I've been hesitating to post something like this at the risk of being canceled, but whatever, here it goes:
Back in the earlier Bitcoin days (2013 for me), we often thought of altcoins as a sort of testnet. Good ideas that were implemented in certain altcoins may, eventually, after many years, arrive to Bitcoin as protocol improvements.
Most Bitcoiners were at some point in their journey interested in altcoins. Many still are. Toxic maximalism only arrived later. There's an element to this toxic maximalism today, as I observe from the Core vs Knots debate, that says Bitcoin is perfect as is, it should begin to ossify, and all non-financial transactions are spam. I think this is a dangerous point of view.
First, Bitcoin is an Internet protocol, and obviously cannot ever ossify. The most obvious example is quantum computing – if or when that happens, Bitcoin will need a protocol upgrade. Hopefully this upgrade will happen before quantum computing is viable.
Second, re altcoins: Bitcoin has already learned a lot and is continuing to learn from experiments on altcoins. Calling them "shitcoiners" is nice for your social engagement and stirring up an angry mob. But here's a list of some things that started in altcoins and is now on Bitcoin, or is useful to Bitcoin, or is being worked on in Bitcoin related projects:
- Namecoin and colored coins inspired the creation of OP_RETURN.
- SegWit was implemented on Litecoin before it came to Bitcoin.
- Ring signatures and stealth addresses, pioneered by Monero, influenced Bitcoin privacy research and concepts like scriptless scripts and Silent Payments.
- Zero-knowledge proofs (Zcash and beyond) accelerated exploration of zk-based verification and client proofs for Bitcoin.
- MimbleWimble introduced new ways to aggregate and compress transactions – ideas that informed work on CoinJoin efficiency, CTV, and general scalability discussions.
- Utreexo, which is promising tech and has been discussed at Bitdevs meetups, implemented on Siacoin this year.
In my opinion, Bitcoin Core developers should be aware of all developments in the industry and looking to bring the best technology to Bitcoin, in a slow and methodical way.
Third, what is spam? I genuinely do not know what spam is. I've heard Knots supporters say that spam is any kind of "non-financial transaction" – but this is a slippery slope.
Let's talk about BIP47, for example, which enables reusable payment codes (like PayNym). BIP47 notification transactions include an OP_RETURN output. Does this mean payment codes are considered spam by Knots supporters?
Knots supporters might say to that "no, of course not, they use tiny amounts of data anyway, so it's okay if we just restrict the maximum size of an OP_RETURN." So what stops a "scammer" from doing multiple smaller transactions then?
And what if I develop a better privacy protocol that requires larger OP_RETURNs than allowed? Do I have to go beg the Core developers to change the defaults? Is it a "non-financial" transaction?
To be even more controversial – back when I got into Bitcoin, I liked the idea of everything converging into Bitcoin. Bitcoin's proof of work will continue consuming more and more computing resources (as Saylor and many others rightfully say). The Bitcoin network and protocol will be the most secure, decentralized, resilient protocol in the world.
Well then, you can't have it both ways – why are you averse to everyone coming and building on our open, decentralized protocol? I thought we cared about freedom and sovereignty. I thought we wanted a healthy fee market. I thought we are worried about what happens after the last block reward is mined. I thought we want full blocks.
Now I hear Knots supporters saying "get away from our Bitcoin, our perfect money, go do your own thing, do your own blockchain." Why aren't we all saying "come build on Bitcoin?"
As technology progresses, and as there is demand for more tech to be built on Bitcoin, Core devs have historically upgraded the protocol (slowly and carefully).
Lightning, for example, was the culmination of years of Core protocol work:
2016: CSV, relative timelocks → channel mechanics
2017: SegWit → malleability fix & efficiency
2018: Bech32 → cleaner Lightning addresses
2021: Taproot → more private, advanced channels
Lightning would have never happened if we had ossified the protocol.
You want to scale Bitcoin to 10 billion users? Then you'd be insane to ossify the protocol.
So I'm saying it, loud and clear. I want everything built on Bitcoin. I want the Bitcoin network to be the most important and resilient network on Earth, and I want all value to flow into Bitcoin. I want to enable everyone to permissionlessly build on Bitcoin. And I want the Core devs to continuously improve the protocol.
Thanks for reading.
Vitalik already made a place for Spammers.
It’s called Ethereum.
I don’t think it’s wise to make more places for spammers on or adjacent to Bitcoin.
If you know, you Knots.
Filters up. ✊🏼🫡