Really enjoyed your recap of your 1st Vipassana course! Sounds like you went pretty deep and made some real progress during the 10 days. Most of my experiences outside of the ordinary also happen while lying in bed after the day's meditation. Great job with keeping up the daily sits! After many years of daily practice and many courses, I can attest that it's well worth the effort and makes life better every day. Metta.

Yes!

Thx for the response. It's helping me DYOR and understand a little bit more today.

From what I can tell with the help of AI, early miner signaling is a poor predictor of ultimate activation. In user-activated movements, miners only capitulate when the economic consequences become immediate.

In 2017, a third of the mining network genuinely wanted SegWit for its technical optimization benefits (like fixing transaction malleability to help scale Layer 2). They flipped Bit 1 voluntarily because it helped their long-term infrastructure. And, the % signaling for it at this approximate time before pre-BIP activation date was higher.

With BIP 110, miners face a direct, immediate financial penalty if they activate it: they have to give up fees generated by the 100kb data and inscription transactions allowed under Core V30. Since miners are incentivized by short-term revenue, almost none of them are going to voluntarily signal Bit 4 right now.

The game theory of BIP110 is structurally different from Segwit. So, I think it's too early to discount it. At the same time, depending on how you define "success", it is too early to claim victory. But, I don't agree that Knots is "lying".

The precedent was already set in 2017 with proposed Segwit UASF. To truly understand the BIP-110 proposal and what might happen, you have to look at this little sliver of Bitcoin history.

google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-qat

To answer your question clearly: SegWit (the soft fork) absolutely activated and is currently the foundation of the Bitcoin network.

However, the UASF (the threat/mechanism) did not "activate" as a piece of code; rather, it "activated" as a social movement that successfully forced the upgrade through.

Here is the detailed timeline of exactly what happened and how the conflict was resolved.

1. The Tension (Late 2016 – Early 2017)
For months, the community was in a stalemate. Developers had written the SegWit code, but miners (who actually add blocks to the chain) were refusing to implement it. The "Big Blockers" had a massive amount of mining power, meaning they could technically ignore SegWit indefinitely without the network noticing.

2. The "Nuclear Option": The UASF (Summer 2017)
The "Big Blockers" realized that the users (node operators) were moving toward SegWit. To counter this, the "Big Blockers" proposed Bitcoin Cash (BCH)—a new version of Bitcoin with much larger blocks.

The users responded with the UASF (User Activated Soft Fork). This was not a technical proposal for a new feature; it was a declaration of war.

The users essentially said: "If you (miners) do not activate SegWit by a certain date, we will implement the SegWit rules ourselves by updating our software. Any block you mine that doesn't include SegWit will be rejected by our computers as invalid."

3. The Turning Point: The "Check"
This created a "game theory" crisis for miners:

If miners didn't use SegWit: Their blocks would be rejected by the users' nodes. Their mining hardware would become useless because they would be mining on a "ghost chain" that no one uses.
If miners used SegWit: They would be doing what they didn't want to do, but they would remain profitable.
The UASF acted as a deadline. It stripped the miners of their monopoly on protocol changes. It proved that the users control the rules, even if the miners control the hardware.

4. The Actual Activation (August 24, 2017)
The standoff ended in a victory for the "Small Blockers" (the SegWit supporters).

The Date: On August 24, 2017, the Bitcoin network reached "activation depth." This is the point where, mathematically, it became impossible for a miner to mine a block without SegWit without being immediately rejected by the majority of the network nodes.

The Result: SegWit went live. Transactions became more efficient, malleability was fixed, and the door was opened for the Lightning Network.

Summary of what "Actually Happened"

The SegWit Code - A technical upgrade - Remained "dormant" because miners wouldn't use it.
The UASF - A social/governance threat - This is what actually "triggered" the change. It forced the miners' hand.
The Bitcoin Cash Split- A hard fork - Occurred shortly after (August 2017) because the "Big Blockers" lost the fight in the main Bitcoin network.

In short: SegWit the technology was waiting. The UASF the threat was the spark that forced the miners to finally press the button and turn SegWit on.

Can you please explain why you think Knots is lying and how it's different from how it's different from what happened with the Segwit UASF threat below?

google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-qat

To answer your question clearly: SegWit (the soft fork) absolutely activated and is currently the foundation of the Bitcoin network.

However, the UASF (the threat/mechanism) did not "activate" as a piece of code; rather, it "activated" as a social movement that successfully forced the upgrade through.

Here is the detailed timeline of exactly what happened and how the conflict was resolved.

1. The Tension (Late 2016 – Early 2017)
For months, the community was in a stalemate. Developers had written the SegWit code, but miners (who actually add blocks to the chain) were refusing to implement it. The "Big Blockers" had a massive amount of mining power, meaning they could technically ignore SegWit indefinitely without the network noticing.

2. The "Nuclear Option": The UASF (Summer 2017)
The "Big Blockers" realized that the users (node operators) were moving toward SegWit. To counter this, the "Big Blockers" proposed Bitcoin Cash (BCH)—a new version of Bitcoin with much larger blocks.

The users responded with the UASF (User Activated Soft Fork). This was not a technical proposal for a new feature; it was a declaration of war.

The users essentially said: "If you (miners) do not activate SegWit by a certain date, we will implement the SegWit rules ourselves by updating our software. Any block you mine that doesn't include SegWit will be rejected by our computers as invalid."

3. The Turning Point: The "Check"
This created a "game theory" crisis for miners:

If miners didn't use SegWit: Their blocks would be rejected by the users' nodes. Their mining hardware would become useless because they would be mining on a "ghost chain" that no one uses.
If miners used SegWit: They would be doing what they didn't want to do, but they would remain profitable.
The UASF acted as a deadline. It stripped the miners of their monopoly on protocol changes. It proved that the users control the rules, even if the miners control the hardware.

4. The Actual Activation (August 24, 2017)
The standoff ended in a victory for the "Small Blockers" (the SegWit supporters).

The Date: On August 24, 2017, the Bitcoin network reached "activation depth." This is the point where, mathematically, it became impossible for a miner to mine a block without SegWit without being immediately rejected by the majority of the network nodes.

The Result: SegWit went live. Transactions became more efficient, malleability was fixed, and the door was opened for the Lightning Network.

Summary of what "Actually Happened"

The SegWit Code - A technical upgrade - Remained "dormant" because miners wouldn't use it.
The UASF - A social/governance threat - This is what actually "triggered" the change. It forced the miners' hand.
The Bitcoin Cash Split- A hard fork - Occurred shortly after (August 2017) because the "Big Blockers" lost the fight in the main Bitcoin network.

In short: SegWit the technology was waiting. The UASF the threat was the spark that forced the miners to finally press the button and turn SegWit on.

Wonderful to see the honest journalism and integrity!

I thought it was "interesting" when his slides stopped showing. Censorship in action?

GM!

I appreciate your summary but I think you glossed over that bip110 was a reaction to core blowing out op return AND all this happened while Bitcoin was hovering at all time highs. So the price isn't what is driving the conflict. The cause of bip110 was op return limits were increased by 1200x.

Seems like @Simon Dixon called this one!

I just wanted to let you know that I am very grateful that you embed the videos into your posts! It makes the experience of watching content on NOSTR so much easier. More importantly, it's safer too since I don't have to trust and click on random links to view content outside of NOSTR. Thank you!