Extra number:Teaching chain internal reference 12.6 "The beauty of the golden section 0.618 from ordi and doge"
The most exciting thing overnight was "Bitcoin Core" developer Luke Dashjr's "one push that caused thousands of waves."
To translate what Luke is saying is that “Inscription” abused the vulnerability of “Bitcoin Core” to send “spam” to the blockchain. "Bitcoin Core" (the client), since 2013, allows users to set their own size limits (-datacarriersize parameter) on the data attached to the transactions they forward or mine. Inscriptions circumvent this limitation by obfuscating data into code. (Note: Some people may question the parameters written by Luke. That is because this person does not understand technology, so just ignore him)
The news spread quickly to all corners of the world along with the enthusiasm ignited by the bull market temperature, and sides and mutual criticisms quickly formed.
The inscription Meme token ordi plummeted in response.
Some mining pools quickly stood up and countered Luke's remarks, expressing contempt and ridicule to the developers on behalf of the miners. The general meaning is that Bitcoin upgrades require miners to vote, so miners have the final say and developers have no say. The subtext is that developers are nothing. Indeed, if Bitcoin is compared to a digital country, then the miners who control the computing power are like the army with guns, and the developers are just weak scholars who type on the keyboard and write code.
As the old saying goes: When a scholar encounters a soldier, he cannot explain his reasoning. The warlords who control the guns are simply too lazy to reason with the powerless scholars and ordinary people. It is precisely because of this principle that a democratic "country" that truly serves the long-term interests of ordinary people must use civil society to control force, use the pen to control the gun, and use systems (code) to control violence (computing power).
Bitcoin is no exception. If the miners engage in separatist rule, they will become warlords. Bitcoin, where a miner interest group "has the final say", is bound to perish. If one day in the future, the miner interest group succeeds in "usurping power", I will probably liquidate all Bitcoins, because its fundamentals have been severely damaged.
* * *
Contrary to what many people believe, developers actually have no ability to "force" anyone to do anything.
Whether Luke Dashjr's ideas are good or bad, right or wrong, he cannot "force" anyone to accept his point of view, nor can he "force" anyone to use his code.
There are only two methods that developers can rely on: one is called freedom, and the other is called democracy.
Take filtering inscriptions as an example:
The so-called "freedom" means that developers need to have a function in the software that allows an ordinary node to freely choose to filter inscriptions or store inscriptions through simple configuration items or switch parameters.
The so-called "democracy" means that developers need to empower users with the above-mentioned right of choice, so that everyone can make their own decisions if they wish. Why waste so much space on their own computers to save these inscription data that are of no use to them? , or delete them all to save disk storage space and achieve the broadest possible democratic self-determination.
If you understand the essence of the matter, you will find that the irony is that those who attack Luke Dashjr are doing it for personal gain, demonizing developers and restraining miners is political persecution, and trying to prevent a wider range of user nodes from gaining freedom on the grounds of the interests of the miner group. The right to choose and the broad right to democratic self-determination, and other words and deeds such as criticizing and criticizing, just expose the current nature of some people who are self-interested and party-minded. Therefore, Bitcoin must not hand over leadership to such people. , the future of Bitcoin must not be hijacked by such people.
* * *
Some people exclaimed that Bitcoin was going to “censor” data. Words are always full of emotions, which make people imagine.
Luke Dashjr's patch just applies the existing additional data size limit for OP_RETURN to the Bitcoin script to the data carried by the taproot script. It can be considered that this is a mechanism similar to "spam filtering". Bitcoin’s judgment of “spam” is very simple, it just depends on the data size. Too big is a problem.
After all, Satoshi Nakamoto said in his early years, why choose ECDSA signature instead of RSA signature? Because the data size of the latter is twice larger than that of the former. Satoshi Nakamoto said that if the large size of RSA was chosen, the Bitcoin system would be unfeasible.
The picture above is Satoshi Nakamoto’s speech on the forum on January 29, 2010. When comparing the two signature algorithms RSA and ECDSA, he said this: "It is not a problem of executable file size, but a problem of data size "I think if the blockchain, Bitcoin address, disk space and bandwidth requirements were all an order of magnitude larger, it would become impractical."
The Ordinal protocol used by the inscription embeds data into the code ("obfuscated into code" as Luke said at the beginning), disguises it as code, and mixes it into the Bitcoin blockchain:
example:
OP_FALSE
OP_IF
OP_PUSH "ord"
OP_PUSH 1
OP_PUSH "text/plain;charset=utf-8"
OP_PUSH 0
OP_PUSH "Hello, world!"
OP_ENDIF
When developers introduced Taproot script extension technology to Bitcoin, they ignored such an "abuse", which allowed the protocol to embed data of any size until the block was filled!
That's why Luke said, this is a "bug".
