provoost
Sjors Provoost

https://sprovoost.nl

Physicist turned bitcoin developer aka "shadowy super-coder", author of Bitcoin: A Work In Progress

Public Key

npub1s6z7hmmx2vud66f3utxd70qem8cwtggx0jgc7gh8pqwz2k8cltuqrdwk4c

NIP-05 Address

sjors@sprovoost.nl

NIP-57 Address

unfitdivine449@minibits.cash

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgdp0taan9xwxadyc79nxl8svanu895yr8eyv0ytnss8p9tru047qpz4mhxue69uhkg6t5w3hjuur4vghhyetvv9usz9nhwden5te0wfjkccte9ehx7um5wghxyctwvsjzk04y

Publishing to

ditto.pub/relay

relay.nostr.band

nostr.bitcoiner.social

Author Public Key

npub1s6z7hmmx2vud66f3utxd70qem8cwtggx0jgc7gh8pqwz2k8cltuqrdwk4c

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Last Notes

2025-05-10 11:35:39

There seems to be genuine confusion about how open source works. In particular some people believe that Bitcoin Core developers have a fiduciary duty, either towards them personally or towards some general notion of the Bitcoin network. They are surprised that I and some others respond to this rather aggressively.
Remember that this is the argument Craig Wright tried to make. He failed, but not after millions of dollars were burnt on defending these developers. And not after several quit because of the stress. Don't go down this path.
To put it as a catchy phrase: open source means you can do whatever you want with the code, not with the people who write it.
Open source lets you fork code, and modify it to your liking. That's pretty much what I do every day, which isn't to say that I don't also try to make sure other people like it. I get paid in Bitcoin and OpenSats keeps their whole treasury in it, so the idea that I want destroy potential future income is rather retarded.
Part of CSW's demands was that Bitcoin Core wrote specific (confiscation) code for him. Eventually he just hired people to write it for him, as one should, but somehow that still wasn't enough for him. I get a very similar vibe from people who run Knots but yet don't find that enough. Should we worry about a new round of lawsuits?

2025-05-10 10:02:17

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It's also unclear what he's offended by. If it's the "catholic" part, I'm merely describing the suspect without any value judgement. There's additional context that allowed me to narrow it down. I won't share that, because it's something only the perpetrator would know, so potentially relevant if they escalate.

2025-05-10 09:44:03

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Intimidatie. Zelfde principe als een granaat voor je door, alleen een mildere stap. Probleem is dat je niet weet wat de volgende stap is.

2025-05-10 09:42:29

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No. Donations are not a contract for performance of specific tasks or the creation of a fiduciary relationship. They are appreciated of course.

2025-05-10 08:21:42

Someone, probably a US based catholic young male, subscribed my email to a bunch of lists in order to spam me. I can't be bothered to trace the IP they used for this. But Luke, control your herd.

2025-05-08 09:25:32

Guess who's back? https://bitcoinexplainedpodcast.com/@nado/episodes/episode-98-return-of-the-op-return

2025-05-07 13:22:52

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And then there's still people who claim they haven't seen any technical arguments of this change. Sure, if you refuse to read.

2025-05-06 18:55:30

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Reminds me of a Bitcoin lawyer who was often a guest on Junseth's podcast, forgot his name, who used to say: "I'm a lawyer, but not YOUR lawyer"

2025-05-06 18:49:43

Excellent take by me! :-)
The fact that many Bitcoin Core developers are paid by someone, when that someone is NOT YOU, does not make YOU a customer that gets to demand things. You need to hire developers directly if you want to work on your behalf.
#nevent1q…x62e

2025-05-06 18:44:05

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nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp59a0hkv5ecm45nrckvmu7pnk0sukssvly33u3wwzquy4v037hcqy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgewaehxw309ahx7um5wgh8xurjdamx7mmnwshxump0qqsvgyvfqz383j30szkg24hzyvvcvenmzdp2areaea68n0g8wnspdcqj6tstn

2025-05-06 18:36:48

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Quadrupple it!

