Bitcoin Archive w Archie Bitcoin’s BIGGEST Vulnerability Just Got EXPOSED — Jameson Lopp on Knots
Nov 14, 2025
In a compelling conversation, Jameson Lopp, a Bitcoin engineer and privacy advocate, reveals what he considers Bitcoin’s most significant vulnerability. He dives deep into the Knots vs Core debate, explaining how the filtering approach of Knots is ineffective and discussing the implications of consensus censorship. Jameson shares insights on miner incentives, the impact of legal risks for node runners, and personal privacy strategies, all while emphasizing the need for self-custody and operational security in an increasingly surveilled world.
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Relay Filters Can’t Stop Determined Spammers
- Relay-level filters (like Knots) are ineffective because transactions can route around them and reach miners directly.
- Censorship via relay policy is asymmetrically weak versus rapid evasive encoding by spammers.
Minority Relays And Miner APIs Defeat Censorship
- A tolerant minority of permissive nodes (and direct miner APIs) makes censorship by most nodes ineffective.
- Direct miner submission and dense relay meshes ensure low-fee or non-standard transactions still propagate.
Filtering Faces An Information-Theory Problem
- Encoding arbitrary data is essentially unlimited, so blocking specific fingerprints becomes a perpetual whack-a-mole.
- Protocol-level censorship would need rapid, automated updates, creating central points of control and failure.
