debate, is ordinals a real thing or not? Like all of this is artificial. Right. But at which point? It's like chain analysis and tracking transactions, right? Like you can say, well, go to back and you can see it's the same guy. It's not the same guy. It's the same like, well, how far removed does Dylan have to be? Like if he resigns from the advisory board of UTXO management, is he clean now? I don't know.

47:15 Well, if he stopped working for Bailey altogether, he would be cleaner. He doesn't work for Bailey. He's an advisor. on okay isn't he an employer of bitcoin magazine and like i don't want to trash talk dylan leclerc it's too much i'm i'm just we're just using him as an example of of why people have this opinion so this so this is dylan if you're watching this i am sorry if it sounded like i attacked you it's that is not my intention at all i i this is just an example i think at this point i stopped going to the bitcoin conference like any bailey conference because i think they've They've been obvious scammers for too long and having actual feds on stage.

47:55 And like there is so much there, this whole NACA debacle. I cannot see these people as good guys anymore. And I respect the people who also join me in boycotting their conferences. I do not like, but I won't stop talking to anyone who has ever spoken at a Bailey conference. That's not the point. There is nuance here. But if you still work for Bailey at this in 2026, I have a hard time respecting that you choose to do that because you could find a better job for a better employer. Like, probably.

48:36 That's fair. And I can see your points. Like, they do let the... They have ordinals at the conference, I think, in one of the years. I forgot which one. But, you know, that's... I don't know. It's like, where do you draw the line? Like, how far back do you have to be associated with? And even if you cut association, are you going to be absolved of your sins by the plebs? I don't know. Right? Like, I think I'll always be deemed to be corrupted or captured because I worked for Blockstream. You know, that's not going away. No, but I mean, everyone has to decide that for themselves. And I have my moral compass. You have yours. And David Bailey has his broken one. And we have to, I think forgiveness is a good thing, too. And the fool me once and fool me twice thing is also good to live by. If someone, if a former shitcoiner becomes a shit becomes a bitcoiner, you should welcome them into the Bitcoin community.

49:38 But if they start shitcoining again, then that's not a person worth talking to. Like, there has to be some way to, for lack of a better word, block or filter out. Filter out is a good term. The bad seeds, because some people are just not worth your time. So what's your mechanism for that? Like, how do you filter out bad people from your life in general? like not only talking Bitcoin here, but is there a method to that? I mean, just ignore them. So if you don't like what Bailey's doing, then don't support him. And if you really hate it, then I guess you do what people are doing now, which is trash talk him online.

50:23 That doesn't really change anything. All the shitcoiners, they're still here. The Ethereum Foundation still holds Bitcoin. So I think I'd rather just direct my energy to better things. And I tried not to talk about the 110. It was almost by accident because I was on the podcast with Jake Roach and he asked me a lot of questions. And I just felt like I had to answer them because I just like I thought 110 is ridiculous. And I bit my tongue and didn't say anything for a while, but it just came out. And then I figured, well, I might as well just speak my piece now. But by and large, I'd rather just ignore everything. I will still go to a Bitcoin conference if I have something interesting, like an announcement for Nation State stuff.

51:04 I don't want to boycott his conference. It's still a good conference. Plebs still go there. I think the best example of separating different things and compartmentalizing is when I think Saylor was asked, why do you go on all these altcoin podcasts? And I believe his answer was, well, if you want to reach people, you have to go on these other podcasts. but to each his own. You can also ignore all the podcasts too that talk about altcoins or you can go there and maybe some crypto guy is going to listen and figure out, okay, maybe I should read everything divided by 21 million, infinity divided by 21 million or something else, right? There's always room for redemption if you're willing to participate and reach out.

51:45 But where I draw the line is I'm not going to promote ordinals at a Bitcoin mag conference. Like I'll go and do my thing and that's it. Yeah and I largely agree because I think guilt by association is a left winger thing anyway Like I don really like guilt by association but but but at some point you by giving your name to a conference you sort of legitimize that conference and if you don't like what that's conference stands for then then not participating is a way to the there is a point to a boycott like so yeah i i don't think you would go to an al-qaeda conference for instance or ridiculous example but yeah yeah i have my limits like i will boycott a I did. I boycotted many conferences that had Craig Wright after the economy and when things escalated.

