0:00 [Intro music] 1:00 ♪, and check out my other videos! ♪, and check out my other videos! 1:05 ♪, and check out my other videos! 1:10 ♪, and check out my other videos! 1:15 Hello and welcome to Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 1:22 We are back. The last Twitter Space had a problem. 1:32 Unexpectedly, it suddenly ended, but now we're back. 1:42 Soon, everyone will join, and all will be well. 2:13 All right, let's see if the connection now works. Excellent. Excellent. 2:19 Rejoin. They probably rejoined, and then they're like, where did it go? 2:24 You have one shot, just like that famous Eminem song. 2:30 Yes, 8 Mile. Well, I opened it exactly as I have in the past for many weeks, 2:37 and there's not been a problem for a few weeks. Maybe Twitter's issues have reached you. 2:42 Probably Elon. Yeah. I did nothing new, and yet there was a glitch. 2:47 But welcome. We have an important speaker on the stage today, 2:52 the designer of Drivechain, Mr. Paul Sztorc. 2:58 Paul, what are your thoughts on scaling Bitcoin this time around? 3:03 How do you feel that the narrative of scaling Bitcoin is going to take center stage 3:08 in Drivechain discourse for the coming weeks? 3:11 Well, I don't know. I think scalability is the most important thing by far. 3:18 It's often just regarded as like one bullet point, like scalability, privacy, whatever. 3:25 But I don't really think that's the case. Scalability is the only thing. 3:28 When you have something with money, when you have something with network effects, 3:31 the thing that meets the needs of the most users will win, and everything else will be destroyed. 3:51 Well said. Yes, the needs of the users. 3:59 Yes, right. 4:02 Well, let's see. There have been a lot of great tweets recently on Drivechain. 4:11 For example, this week, SuperTestNet confirmed, as he has before, that he is a big Drivechain supporter, 4:18 and he is the programmer who created a disruption in inscriptions and ordinals. 4:29 It's great to see people who are builders in the Bitcoin space understanding Drivechain 4:34 and seeing its potential to meet the needs of the consumer. 4:44 Yes, that's what we want. We don't want people just influencing each other. 4:53 We want actual cost-satisfied customers. 4:58 For me, the case for Drivechain has always been economic. 5:02 It's the idea that if there are, let's say, 10 different technologies that can be done on blockchain, 5:07 if each one is done as an altcoin, then they all compete for monetary premium, for network effect. 5:14 Each of those 10 monetary units competes to serve as unit of account in the transactions of consumers. 5:22 So it's inevitable that one of those 10 altcoins would, in that hypothetical, develop a Drivechain-like design, 5:31 and then it would become the base layer for all of those 10 applications. 5:38 Does that simple narrative fit with your view on the economics of how Drivechain... 5:45 Well, I think so. I mean, Drivechain is a solution to the problem of that people disagree over what the blockchain should contain. 5:53 So either there's one thing, which is very unlikely, because people are different and transactions are different. 6:00 So not every transaction requires the same privacy and same decentralization. 6:06 The coffee transaction really just does not. It doesn't have the same requirements as other transactions, which do. 6:15 And so it's very, very, very hard to have a one-size-fits-all thing, 6:20 just because the people and the transactions are so different from each one another. 6:29 The idea of Drivechain is that you would fit all different shapes and sizes. 6:33 So that's the idea. 6:38 And I think that this problem of people disagreeing over what the blockchain should contain, 6:44 I think this problem has always been with us and always will be with us. 6:48 So that is the justification for Drivechain. 6:58 Well said. 7:03 Well, it's great to have you here. 7:05 We've had a number of spaces where all kinds of people have shared ideas on the potential for Drivechain to create a lot of value for Bitcoiners. 7:15 Some people, some of our frequent speakers, much prefer discussion of Drivechain in a context of technological innovation and experimentation. 7:25 Other people, myself included, especially enjoy discussion of Drivechain in an economic context, 7:32 where it is understood that Drivechain could have a great effect on Bitcoin's miner revenue and Bitcoin's price. 7:42 So there is a split. Some DriveChainers like the innovation discussion and others like the economic number go up discussion and security budget discussion. 7:53 Paul, which would you say speaks to you the most? 7:56 Is it the technology or is it the economic value proposition or would you say they're one in the same? 8:05 Well, what did you mean exactly? 8:08 I was just saying how some of our Drivechain supporters, they like the innovation of Drivechain. 8:14 For example, people who are very interested in having people who are interested in just having these interesting sidechains on Bitcoin, 8:23 regardless of whether they're very large in value. 8:26 But others like me find it interesting to reflect on the possibility that the sidechains would become billions of dollars of value, 8:33 which would mean pushing Bitcoin's price up and solving its security budget. 8:38 So what I'm saying is that there are some people who love the innovation part of Drivechain, the technology, 8:43 having interesting experiments like oracles and strong privacy and other people who envision those sidechains becoming very large economically 8:52 and how that could affect Bitcoin's price and security positively. 8:57 So there's like the investor case for Drivechain and then there's the innovation case. 9:03 Well, I think the tech case is like a disqualifier. 9:07 Someone says, well, like this is what the Ethereum people used to say. 9:11 They say, well, Bitcoin is great, but Bitcoin can't do smart contracts. 9:16 That was the line, you know. 9:19 And so the line is, oh, it can't do such and such. 9:24 But with the Drivechain, then there's no disagreement over what the blockchain is going to contain. 9:29 So you're never disqualified. 9:32 And I think that's really the key. 9:34 People want to, they don't want, if they're trying to figure out what money do we pick, 9:39 they want to avoid anything where people cannot use it. 9:42 So if they just can't support some people, then those people will be natural enemies of the project. 9:47 They'll be no matter what, no matter how good or bad the project is in its other dimensions, these people will just be completely against it. 9:55 So you want to eliminate all the blocking coalitions. 9:58 That's how I see it, actually. 10:01 That's very interesting. 10:04 So your view, your view is not, your view is almost a third way of thinking about it from the two I listed. 10:11 Your view is not simply a curiosity and passion for innovation. 10:15 It's not simply strengthening Bitcoin economically. 10:18 It's a third thing, which is we could say social, that we don't want to have disagreements lead to people being naturally outside of Bitcoin's ecosystem. 10:33 They have to be outside of it because Bitcoin can't platform their technology in a peer to peer manner. 10:39 So therefore they have to go launch an altcoin to have a peer to peer implementation of their technology. 10:45 So sidechains, drivechain solves that. 10:48 So it reduces disagreement. 10:50 It allows the disagreement to flow to a sidechain rather than flow to an entirely new coin, a new blockchain, an altcoin. 11:05 Indeed, it does. 11:08 Why don't we get some other people up on stage? 11:11 That'd be great. 11:14 Welcome to all of our familiar faces, as well as those who've joined for the first time, perhaps. 11:20 Come on up to the stage and ask a question or share a comment if you'd like. 11:24 Hello, Hampus. Hello, Moon Settler. 11:28 Hello, everyone. 11:30 Don't be shy. 11:42 It really is a great. Oh, great. 11:44 Hi, Moon Settler. Raise your hand and come on up if you'd like. 11:47 Hi, Hampus. 11:55 All right. Maybe people are just preparing their thoughts. 12:01 All right. 12:03 They have a friendly wave. 12:09 They have a real job. They have real work to do. 12:13 Moon Settler is joining. Excellent. 12:15 One of our most frequent speakers. 12:18 Great to have you here. 12:20 Hello, guys. 12:22 Hello. 12:24 Please begin. 12:25 So, I'm just wondering really how this thing is going to play out, you know, economically. 12:34 Because it looks to me that DGNs are actually paying way higher fees than I expected that they would ever pay. 12:43 So, that was a surprise for me. 12:47 I kind of used to think that this whole thing can resolve itself naturally because the real economic demand for block space, you know, 12:58 is going to come from transactions and they will be able to outbid these various other arbitrary data storage use cases. 13:09 But the problem seems to be that maybe Bitcoin block space has become sort of a web-length good, you know. 13:19 So, the more scarce it is, the more expensive it is, the more desirable it becomes for these purposes. 13:26 And that's a little bit worrisome. 13:28 But obviously, we need to wait and see how it turns out. 13:32 Maybe see how they will fare in the bull market, the bull part of the cycle. 14:02 In my prior conversations with Moon Settler, I recall him expressing greater interest in the innovation-focused rhetoric for drivechain 14:13 as opposed to the more economic line of reasoning that the economic effects of drivechain adoption could be fantastic. 14:24 For example, that drivechain adoption could eliminate altcoins or devalue them almost completely. 14:31 And that drivechain adoption could therefore boost Bitcoin's value and strengthen its security budget forever. 14:39 So, if I recall, Moon Settler, you're more sympathetic to the innovation-focused ideas around drivechain, 14:48 like just enabling interesting experiments on sidechains, bringing in some developers to Bitcoin sidechains who might otherwise go to some altcoins. 14:58 Is that right? 