Supply Shock Bitcoin’s Data Debate: Should the Blockchain Be Permissionless? | Sergio Lerner
May 22, 2025
In this discussion, Sergio Lerner, Bitcoin developer and co-founder of RSK, dives deeply into the pivotal debates surrounding Bitcoin's evolution. He champions a permissionless blockchain and critiques current transaction filtering, citing it as a barrier to innovation. Lerner highlights the potential of the BitVMX protocol to introduce advanced capabilities, and shares insights on real-world financial applications of RSK. The conversation also addresses concerns over mining centralization and the cultural divides within the Bitcoin community, underscoring the need for balance as the ecosystem matures.
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Filtering Limits Bitcoin Innovation
- Filtering Bitcoin transactions by forbidding certain data sizes limits real innovation and financial use cases.
- Arbitrary data like NFTs or smart contract info should be allowed for Bitcoin to remain permissionless and programmable.
Bitcoin Is More Than Payments
- Bitcoin should be open to all financial uses, not limited to traditional payments.
- Filtering out nonpayment data excludes many valuable financial applications and innovations on Bitcoin.
Combat UTXO Growth Efficiently
- Address UTXO set growth with authenticated structures to compress outdated outputs.
- Implementing soft forks for these can keep node operation efficient and the network decentralized.