Bitcoin Knots Developer Eyes Hard Fork To ‘Save Bitcoin’

 Bitcoin Knots maintainer Luke Dashjr proposes a Bitcoin hard fork to resolve the issue of illicit data, a proposal that has elicited a bitter debate and concerns over censorship.

Luke Dashjr, the most prolific developer of Bitcoin Knots, has created extreme controversy with leaked messages showing him considering a Bitcoin hard fork. 

The proposed hard fork will help to resolve the fears of illicit content, namely Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), potentially stored in Bitcoin nodes after recent network upgrades.

Bitcoin Knots is another implementation of a Bitcoin node, run by Dashjr, that attempts to exclude non-monetary spam data from its mempool. The current conflict with the proponents of the Bitcoin Core group deepened recently when the latter Core client was ready to raise the size limit of specific data transactions. 

The team of Dashjr argues that non-money transactions are harmful to the network and refers to them as spam, and demands intensive efforts to filter transactions.

The private messages of Dashjr, published by an independent source, The Rage, show that his position has dramatically escalated. 

Source: The Rage 

He now suggests a multisignature (multisig) quorum, a trusted committee that is authorized to retrospectively change blockchain records that are determined to be illicit. 

This committee would substitute offensive data with cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs, allowing node operators to delete malicious data without breaking transaction validity. 

Dashjr acknowledges the seriousness of the proposal by writing that the option, ultimately, is to either kill Bitcoin or we must trust to believe someone, conceding that consensus changes would be necessary to trigger a hard fork.

Risks to Bitcoin’s Permissionless Nature Raise Alarm

This practice, however, sets alarm on the minds of most Bitcoin advocates. This idea of a trusted committee modifying data in blockchains retroactively is a fundamental failure of Bitcoin as a censorship-resistant system. 

In case node operators comply with such changes, they may find themselves in criminal liability in case they fail to remove data that may be considered by the committee to be illicit.

Critics caution that such precedent may allow the expansion of censorship pressure, such as implementing Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations, as a perversion of the decentralized and permissionless ethos of Bitcoin. 

The authority of the committee to delete data may not be limited to illicit data, but may also block transactional data considered unfavorable.

The proposal of Dashjr has caused intense discussion in the community of Bitcoin users, including miners, policy makers, and node operators. 

The plan lays the groundwork for deeper considerations of control, trust, and decentralization of the future of Bitcoin, as it seeks stronger protections for node operators.

Luke Dashjr has officially rejected certain assertions concerning the hard fork, calling them utterly groundless lies. 

Nevertheless, this does not invalidate the fact that there is published evidence by several sources that the released messages about his concept of a hard fork are legitimate. 

The mining pool established by Dashjr, OCEAN, is also said to have counseled that they should not be associated with letters in support of censorship attempts in publicity. associated with letters in support of censorship attempts in publicity.