14:59 I think that would be the more preferable reason for me that people get excited about drivechain and want to activate it. 15:10 And also that it would take a decade or two, in my opinion, for this to unfold in a way that it becomes truly significant, economically speaking. 15:23 So I think if drivechain was activated today, it wouldn't have a significant effect on the fee, the miner revenue or anything else immediately. 15:35 This would take years and years of building and people adopting it. 15:42 If they did and some other happenings, you know, to unfold positively so that people have a better trust in this way of securing maybe their wealth. 16:02 The main point is, I think, short term, it's probably this permissionless innovation that it would give us immediately. 16:12 And long term, I think, yes, with a very low probability. 16:19 I would personally give it a low probability, but I think it could be very, very positive economically. 16:32 Well said. 16:37 Ah, we have another request for speaker. 16:40 Welcome, Hampus. 16:45 Thanks for joining. 16:52 Hampus. 16:53 Hello. Can you hear me? 16:55 Yes. 16:56 Yes. So maybe this is in one of these two camps, but the reason why I am mostly interested in drivechains is because of the scaling capabilities. 17:07 Like we see now with the on-chain fees are sky high on main chain and even lightning ceases to work, basically, in my opinion, in these situations. 17:18 So I would rather see like intranet of drivechains where you could deploy lightning over that. 17:25 I think that's the most that's that's the most interesting thing for me regarding drivechains. 17:30 But maybe that's that is in one of these two camps. 17:33 But like we need to I think we need to talk about scaling and drivechains more because it's a really interesting value proposition for me. 17:45 Yeah, I agree. I think, unfortunately, it's just naive large block ism. 17:51 It sort of resembles the sidechain point of view, like cosmetically, even though it's not it's not that at all. 17:58 But I just it just kind of looks that way. 18:00 So people are very dismissive of it, even though it's really the opposite in many ways. 18:05 For one thing, there's a night and day difference between the mandatory layer one and the optional layer two that can just be paused and just come back. 18:13 But, yeah, I think the other thing is, again, like I was saying, not every transaction needs the same amount of decentralization. 18:19 Like we do need to have decentralization. 18:22 Of course, that's the most important thing. 18:25 But it's just like plenty of people today are going to use Venmo or whatever, something that's not decentralized in the slightest. 18:34 And we want to capture all those use cases and make them Bitcoin. 18:39 So this is requires just a paradigm shift that people just they they switch from saying we have to have decentralization to just. 18:49 We have all the decentralization we need and we can also travel the whole spectrum. 18:54 We travel the whole spectrum from decentralized to more centralized whenever and wherever we wish. 19:01 And then, yeah, I think lightning like lightning, it was in a weird because of the scaling war. 19:07 Lightning was in like a very little pattern where it was above criticism. 19:13 So even the creators would try to tell people that it doesn't work when the fee rates, layer one fee rates are very high. 19:23 People wouldn't listen because it was all performance. 19:26 So this is an unfortunate thing that has happened. 19:35 But we need to start having this conversation because it seems like like not many people understand that lightning just doesn't work that well. 19:42 If the fees are too high, it becomes like trusted, basically. 19:47 So, yeah, that's that's why I like drivechains and lightning together with with not so high fees on drivechains, maybe. 19:54 But as I said, like main thing can keep sky high fees. 19:58 And then we do a lot of small things on the drivechains instead. 20:03 I think that's a much better way to go about it, right, because it's just it's like in practice, people are not going to be happy about onboarding, you know, like when people on board, they are very new and they have minimal commitment. 20:16 So they're going to be in a bad mood, you know, and you don't want to onboard them with like buy expensive layer one transaction Bitcoin to immediately lose like thirty dollars and then open the channel. 20:30 They're not going to know anything about channels. They don't know who to open the channel with. The whole thing is going to be a mess. That's just like doesn't work. 20:38 You need to have something where there's just lower stakes and the large block sidechain is very good with that. 20:45 You're on this more fragile network, but it doesn't matter because it's just layer two. It's just it can die at any day and layer one is unaffected. 20:57 Henry, I don't know if you remember, but I said it a few times that I'm more interested in the Thunder sidechain than any EVM or any other stuff. 21:08 So when I say permissionless innovation, I don't necessarily mean completely changing everything about Bitcoin, but a lot of a lot of Covenant stuff and other ideas are floating out there that could potentially make lightning 21:26 a much, much better and safer and overall more advanced and more capable experience. 21:35 And they are moving on to main chain very, very slowly. 21:39 And the people who could benefit the most from them are likely the people who will have trouble paying the main chain fees anyhow. 21:48 So and they could they would basically risk becoming dust. 21:54 Their entire life saving may become dust on main chain if things work out not on the optimistic part, but on the worst case part where they would basically fall back to an unspendable UTXO possibly. 22:11 And the other thing I wanted to note that, as Paul said, the decentralization does not need to be, you know, absolute or the largest possible one for everyone, because it kind of, if you think about it, the current spam is motivated by Bitcoin's claims on huge replication, huge decentralization. 22:38 And infinite data availability, basically, and that contributes to this insane race for block space. 22:47 Everyone wants to grab this scarce real estate for whatever silly purposes. 22:52 And so basically it might pay to create real estate that is less scarce and less desirable because it is not as replicated and not as sure to be around forever. 23:04 But it can actually be used, you know, people that just want to transact, that just want to hold their own keys, they could use it. 23:13 And on the other side, it may be time to reconsider these narratives on Bitcoin main chain as well. 23:22 So it might pay to reassess the whole pruning and pruning versus full archival nodes, you know, and this whole notion that we are basically creating a lure for these insane people to pollute the blockchain with garbage. 23:46 I know some people are saying if they are paying the fees, then it's fine. 23:49 But let's face it, this is not conductive to the purposes for why Bitcoin was made and basically makes the experience shitty for everyone. 24:01 And that is the reason why I think Bitcoin mainnet should be more of a live network and less of infinite and forever data storage. 24:13 And if people would reduce the block size, it might actually just make it more valuable, more desirable for certain people who have the money to spend on this bullshit. 24:24 So anyway, I'm curious how this will play out. I just wanted to know these things. 24:29 Well said. Could you could you clarify your question a bit more? 24:37 About what? 24:40 So what exactly is your your question? 24:44 I don't think I can answer that. 24:46 A bit more? 24:50 About what? 24:53 So what exactly is your your question? 24:57 I don't think I have one. 25:00 My question is how this will play out. 25:03 But I don't think you can answer that with a great confidence. 25:07 So basically, will the spammers give up and will the fee rate drop after a while, after the congestion gets bad and they start to capitulate because they can't sell the stuff that they are minting as well as they thought or whatever. 25:25 We are experiencing some credit crunch and everything just drips down and they forget about this bullshit. 25:32 And then we can finally do, you know, open Lightning channels on Bitcoin mainchain and get liquidity on Lightning again or something. 25:40 Or it can actually get worse. 25:43 And I don't know how this will play out. 25:45 I'm just speculating that there might be things we could do. 25:49 And these things mainly should involve making Bitcoin block space less desirable for spammers, I think. 25:59 There is a interesting claim in one of Paul's essays on the security budget. 26:05 It is a reference to Von Mises' ideas from long ago that Bitcoin token is a proportional good, but block space is a production good. 26:17 And I've put a link in the chat. 26:20 I'll put a link in our nest here in this space so you can all click to open that, see the chart and read the essay at the link included. 26:29 Basically, competition and capitalism pushes down the price of all kinds of things. 26:36 So capitalism is always making things cheaper. 26:40 This is one reason why technology creates price deflation. 26:44 If technology pushes prices down, even in the midst of government money printing, some prices fall because technology enables productivity to increase. 26:56 So capitalism can't create more Bitcoin, but capitalism can make it more efficient to use the block space by creating innovations that make block space use more efficient for people. 27:12 So things like Lightning and custodial Bitcoin, sidechains, all of these things tend to reduce the fee pressure. 27:25 So for these reasons, it's very possible that we could see this fee spike end the way that the spike ended in the past. 27:34 Anyone, please jump in and share your thought. 27:38 But it's my understanding that our view as drive-chainers is probably that the fee spike will end. 27:43 But I'm curious to hear anyone who thinks it'll remain permanently. 