🧵0/12 Intro: Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” warns that central planning distorts subjective values, leading to authoritarianism. In Bitcoin’s mempool debate, this parallels Core’s push for permissive defaults (e.g., expanding OP_RETURN to 100kB) while limiting user configs—essentially centralizing policy. Knots advocates counter with individual mempool sovereignty: Let nodes express personal values, aggregating into organic consensus for resilient, evolving decentralization. Freedom vs. control—let’s dive in. #Bitcoin #Hayek #Mempool
🧵1/12 Echoing Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”: Central planning fails because values aren’t a universal checklist—they’re subjective, locked in individual minds. No central authority can juggle the infinite complexities of society without distortion. Enter tyranny disguised as “progress.” #Hayek
2/12 Hayek’s mic drop: Planners pretend they can prioritize everyone’s needs into one tidy hierarchy. But values are personal chaos—your priority is my afterthought. Free markets let prices emerge from this mess. Impose top-down order? You stomp freedom, spark backlash, and slide into serfdom.
3/12 Now, Bitcoin’s mempool showdown: The mempool is your node’s tx waiting lounge, where fees compete for blockspace. Drama peaks with Ordinals/inscriptions spiking fees as “spam.” Bitcoin Core v30 removes old filters, balloons OP_RETURN from ~80 bytes to 100k+, and eyes axing individual node config options. Hayek vibes intensifying. 🚨
4/12 Core’s move: Shift network defaults to permissive, allowing massive data dumps. But here’s the twist—they’re also limiting personal choice by planning to strip away users’ ability to set custom mempool policies. It’s “neutrality” that forces conformity. Sounds like central planning, eh?
5/12 Enter Bitcoin Knots advocates: They champion individual sovereignty. Run Knots, tweak your mempool policy to reflect your values—filter spam, prioritize monetary txs, whatever. Your node, your rules. This is freedom of expression in code: Relay what aligns with you, ignore the noise.
6/12 Why individual mempools = freedom-preserving decentralization: Consensus emerges as the aggregate of all nodes’ policies. Network propagation strengthens for tx types the majority values organically. No dictator needed—evolution via participant selection. Usecases live or die by real demand, not decrees.
7/12 Central mempool planning (à la Core’s defaults + no configs)? That’s censorship wrapped in “efficiency.” Who defines “valid” beyond fees? Today, relax OP_RETURN for data blobs; tomorrow, throttle privacy tools or L2s? Authoritarian control creeps in, eroding Bitcoin’s uncensorable core. Hayek’s serfdom road, blockchain edition.
8/12 Arguments FOR individual sovereignty (Knots-style):
• Adaptive resilience: Nodes vote with policies; spam surges? Fees + filters self-correct without hard forks.
• True innovation: Organic selection rewards useful usecases (e.g., DeFi over junk data).
• Decentralization max: Empowers small nodes—keep costs low by filtering bloat.
• Hayek alignment: Disperses subjective values across the network, avoiding central failure.
9/12 More PROS: Natural evolution—tx types gain traction based on aggregate node support, not dev whims. Preserves Bitcoin as money first, data second. Users express values directly, fostering a robust, freedom-centric system.
10/12 Counter-arguments AGAINST (and rebuttals):
• “Removing limits enables innovation; filters are censorship!” Rebut: True censorship is forcing defaults without config options. Knots enables choice; Core restricts it. Fees still govern—filters just amplify user voice.
• “Neutrality means relay everything valid!” Rebut: Consensus allows it, but policy is local for a reason. Forcing permissiveness centralizes power in defaults, inviting bloat and higher node costs. Hayek: Neutrality without choice = planned chaos.
• “Knots is single-maintainer risk!” Rebut: Better than Core’s groupthink. Community can fork/contribute; it’s open-source. Risk is mitigated by alignment with conservative values—proven over years.
• “Data will happen anyway!” Rebut: Yes, but easy relay accelerates it. Keep barriers; let market truly decide via effort/cost. Don’t subsidize spam by default.
11/12 In a freedom-preserving decentralized system, mempool sovereignty mirrors Hayek’s market: Emergent order from individual choices trumps top-down tweaks. Core’s path invites serfdom—bloat, centralization, regulatory hooks. Knots? Liberty’s lifeline. Run a node, choose your policy.
12/12 TL;DR: Own your mempool, defend your freedom. Knots aggregates individual values into evolutionary consensus. Core’s “progress” = authoritarian defaults. Hayek would run Knots and HODL. Your move? #Bitcoin #Mempool #Knots #Hayek NOSTR/X crosspost. 🔑🚀
This OP_RETURN debate is taking a toll. The participants of the network are taking sides. Even legends that survived the Blocksize war are finding themselves on opposing sides.
This is the network deciding what it will become. What you think matters. What you do matters. If you do t understand the issue, learn about it. Don’t be fooled about personalities and ad hominem attacks. Dig deep and decide what the vision of Bitcoin is for you.
Is Bitcoin freedom tech and the most important defense for individual liberty and sovereignty? Do you believe Bitcoin is money? Is that enough?
Or is Bitcoin just really cool tech, the first decentralized, censorship resistant network meant for general purpose storage? It openly supporting the storage of arbitrary data (including illegal data) how we want to use freedom tech?
The fate of Bitcoin rests with us. We decide. Do we preserve what works, or expand unnecessarily?
Self custody isn’t just a choice. It’s *freedom*.
Every satoshi you control outside of exchanges, wallets you own and keys you guard — that’s sovereignty. No middleman, no blackout risk, no third party that can freeze or confiscate your wealth.
Bitcoin’s power flows from *you* holding your private keys. Don’t let someone else hold your life’s savings.
The question isn’t “Why self custody?” — it’s “Why NOT?”
Get your corn off exchanges
#BeYourOwnBank #Bitcoin #SelfCustody #NoTrust #Sovereignty
There was a proposal in *BIP 300, 301” I think on sidechains. This would allow for experiments, sub economies and data systems. They could use OP_RETURN to anchor to the time chain. The Bitcoin miners would secure the sidechains and benefit from Bitcoin use on those connected chains. Each sidechain is its own system that is decoupled from mainnet. Those sidechains could run these other usecases thereby isolating and protecting Bitcoin from technical and legal risk. The sidechains architecture really seems to be a good approach ‬