> Abandoning instant payment by introducing replace-by-fee where you can "undo" a transaction not in a block yet.

Unconfirmed transactions are inherently at risk for being replaced, which is why confirmation exists in the first place.

When transactions are explicitly market non-final the software makes replacing easier instead of having to broadcast to the entire network yourself. Replacement for non-final transactions was a feature in the very first version of the software but it was disabled because it was vulnerable to a DOS attack (replacing a transaction over and over again in a tight loop). When a fix was found for the vulnerablity the feature was restored.

This is no way inhibits "instant payment"-- if you don't want to honor _non-final_ transactions until they're confirmed or replaced with a final version, just don't! (However, actual testing shows that doublespends of unconfirmed transactions are highly successful even without making them replaceable.)

Regardless, this wasn't a "stripping"-- it was _original functionality_ which was restored.

Aside, I see you are promoting Craig Wright's scammy BSV coin in other posts. I assume you are aware that the "Genesis hardfork" which they are about to release activates replacement in BSV too? https://github.com/bitcoin-sv/bitcoin-sv/blob/dev-Genesis-be...

> The limitation of what can be done with the scripting language by disabling OP codes needed for (even basic) math operations.

Vulnerable opcodes were disabled-- by Satoshi back in 2010. There has not been a single opcode disabled in bitcoin by anyone except Satoshi.

More recent softforks such as BIP141 have made it easy to reenable (fixed versions of) and add new opcodes. But there has been only moderate interest in reenabling any of the disabled opcodes, particularly since on altcoins and test networks (like elements) where they're enabled they've gone unused.

More interest right now is going into bip-taproot, since its structure enables users to use fancy scripts in an extremely efficient and private way-- allowing them to invoke the script only in exceptional cases.

> Forcing transactions to be formatted after specific templates limiting how transactions are used.

That was also done by Satoshi for attack mitigation reasons, but it hasn't been the case for several years now.

> Bonus story: As I understand it, Vitalik tried to build on bitcoin but the limitations in the script languarge and transaction format made a globally distributed computer impossible so he went off and created Etherium.

That is an outright lie. Vitalik never made any made any contact to the bitcoin developers or community related to this. Had any such effort been made it would be easy to point to public evidence of it. It simply doesn't exist.

Moreover, "build(ing ethereum) on bitcoin" would have made it impossible to "premine" 72 million coins (2/3rds of the current ethereum supply) and pocket tens of millions of dollars, as he's done. The folks that he collaborated with to create ethereum had done several prior altcoin pump and dumps and went on to do several others after ethereum.

It's unsurprising that he didn't seek out collaboration with Bitcoin however: He was well known as a scammer in the Bitcoin community at that point because shortly before starting etherum he had been making a nuisance of himself soliciting investments for a "quantum miner" scam. https://medium.com/bitcoinerrorlog/vitaliks-quantum-quest-9e...

Edit: I was just pointed to these chat logs where Ethereum was first suggested-- they strongly refute your claim, https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/1214250162069164032/ph... https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/1214250162069164032/ph...