27:49 Hey guys, thank you for bringing me up. 27:52 I want to say first, thanks to Paul for making those videos on your YouTube that are like five years, six years old, that really, really go into detail about a bunch of stuff. 28:04 Those are really nice. 28:06 I wish one of them that you ran out of time, you wanted to explain blind merge mining. 28:11 So maybe there's other videos that I didn't find that you explained them in. 28:16 But I wanted to ask Paul a question, and I didn't mean to redirect from what you were saying, LayerTwo Labs. 28:23 I wanted to say, I see Supertestnet was just up here. 28:27 He was in the room, but he left. 28:29 So I'm wondering if you had a chance to look at hand cranks, his way of potentially doing something like drivechains without changing consensus. 28:36 And what you might think are the biggest differences or the biggest negatives to the hand crank model. 28:45 Paul, I'm not sure if you looked at it before. 29:00 I assume you did. 29:01 Do you guys hear me? 29:05 It's possible that his Twitter has glitched, and he can't. 29:10 I don't know. 29:11 Oh, man. 29:12 It's interesting, because one of the first times I came to the show with you guys, Paul was there, and he also couldn't talk. 29:18 And now it's happening again. 29:20 No. 29:22 Sometimes there's glitches. 29:24 People can't hear or can't speak. 29:25 But Supertestnet's work has been so amazing. 29:29 And it was great that he created a variation on drivechain. 29:35 That kind of tinkering and experimentation is very valuable. 29:39 He remains a drivechain supporter, emphatically, and tweeted that recently, yesterday or the day before. 29:48 So his invention is not intended to be a competitor to drivechain in the sense that he no longer supports drivechain. 29:56 He does support drivechain now and has. 29:59 So it would be awesome to hear him elaborate on what he learned about sidechains by creating hand crank. 30:08 And how it influences his thinking on the whole topic. 30:14 That would be cool. 30:15 Yeah, I was thinking of what are the benefits of the BIP300 drivechain over hand crank? 30:23 And what would be the cons of hand crank that drivechain can help with that hand crank can't? 30:29 Basically, the major differences that Paul might see of one versus the other. 30:35 But I'm not sure if he hears me or can speak. 30:38 Maybe somebody else. 30:39 Can you speak, Paul? 30:41 Should I take this or can you speak, Paul? 30:46 It seems like he's not connected. 30:47 So Moonsettler, why don't you share your thoughts? 30:51 So if I remember correctly, but I'm working from memory, I discussed this with Supertestnet. 30:58 And like I said, from my memory, and maybe this is not the freshest version of the proposal, 31:04 but he basically sought to emulate the miner consensus. 31:12 If you try to obstruct, you know, a drivechain like a dynamic federation of miners, 31:19 like a large, large multisig where the slots get handed to newer and newer miners who produce the 31:27 blocks, I think hand crank is about emulating that somehow. 31:32 So it will give a threshold vote, basically a threshold multisig for miners to drive this 31:42 forward. 31:43 And the main difference by BIP300 is, in my opinion, is vastly better, is that you have 31:51 this long, long withdrawal period where you have to telegraph your intent to steal. 31:56 It's not an immediate thing. 31:58 You can't just have a momentary majority in a multisig and just steal the coins or do 32:08 whatever you want. 32:09 And as other miners keep building on this, it becomes more and more impossible to handle 32:15 this thing. 32:17 Instead, with BIP300, you need to telegraph this intent three months ahead. 32:25 And the users, in theory, could stop you with a very, very simple soft fork that may not 32:31 even require a new client to be downloaded. 32:35 Just it could be as simple as them agreeing on social media or whatever that this is a 32:42 very, very bad thing. 32:43 And just scanning a QR code or just, you know, whatever. 32:52 Very small input to their client could tell their client to ignore the chain where the 32:57 miners end up successfully stealing, if they carry through even, you know. 33:02 So it's trivially easy to stop it with a soft fork. 33:07 And in case of handcrank, you don't have this incentive, basically. 33:14 So in short, you don't have the exact, you don't have as much security as you would have 33:20 with BIP300. 33:22 And like the time of the security too, basically. 33:27 Yes, I understand. 33:28 No, it just seeks to emulate the dynamic federation aspect. 33:35 And basically, it's kind of a proof of concept, right? 33:38 So if handcrank works, it actually works in securing people's value, their holdings, 33:45 right? 33:46 It works for them. 33:47 Then that basically proves that BIP300 is sort of fine because it's a much stronger, 33:54 much better security, I believe. 33:57 I see. 33:58 That makes sense. 33:59 Thanks for answering that. 34:00 That definitely clears up for me. 34:09 LayerTwo Labs, back to what you previously just said of the fees, meaning it's just a 34:24 spike. 34:25 I remember last time we spoke together on this space that we were looking at the charts 34:30 on the Bitcoin.com charts and like the miner revenue and what it comes from fees. 34:37 And we were kind of predicting that potentially this ordinal, this was before even the BRC20s, 34:44 it would create some, the inscriptions would create some kind of floor for block space 34:49 buyers. 34:50 And it would, even a very, very little bit, it would increase the average fees miners 34:56 make over time. 34:58 It looks like it's been playing out so far. 35:00 I think the recent spike can be temporary. 35:04 Temporary can last because like DGNs can have a lot of money. 35:08 But I do think that overall we might be in areas of like if Mempool does clear again, 35:14 it probably won't last. 35:15 That would be more of a temporary now. 35:17 Whereas previously we had long periods of time of Mempool being clear. 35:21 I don't think we're ever going to come back to a time where we're going to have long periods 35:26 of time of Mempool being clear. 35:28 As opposed to now, if Mempool clears up, people are going to wake up and be like, oh, let 35:32 me go and do on-chain activity. 35:34 And whatever that is, it might be consolidation. 35:36 It might be opening channels. 35:38 It might be inscribing. 35:39 It might be finding other use cases for that block space. 35:42 But I think we have kind of like sailed that time of having low fee rates for like long 35:50 periods of time. 35:51 Those are my thoughts. 35:55 It's very hard to know what the future holds for the value of the block space, that is 35:59 the total transaction fee rate. 36:02 So the best thing I've ever found on the subject is Paul's essay, which is security budget 36:10 in the long run and then security part two. 36:12 Those two essays written in 2019 and 2021, where he examines how the Bitcoin token is 36:23 something which is of a different economic category than the block space. 36:27 So on the Bitcoin network, there are two different goods, two different economic goods. 36:32 One is the token, the other is the block space. 36:35 Their value is not linearly related. 36:40 So the token could go up by 100 times while the value of the block space goes down. 36:46 Hypothetically, that's possible. 36:47 What we've seen over the last decade is that the token can go up a lot while the value 36:52 of the block space doesn't move up at all in terms of purchasing power. 36:59 So you say that there's now perhaps a new normal where we'll see fee pressure forever, 37:06 but it's not something that I would bet on. 37:09 I think that we might see a return to low fees because that's what's happened in the 37:19 past when there was other activity that seemed that it might be permanent. 37:25 Well, the way I would say to that is, even early on to Bitcoin, I always assumed that 37:32 block space is going to be very highly demanded and blocks are going to be full at some point 37:38 in time because of just natural adoption of Bitcoin. 37:42 And that was kind of a given to me. 37:46 I'm actually more surprised to why 10 years have passed and block spaces has still been 37:52 like very hardly used. 37:54 So I think that it's not that we're going to go back to a low fee environment. 38:00 I think that we could, but just like a mempool clear environment won't last because now people 38:06 are realizing of different use cases. 38:09 And I think just like the most simple use case of having the most distributed database 38:15 in the world and being able to put data on it, and that can be any kind of arbitrary 38:20 data you want. 38:22 You might want to back up something of yours, even though that's a bad idea. 38:27 The fact that you can do that openly and easily, even though you could have always done it, 38:30 but now it's more easily accessible and it's more widely heard about. 38:35 I think that that's a use case that will be explored over time more. 38:40 Yeah, this is what I was talking about a few minutes before, that we should, I believe, 38:46 disincentivize this notion, completely disabuse it and just wreck those people that want to 38:55 put data on chain because this will not end well. 38:58 It looks like right now, at least. 39:01 Yeah, but if you think about it, like what is the Bitcoin blockchain space used for? 39:07 It's used for data and that data is ledger balance updates, right? 39:13 And you can say that, all right, that's the main use case of it right now, today. 39:18 And you can say somebody else making a meme coin, and even though it's technically flawed 39:24 and we don't agree with it and it's a bad idea, but just the fact that they're also 39:29 putting on ledger state updates in that block space. 