Open letter to Bitcoin Core: ‘Bitcoin is and must remain censorship resistant’

“Dear Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin is and indispensable stay censorship resistant.” That’s the promise, the battle, and the enactment successful the soil drawn this week arsenic Leonidas, the big of The Ordinal Show, weighs in connected the raging Spam Wars, informing Bitcoin Core:

“Any superior effort by Bitcoin Core to tighten argumentation rules oregon censor Ordinals and Runes transactions volition beryllium met with decisive action.”

Bitcoin Core: transaction censorship is simply a ‘dangerous precedent’

Leonidas argues that the Bitcoin web was designed to beryllium neutral, permissionless, and unfastened to anyone consenting to wage competitory fees. To censor JPEGs, memecoins, oregon immoderate on-chain experimentation nether the guise of ‘spam’ is to undermine what sets Bitcoin apart: absorption to censorship astatine the basal layer. He warns:

“There is nary meaningful quality betwixt normalizing the censorship of JPEG oregon memecoin transactions and normalizing the censorship of definite monetary transactions by nation-states. Both would acceptable precise unsafe precedents.”

For anyone pursuing the 2025 Spam Wars, the Core versus Knots statement is everywhere, and node operators person begun voting with their feet, flocking to Knots for its assertive anti-spam features.

Knots’ stock has ballooned from 69 nodes astatine the commencement of 2024 to implicit 4,200 successful September 2025, present representing implicit 18% of the reachable network, a melodramatic amusement of protestation against Core’s upcoming v30 release.

At involvement is much than OP_RETURN information limits here. It’s a conflict implicit Bitcoin’s soul: Should the protocol stay a strictly monetary colony layer, oregon tin it germinate to enactment innovative on-chain uses, arsenic agelong arsenic transaction fees are paid?

The Ordinals and Runes perspective

The Ordinals and Runes ecosystem, according to Leonidas, has driven implicit fractional a cardinal successful fees, supporting miners and security, portion “using Bitcoin arsenic wealth each day” extracurricular of bequest narratives. They’re fed up pf being “gaslit” by Knots proponents.

Miners aren’t sitting out, either, helium says. Many mining pools commanding implicit fractional of Bitcoin’s hash complaint person privately expressed willingness to judge immoderate consensus-valid transaction truthful agelong arsenic information and implementation are sound. That’s not neutrality successful sanction only; it’s however protocol resilience is achieved connected the ground.

‘Standing with the Degens’: the Shinobi angle

Few comments captured the temper quite like Bitcoin Core’s Shinobi’s:

“As retarded arsenic I deliberation each the sh*t they bash is, I basal with the Degens. I volition not enactment oregon standby portion a clump of moralizing puritanical clowns effort to undermine the precise happening Bitcoin exists to be: a censorship resistant system.”

It’s raw, it’s frustrated, and it echoes a broader sentiment among those who deliberation otherwise from Knots: absorption to immoderate transaction censorship is non-negotiable, whether the menace is JPEGs, memecoins, oregon nation-state monetary disputes.

Tensions proceed to boil implicit connected X and Nostr, with miners, node operators, and developers locked successful heated debates astir about each method item from OP_RETURN caps to what constitutes “spam.”

Knots’ meteoric node stock maturation has made fragmentation and concatenation splits much than theoretical. As Bitcoin Core developer Peter Tood commented:

“This has gotten truthful retired of manus that the Knots assemblage are becoming a superior hazard to Bitcoin.”

If adoption continues, Knots could scope 23% of the web by October, rerpreseting a tipping constituent for consensus. The connection from Leonidas and galore different degens this week is clear:

“We volition not beryllium idly by portion transaction censorship is normalized connected Bitcoin. We volition support the principles that person ever acceptable Bitcoin apart, specified arsenic unfastened access, censorship resistance, and neutrality astatine the basal layer”.

To the gatekeepers astatine Bitcoin Core: Bitcoin is and indispensable stay censorship resistant. Anything little would betray the precise happening the world’s archetypal integer currency was built to oppose.

The station Open missive to Bitcoin Core: ‘Bitcoin is and indispensable stay censorship resistant’ appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.