Mike Schmidt

Funding Bitcoin node security, testing, and maintenance @bitcoinbrink
Blocking and tackling at @bitcoinoptech

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@lukedewolf @coinjoined @AdamSimecka Yes. Remarkably, the person recording the OP video saying "We are better than this." "Why are we doing this to each other?" also said all of these things and more.

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@SimplestBTCBook @Excellion @adam3us @hodlonaut @bitcoinoptech Independent members on the board and grant committee

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

In 2018, there were just 3 organizations funding Bitcoin Core development.

Today Bitcoin Core development is spread over a dozen organizations.

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@PeterRizun @lopp https://t.co/o508Q5rT9k

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@Excellion @adam3us @SimplestBTCBook @hodlonaut @bitcoinoptech Bitcoin is big enough now, more last-mile transmission would probably be help

[Lyn Alden @LynAldenContact]

Hard to say.

For this fork, I’d have to agree that something is indeed killing me by a thousand cuts, rather than just a background nuisance held in check by the block size limit and fee market. Defining the scale of the problem, in other words.

Second I’d have to see what methods of fighting back actually work without breaking much, and weigh those methods relative to my perception of the threat (existential or nuisance or somewhere in between). Can it solve the problem or just move it somewhere else? I’d make sure I’m not putting effort into something that is more performative than functional. And what commitment am I getting into? Can one fork mostly solve the issue, or am I starting a never-ending whack-a-mole process against the problem, while the problem evolves around my attempts, and each attempt comes with potential technical trade-offs such as potentially affecting the prospects of LN Symmetry (a monetary improvement) and so forth? And *precisely* how small do I want to make the spam bucket that doesn’t contribute much to UTXO bloat (op return) while preserving the other spam methods that do? Who knows- the burden of evidence and specifics are on the proponents.

Third I’d make sure not to damage the movement with sensationalist marketing. Self-appointed main characters don’t last long in the bitcoin space. “Pass my fork or Bitcoin dies” is unlikely to win, and may set back the movement. The sensationalist marketing and scale of infighting is what led a podcast host to ask me about it, for me to answer, for others to respond to me, and for me to respond to them with a more public position against this specific fork at this specific time. I’d have otherwise remained publicly indifferent at this time (since it’s a young fork and doesn’t mitigate a whole lot). Wasn’t it @giacomozucco who said that the knots movement was growing until this fork killed it, (his words, not mine)? Something like that. You know how many forks are looking to solve problems in bitcoin and have been seeking consensus for years? Welcome to the party.

Fourth, I’d weigh it against other development considerations in terms of time-resources spent. How does this compare to making Lightning better via LN Symmetry? How does this compare to preventing some potentially serious exploits via Consensus Cleanup? Etc.

Fifth I’d weigh it against other threats. How about governments trying to ID-verify everything at the operating system level? The attack on net privacy is about 100x a bigger concern to me than this. It’s a gift for them to have half the bitcoin space fighting over a contentious fork that just mildly rearranges the buckets for where spam goes (and for which some aspects I might even be in favor of) rather than defending against all the ways that Bitcoin’s privacy and usability can and is being attacked. I want to see a flourishing ecosystem of coinjoins, smooth lightning UX, Chaumian ecash, Ark, and whatever else people can build to improvement payments and route around censorship and ubiquitous surveillance.

Best thing an enemy can do is get you to focus on paper cuts while they’re swinging their machete.

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@BITCOINALLCAPS @hodlonaut Just us 3

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@mattkratter https://t.co/HQuR9W7Yxu

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@hodlonaut In case anyone is genuinely curious

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@SimplestBTCBook @hodlonaut https://t.co/koega870YS

https://t.co/HQuR9W7Yxu

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@hodlonaut In case anyone is genuinely curious

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@hodlonaut In case anyone is genuinely curious

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@BITCOINALLCAPS @hodlonaut https://t.co/koega870YS

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@adam3us 🥖

[Murch @murchandamus]

I for one am working on a system to facilitate the native currency of the internet, Bitcoin. I don’t subscribe to Ordinals, Inscriptions, or Runes meaningfully contributing to that vision, but also find concerns overstated.
Mining centralization pressures have more weight:

[Bitcoin Optech @bitcoinoptech]

Bitcoin Optech newsletter #414 is here:

- describes a new project to apply formal verification to the Bitcoin protocol
- Bitcoin Core 30.3, Bitcoin Core 29.4
- Optech Newsletter #414 Podcast
https://t.co/YnvX0qcuqG

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

This thread is pretty representative of the poor discourse about Bitcoin development on X.