39:34 So it's arbitrary to say that certain ledger updates are more valuable than other ledger 39:40 updates because they're doing the same thing and they're also paying for the block space 39:43 to do the same thing, just update their own state and they're leveraging it. 39:48 So one data cannot be necessarily a better use case for it than another data because 39:53 from the person that is paying to put that data on there, it's like, why would your data 39:59 be more important or more incentivized than anybody else's data? 40:02 And also, there's no real way to stop it because it's an open list or it's open 40:06 permissionless network. You can't really stop it. 40:09 Yeah, there is a way to stop it and I think we should do it for multiple reasons and this 40:15 is one of them. So I understand this notion that if people are paying for it, it's a 40:24 capitalistic system and they should be able to do it, but it disables the use of the system 40:31 for its intended purpose and why people are buying into the Bitcoin asset. 40:35 So I believe in this case, we should fight back, but fight back smart. 40:40 So I don't think the old disrespect or patch or anything like that will 40:46 give you the desired effect. I don't think you can fight it like this. I believe the way to fight this is literally making an asymmetry between how valuable the Bitcoin block space is for one purpose or the other. 41:02 So by reducing the replication, by starting to prune the block space and the UTXO set, even if we must, heavily, 41:13 and shifting the burden of storage to those people that want to store arbitrary data on Bitcoin that is not significant economic value expressed in the amounts known to the Bitcoin base layer. 41:29 So not Satoshi's basically, but something exogenous. We can actually shift the burden to those people by just stopping replicating their shit and pruning and trying to compact the state and basically preferring the way the Bitcoin nodes store, replicate and even propagate this data. 41:56 Should probably prefer these ledger updates, the Satoshi amount ledger updates. And I believe we can do a lot in this regard, but the other way to do it is creating alternative block spaces, basically. 42:11 So that's one thing we are talking about here, that this is the two main attack angle that we could try. But basically, I understand that this sounds like an arbitrary moral judgment from one perspective, but I'm still making it. 42:36 It's my personal opinion that the Bitcoin block space and the Bitcoin network should be used to transact Bitcoin and not for people basically making us store that junk and being satisfied with that we are forced to store that junk. 42:58 I don't think that's a good idea to encourage that behavior because it's seemingly somehow the degens are able to outbid the people who are actually just trying to use Bitcoin in the short term. I don't know how sticky this is. I don't know how much we can project this into the future, but right now it looks rather bad to me. 43:22 Well, I really appreciate your opinion and the way you defined it. But I think that those ways would not be able to stop it because, well, first of all, in order to have a full node sync and to self-verify every single, to verify it from Genesys, you really need all that data. 43:43 You can speed that up, you can have trust-minimized ways, but if you want to fully verify from the beginning, you have to download that data. 43:51 That's why I said that we should disabuse these notions. And it starts with making, first of all, accepting that Bitcoin is a probabilistic system. It always was a probabilistic system. It was never actually, nor immutable, nor 100% sure it was probabilistic. 44:10 And accepting these reasonable trade-offs, like zero sync, if something comes out of zero sync, then we can do a lot about managing this. 44:22 I agree with all that. And you can incentivize that and you can talk about that and all that. But at the end of the day, if you really want a node that's going to sync from Genesys, you have to download that data. 44:34 And aside from that, there just will always be people that will have that. They will have that data because it's really not that much data since it's limited and it can only grow in a limited way. 44:43 So even if the majority of nodes will not store that data, you still kind of have to have nodes that will store that data. But I think there will always be nodes that will store that data. So that will not disincentivize people. 44:57 Sorry, I pressed the wrong button. I wanted to give you a thumbs up. So I agree, there will always be nodes that replicate everything. I'm pretty sure of this. 45:11 But would this whole ethos and this whole motivation and whole incentive be on a strongly pruning network that tries to just work with a live state, that tries to move the UTXO set from one state to the next with the highest possible trust assumptions and the most decentralization? 45:34 It would still be the best option. What's your other option? IPFS? The Bitcoin-based layer would still be the best option to store data, even if a very minority stored that data. It would still be the most immutable best place to store data. 45:50 If you have to, because you don't get it served as readily and it does not have the same data availability that it right now boasts. So tens of thousands or maybe a hundred thousand, I don't know how many nodes are out there. I think it's a safe bet to say that right now there are tens of thousands of full nodes that fully replicate the Bitcoin blockchain. 46:13 I see what you're saying. So you make the availability of that data more difficult. 46:17 Yeah, make it more difficult. 46:20 You're also making it more difficult than for anybody to think of fully verifying nodes. 46:25 Yes, that's what I mean. So if you accept that this is money and it's a probabilistic system and nodes are pruning by default and they accept these trust assumptions that if you are an economically insignificant node, a new player that just starts syncing up a new node and you've never received a single Satoshi, 46:48 then the energy and computation effort to fool you into a false chain so that when you receive your $10 worth of Satoshis from Binance or Lightning or something like that, it's not realistic. 47:13 Like I said, it's not 100% sure, but it's a probabilistic system and the probabilities are that if you verify the proof of work and you have these very reasonable assumptions on the UTXO set that you receive either a zero knowledge proof or you are getting a confirmation on a chain state from multiple reputable parties 47:38 and you are seeing that your node starts building, receiving the new blocks and they are all validating and checking out and the proof of work is checking out for a thousand blocks now, 47:49 then you just know that chances of that you have been fooled are almost non-existent and you wouldn't give good motivation for people to mess with you anyhow. 48:00 And the financial institutions and large players that are worth to spoof with significant effort are going to find a way to get the entire history anyhow. 48:11 So that's why this mental shift could actually happen and I believe it could disincentivize the abuse of the block space and I think we should explore it now. 48:22 Because like I said and as you said, so long that this ethos prevails that Bitcoin is this immutable storage forever stored and infinitely replicated, the motivation to put these things on chain is insanely high, I believe. 48:41 Yeah, I understand your point. If you disincentivize availability, but it's trivial for somebody to spin up a thousand nodes and then make that availability higher again. 48:52 Yeah, but the burden is his. 48:55 Yeah, the burden is his. But there will be people that want to, like aside from any of this garbage storage of data, they just want to for the fundamental reasons of Bitcoin to have their availability better. 49:06 There might be people like that, but I hear what you're saying, you can disincentivize them by explaining that. 49:11 But I still think there will be people that will want to do that. But as far as the UTXO set, people can store data in the UTXO set as well with fake signatures. 49:19 So you don't want to incentivize people to start storing data into the UTXO set because that's more of a problem for node operators. 49:26 That's what I said to people who first wanted to fight back on this. When it was just in the witness space, I was fairly relieved because the UTXO set is a much bigger problem if they start spamming that. 49:42 And sadly it happened with stamps. So even before any efficient fight would have been mounted by certain toxic maximalist labs, they already found a way to make things worse for everyone. 49:59 But if you check out how zero sync is supposed to work and what UTXO can do, then you realize that we could actually prune the crap out of the UTXO set as well, the way we store it and propagate it. 50:17 And shift the burden of proving that the UTXO is actually an existing thing and it is included in the UTXO set to those people that are creating these near-dust amounts. 50:32 And if you are not creating near-dust amounts, then that is going to be pretty damn expensive. 50:38 So obviously you can't stop it 100%, but you can probably keep it manageable. At least that is the theory that I think we should explore. 50:51 So I don't know. 50:53 I hear that. But as somebody that has been in the Ordinal ecosystem, I always incentivize people to run their own node if they are putting arbitrary data like pictures. 51:07 Where I would tell them that the best way to secure it is you actually hosting this data yourself. 51:12 So I think that there is an incentive for anybody participating in the network through putting arbitrary data. 51:18 And that's okay, right? 51:21 So if the people who are doing these things are actually the ones that are bearing the burden of it, then I think that is a more fair thing than what we have now. 51:32 But I think the better solution to this would be to reduce the block size. 51:37 Because I think that if economic value transfer of only Bitcoin satoshis and not any exogenous asset on top is the most valuable thing for Bitcoin, then that will eventually buy up the block space and pay the highest fee rate. 51:53 Now if it's not, if actually other asset transfers are more valuable, then that can be a great use case for Bitcoin. 