52:37 But I would just tell them, like, if you have Craig Wright, I'm not going. Right. But I think, you know, you'll never get rid of all the crypto altcoin stuff. I've gone to ConsenSys before, too. And there's tons of stuff there. I went to LaBitConf in Argentina. And even though it's LaBitConf, if you go to the exhibition floor, it's like all crypto. And they love Ethereum in Argentina. But I want to get the message out about Bitcoin. So I make my choices, but generally, unless it's really bad, like Craig Wright level bad, where he's suing developers and suing HODL or not, then I'm not going to boycott. No, and yeah, I went to love Bitcoin for the year after you did, I think. And I also noticed that they really, and I thought it was so sad because a country with the hyperinflation is the country that needs Bitcoin the most and definitely does not need shit coins.

53:27 Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Speaking of conferences, when's the next Nevermind gig? Lugano. It's in Lugano, right? So, and I think we have managed to have this conversation without breaking up the band. We'll see if we're on different chains by then. But, yeah, we should talk about that too. So, I've seen, I've asked people what happens if there's a fork. And a lot of plebs have said, yeah, well, then I don't care. I don't want to use the corrupted chain anymore. But there are reasonable people on the 110 side too. Like I'm not going to demonize everyone that supports 110. Like our friend Luke DeWolf, he said, if there is a fork, then that's it.

54:08 Arthur Van Pelt, you know, he's very pro 110, but he's also said, if there's a fork, I'm out. Right. So I think that is a healthy attitude to this whole thing where you have a limit. But I hear other people saying, well, if there's a proof of work change, then so be it. Right. Right. So there's different degrees of extremities on the 110 side. And I think, I hope that you're not going to fork off and have an altcoin. No, I am not going to discuss that before I see how this thing plays out though. Because like, I don't want to base my decisions without the complete data set. And I want to make principle decisions and it does matter how how this plays out and I guess we'll see in a couple of weeks here but at the moment I'm I'm not taking any not making any statements about what I'll do after the fork like the the thing that's on the table now is is the soft fork and not a hard fork or anything like that so we'll see how that plays out and take it from there okay did you have any Anything else you want to talk about?

55:17 I think you listed off a bunch at the beginning, and one was my inconsistencies. No, yeah, I mean, I think we addressed most of that. Yeah, people have been calling you inconsistent. I've seen online, but maybe that's just part of the trolling, too. Do you think that you've been inconsistent? No, and that's because there's a lot of nuance here. So I see people retweeting stuff I posted in 2025 when I was speaking out against what Core was doing. And you have to factor in the time dimension there. They had not yet made their decision to uncap OpReturn.

55:57 And I was telling, trying to tell them, maybe you shouldn't do this, as were other people at that time, because the result was pretty much predictable that you are going to get a lot of angry people because they're feeling like you forced them to do something. But once they made the change, then I stopped complaining or voicing my opinion because it's already done. And I think around that time, I was starting to set up production ready to with Jimmy and Parker and John. So the solution for me is we have to get financing for a new client. And again, for everyone in the back, production ready is not a client. It is a funding org like Brink, like OpenSats. And I still believe that it's better to have more funding organizations than a few, because like you were saying, the money can have some influence in some ways, right?

56:49 So the only real way to mitigate that is to do it yourself. And that's what we did. We set up this funding org. We've raised a pretty good amount of money, but then Bitcoin came down and we need to raise more now. So I still think that's the way forward. A lot of people are angry that Bitcoin Core didn't listen and they didn't do what they said. But there is no obligation for Bitcoin Core to do what you say. It is ultimately their own project and they decide to work within the rules of their own project. And they can do things that are right or wrong and that is subjective, but it's still their project. And I think a lot of people are angry because, you know, they didn't do what we said, but they have no obligation to do what you say. the only way to do it is you do it or you fund someone to do it yourself so i think the i i still believe they shouldn't have uncapped op return but at the same time i understand and this is where nuance really matters that it didn't matter either because it was just policy there was no consensus rule change so for just a policy change they alienated a large chunk of real people and i don't know if that can be healed and i think there were are there are mistakes being made on the not side too where knots is sort of being wrapped up into 110 and that's going to alienate a lot of people too like it's being seen as the same thing i would have preferred it if knots didn't push this 110 change and we be more low time preference and just slowly you know diversify against one major

58:24 client and that would give production ready time to fund developers and build another conservative client too so you'd have a nice split between all different types of nodes on the network which i believe is more resilient to change so a policy change in core would not really affect not snowed runners or people that run the client that production ready will sponsor and that would be the best outcome. I think the current, you know, mandatory soft work is not a good solution in any way. Yeah. So, so I guess that's an update on what's going on with the production ready. Is there anything else about production ready or, or Jan 3 for, for that matter? Like what's going on with Jan 3? What's going on with the Aqua wallet? Let's not talk about Jan 3 and Aqua right now.

