The "Inscription War" is a Rehash of Old Stories, A Struggle Between Dogmatism and New Hipsters

I. What is Bitcoin Core?

Are the developers of Bitcoin the sole decision-makers?

No, #BTC is not a shitcoin; it’s completely decentralized. The term Bitcoin Core DEV in Chinese has some ambiguity. It doesn’t mean the core developers of Bitcoin, but rather the developers of the Bitcoin Core client software. You can think of them not as the authors of a scripture, but the ones who dust and maintain it.

What is Bitcoin Core?

Bitcoin Core is a software client. In layman’s terms, the Bitcoin network consists of many computer nodes. Many elders humbly say: “I’m not an elder, just a node.” Each computer node needs to install a client, and the most widely used client software is called Bitcoin Core. It’s like you need to drink water daily; water doesn’t belong to anyone, but there’s a brand of mineral water called “Water Core.” Without this brand, you could still drink water, either by choosing another brand or digging a well.

Are there other clients besides Bitcoin Core?

Yes, just like using different browsers for the internet. There have been multiple Bitcoin clients, such as Bitcore Node, Btcd, Bitprim.

Why do most people use the Bitcoin Core client?

Because it was the earliest one written by Satoshi Nakamoto, the original Bitcoin Core DEV.

Do Bitcoin Core developers have a lot of influence?

Not really, Bitcoin Core is just one implementation of the Bitcoin protocol. An implementation of a protocol isn’t limited to a single application, and Bitcoin Core is completely open-source. The software repository is available at https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin Every line of code modified by whom at what time is clear.

We say Bitcoin is truly decentralized, and decentralization has many aspects, including open-source code and transparent rules. Like other open-source projects, Bitcoin Core can be forked.

Who maintains Bitcoin Core now?

“Anyone can freely propose code changes, test, review, and comment on open pull requests. Anyone who contributes code, reviews, tests, translates, or documents to the Bitcoin Core project is considered a contributor. Each version of Bitcoin Core software includes an acknowledgments section to recognize all the people who contributed in the last release cycle. The list of code contributors can be found on Github.” - https://bitcoincore.org/en/about/

The development team behind Bitcoin Core is a loosely organized group of individuals whose composition constantly changes. No individual can control Bitcoin’s development. If the project is maliciously manipulated, and the development direction deviates, software users and miners can choose to install other software or create their own client (open source). So, I often say, “Who do you think you are?” Even if Satoshi Nakamoto came back, he would also say, “Who do you think you are?” This year, Satoshi Nakamoto’s fake Twitter account resurrected but was confirmed by multiple parties as a scam. Let’s assume he is the real person; it doesn’t matter.

Are Bitcoin Core developers wealthy?

As mentioned earlier, some people left because they didn’t have money. They did not live lavishly; they were a bit like Orthodox Judaism in Judaism, Vinaya in Buddhism, studying doctrines, contributing to the ecosystem, rigid and restrained. Over the years, the operation of Bitcoin Core has mainly relied on donations.

Here, we need to mention Bitcoin maximalists, which can be translated into Chinese as Bitcoin minimalism or Bitcoin extremism. The core belief of Bitcoin maxis is that there should only be one cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies are scams, crap. Luke seems to be a very typical Bitcoin maxi.

II. Struggle Between Dogmatism and New Hippy Spirit

What are the views of Bitcoin minimalists?

In fact, there is no explicit statement that can unify the views of minimalists. This term has been around for a long time, and its real popularity originated from Vitalik’s criticism of Bitcoin minimalists in 2014. Of course, a few months later in 2015, Ethereum was launched, which is another story.

A brief summary of minimalist views, which the Chinese community is familiar with: All chains return to the origin. Summing up its characteristics, there are three points: leaderless, fair supply distribution, monetary ethics, and protection of individual sovereignty.

Are the views within the Bitcoin community consistent?

We must admit the elegance of Bitcoin. From a personal perspective, I also agree with the views of Bitcoin minimalists: Most cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin are essentially manipulated scams since their inception.

However, the views within Bitcoin are never consistent, making it challenging to judge whether a Bitcoiner’s viewpoint is logical, emotional, scientific, or dogmatic.

For example, laser eyes, cryptocurrency moralization, Bitcoin elite, populism, etc.

Some Bitcoin users choose to follow orthodox views based on the white paper. However, like any religious organization developed based on text, it can be interpreted in various ways, with obvious flaws (such as Sunni and Shia in Islam, each with its own view of the Quran).

