Oddbean

Here is my understanding of the ongoing controversies around the @OCEAN saga. I think there is a lot of generalizations and misunderstandings happening. I'll ELI5 the situation as I understand it. Please correct me if any of my facts are wrong. My opinions are my own, dont correct those. I can amend those myself. Ocean is not specifically targeting coinjoins. It is only samurai implementation that is being affected (and I believe unintentionally). I believe ocean is intentionally targeting inscriptions, yes. To be clear, I do not agree with what they are doing but I also do not believe they are out of bounds. Miners are free to set parameters on their node. This is not controversial. Ocean is setting the upper threshold for data size to a lower parameter than what is the current norm in order to bulk filter out inscriptions. As a side note, it's my opinion that suppressing oceans right to set parameters and filter out the blocks they feel to be spam is an act of centralization in trying to force Ocean to follow the current status quo. Ocean is well within their rights to construct block templates however they see fit. Their ability to mine that template is the checks and balances that decentralization offers. The unintended result is also filtering out samurai coinjoin transactions. To be clear, other coinjoins are still fine. And finally, exactly zero blocks have been mined by Ocean since knots was implemented. So their impact has been exactly zero. If you don't like what they are doing, you're free to point your hashrate elsewhere. Ocean is free to construct their block templates however they wish. That is their right as a miner. It will be to no avail if they dont have hashrate behind them. Just like on nostr you're free to mute spammers, Ocean is free to set their parameters to exclude what they feel to be spam on the blockchain. If you disagree, simply move your hash and everything they are doing is moot. It's that easy. THE SYSTEM IS WORKING EXACTLY AS INTENDED

Their method of filtering is to set a lower threshold than the current industry norm. The parameter they are setting is a valid parameter that all miners can choose. With that line of thinking, all miners are technically filtering. Ocean is simply filtering with a finer mesh filter than the rest.

I'm boosting discussion and observations like this, not as "championing" one side or the other, but simply in an effort to understand all the issues involved. My sense thus far is that the empty shout-downs I'm hearing are obscurantist noise. The comment below is signal, and I'm happy to boost signal on this topic from any viewpoint. 😆 nostr:nevent1qqs9uf3f2stqzp0xe494luw07uqwvuuk9edzhps4n2hqwysxts4x25gppamhxue69uhk2tnwdaejumr0dspzpr38l76unwuvm5qnrt0xa7jf64k5qx65ynvlm7dx8cr565nmqu2uqvzqqqqqqy29z2q3

I think that would all be easier to swallow if this wasn’t a clear effort to actually change all of bitcoin. Luke has a PR in for bitcoin core to apply the same logic. As such, ocean is effectively a large (subsidized) PR campaign to literally change the code. This is effectively a roundabout way to initiate a softfork, which hopefully will not be taken seriously unless the broader community shows support for the code in knots.

This is an interesting angle that ive not heard before. My initial reaction is that the strategy may work against him. It seems most people, while actively hating on ordinals, are also against the filtering of those transactions (or at the very least, their method of inplementation). Luke and anyone else is always welcome to submit a PR to change the code. Whether it is accepted or not is a matter of consensus. If, as you claim, he is leveraging ocean as a sort of diving board (see what I did there 😉) to enact change to bitcoin, I think that's also within his rights. But I also think it is backfiring as general public perception seems to be against him.