2025-05-06 18:11:20

On Consensus and Humming in the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)
Classic read.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7282

2025-05-06 18:00:02

Well, according to AI - which must be right - this way the best quote from me in the @npub1hku…432p podcast: https://riverside.fm/guest-page?sessionId=2c859898-b88a-4016-abb6-c0fc6e8cb3c8&clientId=3d897568-30e6-4244-8a6d-59ebb8c8855b&archiveId=sjors-qg14v9s75&t=080a6fc0b5a20ddcd074

2025-05-06 14:13:28

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There's also the question of how many people audit the 1370 commits that make Knots different. It's basically a giant patch set on top of Bitcoin Core, similar to what Liquid does. Despite my issues with Luke, I do trust him to not steal peoples coins.
But that's not an ideal trust model. Part of the problem is a lack of upstreaming. And that's not always because of a fundamental disagreement on functionality. Sometimes the patches just don't meet the review bar for Bitcoin Core. That itself isn't the end of the world either, but it does make comparative review harder.
But I hear OpenSats is going to fix that with grants? :-)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/compare/v28.1...bitcoinknots:bitcoin:28.x-knots
#nevent1q…g5j7

2025-05-06 13:49:24

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There haven't been that many incidents like this one. The previous round of OP_RETURN drama also saw some moderation. Also, it took many years to agree on having a moderation policy in the first place.
#nevent1q…uyne

2025-05-06 13:35:21

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Here's an alternative timeline to consider: Bitcoin Core as a project seizes to exist, no more updates appear on Github. The current developers are all hired by different companies that can afford it. They continue to work, and informally exchange patches.
Some of those patches are published, and maybe one or two developers maintain a public collection of the most useful patches. The end result would be that most users are running inferior software compared to the corporations with money. Afaik this would be perfectly legal under the MIT license.

2025-05-06 13:23:15

People seem to be confused about the fact that although Bitcoin Core is open source software, the bitcoin/bitcoin Github repository is a private space, not a public square. As a private space it has rules. Very few, and there's not much enforcement, but they're there. And those rules are not decided by users (in fact, ultimately Microsoft controls the domain).
People are free to fork the code and create an alternative space to work on that code. There they can have whatever rules they want. You can make it completely private. The MIT license is very permissive, you don't even have to share the resulting code. You could also allow anyone to comment and sell viagra pills. Up to you!
Such code forks are not ideal though. It could create confusion around where to download the "real" Bitcoin Core. Slightly different codebases make things difficult to audit. When implementations diverge too much, it will make future soft forks hard to coordinate. But if contributors to Bitcoin Core can't get any work done when doing so in public, they'll have to find another way to get work done.
So as a user, you should not be happy when brigading happens on the repo. Those are precious developer days being wasted, in which actual bugs are not being fixed - or even introduced because tired developers make mistakes.
Even if you disagree with a specific change, you have an interest in that being communicated in a non-disruptive manner.
#nevent1q…dctu

2025-05-06 12:59:38

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* already stated

2025-05-06 12:59:22

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It was already multiple times on that pull request that conceptual discussion needs to happen on the mailinglist. Yet people ignore that instruction. And as I predicted, they kept doing so.
When people break into your office and start screaming at staff, sending them away is not "censorship".

2025-05-06 12:44:35

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> You suggested censoring people which is a form of harassment
It's complete nonsense and I don't have time to engage bad faith actors like "BitcoinIsFuture".

2025-05-06 12:40:47

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You can leave a comment (not answer) on the Stack Exchange post asking for clarification. I can edit or expand it later.

2025-05-06 12:38:52

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[1] De Volkskrant, 29 april 2025, ‘Cryptomijnen in een land onder hoogspanning’, (https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2025/ethiopie-bitcoin-miners-crypto~v1402259/) 

2025-05-02 17:51:25

Roger Ver 'calm and politely' calling out Bitcoin Core censorship, even of people who've been around since the early days. He calls out their conflicts of interest and corruption, their deviation from the original version of Bitcoin... And they always go off on these super technical tangents. And they're mean on camera. "Won't even answer a single question".
Install Bitcoin ABC, now! (yes, it's still actively maintained)
P.S. wow people were young back then
https://youtu.be/dUxXGmgv5mo

2025-05-02 16:53:29

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Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at a (spectacularly failing) UASF to make the Knots OP_RETURN limit and other filters consensus.

2025-05-02 16:46:33

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Massive collatoral damage. The hypothesis could have proven with a simple alt coin, rather than years of vicious attack on Bitcoin Core.

