{"id":50385,"date":"2025-10-01T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=50385"},"modified":"2025-10-01T00:01:32","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:01:32","slug":"bitcoin-core-vs-knots-is-old-news-satoshi-fought-the-same-war-15-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=50385","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin Core Vs Knots Is Old News \u2014 Satoshi Fought The Same War 15 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A fresh round of sparring between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots over \u201carbitrary data\u201d and policy defaults is ricocheting across X, but the argument\u2019s bones are older than many remember. As Bitcoin developer Peter Todd put it on Sunday, \u201cGood read. tl;dr: everything that has been said about Core vs Knots has already been said almost 15 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2010 Fight Over Bitcoin\u2019s Soul That Never Ended<\/h2>\n

The historical through-line runs straight back to December 2010, when Satoshi Nakamoto shipped Bitcoin version 0.3.18. That release quietly introduced an \u201cIsStandard()\u201d relay and mining policy to \u201conly include known transaction types,\u201d a defensive move designed to reduce attack surface from exotic scripts. Satoshi\u2019s own release note summarized the change tersely: \u201cIsStandard() check to only include known transaction types in blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The first debate about arbitrary data in the blockchain happened in December 2010 and Satoshi was involved<\/p>\n

On 8th December 2010, Satoshi released Bitcoin version 0.3.18, which included a standardness check, to only include known transaction types<\/p>\n

\"\ud83e\uddf5\" pic.twitter.com\/J95ax5Cgte<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) September 29, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe check ignited what many participants described as Bitcoin\u2019s first real governance dispute. Within hours, forum users split over whether restricting non-standard transactions would neuter legitimate experiments like BitDNS or simply protect the young network. The thread, preserved by the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, captures the core fault lines that have resurfaced in 2025.<\/p>\n

On the permissive side, user \u201cda2ce7\u201d argued that fees would rationalize everything: \u201cTransaction fees will pay for the generation of the chain in the future\u2026 if [others] want to include carefully crafted transactions\u2026 they must include the appropriate compensation.\u201d Jeff Garzik<\/a> fired back that such a stance \u201cwill disadvantage people who use bitcoins\u2026 as cash as intended,\u201d because non-currency uses would bid up fees and crowd out payments.<\/p>\n

Theymos, then pushing for minimal relay restrictions, argued miners\u2019 incentives would bulldoze any client-level gatekeeping: \u201call miners have an interest in including any and all fee-carrying transactions\u2026 The restriction on relaying these transactions should be removed, at the very least.\u201d Garzik warned that if \u201cdata spam increases TX fees to annoying levels,\u201d currency users would decamp\u2014and that the presence of \u201claw-enforcement-objectionable data\u201d would raise different, sharper risks.<\/p>\n

Crucially, Satoshi and Gavin Andresen<\/a> converged on the whitelist approach as a pragmatic security default, while leaving the door ajar for purpose-built data uses. Gavin explained that whitelisting known-safe templates was \u201cthe right thing to do,\u201d drawing an analogy to web security\u2019s failure modes when blacklisting is relied upon.
\nIn a follow-up, Satoshi wrote: \u201cI came to agree with Gavin about whitelisting when I realized how quickly new transaction types can be added,\u201d and endorsed a path for small data commitments: \u201cI also support a third transaction type for timestamp hash sized arbitrary data.\u201d<\/p>\n

If today\u2019s back-and-forth feels like d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, BitMEX Research\u2019s weekend recap is the missing Rosetta stone. Their thread traces the debate\u2019s timeline\u2014RHorning\u2019s early pushback against 0.3.18\u2019s new standardness rules; Theymos\u2019s insistence that miner incentives would trump relay defaults; Garzik\u2019s resistance to \u201cnon-currency data\u201d pricing out money use; and community unease about what happens when immutable ledgers meet illegal content.<\/p>\n

The researchers note that Theymos even released a patch client removing restrictions at the time, underscoring how client defaults and miner policy have always been a contested, malleable layer.<\/p>\n

There are two enduring takeaways from the 2010 record. First, the \u201cpolicy vs protocol\u201d distinction\u2014what Bitcoin can do versus what the reference implementation should relay or mine by default\u2014has long been a pressure valve for innovation and a magnet for controversy. Satoshi\u2019s 0.3.18 email makes plain that IsStandard() lived in this gray zone of incentives and norms, not consensus rules.<\/p>\n

Second, nearly every argument now deployed in Core-versus-Knots skirmishes<\/a> had an ancestor in that first \u201ccoming-of-age\u201d fight: fee-market neutrality versus application-layer bloat; the right to pay for block space versus the social cost of permanent data; and whether tightening defaults protects Bitcoin\u2019s monetary function or stifles its utility for timestamping and proofs. The archive shows the spectrum clearly, from Theymos\u2019s \u201cremove the restrictions\u201d stance to Garzik\u2019s warning that generalized data \u201chas the distinct probability of degrading service for digital cash.\u201d<\/p>\n

At press time, BTC traded at $113,071.<\/p>\n

\"Bitcoin<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fresh round of sparring between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots over \u201carbitrary data\u201d and policy defaults is ricocheting across X, but the argument\u2019s bones are older than many remember. As Bitcoin developer Peter Todd put it on Sunday, \u201cGood read. tl;dr: everything that has been said about Core vs Knots has already been said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-50385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}