This is a guest post Brandon Black. The views expressed are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
Within the tiny Bitcoin X community (formerly Bitcoin Twitter or Crypto Twitter), there has been a lot of buzz over the past year. @dathon_ohm’s the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork request, also known as BIP110. Underlying this idea is the idea that some Bitcoin transactions have been violating the rules of the Internet by including in their closing or releasing data that can be interpreted in one or more ways in addition to their simple interpretation of Bitcoin. According to the supporters of BIP110, reducing the work of this exit is a sufficient justification to take over the Bitcoin softfork until today, on the submission of Time Calculations that it is much faster than the two forks recently, and the bottom opens the door to the preparation.
Bitcoin is an open, blockchain ledger where anyone can write entries if they are willing to pay enough fees to entice block template creators and miners to include their transactions. The basic value of Bitcoin against all other calculators is the aforementioned method. Without it, the Bitcoin ledger is worthless more than a bowling alley board. Thanks to open access, we all know that Bitcoin will be used by those we hate. Just like the principle of free speech, which is meaningless unless it applies to speech we don’t like, Bitcoin’s open access would be meaningless if it only applies to activities that you or I approve of. So I think we don’t want to be in the business of looking at how other people do their writing instead of how we want them to look at our writing.
Supporters of BIP110 may say, “Sure, but this only works money notes! What about the non-monetary registers?”, but the truth is that there is no such difference. Every transaction that takes place on Bitcoin is made by fulfilling certain closing registers to enter the ledger, which eats the input money and makes the output money. Look at the actions of other people is no more my business than what other people order at the local cafe, my principles do not make such a difference or invalid, and it is expensive to verify (like multisig) or cheap to verify (like one of the Ordinals or OP_RETURN).
One could argue that Bitcoin, like gold, would be a valuable asset if it could not be viewed in other ways. Imagine if gold could not be used in industry or jewelry! It may be true that this would be better as an investment. But of course, the same thing that makes gold a good currency also makes it valuable in jewelry and industry. The same applies to Bitcoin. The fact that Bitcoin allows anyone to log in if they are willing to pay the money means that we have to let go of the idea that we can control how they can control that log in. Regardless of the restrictions we put on the design of the documents, it will be possible to create documents that can be interpreted in other ways by non-Bitcoin software. So, both with Bitcoin and gold, we agree that some uses are inevitable. In gold, this leads to volatility in the market as demand for cash increases or decreases. In Bitcoin, this can lead to higher fees when there is a greater demand for its limited supply.
In Bitcoin, we have two advantages that gold does not have. First, making a Bitcoin trade that can be viewed in other ways does not affect the Bitcoin market itself. Unlike gold, very little Bitcoin is allocated to these assets. Second, in Bitcoin, we have a protocol that has already been developed to reduce the cost to the authentication network from other definitions. Bitcoin limits the size of blocks and the number of signatures that can be used for transactions. This is very difficult for verifying nodes, and protocol limits have been in place since the early days of Bitcoin, to prevent abuse by using too much or too much of the book. These limits have already inspired innovations such as Lightning Network, Ark, Spark, Cashu, and more. Even the increased demand for blockspace caused by these “non-cash” records (yes, this sounds silly) has increased the use of these solutions, which require fewer records on large ledgers.
With the justification for BIP110 examined, and hopefully shown to be woefully lacking, let’s look at the proposed changes. BIP110 restricts the size of lock registers, restricts the number of other registers in taproot, makes taproot annex invalid, removes all types of evidence and tapscript, removes all variable opcodes, and makes OP_IF and OP_NOTIF invalid in tapscript. All of these restrictions apply to UTXOs created during the 52414 blocks (approximately 1 year) after launch. BIP110 also requires the mine to be ready to approach 55% instead of the used limit of 90% or more. If 55% of the blocks do not show readiness before block 961632, the BIP110 enforcement nodes support the blocks. no mark preparation as invalid forcing the switch to close with block 963648 and start with block 965664.
BIP110 may be the most restrictive Bitcoin script since Satoshi disabled many opcodes in response to a major vulnerability (CVE-2010-5137) back in 2010. It encourages miners to be opened with the lowest and most pressing nodes after at least 9 months from the date the BIP was assigned a number. It does all of this because (as mentioned above) some people are viewing certain documents in ways that BIP110 sponsors do not approve of. Worse, people who use such illegal scripts have already modified their software to continue writing this even if BIP110 becomes a Bitcoin law. This was obvious (many of us predicted it clearly) because it is impossible to stop how some people use external software to analyze the content of open source books.
In short, BIP110 is an idea to do something impossible (reduce the use of the open book by users of the book) in response to a problem that has already been addressed through the limitations of the existing Bitcoin protocol. It wants to do this impossible in a small time of arbitrary opening, with limited monitoring, and regardless of whether the change reaches any kind of environmental agreement. Fortunately, Bitcoin is not a delicate flower of the system so that stupid attempts like changing it will succeed. Not only have miners outright rejected BIP110, but other construction, investment, lobbying, and industry voices have spoken out against the amendment. In August, this attack against Bitcoin’s consensus rules will make Bitcoin stronger because of its failure, and the network will continue its regular rhythm of tick-tock, block to block.
