Does Michael Saylor even understand Bitcoin Core vs. Knots?

As founder of the world’s largest bitcoin (BTC) treasury company, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), many people were hoping Michael Saylor would have taken a position of leadership in this year’s civil war between Bitcoin Core and Knots node operators.

Unfortunately, when an audience member at his Bitcoin Treasuries NYC Unconference yesterday asked him about the contentious change to OP_RETURN at the heart of the disagreement, he failed to provide any satisfactory answer.

Paul Sztorc called 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 another.

Embroiled in disagreement for nearly a year over Bitcoin Core’s contentious accommodation for arbitrary data storage, Knots dissidents have been running software to protest Core’s change.

Unlike Core version 30 (v30), Knots software will retain a deterrent against most arbitrary datacarrier use of OP_RETURN, Bitcoin’s primary storage method for random media or computer files.

Bitcoin Core is the most popular software for node operators with over 3/4ths estimated dominance on various trackers.

Knots, unlike Core’s increase to 100,000 bytes with its v30 update in October, plans to retain OP_RETURN’s datacarrier limit below 90 bytes in their default mempool.

Read more: Bitcoin Core devs schedule OP_RETURN change for October

Seeking insight from the executive chairman of the world’s largest corporate treasury of BTC, an audience member asked him what he thought about Core’s proposed increase.

Michael Saylor comments on the OP_RETURN debate

Saylor avoided a clear response.

“I think protocol proposals, however well intentioned, can go horribly wrong,” he said.

“I think this debate we see right now over OP_RETURN limits, this is actually a second-order or maybe even a third-order change.

“It is not changing the amount of BTC, which of course is an atomic zero-order change. It’s not changing the block size, which is a first-order change. It’s somewhere in the second-and-a-half to third 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.”

Saylor went on to describe the danger of a very talented, well-funded, well-intentioned developer trying to do something “good” but not “great” for Bitcoin.

He highlighted the risk of unintended consequences or knock-on effects from an otherwise wholesome attempt to upgrade or modernize Bitcoin software.

Some people interpreted the response as pro-Knots or pro-ossification. Other people disagreed that the comments were pro-Knots.

Overall, the response showed very little depth of understanding about the technical disagreements between these two software implementations.

Indeed, Saylor never mentioned the amount of data storage at stake, the effect of the change on the cost to run a node, the difference between mempool defaults and base layer consensus, or the multiple years of opposition from the Knots community against almost all forms of data storage unrelated to the on-chain movement of BTC.