52:01 If exogenous asset transfers or balanced transfers of something that's not taking up space is more valuable than actually transferring Bitcoins, then why not? 52:12 That can help the security of budget of Bitcoin. 52:15 What do you think about that? I think you might have missed the question I posed. 52:22 Just observing what is happening now, it has just popped in my head that the Bitcoin block space is valued. 52:34 They are not using BCH or PSV or anything else to put this data on. 52:40 They are using Bitcoin block space because it has higher prestige, it has higher perceived value. 52:46 Because it is scarce. It's all a downstream consequence of its scale. 52:49 So maybe if you make it more scarce, it would be just more valuable, like a web link. 52:55 The more expensive it is, the more scarce it is, the more valuable it is. 53:00 But it's not to solve that. It's not to solve the fees going up. 53:04 It's to solve the issue of people having to store more data than they are used to. 53:10 The fee aspect would most likely go higher. 53:14 I do agree that if you lower the block space, fees go higher. That would make the most sense. 53:20 Because you want to ease the burden of regular node operators that do not want to participate in this from storing this data. 53:31 And you want to incentivize the ones that do want to store this data, let them store it. 53:35 And that's okay if you put the burden on them. 53:36 But the easiest way to do that is to just lower the block size. 53:40 And now the burden is lighter on every node operator because now they have to store less data. 53:45 That's like the most simple solution. 53:48 But they are also just getting further away from being able to afford to participate in a self-sustaining way with the Bitcoin ecosystem. 53:58 So we are basically pouring gasoline into the fire from one aspect. 54:03 And I know that can be sometimes a valid strategy. 54:08 Some people suggested that we should constrict the block size temporarily. 54:14 So to squeeze out this type of economic activity and then relax it. 54:20 I'm not sure about all this. 54:24 But the way I see the solution is really to create an asymmetry. 54:30 So what Bitcoin is good for and what Bitcoin is the most useful for. 54:36 I would like to shift that in a way that creates a more inclusive environment. 54:42 I don't think the pricing out is a fair assessment. 54:49 Because if you look at hypothetically, we have 1 million people using Bitcoin for day-to-day transfers. 54:57 Or even more than that, let's say you have 1 billion people using the Bitcoin network. 55:05 And the Bitcoin price is at 1 million USD. 55:09 The fees are going to be extremely high. 55:12 So people are going to be priced out from using the base layer no matter what. 55:17 Even if there's no other type of transactions other than Bitcoin, eventually people get priced out. 55:23 It doesn't scale for that. 55:24 So to say that reducing the block size, you're pricing people out, it's an inevitability. 55:30 People are going to be priced out anyways. 55:32 I don't think that's a reason not to reduce it. 55:34 I think reducing it can have other benefits. 55:36 Wait, wait, wait. 55:38 Obviously, the Bitcoin album block space will not be able to service billions of people. 55:45 That was, I think, always pretty much understood after 2010 or something like that. 55:51 I think it's not understood as far as, I assume then, just like you, it's understood. 55:58 But as you can see on Twitter now, it seems like a lot of Bitcoiners have not understood that aspect. 56:03 Because they're saying the same arguments of the bigger blockers in 2017. 56:09 The same Roger Ver arguments, right? 56:11 Like children are dying. 56:13 It's really the same argument if you think about it. 56:17 Yeah, but bigger and infinite are not the same, right? 56:21 If you can make blocks reasonably bigger, and just hypothetically, if you can make blocks reasonably bigger, 56:30 and like I said, create an asymmetry. 56:32 It will not solve the issue. 56:34 If you make them bigger, people will always use it as well. 56:36 In itself. 56:38 That is why I said, I think we need to create an asymmetry. 56:42 Because if you just increase the block space now, you are going to get more of the garbage. 56:46 I'm 100% down with it. 56:47 So what I'm trying to say, we have these L2 solutions we are working on. 56:53 We are trying to make something more optimistic, right? 56:58 So people could share a UTXO, but they could fall back to on-chain. 57:04 And their ability to fall back to on-chain and their UTXO share not becoming dust, 57:10 basically depends on the availability of block space and the demand for it. 57:14 And that is why I try to say that if you can create an asymmetry where Bitcoin block space is mostly used for this, 57:22 because it is mostly good for this, right? 57:25 And we have a bit more block space, in theory, again. 57:30 I understand that probably it's not the best time to talk about increasing the available block space right now, 57:38 but there are caveats to that. 57:40 There are all sorts of ways we could do. 57:42 But like I said, it's a non-starter, as things are, right? 57:47 So if you just added more block space right now, it would be taken up with JPEGs and whatever. 57:53 But to come back to this, all these L2 schemes where you are deferring settlement, you have an off-chain state, 58:06 you are maintaining that off-chain state, preferably interacting with Lightning, 58:10 and your property rights basically hinge on that you can fall back to L1 and enforce them contractually on Bitcoin. 58:20 This all assumes that you are going to be able to pay for this. 58:25 And if we take, for example, say, CTV check template verify, 58:34 we could just by activating that one fork, that one tiny 200 lines of code fork, 58:41 we could put 1 billion people on Lightning with a single UTXO. 58:46 But if they have to close, then they are completely trapped, 58:50 and their small, tiny virtual UTXOs could actually become dust in a high-fee environment. 58:58 And that means that they are not really self-sovereign. 59:02 They did not accomplish anything by going to Lightning, right? 59:06 So we need to find ways for these people to be able to optimistically defer from going to on-chain, 59:15 but being able to fall to on-chain. 59:18 That is the current scaling, I don't know what to say, scaling paradox of Bitcoin, right? 59:27 This is the scaling paradox that we want, yes? 59:34 The drivechain vision is to have multiple one-gigabyte thunderside chains 59:40 that would be able to support billions of transactions a day, 59:45 and they would be merge-mined, so billions of fees paid to Layer 1, 59:50 and the fees would be low for the end user. 59:54 So they would use the thunderside chain with its large blocks, and it would be opt-in. 1:00:00 So anyone who wants to use the main chain only can do that, 1:00:04 but the main chain would have very high fees. 1:00:05 Very high fees on main chain was inevitable from Satoshi's decision to set the block size limit, 1:00:15 and it's good that he did that because it makes the main chain very cheap to validate. 1:00:22 So an ordinary person can validate, and if the block size were smaller, 1:00:27 as drive-chainers generally support, not all of them, but I believe that's Paul's view, 1:00:35 and it makes sense to me and others, is that if we have an even smaller block size, 1:00:42 then it would be even sooner that Bitcoiners could have a full node on their phone. 1:00:46 Comfortably. And then the whole world would be able to, you know, including poor people who only have a phone and no laptop, could validate the blockchain and be sure that they're paid Bitcoin, and for anyone who opts in to the thunderside chain, the large block sidechain, then they would have lower decentralization and lower fees, and validation would be harder, but it'd be optional. 1:01:13 So it's just like a restaurant. Some people like McDonald's, and some people like the Four Seasons. So it's good that poor people can choose to get some food cheaply, while other people who prefer to pay a lot for a higher quality experience can do that. 1:01:30 So Bitcoin needs to be a place where people can choose whatever they want, they can go to the sidechain they want, and it's all optional. No one has to use any sidechain ever. And if Bitcoin fails to provide that multiple sidechain design, where anyone can opt into whatever they want, then some other coin will, and then that coin will eventually accrue the value, because we don't want to lose users. 1:01:55 We want all this activity on Bitcoin, people doing all different kinds of things on Bitcoin. And we want to provide avenues, sidechains for people to be most comfortable. So if they want low fees, then they can use the large thunder sidechain. 1:02:10 So Moonsettler, why is it that you would prefer a block size increase, if I understood you correctly, on mainchain, when that would be a mandatory change for everyone? It would force everyone to have larger blocks, making it more expensive for the whole world to validate Layer 1. Why not keep Layer 1 small, if not smaller block size, and have large blocks on Layer 2, where it's completely optional, no one has to use it? Isn't that better? Why not have... 1:02:39 Yeah, I didn't get to this part. So basically, there is a difference, two different approaches that you can take. The one is the mandatory block size increase, as you said, which increases the burden for everyone, and the other is the non-mandatory block size increase, sort of, where you are running a lean mainchain node, and you are running a heavier sidechain node, 1:03:04 and that way, we could basically have, if not infinite block space, but definitely more than what we need to scale Lightning and stuff like that. And the whole thing would probably be manageable. 1:03:20 And as I said before, there is the potential for the Internet to partition even, you know, among continents, among superpowers. We don't know what the future holds, and it's very likely that these sidechains could be localized, if needed, and the Internet infrastructure would still work fine within the geographical and jurisdictional borders of these superpowers, even if they are not talking to each other. 