2025-05-02 16:23:48

I don't mean to diss OP here, but free market analogies have often misguided people. Sometimes you need good engineering. It really is what led to Bitcoin Cash.
But that doesn't mean blindly trusting engineers. You should find out if they really know what they're doing. How to find out? That's a hard problem, i.e. they can't all get on a person phone call with you, some have an abrasive communication style, sometimes a problem seems very simple but take a lot of curriculum knowledge to grok. You can't just trust them either when they say "it's complicated", because that what charlatans would say too.
#nevent1q…5yle

2025-05-02 16:20:07

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To cite Roger Ver:
> The market determines the ideal block size and network fee.
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/errkm2/the_market_determines_the_ideal_block_size_and/

2025-05-02 16:10:13

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I would recommend Greg Maxwell and AJ Towns latest replies on the mailinglist. It's harmful if people use different settings, whether that's by configuration option (-datacarriersize) or by code forks (Knots). The chaos of a "free market" for settings is disruptive for the network, which only helps its real adversary: governments.
The custom Knots default of 42 bytes caused problems in the past for Samurai wallet (which they in turn used for their drama marketing). In theory it should also interfere with compact block relay (I haven't seen measurements though).
https://gnusha.org/pi/bitcoindev/aBSVn7nJnrheLy5Z@erisian.com.au/

2025-05-02 14:16:53

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Yes, that's on. But I get a notification for each zap afaik. I don't get that many, a few per day, but I really don't like push notifications :-)

2025-05-02 13:20:03

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Since then he hasn't attacked me personally, until now, because I reviewed a pull request he hates.
In the mean time Luke has attacked Bitcoin Core on multiple occasions, e.g. creating needless drama around Taproot activation. Meanwhile despite calling Bitcoin Core all sort of bad names, he uses 99.99% of its code for Knots. Although he does occasionally contribute back, and of course has contributed much in the far past, it's not a healthy open source relationship.
Much of the drama he creates also comes across as either blatant self-promotion or his company Ocean (which I like, so that's unfortunate).

2025-05-02 11:02:42

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In general I'd like to be able to turn off push notifications, maybe with the exception of really big zap. I prefer to occasionally go through the list instead.

2025-05-02 10:59:21

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If you're worried about sitting on user funds for too long, and the app can't do all this in the background, it's fine if the app nags me once a day or so collect the sats. And send a push message like: X dust ready to collect!

2025-05-02 10:56:55

@npub1kva…tkzv can you add a threshold amount setting below which:
1. You don't send a push notification
2. You don't show the transaction
3. You do collect the zap(s), either in the background or the next online session
#spam #zapvertising

2025-05-02 09:29:04

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That's what I've been told, I don't know if there's (public) data on this.
It does make sense. While the big corporate miners can hire fancy developers, who would use Mac or Linux, there's many very small miners out there. Those are often "normal" people who are good at buying equipment and getting access to electricity. Most "normal" people use Windows.

2025-05-02 09:04:50

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One way to look at OP_RETURN usage by "L2" projects, is to get a sense of what future op codes could look like. If people keep sticking zero knowledge proofs there, maybe at some it makes sense to just add a zero knowledge proof output type. Obviously that's a _very_ long time out, and there might be very good reasons to never do it. But you can look at it as a (permissionless) draft.

2025-05-02 09:01:32

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And yes, Linux people look at Mac users they way Mac users look at Windows users.

2025-05-02 09:00:57

Windows is back!
Although Satoshi started out with a Windows client, and apparently many miners still use it, most sane developers and security conscious people use Mac or Linux. Over time this led to increasing neglect of Windows support in #BitcoinCore, to the point where some people joked (?) about just dropping it entirely.
But it seems there's renewed attention.
https://img.sprovoost.nl/2096c8f45ef082bde223d06fc0de0b2c866db8c7936ef7adb02f5979b0f8cb49.png

2025-05-02 08:42:38

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And from that I'm assuming various BitVM schemes will work in similar ways. Hard to predict what ends up being successful here.

2025-05-02 08:41:44

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The Stack Exchange post links to the mailinglist post by Antoine Poinsot. It it turn uses Citrea as the example. They use some sort of watch-tower scheme that needs to look for zero-knowledge proofs on chain and then react.