“ship rad stuff”, “ship value”
instagibbs was instrumental in shipping ephemeral anchors, TRUC, package relay, and other work that improved Lightning, to the celebration of Lightning node maintainers, Ark implementors, and users. Then wrote a guide to explain it all: https://t.co/parprBVn3m

instagibbs helped ship Cluster mempool to improve the mempool, fee bumping and other improvements

instagibbs has been working on eltoo/LN-Symmetry, a substantial improvement/overhaul of Lightning for Bitcoin payments

instagibbs is also working on covenants proposals specifically scoped to improve Bitcoin payment use case improvements for layer 2s like Lightning and Ark, as well as vault features. In addition to authoring these proposals, he is also working on tooling and a variety of proof of concepts.

“Hold yourself to some level of standards. 8.5B people are counting on *us* to not drop the ball.”

instagibbs has reviewed and provided many 1000s of comments in the last 11 years to help ensure balls are not dropped. You’re welcome to look at GitHub for the quality of these reviews.

instagibbs’ work also helped mitigate pinning attacks on the Lightning Network. There are many other examples of hardening Bitcoin software, check the repo or ask your favorite LLM.

Yet you claim he has “completely torpedoed quality work”, and should “be sent on your way”. Because you disagree with the rationale for a default mempool policy setting value change? Send away the guy spending 11 years on Bitcoin and some of the most impactful Bitcoin-as-payments work out there.

Michael, ARE YOU OK?

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@cbspears @MichaelDunwort1 @theinstagibbs @sendwyre I see a 503 error for that website, do they block VPNs?

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

This thread is pretty representative of the poor discourse about Bitcoin development on X.

“ship rad stuff”, “ship value”
instagibbs was instrumental in shipping ephemeral anchors, TRUC, package relay, and other work that improved Lightning, to the celebration of Lightning node maintainers, Ark implementors, and users. Then wrote a guide to explain it all: https://t.co/parprBVn3m

instagibbs helped ship Cluster mempool to improve the mempool, fee bumping and other improvements

instagibbs has been working on eltoo/LN-Symmetry, a substantial improvement/overhaul of Lightning for Bitcoin payments

instagibbs is also working on covenants proposals specifically scoped to improve Bitcoin payment use case improvements for layer 2s like Lightning and Ark, as well as vault features. In addition to authoring these proposals, he is also working on tooling and a variety of proof of concepts.

“Hold yourself to some level of standards. 8.5B people are counting on *us* to not drop the ball.”

instagibbs has reviewed and provided many 1000s of comments in the last 11 years to help ensure balls are not dropped. You’re welcome to look at GitHub for the quality of these reviews.

instagibbs’ work also helped mitigate pinning attacks on the Lightning Network. There are many other examples of hardening Bitcoin software, check the repo or ask your favorite LLM.

Yet you claim he has “completely torpedoed quality work”, and should “be sent on your way”. Because you disagree with the rationale for a default mempool policy setting value change? Send away the guy spending 11 years on Bitcoin and some of the most impactful Bitcoin-as-payments work out there.

Michael, ARE YOU OK?

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@lukedewolf Regarding node software, see which of these projects you think are improvements or not:

https://t.co/jIamInifL8

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

The good news: there are a million other ways to improve Bitcoin as money.

[Mike Schmidt @bitschmidty]

@Excellion @hodlonaut @adam3us I’m really curious as to what is meant by captured as well. Namely:

Who specifically in Bitcoin Core is captured?
By whom exactly?
By what mechanism?
For what purpose?

Preferably with evidence.

Perhaps that will come out in the 4th/final article.

[Adam Back @adam3us]

@lopp so basically while anti-spam crusaders were crying about the nearly non-existent JPEGS, the bitcoin project optimized IBD 30-40%🤣

ignore the whiners, improve something.