* * *
There are three ways to embed data on Bitcoin’s blockchain.
The first is to write data into the block header when a new block is produced. Obviously, only miners have the opportunity to do this method.
At that time, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the headline on the front page of The Times in the genesis block, which was the method used.
Some ignorant people say that the inscription technology used by Satoshi Nakamoto was pure nonsense.
The second is to append a small piece of data after the OP_RETURN instruction of the Bitcoin script in every transaction, that is, when transferring Bitcoin, or speaking from the underlying technology, when a UTXO is destroyed and a new UTXO is created.
If readers who are interested in digging up history can review the development history of OP_RETURN, they will know that no special filtering restrictions were imposed at the beginning, which led to a certain amount of abuse. Some people have even embedded child porn into Bitcoin. So there were subsequent constraints, restrictions and filtering on OP_RETURN size.
The third type is the data embedding technology used in inscriptions today, which is to stuff data into the Taproot script code.
This capability was only realized after the so-called Taproot technology was introduced into Bitcoin at the end of 2021. Regarding Taproot, you can review Liu Jiaolian’s article on November 15, 2021 "Taproot has been activated: It is not that Bitcoin evolves slowly, but that we evolve slowly 》.
* * *
From Bitcoin to the so-called BRC-20, there are actually two levels of "abuse."
The first layer is the "abuse" of the ordinal protocol's ability to embed data in Taproot scripts. This is the point of criticism from Luke.
The second layer is the "abuse" of the ordinal protocol by the BRC-20 convention specification. Many people who speculate on BRC-20 may not know that the original inventor of the ordinal protocol, Casey Rodarmor, is very disgusted and opposed to BRC-20. Because he hopes that the ordinal protocol can be used to mint digital artworks instead of speculating on coins.
Casey believes that the problem with BRC-20 tokens is that they generate "junk UTXOs" that take up space in Bitcoin.
Not only do nodes have to waste disks to store this data, but ordinary users also have to pay higher transfer fees and currency withdrawal fees because of currency speculators congesting the blockchain.
However, fate plays tricks on people. The hype about BRC-20 is more exciting than digital artwork.
* * *
In the strict sense of mathematics, speculation in BRC-20 is a negative-sum game. The total profit of all speculators must be negative, that is, they lose the fees paid to the miners.
The BRC-20 plate is further subdivided into dealers, thugs who drink soup, and leeks who follow the trend.
The ones who contribute profits to everyone are the 99% followers who follow the trend. It is their losses that become the gains of the miners, bookmakers and thugs.
Two vested interest groups are formed here: the miners' interest group and the plate interest group.
The high fee income brought to the miners by speculating on inscriptions is a kind of "bribe" paid by the plate interest groups to the miners' interest groups.
Therefore, this is the corruption and corruption of Bitcoin caused by the collusion of two major interest groups.
The two major interest groups united to overthrow the leadership of the civilian group (developers).
What the core developers want to do, under this metaphor, is like "anti-corruption".
The fight against corruption should be fought sooner rather than later. If it is too late, we will fall into the dilemma that Chang Kaishen had.
* * *
So when are the core developers ready to take action?
Judging from github PR#28408 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/28408), Luke Dashjr actually submitted the patch code to the core developers for review as early as September 5 this year.
Issue shows that, except for Luke himself, there are currently 3 people who support the patch and 2 people who oppose it, as shown in the following table:
Therefore, it is estimated that merger is a high probability.
I originally wanted to compile their wonderful speeches, but this article is already too long, so I will skip this chapter for now.
According to Luke, the patch has currently entered the non-core client Bitcoin Knots v25.1 version. The so-called official core client may not be able to catch up with the upcoming v26 version to incorporate this patch. He expects this problem to be fixed before v27 is released next year.
* * *
If you agree with Luke, or you want to save your own cloud server costs, you can currently choose to use the Bitcoin Knots v25.1 version client. After Bitcoin Core v27 is released next year, if the patch is merged, you can switch to the Core v27 client. .
The inscriptions are swept away, and the disk saves money.
In a larger sense, a smaller full ledger size helps lower the barrier to entry for running a full node, thereby expanding the degree of decentralization. If ordinary people are deprived of the ability to run full nodes, then the barriers and thresholds for democracy are raised. If a few mining pools monopolize ledger data, democracy may gradually die out.
Do you think it’s the miners who have the final say? Can a miner force you to store inscription data for him? Not really.
Your disk is yours.
This is democracy.
Extra number:Teaching chain internal reference 12.6 "The beauty of the golden section 0.618 from ordi and doge"
(Public account: Liu Jiaolian. Knowledge Planet: The public account replies "Planet")
(Disclaimer: None of the content in this article constitutes any investment advice. Cryptocurrency is an extremely high-risk product and may return to zero at any time. Please participate with caution and be responsible for yourself.)