2025-05-02 08:40:24

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This also illustrates that if we had made this change earlier, they would not have designed the system to create unspendable public keys in the first place.
They have no financial incentive to deviate from the original design. And once such a system goes live, assuming it has any uptake, their engineers will be busy with all sorts of more urgent things.
Any typical corporate CTO would look at this situation and say: hey look, there's a bunch of drama here, let's assume the brigaders win and the OP_RETURN limit stays in place. So let's just stick to the original design. We're not price sensitive, so it's the safest option. It also saves us a bunch of engineering hours. Also, it protects our engineers from being harassed.
Finally, this also goes to show that we really need to make progress on Utreexo, because UTXO set growth is a sitting duck. All we can do is ask people nicely to not grow it needlessly.

2025-05-02 08:17:20

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With stamps the explicit goal was to bloat the UTXO set. Their marketing framed that as "unprunable".
Counterparty was designed before SegWit and due to fee spikes around that time was pretty much unmaintained afaik.
BRC-20 is just crazy. JK, I have no idea how that one works.
https://bitcoinexplainedpodcast.com/@nado/episodes/bitcoin-explained-76-stamps-and-the-invalid-block-caused-by-it

2025-05-02 08:07:19

This seemed worth clarifying, so I did the thing where I ask a question and answer it myself:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/126208/4948

2025-05-02 07:19:13

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With regards to what I said here:
> This then encourages them to be on the safe side and use these filters. Bitcoin Core might then have to adopt similar rules in order to produce blocks that are safe.
This would be a "nice" use case for what Greg Maxwell suggested today on the mailing list (and earlier on Reddit), to separate relay policy from mining policy - where the latter can be more strict:
> That said, Bitcoin core has generally not
had knobs to adjust relay policy as distinct from mining policy in large
part because of the design assumption that the two need to be the same.
But in this case if there were a knob here I think would make more sense
for it to control mining policy rather than relay policy, since it would
actually have some effect in the mining context (in excluding the txn from
your own blocks) while as a relay only thing it is impotent.

2025-05-02 06:24:46

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Luke is signalling his followers to attack me via his clown emojis. That has nothing to do with being on the side of any argument. It's an intimidation tactic to stop me from reviewing the pull request. It's as effective as the filters though.
My observation that he is a cult leader is not based solely on this incident. He's been consistently behaving like one since at least the 2017 UASF days.

2025-05-02 06:17:43

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To be clear, this won't permanently censor these transactions either, but because not everyone is going to be sufficiently intimidated. But it will delay them more than in the scenario where those miners only exclude things from their own blocks. And definitely delay them more than can be achieved with just policy, even if 90% of nodes used these filters.

2025-05-02 06:13:49

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I should also emphasise the word "might", in contrast to the current proposals which certainly don't work.
The goal of the filter people is to censor OP_RETURN and inscriptions specifically. They have no rational basis for this, as you explained, but I'm just taking this goal at face value.
Without a consensus change it's impossible to stop the transactions from going through eventually, but you could try intimating miners into self-censorship. We know from human societies that a fairly small group of people can control a very large group at fairly low cost. A key ingredient seems to be to disproportionately punish offenders to set an example.
So if you can gather a few percent of hash rate that enforces these arbitrary filters through reorgs (N deep, depending on budget), some pools will experience noticeable losses. This then encourages them to be on the safe side and use these filters. Bitcoin Core might then have to adopt similar rules in order to produce blocks that are safe.

2025-05-02 06:01:59

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pot_calling_the_kettle_black

2025-05-01 18:43:10

> It is about time that we stop tolerating nonsense and come back to a place where most of us value (proof of) work, ideas, and selflessness instead of overblown emotional reactions, unbacked wild claims and adhesion to various cults.
Anyway, in the unlikely event I can restrain myself, this will be my last comment on this topic.
https://antoinep.com/posts/relay_policy_drama/

2025-05-01 17:39:57

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How convenient that you don't have to read anything!