1:03:47 You know, they are shooting down each other's satellites, and they are cutting the fibers below the oceans or whatever, and they are just setting up these huge national firewalls. 1:03:59 So, in a future like that, which is not completely unimaginable, it would definitely be the best option to have localized blockchains and a lean mainchain. 1:04:16 I have talked about this, but I would also like to mention, as I usually mention, that the trust assumptions are not the same for mainchain and for drivechains. 1:04:31 Yes. 1:04:32 Property rights do not have the same strength, and some of the people who are married to this part of the Bitcoin ethos, that you have to be, you know, momentum and self-sovereign, then those people probably do not accept it as a good compromise right now. 1:04:54 I'm saying right now because, as I said, it would take 10 to 20 years for us to be able to judge it with certainty that it's as good as mainchain, basically. 1:05:09 But since no one has to use it, the mountain men who don't want to use it, because as you rightly emphasize, the sidechain security budget is going to be only the sidechain fees, whereas the mainchain has the fees plus the subsidies. 1:05:25 So the mainchain is stronger. 1:05:27 In fact, it's funny that people who don't like sidechains actually benefit from them, even if they don't use them, which is an unusual phenomenon. 1:05:39 Usually there isn't a positive externality from activity, but in the case of a Bitcoin sidechain that's using drivechain technology, all of the fees on the sidechain are paid to the mainchain, approximately all of them. 1:05:53 And therefore, people who never use the sidechains ever still benefit, because when they eventually do their mainchain transaction, their layer one transaction, it's more secure because of the existence of those sidechains. 1:06:07 So this is why it's wrong for people to say that the ordinals and inscriptions, that this activity would be better if it were completely outside of Bitcoin, if it were to be on Ethereum or somewhere else. 1:06:18 We want this activity, these value, the value, the activity, the users, the demand, these people, it'd be better if they're Bitcoiners. 1:06:29 But if we had sidechains like drivechain, then more likely these users would find their way to a sidechain, or people who don't like the high fees could use a sidechain. 1:06:41 So we want to make Bitcoin a place where everyone can get whatever they want, kind of like Walmart. 1:06:46 You walk into Walmart, they have every product for every kind of person. 1:06:50 And that's why it's such a successful place. 1:06:53 We don't want Bitcoin to be narrow and limited, where most people in the world go somewhere else for their needs. 1:07:00 If Bitcoin were to be like that, and it become like a niche product, then it would not have the global monetization narrative. 1:07:08 It would become flipped and it would become a niche product, kind of like gold is today, where there's only a limited number of people around the world who are using gold and hoping for gold to become money. 1:07:19 And instead, you know, something else with more features and capabilities and flexibility becomes the world's one stop shop for all kinds of monetary use. 1:07:31 So you're emphasizing that some people don't like that the sidechains under drivechain would have a security model that is not identical to Bitcoin's mainchain. 1:07:43 So you're right about that, but that's fine. They don't have to use it. No one has to use it. 1:07:49 Yes. 1:07:50 Yes, but basically by reducing the block size of the mainchain and adding drivechains, you are almost forcing the people who actually want to use it for, I don't know, even just for, you know, a lightning wallet to have to run their own nodes and connect lightning network and stuff like that. 1:08:17 You are almost economically forcing them if they have holdings below a certain threshold. 1:08:24 And at the same time, you create a scarcity and prestige to mainchain block space where quote unquote artists and other people could basically use that block space scarcity to sell stuff that is really exogenous to the value that Bitcoin is trying to provide. 1:08:50 And some people call that scam outright and fraud and whatever. But even if you are not going there, it kind of sounds like that we are pushing the people who actually want to use Bitcoin as we envisioned how it will be used back in the days to lessen trust assumption and trust model and data availability model. 1:09:18 And we are just making the thing that the scammers produce even more valuable. So I see a potential there that it could play out in this perverse way. But like I said, from another approach and under other assumptions, it can make a lot of sense to actually do this. I just don't like what I'm seeing right now. 1:09:44 I'm surprised you have that view. It seems like you're comfortable making a value judgment on how people are using the chain, but you're talking about what people envisioned long ago. 1:09:55 Like Satoshi himself, the first Bitcoiner, was interested in using it for poker and for people to pay their pornography bills privately so their wife wouldn't see. Stuff like that. 1:10:10 So the idea that Bitcoin was originally only for political dissidents and victims of statism and that no one should use it for any kind of artistic or entertainment purpose is actually the opposite of the most original Bitcoin view, which was that it's about fun, creativity, experimentation and freedom. 1:10:37 I love libertarianism, but I feel that it would be a mistake to have a view which is at all anti-capitalist. 1:10:48 There are multiple ways to do these things, right? So you can commit arbitrary amounts of data to the Bitcoin blockchain, you can stamp it to site trees or whatever else, and you can have whatever you want attached to it without making it everyone's burden to this degree that we are seeing right here. 1:11:13 So I'm not sure I would say that I completely disapprove... I don't disapprove people paying poker and paying each other over Bitcoin. I disapprove putting every poker game that ever was played on the Bitcoin blockchain and recording it there. That's silly and that's bullshit. 1:11:38 I don't disapprove open timestamps, right? I don't necessarily disapprove DID's ION that is using Bitcoin for these DIDs and verifiable credentials. 1:11:56 I don't disapprove these uses. I disapprove the reckless and damaging ways that they are done that just make things worse for the people we want to bring to Bitcoin. 1:12:11 Well said. 1:12:13 Sudrunim, please join the conversation. You've so politely been waiting. 1:12:18 Yeah, well, I don't know enough about drivechain and sidechain, but my opinion on the situation is to just take a bunch of steps back and know that these guys are basically burning $150,000 to $200,000 every single block and this thing, it won't sustain. 1:12:39 But what will sustain is like multiple new use to Bitcoin blockchain. And what I find good in this is what we want to preserve a security budget of Bitcoin chain is as many use that have a high dependency to block space, but not in size, more like in blocks. 1:13:03 And right now what we're seeing is extremely inefficient. And I see it as a good reminder that people need to come up with alternatives. And I think the block size is too big and that's why people don't. 1:13:19 Like what happened with the inscription is people got access to three extra megabytes for very cheap. And that led to a bunch of stuff. And I see it as a good thing. And I'm curious to see how the fee was stabilized. 1:13:34 I'm thinking maybe around 25 sats per byte. And I don't know how long it's gonna last, but maybe like a week or two. It's pretty impressive the amount of money that is being spent on this. And I welcome as many completely different use cases that create themselves high dependencies for extremely reliable block space. 1:14:05 Yeah, I mean, we are having a bit of a glimpse into the future in some ways. And if we had for Bitcoin transaction at the moment, we would have these fees and we could sustain them. 1:14:21 Even that would be an interesting wake-up call, right? So people paying 30 or 50,000 satoshis for transactions and just imagining what that would mean at sub-dollar parity, right? 1:14:38 So who would be the people that can transact on-chain or open a lightning channel? And with what amount of money? That gives us some insight to how this thing could look in the future. 1:14:53 If we assume the bullish case for Bitcoin where the fees might sustain the miners and all. But we already see that this would be a serious barrier to entry. 1:15:07 And really the scary thing for me, and I understand the argument that this might just work itself out, right? This might just be a temporary thing. 1:15:18 But this temporary insanity that people are paying these fees for these various use cases, this is, I don't know, it just makes me be more careful about assumptions on how insane people could get and for how long, right? 1:15:44 That's all. So maybe I'm just a bit shaken and it's not a big deal actually and it will work out just fine. But right now what I'm seeing is not encouraging. 1:15:55 Hello SuperTestNet. Welcome. What's on your mind? 1:16:00 Thank you. I was just, when Mr. Moonsettler brought up that he doesn't want to see or he would not like it if every poker game ever was on Bitcoin. 1:16:12 When you brought up that, it brought to mind the observation that I suspect that it would be possible to do something where you put the payments for the poker game on the blockchain without putting the hands on blockchain. 1:16:27 Like you don't need to show what or to put information on the blockchain concerning what card everyone has in the poker game, but you can still put the payments on it and say like the payout is done through Bitcoin. 