Bitcoin: A Social Fork in the Making?

If you want to claim that bitcoin is a database, then why don’t we define some other terms?

What’s a Fork?

What if core was the fork and you just didn’t know it yet? Knots has been around for years now, working flawlessly, maintained by someone who has been developing bitcoin since 2011.

This fork just happened more slowly. It started with segwit and taproot. I don’t know the history well, but you all can correct me, but those were big changes, and they had unintended consequences. Over the last few years, the two versions have slowly been drifting apart into two completely different “chains.”

For all the trolls out there, I’ll save you the effort. “I’m retarded.”

Yes, but even someone as dumb as me understands incentives better than you.

The Real-World Stakes

Who here has put their life into this? I mean, had to work your ass off physically, out in the real world, not on the twitters, had a real job like most people on planet Earth, since before bitcoin was even around, and you’re all in on this thing? If this doesn’t pan out, you’re going to be screwed because there is no other option.

People in ivory towers have no clue what that’s like. So no one has any right to tell me that you know bitcoin better than me. You may know the code better than me, but bitcoin is more than software. Bitcoin is the people running that software. Knut made the great point that a node isn’t just a machine running some software. The node runner is the key there, not the hardware running bitcoin.

Acknowledging the Divide

To be clear, I am not saying bitcoin isn’t bitcoin. I know the difference between a soft fork and a hard fork. Come on, stop acting like children and calling each other names. I’ve done it myself, but we can’t move past this until we acknowledge it.

That’s not even my point. What I’m saying is there has been a social fork of bitcoin. Now we face the update that would be a hard social fork.

Defining a Fork

Finally, let’s define some terms. What happens when you update a piece of software? When a developer wants to make a change to the code, he “forks off” a copy of the main code, a copy of what we would refer to as core. At that moment, the two forks are exactly the same. Then he starts working on it, and implementing whatever he thought bitcoin actually needed.

Buuuuuttt…

When our developer asked for his changes to be implemented on the main branch, core looked at it and said, “This isn’t bitcoin, go fork off!”

Then the dev said, “Yes it is, I just pulled latest from master!”, meaning he has the most recent copy of bitcoin itself that he was working on.

A fork is just an update.

This dev did not change consensus rules. He just made an update.

Core isn’t breaking software consensus. They are breaking MEATWARE consensus. 🤣🤣🤣

While core didn’t feel it should be included in the social consensus, a lot of bitcoiners did.

The Social Consensus Has Forked

The social consensus has forked already.

Who’s the real bitcoin?

If bitcoin is a database, then this is a social fork of bitcoin.

The two cultures will continue to diverge. It is no less serious than a hard fork of bitcoin, with actual consensus changes.

The two cultures are incompatible. Are you storing your life’s savings in taproot wizards and ordinals, or are you storing everything you have in the hardest, most secure, most decentralized, incorruptible monetary network that the human species has ever seen and probably won’t see an improvement upon for millennia? The one thing that could actually improve the lives of billions of struggling people around the world, and you think you know best because you know C++?

A Call for Perspective

You want to be environmentally friendly? How about we be humanitarily friendly?

How about we don’t screw this up?

Now, I would like to point out, core are the ones proposing a change to bitcoin. It’s not the other way around.

I know this sounds crazy, but I honestly want to know what you all think about this.

I’m not running knots or core. I’m running bitcoin.