2025-05-01 17:27:59

But yes, we need to nice to @npub1lh2…a9nk and his aggressive cult.
#nevent1q…cm4n

2025-05-01 17:24:49

https://img.sprovoost.nl/c3523912bc232cb58b308df5fcd0ebac658d5e346e97abc21ed8cd5d59c6f71b.png
#nevent1q…jpg0

2025-05-01 17:21:27

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* met

2025-05-01 17:21:11

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The pull request links to a mailinglist post that explains all of this. You're not required to read it, but this "burden of proof" has been more than bet. On the flip side, those who oppose the pull request have not raised a single technically valid argument. And rather than just running Knots, many of them choose to harass developers and frustrate the Github repo.

2025-05-01 13:54:49

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I also think that if you explore technical solutions that might _actually work_ (though also require people to spend their own money), rather than the current and proposed feel good settings, you quickly end up attacking the heart of censorship resistance.
nostr.
#nevent1q…shlf

2025-05-01 13:40:56

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I'm happy to give @npub12rv…85vg some artistic license here. It's also worth considering that the people who advocate for filters do not have a clearly articulated position. That includes a lack of clarity about how far they're willing to go. Is the line really at automatic updates? Just because nobody said it out loud? The arguments in favour of filtering seem to vary by who you ask. So that means any attempt at summarising the position can be interpreted as a straw man by someone who has a slightly different position that the other person.

2025-05-01 12:04:13

"Life changing" - anonymous person who first learned about this
https://lornajane.net/posts/2011/navigating-bash-history-with-ctrlr

2025-05-01 08:32:32

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* before the release is even out

2025-05-01 08:32:02

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You can't change consensus on a whim. Standardness filters don't work. But even if they did, Bitcoin Core does a release once every six months and people can take years to upgrade. Spammers can adjust because the release is even out. So for all intends and purposes these filters are static.
Now you add a privileged public key to each that accepts new filters in real time. Then they wouldn't be static. And then OFAC asks for the corresponding private key.

2025-04-30 18:38:00

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> I don't understand how smart technical people believe [X]
Unfortunately this is completely normal human behaviour (which I don't pretend to be immune for, but I try).

2025-04-30 18:33:41

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It's not a strawman. Static content filters do not mitigate spam on the blockchain at all.
To continue the police analogy, to reduce spam you need actual deterrence in the form of very serious real cost. Such cost should ideally be imposed on the spammer or on the miner that facilitates the spammer. The former would require KYC. The latter can be done. But be careful what you wish for.
#nevent1q…kzjv

2025-04-30 17:03:12

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Paid volunteers are a thing. Especially if you consider the opportunity cost of not working for Google.
From the point of view of a user it doesn't matter if a developer is working from savings, government welfare, or hired by a benevolent rich Bitcoiner. Users are not customers of the developers. There's no fiduciary duty. They don't get to make demands. You would treat them exactly as you would a volunteer in the more narrow sense of an unpaid volunteer.

2025-04-30 16:57:24

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The most effective way to encourage significant censorship by all miners is to credibly threaten them with reorgs if they include bad things. Needless to say, that would set terrible precedent and probably be the actual end of Bitcoin.
#nevent1q…9hdj

2025-04-30 16:55:22

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Interesting idea, could stimulate people to use Stratum v2 / DATUM without having to run a fork of Bitcoin Core:
> While discussing this here it does occur to me that there is a different line of compromise which might make more sense-- Bitcoin Core conflates relay policy and mining policy. The historical reason for this is that they should match or vaguely bad things happen. But in case where there is a dispute over policy it makes more sense for mining to be the more restrictive of the two, because the negative effects largely come from miners including txn nodes weren't expecting. So maybe it would make sense to change the option to be one that only changed mining policy. At least as mining policy it has a real effect (assuming you're mining!) -- I'm not sure, this is just an off the cuff thought.
Though this also sounds like an implementation headache, and it's still ultimately a placebo. Since this would only be used by tiny miners, the thing they don't like will go in the next block.
From that same thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1kab15o/comment/mprj4tv/?context=3

2025-04-30 16:48:42

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So is this point from a followup:
> Sometimes developers have left in options to silence disputes from people in the sense of "look if there is an option it will have no effect because virtually no one will set it, and the people committed to this argument can feel that they won, that they did something, but it's really just a placebo". It's expedient but arguably it's not particularly respectful. Especially in a case like this where even if virtually everyone set the option it still wouldn't have the intended effect.