59:14 You're just going to direct the angry people over. But production ready, the problem is we're all so busy with our main things. So we had a call a couple of days ago talking about 110 and the next things that we should do. And I think we agreed we're going to hire some people just to do admin, help with coordinating fundraising. We've had a few volunteers that we're talking with now to help with other things like running our X account and preparing slide decks and other things like that, too. So we're going to try to get it back on track. But at the same time, we kind of realized that all eyes are focused on the 110 thing now. And anything we do is just a sideshow at this point.

59:54 So we'll probably kick things into high gear in September or something like that. We'll see. Yeah, and we'll see each other in October. I should ask you the same question that you asked me 10 minutes back. Is there anything else you want to talk about? Well, I would say for you personally, like what or maybe you're you're kind of you don't post that much about 110, actually. But there are a lot of people that are that they know Adam and Blockstream. Like as a 110 supporter, are there any 110 supporters that kind of speak out against the larger group and say, well, you shouldn't slander Adam or you shouldn't demonize Blockstream or, you know, dial it back and be more civil?

1:00:40 I don know I haven seen any of it I only seen the brunt of the attacks but I haven seen any calm rational voices out there saying hey guys let chill out and be more civil Well, there's a lot of people crying out for more civility or arguing for more civility, absolutely, in the groups. And a lot of people have a lot of questions for Adam, and Adam is one of the people that is viewed as one of those that has become increasingly arrogant the last year. So there's that. But there's definitely talk within the BIP 110 groups that people should be more civil.

1:01:22 I mean, that's, of course, what the more mature people in the group think, that civility is the way and anger is not, especially not anger directed at people. You can be angry with ideas and stuff like that and angry with incentives and how things are playing out. But I mean, I have my method for, I shit post a lot. Yes, I do. And sometimes I blurt out shit that I maybe shouldn't have. But also I try not to attack people because I think slaying bad ideas is more important than slaying heroes. I agree. Yeah. Well, do you think the perception of that anger hinders the 110 movement?

1:02:08 Like if you're a business or mining pool or a miner and there is all this anger abuzz and there's murmurings of proof of work changes, how do you think they view this? I do think there's damage done there by the way people communicate, absolutely. And of course, Luke himself has a very, very special way of communicating. And when he doesn't feel like he has to engage with an argument, he just writes liar and goes on. And I mean, but if you know Luke's history, you know he's always been like that. And he has a very specific way of talking.

1:02:50 And if you can see through that and see the guy behind it, then it's easier. But yeah, I mean. Well, he's escalated a bit now, too. So he's also adding pedo. Yeah, but he is very passionate about the fork and he is very passionate about specifically the op-return mempool policy default change. And he thinks, I personally think that the op-if thing is just as big of a problem, if not a bigger problem. And I don't really see why op-return, like, yeah, let's not open that can of worms, the op-return thing.

1:03:30 because I didn't like the CSAM argument to begin with. I think that that argument is weak. I think there are better arguments for why op returns shouldn't be big than going that direction. But I mean, as I said before, there has been good and bad communication from both sides. And from the core side, you have people that come off as very arrogant and calling BIP-1-10ers lemmings and idiots and not technical enough. I went to this BTC++ in Vienna, which was an interesting conference to go to. And as expected, a lot of the developers there, or I shouldn't say a lot of them, but some of them were even hostile to me.

1:04:12 And they thought that I made bad arguments and I wasn't taking them. When was this? Last year? No, back in May, I believe. In Munich. And I had a talk about why Bitcoin needs to be money. and reception was so-and-so, but a very interesting conference to go to. And I do talk to those developers and I do talk to people on both sides here. It's just that I am taking this stance from a more of a principled perspective that I think everything we can and should do to keep the narrative Bitcoin is money. Like that's the thing I want to see ossified, that Bitcoin is and should be money and to fight the bad narratives.

