Tauri on Nostr: BIP-148 had no coordination mechanism for miner activation like BIP-110 has. That’s ...

BIP-148 had no coordination mechanism for miner activation like BIP-110 has. That’s why someone proposed BIP91, which was written to be compatible with BIP148 and had a lower, shorter signalling threshold. If BIP-148 didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be BIP91, and BIP141 (SegWit) would not have activated. You yourself admitted miners decided that the risk of a chain split was too great, so they went along with it despite opposing SegWit for nearly two years. The situation right now is exactly the same. Miners have next to nothing to lose by going along with BIP110, and they risk the same chain split scenario if they decide to ignore it. That’s why I think they will switch to signalling right before it becomes mandatory.

You still have not provided proof for the 22% hashrate signalling for BIP-148. I tried to find your source to no avail. I only found evidence for 1% signalling. Either way, whether it was 1% or 22% is largely irrelevant. The game theory dictates that whenever a more significant percentage of hash starts signalling, the rest follows quickly, especially if there is little time left. BIP91 had only a 10-day signalling window, and the threshold was met almost immediately.

The point about economic nodes is irrelevant. There is no credible way to determine whether a node has economic weight or not. The NYA had the biggest economic weight at the time, and yet a bunch of poor, angry plebs with tiny economic weight were somehow able to wrestle with them, right? But for the sake of argument, let’s say economic weight does matter the most. Then what is the point of running nodes at all? It would mean that Bitcoin is no longer a grassroots movement and that its governance process is entirely dependent on developers and industry giants. What would be the point of participating in a Wall Street-run, decentralised-in-name-only project? There wouldn’t be one, in my opinion.

I also disagree with the notion that the problem BIP110 is trying to tackle is blown out of proportion. The problem has little to do with the fact that JPEGs are stupid or simply strain node resources. The actual problem is the ability to maintain near-perfect money. Near-perfect money requires next to no other uses besides monetary ones. You add another use case, and you degrade the quality of the money (its monetary premium). That’s Econ 101. More use cases dilute the monetary premium and make the money in question less valuable.

Now remember, Bitcoin is an open network. Anyone with a computer and basic technical skills can analyse the structure of blocks and the split between monetary and non-monetary transactions. What happens when the market starts to sniff out that Bitcoin is predominantly being used as data storage rather than money? How do you think it will price that change? I can confidently say it will be priced at a discount, and the discount will be proportional to the loss of the monetary premium. That’s how silver was demonetised by gold historically.

This will happen to Bitcoin eventually. You’ll know it when the next ATH barely eclipses the previous high. We already have hints that this is happening. The spam started mounting back in 2022. The next ATH didn’t even make 2× the previous one. Gold outpaced Bitcoin. Even Monero made bigger gains than Bitcoin while the rest of the crypto market died. Fun fact: ordinals on Monero never took off because their community rejected them immediately and forked them off. Coincidence? Maybe. But we have enough historical data to predict what will happen to Bitcoin’s monetary premium and decentralisation if data storage ever takes root and becomes a sanctioned use case.

That’s why I’m convinced this is the biggest issue in Bitcoin’s history so far. That’s why I’ll sell my last coin at the next ATH if BIP110 fails. I’d only do that if I were certain there’s no other way. We can’t afford not to activate it, even if only to send a signal to the market that the network rejects data storage. I know this won’t fix the spam issue. The issue lies with SegWit and Taproot. BIP110 is only treating a symptom. The cure has to address those two “upgrades.” Hopefully we find a way to do that over the next few years. You say that you don’t have a skin in the game. I say you do, you just don’t realise it yet.

End rant.