2025-04-30 16:42:40

> If development were primarily about choice the developers ought to instead just ship a copy of GCC: there tada, you get all the choices, write your own node. :)
/u/nullc
Jokes aside, it's a good post.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1kab15o/bitcoin_cores_github_mods_have_been_banning_users/mpou6xb/

2025-04-30 14:13:06

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Well Kraken has some sort of proof-of-reserve thing on top of their PHP variable!

2025-04-30 14:11:48

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Wait until you see their #SafetyShield
https://together.bunq.com/d/61799-extra-protection-for-your-crypto-with-safety-shield

2025-04-30 14:09:23

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Indeed, and also there's really no need to directly respond to someone who insults you.

2025-04-30 14:06:19

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Bitcoin users are not paying customers of Bitcoin developers. It's not the same kind of relationship. As Craig Wright found out.

2025-04-30 14:04:03

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It's still a volunteer effort in the sense that users are not paying customers.

2025-04-30 13:53:20

Dutch hipster bank #Bunq just added support for buying and selling crypto in collaboration with Kraken. There seems to be no way to withdraw coins, which not even their FAQ seems worth mentioning. It says something about the "crypto" market in general that any company thinks they get away with that.
https://together.bunq.com/d/61673-bunq-crypto

2025-04-30 08:12:52

My first impression of Bitcoin Core, during the blocksize wars, was also that of arrogance. It's an unfortunate side-effect of people losing patience when having to re-explain something a hundred times. Time they're not spending on writing code, and energy they're losing to remain motivated to write code.
The project is run by volunteers who do not have time, and should not waste time, for maintaining useless functionality. Having people in the project that are (somewhat) comfortable in delivering such bad news is extremely important. I've been on the receiving end of that too internally.
You do not want Bitcoin Core to be a please-everyone kind of project. That's a recipe for unmaintainable code and really bad bugs down the line.
#nevent1q…na9k

2025-04-30 08:03:23

Always great when stuff gets merged after two years, especially after a few months I tend to forget what my code is doing. Shout out to Daniela Brozzoni for the diagram.
https://img.sprovoost.nl/cf5d180b52b266f4fbddb8bd666e00afe418f618f2cde84f3149da06793faa06.jpeg
#nevent1q…jsn9

2025-04-29 11:48:07

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You already have the followers, which I suspect any discovery algorithm takes into account.

2025-04-29 11:17:38

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My main concern with moderation is that it can drag culture war stuff into a project. But I think the moderation process is transparent enough to keep an eye on that.
Still need to decide if I'm going to do Drama Mondays and not go anywhere this stuff on other days. Like today.

2025-04-29 11:13:25

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> without warning/notice
The whole thread was full of warnings. Warnings don't have to be individually tailored. Moderators are often developers too and have better things to do with their time than to give a non-contributor extreme benefit of doubt. Or even to have rigorous due process. Every second these people have to waste on this nonsense is time they're not fixing the next CVE.

2025-04-29 08:39:14

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Citrea is much further along than a whitepaper.
The limits were on the verge of being dropped two years ago because inscriptions made them useless. That change was only held back by the argument that there's a small range of sizes where OP_RETURN is cheaper.
That was never a strong argument, so yes, a single example like Citrea was plenty to dismiss that last remaining argument.
I explained all that in my mailinglist post, feel free to read it.
Consensus changes like CTV is totally different from standardness. The latter requires broad consensus, because the consequence of inconsistent enforcement are catastrophic, etc.
Modetating harassers is perfectly legitimate. His concern about a conflict of interest was absolutely spurious here. It's also been stated multiple times that discussions about standardness should be had on the mailinglist, not in the pull request.
Pretending to be a censorship victim is the oldest trick in the book.

2025-04-29 08:09:40

Give the man more followers!
#note1kph…ltt8

2025-04-29 08:06:43

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Sorry, I should have split that reply. The first part was an answer to your question, the last bit referred to Bitcoin Mechanic, who should know better which forums are appropriate for which concerns.

2025-04-29 06:42:42

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I think the blockchain just isn't a "controller", or any other entity that some sort of obligation. It's only about what people put on it. So an exchange that generates a deposit address for you is now responsible to hold that PII private.