1:04:57 I think the risks are sort of worth it because that's the bigger overarching thing here. And I think there's a blind spot that developers have, which is the incentive structure behind those buying the hardware and running the software. or why money needs to be quality money. and the Austrian perspective on what money is and what money ought to be. And so I think there's a lot of developers that are, they think they know. The way I've had it described to me is that Core is a project where their main goal is to adapt to how the network behaves.

1:05:41 And they don't really have this principled perspective that Bitcoin ought to be this or Bitcoin ought to be that. And that has sort of, which maybe they did in the past. But right now there's a lot of damage control that they're doing because the network behaves in certain ways. And I think that's where the big difference of opinion is that, well, if people are shitcoining on Bitcoin, why aren't you just like doing everything in your power to fight that? Bitcoin should not be for these people. They shouldn't be here at all. And yeah, I guess that's where they, like you have miners who are very fiat minded. You have developers who are sort of indifferent to what Bitcoin is used for, especially if they're funded by grants in fiat from outside and don't have Bitcoin stacks themselves.

1:06:31 And then you have the plebs who only care about Bitcoin being money and Bitcoin being their savings account for generations to come. And that's where the clashes are in the community and the different aspects of it. yeah i think a lot of some of the core devs did say something like you know it doesn't matter or you know it's just all data and i think we should do things to mitigate spam because it does make it harder to run nodes you can take different if you go back to the opportune thing and the mempool improvements that they were undertaking it was to improve decentralization of bitcoin but i think at the same time, you could argue that mitigating spam is also a way to improve decentralization because more people can run a node more easily. And I think the two things are not at odds with one another. Like you can do both. But I believe that the focus is just not on mitigating spam when clearly there is a demand for some developers to do it. But I believe what they look at, they don't, okay, I don't want to speak for everyone, but they may or may not look at Bitcoin as money, but they definitely look at Bitcoin as code because they are developers. So I think this is another point that I don't know if you and I disagree, but definitely Luke DeWolf and I disagree, which is I say Bitcoin, the monetary property of Bitcoin is emergent, but Bitcoin is really software. At the end of the day, the base of Bitcoin is software and information. And it is impossible to limit all forms of data in Bitcoin. Even if you had Bit110, you'll still get all these

1:08:08 ways to bypass it and embed data. And I don't think it degrades Bitcoin as money. It can make it harder for someone to run a node. But you opted into this when you decided to run a node because that's what nodes do. They don't differentiate between anything. And yes, spam is obviously non-monetary data, but it is still data and Bitcoin is data. It's the first class citizen data, but it is all data and it's very difficult to stop anything that's not a pure bitcoin transaction because there's tons of stuff in there there's opertern there's scripts there's ways to stuff things in in tap leaves there's just like a million ways to store data in bitcoin and you're never going to stop at all and i think you just have to come to terms that none of this makes bitcoin worse as money and you have to get this idea out of your head that my node has to be pure because once you start down that route of thinking, Nothing is going to clean.

1:09:09 You have to keep washing your hands constantly. What about a transaction from a terrorist? I don't know. To be fair, I don't think anyone on the Bit.1.10 side thinks that Bit.1.10 is going to stop spam. They think that it's going to reduce spam. Yeah, I'm sending a message. And also the whole Bitcoin's quality as money, the cost of the initial block download, which is a cost that would grow forever, regardless of what happens. Like if that is a very, very underrated metric in this because Bitcoin is worse money if it's more expensive to do the initial block download. I agree with you on that.

1:09:50 Yes, period. That's just a fact. everyone notices when you hit this point in time, your node slows down the sinking. That is all the ordinal garbage there too. So yeah, it is true. But at the same time, you can't really stop it. Someone, let me think, who was it? Okay, I forgot the name, but he was showing this chart. Like, look it, you have all this operaturn garbage here. And then, you know, Core30 came out here. And it's obvious, like, you know, what happened, which is developers stopped fighting spam. But that's just because the ordinal craze started then. Like that could have started three years ago. Just because it started then does not mean something empirically changed. And your other point was it reduces spam. It actually doesn't because we already have several new mechanisms to embed spam.