Some Bitcoiners intrude into others’ lives, punishing them from a moral high ground, and even issuing death threats to each other.

Some Bitcoiners quit because they are tired, silently holding or maintaining Bitcoin.

But internal debates within the community have never stopped. The mainstream Bitcoin culture is born out of such arguments, degenerating from expressing ideas to rehashing old stories.

Old enemies are replaced by new enemies more in line with the trend of the times (refer to the BRC20 community’s attack on the minimalist LUCK), and Bitcoiners have always maintained the tradition of “Bitcoin players against the world.” However, this has also led many newcomers to excessively defend their beliefs.

In fact, most people’s heads have short-circuited. People don’t have time to digest memes, narratives, new words, and the dry white papers and token economic models of numerous encryption protocols and scythe projects in the vast information flow.

The current debate within is actually a struggle between dogmatism and the new hippy spirit. Of course, this kind of struggle is also a turning point, but no matter how it goes, in front of fair Bitcoin, it will be benign. Just like the scalability war many years ago, at least we won’t roll back (many later Ethereum people don’t even know that Ethereum rolled back in the DAO incident back then).

Since we all know that ordinals can increase miner fees and create a suction effect on other chains, why do Bitcoin extremists like Luke oppose it so vehemently?

A shallow speculation is that they haven’t been in the car. This speculation is likely to be significant but not necessarily valid.

On the OG gathering place, the Bitcoin forum, the debate on ordinal theory began as early as January 31 this year. It ranged from Bitcoin not needing spam to resurrecting the sidechain white paper from ten years ago, from engraving human values on Bitcoin forever to making my chain fat and congested, from fees being too high for small payments to Bitcoin being used as the final settlement with high fees. In the latest debate, some people also raised this old point: “BTC transactions are final settlements and should not be compared to ordinary credit card or PayPal payments because they are not final. Because if you want to send money from the United States to Tanzania, the final settlement between your bank and the other party’s bank, and the dozens involved, may take several days or even weeks, and it’s not cheap.”

This view essentially implies: We use Bitcoin for large settlements, and for small amounts, we already have USDT. I don’t care about fees when transferring ten million dollars with Bitcoin; I even think they are reasonable, although they beat the legacy system in this regard. However, now, more and more people are optimistic about the increasing fees. Some institutions and even banks are settling transactions using BTC. We should not discuss those data storage issues that are of no discussion value to those youngsters. In terms of views, both Luck and the lovers of ordinals are not wrong; we are just having an internal dispute. Luck says ordinals are garbage, a bug, but minimalists think that Ethereum, SOL, and the like are garbage.

You see, Bitcoin is more fair.

III. Will this lead to a Bitcoin fork?

Forks can be either hard forks or soft forks. A soft fork is compatible with both new and old blocks, while a hard fork results in two separate chains.

It’s almost 2024, and forks are no longer fresh.

In June 2016, Ethereum forked into Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) due to The DAO incident.

In August 2017, to address Bitcoin transaction congestion, high fees, and other issues, Bitcoin Core proposed the “Segregated Witness + Lightning Network” scaling solution. However, another faction believed in on-chain scaling directly, supporting larger blocks (increasing block size to 8M). At block 478558, Bitcoin split into BTC and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

There are supporters of forks because each fork is good news for investors; they not only retain their original digital assets but also receive a considerable amount of forked coins.

There are opponents to forks because frequent forks can lead to a collapse of faith.

I think this is also why Luck proposed a client-size restriction solution instead of directly forking. People who can maintain and develop Bitcoin Core tend to be genuinely pure. If it’s for making money for oneself, they can simply propose a fork solution.

What will be the result of this war?

The struggle of ideas, beliefs, and interests is more brutal than the struggle of positions. There are many positions, and the water is very muddy (muddy water can catch fish).

Although I, as a Bitcoin centrist and minimalist, do not hope that this incident will ultimately destroy the purity of Bitcoin, I have to admit that this resembles the scalability war of the past. Strictly speaking, Bitcoin’s faith has never forked, and Bitcoin has no god and no monopoly. Although there has always been arguing and debate, this is the precious aspect of Bitcoin as decentralized Crypto-anarchism in this absurd world. The result, no matter who says it, doesn’t count. Everyone says it, and it counts.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far. I hope my narrative gives you a bit more understanding of real crypto-anarchism and Bitcoin. It represents my shallow understanding. If you don’t like it, please don’t criticize. I won’t write again if you criticize me in the future.

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