If a split happens, much more is at stake than just fees. A chain split would hurt Bitcoin’s reputation, likely cause a price drop, reduce mining revenue and fees, and probably create issues for Lightning too. Around 10% of nodes is already a significant share, and there will certainly be miners who want to capture those fees. The only realistic way to prevent this is to activate the BIP. The closer we get to the deadline, the more pressure miners will be under. If miners really follow economic incentives, then in theory they will just adopt the BIP, or mine BIP-compliant blocks, because that’s the rational economic decision. A small amount of spam fees are not worth the trouble.

Truly astonishing. It’s likely Citrea has more to do with it than they admit.

Bitcoin becomes what its users use it for. The direction of Bitcoin is ultimately shaped by the collective agreement of users, and the rules can change if that agreement changes. If more activity moves toward NFTs, smart contracts, or DeFi, the incentives around Bitcoin will also shift in that direction. Because Bitcoin is built on trade-offs between decentralization and scaling, pushing it toward other applications risks weakening its role as decentralized money and a store of value.

Many of the possibilities that are now used for spam were introduced with Taproot, with the promise that they would improve Bitcoin as a payment network. For a long time the argument was that these use cases simply needed time to develop. Now more than four years have passed and Taproot is still barely used for payments. It had enough time to prove its value. What we see instead is that a significant portion of blockspace is used for things that have little to do with Bitcoin as money, or a payment network. The issue is that Bitcoin evolves through consensus. Bitcoin ultimately becomes what its users use it for. If more activity revolves around NFTs, smart contracts, DeFi, or similar applications, the incentives around Bitcoin will inevitably shift in that direction. Bitcoin is built on trade-offs. Decentralization and scaling cannot both be maximized. Other applications have very different trade-offs than Bitcoin as decentralized money and a store of value. Once those use cases become large within the network, they also gain influence over its future direction. At that point it becomes much harder to steer Bitcoin back toward its role as money. If a large share of blockspace is already used for other purposes, that shift has already begun. That is the risk I see, and why I support moving Bitcoin back toward being primarily a store of value and payment network.