1:10:34 So all it's done is it's encouraged developers that want to show you to develop new innovative ways to spam, which will be used by some other project. But you can't know that before it happens. And you can't know that from empiricism. Like you can make a guess, but whether it reduces what would have been or not, this is like Bastiat's broken window thing, the seen and the unseen, right? You can't really make observations and draw conclusions about that. You have to do this from first principle since it's about economics. It's very hard to know why people did something. But one tell should be that most of the spammers don't like BIP-110.

1:11:14 Like that, to me, sends a clear signal that spammers don't like BIP-110. So obviously they would like it if it made it less costly for them to spam. But I don't think that's the case. I do think it makes it slightly more costly. And it does. They will be forced to change their business models. What people thought were like forever rare sets and stuff are not as forever anymore. And these change it that makes people change their mind about stuff. But you see, it doesn't matter because it's just like a long time ago, we would have discussions like, why didn't someone 51% attack an altcoin and just grind it into the ground?

1:11:55 The security is so low. The cost to attack it is so low because it doesn't matter. They can always, you know, make a hard fork and, you know, put a block as then the they can mark a block as this is the real chain because they're centralized. All these scam projects are centralized, too, which you can see they they're they can adapt quickly to the threat. So it's a totally different market. Their market is to scam. And you can make it more costly for them to scam, but that won't make them stop scamming. There will be Taproot Wizards 2 and 3 and 4. And, you know, for the sake of trolling, they might do it at some upgrade, like some covenants upgrade, and say these are covenant assets or whatever, covenant wizards, because they are scammers.

1:12:36 And the benefit for them to scam is not to harm the network or whatever It to make money And they happy to pay fees to scam because the money they make far exceeds the cost they pay no matter how high a barrier you erect to try to prohibit them. So to me, it's not about the broken window theory. It's about probability. Is there a chance that some group is going to launch Covenant Wizards? I would say it's like an 80% chance because they're going to make some money off of selling some NFTs, somehow tying into covenants. And just going back like five steps in our conversation, it wasn't even Taproot that enabled Taproot wizards. It was Segwit that did it because they're using the Taproot Segwit envelope, right? So if you wanted to stop all of that stuff, then, you know, we shouldn't have activated Segwit or at least without the discount.

1:13:28 But no matter what you think, all of that is done now. And there should be due care in everything with the network to not damage or harm anything that has come before, which I think is also another technical criticism of 1.10, which is it breaks a mini script and some other things in various wallets. And the justification I see is, well, it's only a few wallets, but that is not the level of due care. I think a professional development group that is maintaining a Bitcoin. Well, it's not entirely true either. Like the big one was Nunchuck and it turned out to not be a non-issue. I think it's Liana too. Is it Liana too? Yeah. Anyway, once again, this is why it's temporary.

1:14:08 And another perspective there is, like, who is Bitcoin for? Is Bitcoin for wallet developers? No, it's not. It's for Bitcoiners. And wallet developers will have to adapt to whatever Bitcoin is. And the other thing you said about when you signed up, you signed up for these consensus rules. Yes, but you also signed up for the overarching, you know, social dynamics of Bitcoin and that these consensus rules can and will change at one point. You signed up for that, too. Like you signed up for the entire package. You signed up for the risk of a Bit.1.10 playing out. Yeah, that's fair. But when you sign up for the consensus rules, you sign up for the consensus rules. And that's why the bar for any fork that changes consensus rules should be like 95%, because you want to make sure that you're not going out of consensus.

1:14:57 You're not forcing a change on anybody that signed up for that rule set. But, you know, you're saying Bitcoin is for Bitcoin users, not wallet developers. Well, who do you think uses the wallets? It's Bitcoiners. So it's some Bitcoiners somewhere using some wallet built on this foundation that was established. And now you want to rug them because spam is important. I don't want to rug them, but I want like Liana. Not you, but. No, no, no. But I want wallet developers to develop on the Bitcoin that is the real Bitcoin. Like if Bitcoin changes, they are the ones that, and they should be the ones that are forced to change. They shouldn't resist. But Bitcoin changed to enable those wallet developers to do these things.

1:15:39 And we all agree with those changes right now. Right now, this very moment, you agree with all those changes. I'd say we all tolerate those changes right now, but we don't agree with, like consensus is not really agreement. It the lowest bar of tolerance maybe I mean I coming up with terms here but I say I don view BIP as necessarily a consensus rule change since it's temporary. And it is what it says it is, is a temporary restriction of certain fields. Somebody somewhere decided this temporary period and when that temporary period expires.