1:16:38 So like using Bitcoin as a payments layer but not using it as a data storage layer seems like a good idea to me. 1:16:44 Well said. One of the analogies Paul makes in his essays is that there is a structure in our energy grid where there is, for example, a nuclear power plant and ordinary consumers generally are not plugged in directly to that power plant. 1:17:06 Instead, there's a layered system, an architecture where the power plant connects to a set of industrial grade power lines that then diffuse the power availability to neighborhoods and then the neighborhoods eventually through smaller infrastructure diffuse the power to the retail households. 1:17:30 And then within the household, an ordinary person connects to an even more diffuse human level power outlet to get a trickle of power. 1:17:41 So there are many different layers between the power station with the nuclear reactor and the ordinary consumer a few miles away. 1:17:48 Similarly, Bitcoin in the future, if it adopts drivechain or something like it, will have a layered architecture. 1:17:58 And the ordinary person generally will be interacting with certain parts of that layered system depending on his needs. 1:18:07 So it's under it's reasonable that, you know, back in the primordial days, you know, mankind was like using a fireplace, they would make a bonfire and burn some wood and that was their power system for heat and cooking and light. 1:18:24 But today, you know, as Bitcoin's growing, instead of everyone directly interacting with only one layer, as if we were gathered around a fireplace, instead there's a nuclear reactor. 1:18:36 And now we're far removed from the fire because the fire, you know, the energy source has become massively powerful and therefore it isn't going to be something that ordinary people directly interact with. 1:18:46 So if Bitcoin has drivechain with, you know, let's say, as Paul has elaborated in his essays, there would be multiple thunder sidechains with one gigabyte blocks. 1:18:58 And as Moon Settler has talked about in different parts of the world, there could be one for Russia, one for China, one for America, one for India. 1:19:04 And, you know, that would make it more efficient. 1:19:08 So billions of people would be using these massive block sidechains. 1:19:12 And if they want to do a very large transaction, like if a bank is moving a billion dollars, maybe they would settle on layer one directly. 1:19:18 But for most people, they don't want to pay the high fee and there's no need. 1:19:22 So super like I feel that if we were to have this layered architecture, it would be perfectly fine for anyone who chooses to to spend a whole bunch of money to do something with the blockchain for fun or entertainment or art. 1:19:43 No one would object to it because everybody would already be happily on the layer where they are most comfortable and efficient. 1:19:49 So people would opt in to the amount of decentralization and low fees that they prefer. 1:19:55 And nobody would mind if someone is a willing customer at a higher level of decentralization that carries a higher fee, such as the Bitcoin main chain. 1:20:05 Because why would it why would I mind if someone goes to eat lunch at the Four Seasons if I'm happy eating lunch at an inexpensive store? 1:20:14 It doesn't bother me that someone eats lunch at a more expensive store. 1:20:20 Does that all make sense? 1:20:26 Can I say just one small thing? 1:20:28 Yeah. 1:20:29 So I have mentioned that I don't actually think that it's a good idea. 1:20:38 It's necessary or generally an optimal outcome if you have a gigabyte blocks on these sidechains. 1:20:48 So the way this works is the security budget is, of course, a function of the total fees that you allocate on a sidechain. 1:20:58 And since they can't have subsidy rights, so they can't be subsidized like alternative layer ones or like Bitcoin. 1:21:07 So they are going to have the fees for security budget and we can see it already. 1:21:13 I think it's pretty much proven at this point that infinite block space or just obdurant block space does not equal to high aggregate fees. 1:21:23 Right. So especially in I don't want to say dollar value, but in purchasing power or whatever you want to say, 1:21:37 it's not going to be competitive to have obdurant block space. 1:21:45 I think these sidechains would also have to need to make rational decisions on the size of their blockchain 1:21:55 to have the best security possible that their users can actually afford. 1:22:01 So I just wanted to... 1:22:03 Yes, understood. I see what you're saying. 1:22:08 If there's a one gigabyte block, then you're saying, why wouldn't the fee be extremely low? 1:22:13 Well, the fee is going to be extremely low. 1:22:15 That's the whole point. 1:22:17 It's kind of like if the whole world can pay an extremely low fee for cash payments that are peer-to-peer 1:22:25 and that use a verifiable peer-to-peer relationship to the main chain, 1:22:33 then they're dealing with a unit of account which is equal to one Bitcoin, 1:22:38 but it's very easy to move around at extremely low fee and that's the result they would have. 1:22:43 So there'd be a billion transactions a day of a penny each on each of these one gigabyte sidechains 1:22:49 and the total amount of fee would be substantial because we're talking about billions of pennies. 1:22:57 I'm just saying everyone probably wants to be in the highest security setting that they can pay for, right? 1:23:04 So that makes sense to me. 1:23:07 And I think that will not work with practically infinite block space, 1:23:12 but I also think you're probably going to have options. 1:23:16 As you said, people can shop around and have options, whichever suits them for whatever purpose 1:23:23 because hodling and transacting large amounts is probably completely different 1:23:30 from micropayments that for whatever reason happen on-chain. 1:23:37 I actually don't think we should have micropayments on-chain necessarily, 1:23:41 that's not a very good use of resources, 1:23:44 but I'm not going to be the blockchain police, right? 1:23:47 So if people want to do it, sure. 1:23:50 Satoshi himself was excited about microtransactions. 1:23:55 He wrote about it repeatedly. 1:23:57 I remember when I read the book of Satoshi 1:24:00 where Phil Champagne collected all of Satoshi's writings into one book, 1:24:07 all of the forum posts as well as messages that have been published reliably. 1:24:15 Satoshi was interested in the possibility that microtransactions 1:24:19 would be possible and useful and interesting 1:24:22 and that would develop a new kind of economy. 1:24:25 So maybe he was right. 1:24:27 Yeah, but come on, Lightning. 1:24:30 It's so much better, I believe, for this purpose. 1:24:34 And Lightning and also for very microtransactions and special cases, 1:24:41 even eCash, so when you are going to these extreme low values, 1:24:46 I just don't think the blockchain makes as much sense 1:24:51 and it's not really where you need the best assurances, really. 1:24:57 So people usually want to secure their life savings, right? 1:25:04 So they don't want to secure as much whatever coffee purchases they make that day. 1:25:11 It just doesn't, it's not as important. 1:25:15 But they actually want their savings to be safe. 1:25:19 That is a very important part of the Bitcoin ethos 1:25:22 and I believe for this reason it's probably going to work out a bit different. 1:25:30 And this is why I said I'm very interested in the Thunder sidechain, 1:25:34 actually providing block space for Lightning nodes. 1:25:38 Lightning nodes actually rely on having some finality assumptions. 1:25:43 I mean, they would probably work if you increased 1:25:48 because you have lower security assumptions on the sidechain 1:25:52 and you increase the time lock that if you are unilaterally closing 1:25:59 that you have to wait for spending, you know, 1:26:01 while someone else can, if you are fraudulently closing, 1:26:09 someone else can put in a justice transaction, right? 1:26:12 And the problem with this is the lower the security budget, 1:26:18 the cheaper it is to steal from someone like this 1:26:23 by denying them transactions or reorging or whatever reason. 1:26:30 And there is going to be a limit for how long people are willing to wait 1:26:34 in a non-cooperative scenario. 1:26:36 So there are practical limits. 1:26:38 These sidechains would need to have reasonable finality 1:26:42 and trust assumptions for the amounts that people are using to lock them in. 1:26:47 And that is why I think it will probably pay to have 1:26:51 the maximum amount of fees that people are able to, 1:26:54 certain people are able to, you know, pay on a sidechain 1:26:58 for this to work optimally. 1:27:00 And they would just have to deal with the time locks 1:27:04 and finality assumptions that come with that fee band, right? 1:27:08 And everyone can basically then use Bitcoin 1:27:12 by trading time for money. 1:27:17 Well said. 1:27:19 Everyone is free to chime in and join this conversation. 1:27:23 This is Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 1:27:25 We meet every Monday and Thursday, 1:27:27 hosted by LayerTwo Labs to discuss 1:27:29 Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 300 and 301, 1:27:32 a potentially transformative upgrade for Bitcoin 1:27:35 enabling sidechains that are more peer-to-peer. 1:27:39 That is the phrasing I like, 1:27:41 which I read in a tweet by Adam Back, 1:27:43 where he described Drivechain sidechains 1:27:47 as being more peer-to-peer than the sidechains we have today, 1:27:51 which necessarily include a 15-party multisig federation. 1:27:57 So in a Drivechain sidechain, 1:27:59 there would not be a 15-party multisig federation 1:28:03 where socially selected people are appointed 1:28:07 to hold the Bitcoin as part of the security model. 1:28:11 Instead, it would be the dynamic, 1:28:13 global multitude of Bitcoin miners 1:28:15 who are involved in the security model. 1:28:18 And we believe that it would be great 1:28:21 for Bitcoiners to have the option to use that. 1:28:24 No one has to use it, 1:28:26 but it would be great to have that option. 