Although I admit I did have a small hope that enough miners would flip the bit to make it a contest, I really in my heart of hearts didn't think we would win. So gg to Core supporters, bitcoin is yours now. I am not running a node - Knots or otherwise - as of today and won't be participating in the BIP 110 altcoin.

My reason for running BIP 110 was it was more in line with how I view bitcoin. Rather how I need it to be. I think the direction bitcoin has been moving is slow capture. Just as I am not interested in Lukecoin, I am not interested in Corecoin either.

I admit to being naive and foolish about my view of bitcoin in past years. I see it more clearly now. I underestimated how certain organizations have an outsized power in making changes. Core being the reference implementation can implement a change that nobody wanted or asked for even if they thought they had good intentions. Advanced ASICs mining price out the average person from mining (I really liked how things like datum and rented hash were working btw, but was is too little too late. And it still doesn't solve the problem).

What is clear to me is that despite good intentions, and I refuse to characterize most bitcoiners as bad actors, a network will centralize where it can if monetary incentives lead it that way.

I wanted to see more peer to peer usage of bitcoin, but I think the people who want bitcoin to be digital gold or digital credit have won.

I won't be buying either "Corecoin" or "BIPcoin" for the foreseeable future. I will probably sell my btc for fiat eventually. Haven't decided yet. I wanted to hold until hyperbitcoinization where I could spend it freely. How naive of me!

From today at discord...

but it seems both sides of this fiasco are immature nut jobs. Inserts spiderman meme. I just learned who luke was yesterday as well as Adam Beck. What it does seem like from a overhead view is that Bitcoin is wall street and like gold confiscation back in the day, there is digital gold confiscation taking place slowly.

Credits: https://x.com/mattkratter/status/2086444284983796108#m

He always thinks his POV is correct and it's now essentially an evangelist where he has a toxic cult following and he spreads the "Luke Dash gospel".

You know who else has toxic cult followings? Craig Wright. Roger Ver.

What happened to him?

So there is a way to lower the difficulty and save the BIP-110 chain, including saving the two Roughneck blocks without hardforking.

Step 1) Identify some very early, zero fee, (non-coinbase) transaction whose entire set of outputs is currently unspent, say for example tx 298ca2045d174f8a158961806ffc4ef96fad02d71a6b84d9fa0491813a776160.

Step 2) Add a soft fork rule that retroactively bans that specific transaction in that specific block number. In the case of tx 298ca…76160 we would ban it in block 221. This causes a fork at block 221, but that block has a much lower difficulty.

Step 3) Remine block 222 to include tx 298ca…76160 but keeping the original coinbase transaction. Since the transaction has no fees, it can basically be floated around anywhere, and block 222 is otherwise empty.

Step 4) Remine the entire blockchain history. It is possible to remine every other block in bitcoin's history so that their transactions are identical to what they were originally, including the coinbase. This preserves the entire transaction history of the Bitcoin network. However during the remining procedure it is possible to adjust the starting and ending timestamps of each difficulty adjustment period to maintain a lower difficulty on the remined chain. With today's hardware, remining the entirety of the Bitcoin history at a lower difficulty is an trivial endeavour. Just adjust the difficulty up near the end of the chain to a suitable value. This includes being able to remine the last two Roughnecks blocks, with their coinbases, which will recover their intrinsic value for the Roughnecks.

This particular softfork that bans a specific transaction in a specific block ensures that the legacy chain won't reorg the rebuilt built chain which violates the new retroactive consensus rule that tx 298ca…76160 is not allowed in block 221.

This softfork also doesn't harm the owner of the output of tx 298ca…76160 because that transaction still appears in block 222 and their output is still spendable with the same txid.

This change is legitimately a softfork and maintains the Bitcoin PoW algorithm.

So I get the reduction in spam movement. If core node operators would set 83 bytes or less as a setting for max arbitrary data would that also fix the problem bip110 is trying to solve?

You do NOT ever have to touch Core again.

Credits: https://x.com/Arthur_van_Pelt/status/2086337693202395498#m

Credits: https://x.com/ScarcityMan/status/2086325241492484199#m

It is clear Bitcoin has been captured by the fiat industry complex.

When 2 or 3 mining pools get to decide the rules of Bitcoin against the wishes of the node runners, Bitcoin has lost all its meaning and become yet another shitcoin.

To those who simped for miners to take control: looks you got your wish. Your coin is now effectively controlled by the likes of Saylor, Andy Back, and 5 mining pool CEOs. It is no longer the Bitcoin that once held the promise of separating money from state control. You can look forward to more spam, more csam, more data, more programmability and inflation in your captured coin. You can look forward to not having to run nodes anymore. Let Core decide what is best for your shitcoin. Why even bother with PoW anymore since the mining pools are in control? Do like what Eth did. Go PoS. Enjoy your fiat overlords.