1:16:20 And I didn't agree to any of that. And the question that begs to be asked is what happens after that temporary thing expires? Is there going to be another temporary thing? Like, or do we go back and use core? Or do we follow Luke? Like what really happens? And nobody has that answer. If you ask mechanics, like, I don't know. No, but do we even need to know? What happens after the expiry is that the old consensus rules kick in again. It's just that hopefully we would have demotivated the spammers so much so that there's not as many of them left. But we can't know that for certain, right? No, and if we need to do another one, then we'll do another one. I see. There you go. So where's the end to it?

1:17:02 So if you go to Mechanics' grenade example. The end is when the spammers go away. Spammers will never go away. No, they will never go away, but when they're a reasonable amount of them instead of just a shit ton of them. Like, I don't know where, but I think it's not relevant for the discussion around the temporary fork. Because, like, we're trying to do send a message here. You know that Joker meme where he has that pile of money that's just burning it off? Like, that's the thing. Go send a message, but don't disrupt the network and make it so that people that are using Bitcoin as money have to care about what you think. That's the ideal in my mind.

1:17:43 But, you know, you said like, well, if there's a need for another temporary soft fork, then you just said it. There is no end to this. So we just cede control over to Luke and the guys. And that is the future of Bitcoin. By the way, the Miniscript thing that it allegedly breaks, which I haven't verified, I've heard different things about this. But for a Liana wallet user that uses some miniscript transaction that is super complicated to do some super complicated stuff, that potential user is definitely technical enough to be able to move whatever coins was in that address before or after the temporary soft fork.

1:18:24 And these transactions aren't frozen right now. If you make one during, and it shouldn't break stuff that was made before, if I understand it correctly, it shouldn't break any transaction that was made before the mandatory signaling period. So you would have to deliberately make a transaction that you know is at risk of being invalid. And that's just a fuck around and find out thing, isn't it? yeah but I think the burden of proof is on the people that want a change so you need to show me clearly that here's this transaction pre-fork on testnet and post-fork on testnet and it works and I can recover my coins because otherwise you infringing on the sovereignty of a sovereign individual that did something with Bitcoin Infringing is too strong of a word here I think because the only thing anyone did was buy hardware and run software So, I mean, you can even go so deep as to question if you can really own a Bitcoin since it's just a string of information that you know and you can act as if you own it, but can you actually own information?

1:19:37 Like maybe that's going into too much of woo-woo territory, but the worst thing that can happen potentially to these people is that they will have to wait a year to make the transaction. And I mean, a block could take a year. Like the risk that it does is very low. But when you sign up for Bitcoin, you know that there is a risk that your transaction won't be included in a block for a long time. If you pay too low of a fee and all of a sudden the fee spikes to 300 sats for BeVipe for a year. like that that's the same mechanic i mean you could rbf it but you just said if if needed we will make it last another year depending on what happens with the spammers so and then we would have to form consensus around that and but there is no consensus right now either so not right now but we haven't started signaling yet we haven't started mandatory signaling yet we have started signaling exactly yeah yeah but we haven't started mandatory signaling and that's a There's a big difference there.

1:20:37 Anyway, yeah, we'll both see how this plays out. And what is it like two weeks from now or something? It's pretty close. August 8th. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, it's not the ideal situation, but I would say nothing's going to happen. It'll be, it'll fizzle out. And I've talked to some 110 miners too. I talked to a lot of people and a lot of them have, some of them have said, you know, if If the minority fork lasts more than a few hours, then I'm out. So, you know, I don't know. You should talk to the miners, too, that are mining 110 and really get a gauge on what their actual commitment is to it.

1:21:17 Yeah, I should. And I will if I have the time. Maybe I don't have the time because I don't think I'll do another interview before the fork happens, to be honest. I'm traveling to the U.S. here next week, so we'll see how that happens. anyway samson it's always a pleasure to discuss these things with you and i hope that we haven't that we're not at risk of breaking up never mind anytime soon and uh i'm still good if you're good yeah absolutely and i've never been in a band where i've had the same opinions as the other band members and i so especially not about non-band related stuff but yeah always good to talk to you and and see you in lugano looking forward to it a lot sounds good see you in lugano Yeah, great. This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show, special summer nighttime edition.

1:22:07 And like, subscribe and brush your teeth and go and check out production ready. Take care. Bye. Bye.