That is most likely the case but I’m not enthused about getting into a bare knuckle brawl for just a temporary change. Removing the unused witness stuff from the soft fork scope is strategically useful as it removes a piece of FUD from our adversaries and puts Core in an awkward position vis a vis policy if and when scammers start using that for their spam.

One is Coinkite. I don’t want to name the other one because it’s a one-guy shop through which he sells merch to fund non profit work.

@Bitcoin Mechanic, to expand on my last comment: the need for it to be temporary seems solely tied to the desire to disable unused segwit versions. I think there is a good case for not doing that. Specifically, policy already filters these transactions. If, as @Dathon Ohm is anticipating, spammers start using unused segwit versions, a successful soft fork would force Core’s hand and make them adopt the traditional stance on filters, if only to protect upgrade hooks. What are your thoughts on this?

I don’t believe the psychopaths that presume to rule us have good intentions.

“The purpose of a system is what it does.”

— Stafford Beer

It will hurt my bags but I can’t help but be glad that noderunners will not be passive and hand the decision over to miners.

Shameful behaviour.

Life is good but Tor is not doing so well these days, at least for me. I’m also surprised that two websites I used recently to buy Bitcoin-related products do not work with Tor.

Jan 6 was an op. Once you internalize this, your bafflement will cease.

Right but that pertains only to undefined witness versions. If you limit the BIP to OP_IF, OP_RETURN and output sizes in current witness versions, there would be no risk of HF or ossification. I understand that cutting off the current avenues for spam would incentivize use of undefined witness versions. But these are restricted by policy in both Core and Knots. If scammers migrate to v2+ we can force Core to take a stronger stand on policy, since they do really want to protect the upgrade hooks currently afforded by it.

Unfortunately, the problem is even a harder nut (pun intended) to crack. You can’t just will into existence a whole economy of services run by the small number of bitcoiners there are. Existing services must want to receive bitcoin instead of fiat. That is the most difficult missing piece, not solutions which will naturally follow. Until then, proper Bitcoin powered solutions like Cashu, which is perfect for 402 payments, will remain niche.