Chat_133 - Bitcoin Development & Controversy with Antoine Poinsot

Great episode! I respect Antoine, but unfortunately the majority of opinions he expressed are the same things we've already heard from Core devs, many of which don't make logical sense. The idea that an increased use of OP_RETURN for spam purposes won't happen because spammers are already using the witness data is absurd. They are two different things. It is equally as absurd as saying that they will stop using witness data and use OP_RETURN instead, which we know is not the case for things like ordinals because they CAN'T. It is the same as saying "the filters don't work, we need to remove the filters because they encourage spammers to go directly to miners." Also, the idea that no core devs want spam on bitcoin is factually untrue. Lopp has specifically stated that he is "a fan of new technology," ie shitcoinery on bitcoin. He is not concerned for the monetary use case of bitcoin but rather sees the timechain as a developer playground. Lastly, I am deeply, deeply troubled by the apparent defeatist mentality of Core developers that fighting spam is a losing battle. In a tweet from March 8th, Lopp posted this: "OP_RETURN debate is novel due to how factions are split. 1) Ruthlessly rational technical folks who understand the dynamics of the network and don't want to play unending subjective games. 2) Ideological folks upset by how others use the network who want to play those games." Ignoring the arguably inaccurate representation of both sides in that comment, I find it stunning that someone who supposedly gives "insights on security" (per his Twitter bio) thinks that attacks on a network are "unending subjective games" that can simply be opted out of if the developers so choose. Oh how easy information security would be if that were actually the reality, Jameson. Unfortunately in the real world, things like spam and DDoS attacks are very real threats that require constant vigilance to be mitigated. The Core attitude of "we can't stop it, so we might as well gi…