2025-04-29 06:40:01

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I think a Bitcoin address should be considered PII just like an IP address. With a possible exception if it's been mixed, freshly mined and held, never touched a custodian, etc. Now that would have serious implications for these surveillance companies.

2025-04-29 06:26:43

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See also the mailinglist thread, particularly Sipa's comment: https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/d6ZO7gXGYbQ/m/g9SIY4iqDQAJ

2025-04-28 19:54:00

This could become a problem: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/04/drug-cartel-influencers-social-media/682588/

2025-04-28 19:06:37

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Probably, but you're in better standing (including legally) if your objection is on the record.

2025-04-28 18:40:44

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It also makes it more clear that it's not about protecting the censored person or entity. They don't need it, they have the ear of POTUS. It's about protecting humanity from censorship, including all future instances of it.

2025-04-28 14:44:22

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Maintaining such a patch is probably a couple of days work per year, assuming a worst case scenario of the patch being hard to maintain. Maybe half a day if you can cherry-pick it out of Knots.
This is a much lower bar than having to maintain a custom Bitcoin Core fork for consensus changes. Don't be shy.

2025-04-28 14:39:14

You can just maintain your own fork of Bitcoin Core. Ask @npub1ej4…ndrm for tips. Or run Knots which has all sorts of mempool purification features. You can't force volunteers to maintain therapeutic features.
#note10rt…yq5s

2025-04-27 13:30:34

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On that topic: #note1gky…rz7u

2025-04-27 13:27:49

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In terms of how to deal with it: tell your kids to use and/or donate all the money and not leave an inheritance?

2025-04-27 13:26:45

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The tendency of third generations to spoil their inherited wealth or empire has een independently discovered in many cultures. It seems to be human nature. In the case of wealth it's a nice way to achieve redistribution without taxations. With empires it can be quite painful for the subjects, depending on how the next guy goes about his conquest.

2025-04-26 20:31:58

Actually* negative electricity tomorrow for three hours. You know what to do.
* = even with the €0,12 energy tax. Yes, you have to pay a tax even on negatively priced electricity. Yes, you have to pay VAT over this tax. Because government. They do build nice roads though, no potholes.
https://image.nostr.build/67d60e57de0e51201b755420e6391452830cf03c4005931eeeda2fd82d3e7a64.jpg

2025-04-26 14:19:38

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They're very good at hallucinating results that look right at first glance.

2025-04-26 12:31:57

If you're going to reorg a block because its content is evil, or just doesn't obey your favorite new soft fork rules, please put its hash in a coinbase OP_RETURN of your alternative block.
That proves you saw the block but chose not to accept it. As opposed to just having missed it, as with a typical stale block.
Call it a Bad Uncle block?
You could even do this with weak blocks (reduced proof of work) if all you have is a BitAxe.

2025-04-26 10:12:01

In case Shanghai Jiao Tong University contacts you from a dot com domain, it's probably not them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/shanghai/comments/1k7lfib/comment/mp4frum/

2025-04-26 08:51:49

The concept of a “prerogative state” that operates in parallel to do the dirty work, is an interesting concept. Recent news of ICE trying to arrest someone in a court room and then arresting the judge from trying to prevent that, remind me of this.
That said, the El Salvador gulag still has a lower death rate than Nazi concentration camps - so let's not get too carried away?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-executive-order-lawlessness-constitutional-crisis/682112/

2025-04-25 09:34:29

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I can look at the list of zapa on a post and copy its event id.
https://image.nostr.build/0db512bcdec25fb762a3999b5e7456602d66e475e87677807b405ffd20d0a36e.jpg

2025-04-25 09:33:28

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Like the one I sent you now, which did go through.

2025-04-25 09:32:42

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I just hit the Zap button in Damus.

2025-04-25 06:33:05

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It would be nice if you could copy-paste a zap request into the app if somehow it's not picked up via the relay. E.g. this one: #note18yy…hlu4

2025-04-24 21:42:22

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English TL&DR there's a proposal to tax cars by surface area instead of weight. Somehow this is supposed to be better for electric cars because their batteries are heavy. (Not really, because the battery weight also needs to be flat and close the floor for balance and leg room reasons, making them long and wide).
My hot take: future cars will be (unstable) narrow double deckers.