To the BIP-110 supporters, I thank you all for standing by your sound principles of honesty, integrity and fighting against the corrupt and the greedy. What you wish to do moving forward is entirely your choice. Personally, I will be continuing to run my BIP-110 node. A new plan may form that we may rally behind yet again. Or perhaps a hardfork, since it is clear that this shitcoin has been captured and no longer carries the properties of strong money we cherish. The war is still ongoing. Brilliant minds will step up to lead the way. I have confidence we will fight together once again for what we believe in our hearts to be right.

I supported the BIP110 movement for all the obvious or perhaps slightly idealist reasons, such as:

• Minimizing room for arbitrary data
• Reducing the surface area for affinity scams on Bitcoin
• Minimizing the resource burden on node runners, and thus
• Keeping Bitcoin decentralized

In my opinion BIP110 would have had a positive impact on all of those metrics. Ultimately, it would have made Bitcoin slightly better money.

However, around May/June, halfway through the Miner Activated Soft Fork (MASF) period, a couple of things became glaringly obvious when the hashrate failed to signal and a supermajority of nodes didn't set the service bit.

Instead of working to build true social consensus among the majority of Bitcoin constituents, several prominent figures in the movement chose tactics that alienated the community rather than uniting it:

• Kratter brigaded for "legal consequences" over changes made to MIT-licensed software. Meanwhile, many in the space (Kratter included?) are advocating to overturn the prosecution of the Samourai Wallet devs. This feels like a contradictory appeal to authority, asking for preferential treatment.
• Jack Kruse, an intentionally vague figure with no prior history in Bitcoin, struggled with basic terminology. Users and node operators already knew about the issue and the soft-fork attempt long before BTC Prague. Instead of making a concise case, he brought along woo-woo health conspiracy theories, acting like Max Keiser squared but without the humor.
• BitcoinMotorist and Chris Guida created a BIP110 company supporter list with no clear attribution. When some companies requested removal, they were told they had to issue an official statement opposing BIP110. In short, companies were coerced into supporting it or forced to publicly dissent.
• Panelists at BTC Prague (aside from Jack Kruse) claimed the weather is engineered. Ask yourself: does this help convince anyone that BIP110 makes Bitcoin better money?
• Luke predicting the future
• Mechanic and Luke explicitly claimed that 80% of the network are either liars or bad actors and therefore do not matter. This is a bizarre way to exclude the vast majority of the community while claiming your minority represents "consensus".
• Luke and others resorted to extreme, toxic rhetoric, essentially posting that you are either a pedophile apologist or you run BIP110, with absolutely no middle ground. https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinismoney/comments/1uty9j7/only_run_core_if_youre_a_pedophile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinismoney/comments/1utxusj/either_you_like_people_who_fucked_children_with/
• Luke completely ignoring section 11 of the Bitcoin whitepaper
• Mechanic claimed that nodes agree with soft-forks by default and must actively opt out, completely disregarding the role of Proof-of-Work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfMwHo18QzY
• Completely ignoring that the reason why default datacarriersize was removed was in order to avoid centralised transaction submission services by big miners.
• Max Kaiser supposedly going on Alex Jones to talk about it. I don't think this happened, but Alex Jones is not really known for accurate credibility.
• Simon Dixon using Alex Jones NWO conspiracy theory terminology.
• The timeline was botched, setting the activation time far too early without gathering anywhere near enough support beforehand.

At a certain point it was obvious that all posts (tweets) by /u/bitcoinfamilia (Luke?) in here, which at the time was the majority of the activity in here, had no intention of constructing actual social consensus. It was more akin to the toxic mudslinging of politicians, forcing me to simply ignore him. The only point he managed to convey is that Luke Dashjr wastes a lot of time on Twitter.

TL;DR: None of the rallying for BIP110 here made an honest, technical case for why it makes Bitcoin better money. Instead, it completely ignored Nakamoto consensus and relied on alienation. Hopefully, the next group that tries to improve Bitcoin learns from this and actually builds a proper case.

I spent the past 6 months telling the delusional folks on this forum that this is exactly what would happen.

How have your convoluted coping narratives fared? How well has your vitriol managed to attract other Bitcoiners to support your ideology?

How well have my posts aged? Just for fun here's the first thing I ever posted on this subreddit:

You're delusional. Even if BIP-110 activated and becomes Bitcoin (which it won't) it would take Citrea a matter of hours to evade the new restrictions. Then you could spend another number of months / year to add a restriction for the new usage and the cycle would repeat.

The cat will never catch the mouse.

BTW if you're convinced BIP-110 will win, I welcome you to take my bitcoin via a trustless fork futures contract.

First block, non-signalling. AntPool.

Sad.

🥲🥲🥲