As founding father of the world’s largest bitcoin (BTC) treasury firm, Technique (previously MicroStrategy), many individuals have been hoping Michael Saylor would have taken a place of management on this yr’s civil conflict between Bitcoin Core and Knots node operators.
Sadly, when an viewers member at his Bitcoin Treasuries NYC Unconference yesterday requested him concerning the contentious change to OP_RETURN on the coronary heart of the disagreement, he failed to offer any passable reply.
Paul Sztorc referred to as it a “bulls*** pro-ossification answer” that demonstrated “no actual knowledge of the issues.”
“One of the most word salad statements I have ever heard,” commented one other.
Embroiled in disagreement for practically a yr over Bitcoin Core’s contentious lodging for arbitrary knowledge storage, Knots dissidents have been working software program to protest Core’s change.
Not like Core model 30 (v30), Knots software program will retain a deterrent in opposition to most arbitrary datacarrier use of OP_RETURN, Bitcoin’s major storage technique for random media or laptop information.
Bitcoin Core is the preferred software program for node operators with over 3/4ths estimated dominance on varied trackers.
Knots, not like Core’s enhance to 100,000 bytes with its v30 replace in October, plans to retain OP_RETURN’s datacarrier restrict beneath 90 bytes of their default mempool.
In search of perception from the chief chairman of the world’s largest company treasury of BTC, an viewers member requested him what he thought of Core’s proposed enhance.
Saylor prevented a transparent response.
“I think protocol proposals, however well intentioned, can go horribly wrong,” he stated.
“I feel this debate we see proper now over OP_RETURN limits, that is truly a second-order or perhaps even a third-order change.
“It isn’t altering the quantity of BTC, which in fact is an atomic zero-order change. It’s not altering the block measurement, which is a first-order change. It’s someplace within the second-and-a-half to 3rd order.
“But the reaction of the community, which is to reject it, an inflammatory reaction, I thought was a healthy response. It’s healthy to be skeptical of a third-order change to the protocol, because it might become a second order change. And if it’s a first-order change, it puts everything at risk.”
If I wished to stifle Bitcoin, trigger stagnation, and forestall it from reaching its full potential… I would attempt to persuade of us that its most expert builders are literally a menace.
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) September 18, 2025
Saylor went on to explain the hazard of a really gifted, well-funded, well-intentioned developer making an attempt to do one thing “good” however not “great” for Bitcoin.
He highlighted the chance of unintended penalties or knock-on results from an in any other case healthful try to improve or modernize Bitcoin software program.
Some folks interpreted the response as pro-Knots or pro-ossification. Different folks disagreed that the feedback have been pro-Knots.
General, the response confirmed little or no depth of understanding concerning the technical disagreements between these two software program implementations.
Certainly, Saylor by no means talked about the quantity of information storage at stake, the impact of the change on the associated fee to run a node, the distinction between mempool defaults and base layer consensus, or the a number of years of opposition from the Knots group in opposition to nearly all types of knowledge storage unrelated to the on-chain motion of BTC.
