Bitcoin Core Dev Discusses ‘Firing’ All Miners With PoW Algo Change: Feisty Exchanges Mark Growing Divide

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Over the last ten years, Luke Dashjr has emerged as a key player in the realm of Bitcoin development and the network’s open-source software. His opposition to specific trends within the Bitcoin ecosystem has gained more attention lately. He has labeled Ordinal inscriptions and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin platform as detrimental to the protocol and akin to spam, which he believes has been curtailed since 2014. Just this week, he suggested that Antpool might be employing “covert” ASIC Boost techniques. Subsequently, he informed individuals that the Bitcoin community has the power to fire all miners “by changing to a different PoW algorithm.”

Luke Dashjr Talks Ousting Miners and Covert ASIC Boost Use

In recent weeks, Luke Dashjr, a prominent Bitcoin Core contributor and the brain behind Bitcoin Knots, has been particularly vocal. He re-entered the spotlight when his operated pool, Ocean Mining pool, confirmed it was filtering specific transactions, including Ordinal inscriptions, BRC20 tokens, and coinjoin-related transfers. On Dec. 17, in a conversation about simply using a .sats domain on an X profile among Ordinals enthusiasts, Dashjr remarked, “Hopefully enough of you scammers will be in jail by ’26 so we never have to worry about you again.”

An individual, surprised by Dashjr’s comment, asked him, “Wow. Okay. I have never talked to you before nor done you any harm. What’s your problem?” To this, Dashjr bluntly responded, “Scamming in the name of Bitcoin literally harms everyone on the planet.” In a separate dialogue on Sunday, Dashjr engaged with Adam Back, after Back asserted that stopping Ordinals was futile, as “you can’t stop JPEGs on bitcoin.” Dashjr elaborated on his stance in Back’s X thread with others.

Discussing this with an X user named Bobby.sats, Dashjr explained, “It’s inevitable that bad actors will bribe miners to attack Bitcoin. If they actively do so, it becomes time to fire the miners. But step 1 is to fix the bug so they can do the right thing.” When Bobby inquired how one could ‘fire a miner,’ Dashjr clarified:

​​You can’t fire a single miner, but if a majority are attacking, the community can fire them all together by changing to a different PoW algorithm, making their mining hardware all useless.

Dashjr also ventured a theory on X (formerly known as Twitter) regarding the mining operation Antpool. “My theory on Antpool’s abnormally-high rate of empty blocks,” Dashjr theorized, “These blocks are probably found using some old ASICs which only supported covert [ASIC Boost] (ie, not overt which is common today). Covert [ASIC Boost] is incompatible with Segwit. This was a major reason Bitmain tried to prevent Segwit in 2017. Bitcoin Core and Knots 0.18, however, removed support for creating non-Segwit block templates in 2019. So the only way to do so post-Taproot, is to make an entirely empty block.”

He added a disclaimer to his post, noting, “This is only one possibility, not a confirmed fact,” and encouraged people to contemplate such scenarios.

Dashjr’s comments have attracted mockery on X, with Taproot Wizard founder Udi Wertheimer sharing screenshots of his statements. “Cat-eater [Luke Dashjr] actually believes that if bitcoin miners don’t censor inscriptions for him, he’ll just change the proof of work algorithm and put them out of his business … he’s deranged,” Wertheimer commented. Wertheimer also criticized software developer Peter Todd for discussing Rune assets’ alleged fraudulent use of other coin names and suggesting the Rune protocol is “_designed_ for fraud.”

Wertheimer contrasted this with Blockstream’s ‘Liquid’, noting, “This ‘Bitcoin Core dev’ is crying because Runes — a protocol ONLY AVAILABLE ON TESTNET — has some TEST ASSETS on it with NAMES he dislikes. Blockstream’s ‘Liquid’ — which he shills daily — has many assets on MAINNET. I found 3 named ‘USDT,’ 10 named ‘BTC,’ and 7 named ‘Binance.’”

​​The debate over Ordinals on Bitcoin has intensified in the past two months, igniting a spectrum of opinions among community members. Some participants, displaying heightened fervor, vehemently oppose these developments, while others advocate for them, underlining the growing divide. As discussions continue, some participants are getting feistier with their comments, highlighting the stark contrast in opinions.

What do you think about the statements Dashjr made about firing miners? What do you think about the feisty comments on social media about Ordinal inscriptions in recent times? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.