1:28:32 Yeah. 1:28:33 Do you want me to talk about that? 1:28:35 Maybe Hampus, if you can come back, 1:28:38 will talk about what he thinks it would look like 1:28:42 to integrate sidechains into Lightning. 1:28:45 That's an interesting topic, I think. 1:28:51 I've invited him back. 1:28:56 There are a bunch of different sidechains 1:28:59 that have captured different people's attention. 1:29:02 For example, Fiatjaf has tweeted, 1:29:06 Fiatjaf, the creator of Nostr, 1:29:09 has tweeted that the Hivemind sidechain 1:29:12 is the one that interests him the most. 1:29:15 And I think he means that Paul's idea 1:29:19 for a peer-to-peer Oracle network 1:29:22 as a Bitcoin sidechain could be very interesting. 1:29:25 And that also is my personal greatest interest. 1:29:28 But Thunder is also interesting, 1:29:30 as is DNS on blockchain, 1:29:32 something Satoshi approved of all the way back in 2010. 1:29:35 And then there's others. 1:29:36 There's a whole number of sidechains that are planned, 1:29:39 including Zcash technology 1:29:40 on a privacy-focused sidechain for Bitcoiners. 1:29:45 Hivemind is the prediction markets thing, right? 1:29:48 Yes, exactly. 1:29:49 A peer-to-peer Oracle network 1:29:51 for multi-dimensional event derivatives, 1:29:54 as Paul calls it. 1:29:55 It's a really interesting white paper Paul wrote in 2014, 1:29:58 which you can find at bitcoinhivemind.info. 1:30:03 I believe it's .info. 1:30:04 And it's an amazing white paper. 1:30:07 Basically, as far as I can tell, 1:30:09 in my humble understanding, 1:30:10 it overcomes the Oracle problem 1:30:12 and enables the whole world to collaborate 1:30:15 to have a prediction market 1:30:18 for all kinds of things, 1:30:19 an unlimited number of things. 1:30:20 And this could help society 1:30:23 crystallize its expectations for the future 1:30:26 in a capitalistic way. 1:30:28 And do you think this could be leveraged 1:30:32 on the Bitcoin network or on other sidechains, 1:30:35 like via DLC contracts or something like that? 1:30:42 I didn't quite hear that question. 1:30:44 Could you say it again? 1:30:47 So I was asking if we could leverage these Oracles 1:30:50 on Bitcoin mainchain or other sidechains 1:30:54 via DLC contracts or something like that? 1:30:58 That would be a question for Paul. 1:31:05 Welcome, Hampus. 1:31:09 Welcome to the stage. 1:31:10 I think Moon Settler had a question for you about lightning. 1:31:14 Yeah, but I see him drop though. 1:31:16 Is he on stage? 1:31:20 I think he is, from my standpoint. 1:31:22 But in the meantime... 1:31:23 I could see him. 1:31:24 I wanted to challenge him 1:31:25 because he said lightning completely breaks 1:31:27 when fees are high. 1:31:28 And it's working for me. 1:31:29 What's up with that, Hampus? 1:31:33 Super, could you elaborate? 1:31:34 There's been lots of discourse on Twitter 1:31:37 about how high fees make it unaffordable 1:31:39 to open a channel. 1:31:40 What's your view? 1:31:42 Well, I opened one yesterday 1:31:44 and it was more expensive than usual 1:31:46 but I just increased the amount 1:31:48 that I was putting into the channel 1:31:50 so that the overall percentage was still low. 1:31:54 And that's how I figured it out. 1:31:57 So it still works, at least for me. 1:31:59 You have spoken in the past here 1:32:01 about how any kind of block size increase 1:32:04 on Bitcoin would make it economically difficult 1:32:09 for people of limited means 1:32:11 to have a full copy of the blockchain. 1:32:13 So you have expressed sensitivity 1:32:15 to the economics of nodes 1:32:17 being burdened with lots of data 1:32:20 at a high rate of data accrual. 1:32:22 So why is it that you aren't as sensitive 1:32:27 to the economics of higher fees 1:32:29 for lightning operation? 1:32:34 When you say I'm not as sensitive 1:32:39 I'm not sure what is the relative sensitivity 1:32:41 of the first comment 1:32:42 and the relative sensitivity 1:32:43 of the second comment. 1:32:44 I'm just saying I recall you 1:32:46 once talked about how 1:32:48 you would like it to be cheap 1:32:49 for people to have a full node. 1:32:51 But today you're not expressing 1:32:53 the same kind of attitude 1:32:55 about the cheapness or lack thereof 1:32:57 of lightning operation. 1:32:59 That's all. 1:33:03 I don't think... 1:33:05 Okay, I haven't thought of this before 1:33:07 so I will give that some thought. 1:33:09 I'm not sure that 1:33:11 I have a good answer right now. 1:33:16 Welcome, Brad Baker. 1:33:18 What's your question or comment? 1:33:21 Hi, sorry. 1:33:23 I've only followed you guys 1:33:25 in the project kind of cursory. 1:33:28 And you probably answered this question 1:33:30 a hundred or a thousand times 1:33:32 but I don't know the answer. 1:33:35 How does drivechains differ 1:33:38 or at least the mining part of it 1:33:40 or the block producing? 1:33:44 How does it differ 1:33:46 from the merge mining 1:33:49 of like RSK, for example? 1:33:53 Super, do you want to take this? 1:33:56 What was the question? 1:33:58 I was reading something on Twitter. 1:34:00 He asked, how is the merge mining 1:34:02 of a drivechain 1:34:04 with BIP301 different 1:34:06 than the merge mining that's going on 1:34:08 in RSK right now? 1:34:10 Oh, so it is merge mining. 1:34:13 I didn't even realize. 1:34:15 I thought it was something different. 1:34:17 Yeah, merge mining is 1:34:19 something that's existed 1:34:21 for a long time. 1:34:23 Ever since 2010, I think 1:34:25 there's been merge mine. 1:34:27 So let me change the question 1:34:29 a little bit. 1:34:31 How does it differ 1:34:33 from what RSK is doing then? 1:34:35 Yeah, so one of the things 1:34:37 that happens with the way 1:34:39 RSK does merge mining 1:34:41 is to run the RSK software 1:34:43 and then 1:34:45 the miners of RSK 1:34:47 basically run 1:34:49 both sets of software 1:34:51 and when they create a block 1:34:53 on the sidechain, they put a hash of it 1:34:55 into Bitcoin in the Coinbase. 1:34:57 But it's hard to convince miners 1:34:59 to run alternative software 1:35:01 which is why 1:35:03 RSK only has about 50% 1:35:05 of them actually doing it. 1:35:07 So BIP301 1:35:09 is a way for users 1:35:11 to do it. 1:35:13 The users of the sidechain are the ones 1:35:15 who create the blocks on the sidechain. 1:35:17 They create a hash of them 1:35:19 and then they submit those hashes to miners. 1:35:21 That way miners don't have to run the software. 1:35:23 They just put in whatever hash 1:35:25 the sidechain users 1:35:27 give them and that way 1:35:29 they don't have to validate anything 1:35:31 or run any software. 1:35:33 So that means 1:35:35 that 1:35:37 the block producers 1:35:39 on the drivechain don't have to be 1:35:41 Bitcoin miners as well. 1:35:43 Yeah, you can produce 1:35:45 blocks on the sidechain without running Bitcoin 1:35:47 software and vice versa. 1:35:49 You can mine blocks on Bitcoin without running 1:35:51 the sidechain software. 1:35:53 That's good. That was my main concern 1:35:55 was like, wow, it seems limiting 1:35:57 if you're forcing all of the people 1:35:59 who want to support 1:36:01 this drivechain sidechain 1:36:03 to have to also be a Bitcoin miner. 1:36:05 So that's good. I'm glad 1:36:07 to hear that part. That should help 1:36:09 a lot to 1:36:11 get adopted, I think. 1:36:13 So the main 1:36:15 difference is between 1:36:17 previous 1:36:19 attempts 1:36:21 is like 1:36:23 the old merge mining was 1:36:25 forcing miners 1:36:27 to run the sidechain software. 1:36:29 The new 1:36:31 proposal of blind merge mining 1:36:34 does not force them 1:36:36 because there is an open auction 1:36:38 in the Bitcoin mempool for these slots 1:36:40 and anyone can 1:36:42 make a bid 1:36:44 and the miners can just simply take 1:36:46 the highest fee bid, whether it's 1:36:48 valid or not valid. So it can actually 1:36:50 be invalid. Someone can just stop 1:36:52 the sidechain, 1:36:54 deny them 1:36:56 progress or whatever, 1:36:58 try to include invalid hashes 1:37:00 for trollish 1:37:02 or other reasons, 1:37:04 but the sidechain 1:37:06 nodes will still validate their blocks 1:37:08 and will not advance on an invalid hash 1:37:10 and 1:37:12 basically 1:37:14 their 1:37:16 only defense is 1:37:18 pay more than the other care 1:37:20 eventually to advance the state 1:37:22 the valid state. 1:37:24 Is there any progress 1:37:26 in this bit going through? 1:37:28 I mean, what do you guys 1:37:30 think is the 1:37:32 prognosis or the time 1:37:34 required for this to get 1:37:36 adopted? 1:37:40 Does anybody know? 1:37:42 It is progressing. 1:37:44 It's hard to know when the Bitcoin community 1:37:46 will decide to do anything. 1:37:48 So it's like predicting 1:37:50 an election. It's extremely hard to know 1:37:52 the future, but work is being done 1:37:54 that's very important. For example, 1:37:56 a very experienced Bitcoiner 1:37:58 has been 1:38:00 hired by LayerTwo Labs to rebase 1:38:02 the drivechain code 1:38:04 so to meticulously review 1:38:06 it and ready it to be 1:38:08 merged at some time this year. 1:38:10 So that's one interesting 1:38:12 fact and then 1:38:14 there have also been 1:38:16 a great increase in the number 1:38:18 of well-known 1:38:20 Bitcoiners who have 1:38:22 announced a favorable 1:38:24 or strongly supportive 1:38:26 attitude towards this upgrade. 1:38:28 So 1:38:30 there is some momentum. 1:38:32 Yeah. So I wonder 1:38:34 this may 1:38:36 be blasphemy in your guys' 1:38:38 eyes, but 1:38:40 I wonder if 1:38:42 you did it or if you 1:38:44 were able to convince, for example, 1:38:46 Litecoin or something to do it on there 1:38:48 just as kind of like a test run 1:38:50 to show them, hey, look, it works. 1:38:52 It's in the wild. 1:38:55 It's running here. Look at this. 1:38:57 And then maybe that makes it a little bit easier 1:38:59 to convince Bitcoiners. I don't know. 1:39:01 Just a weird 1:39:03 idea. 1:39:05 I support 1:39:07 that. We should ask the Liquid people 1:39:09 if they'll add drivechain support 1:39:11 or if they'll add BIP300 to Liquid. 1:39:13 Oh, Liquid. 1:39:15 Yeah. 1:39:17 To my knowledge, by the way, 1:39:19 Bitcoin Cash actually tried 1:39:21 to implement 1:39:23 and they, 1:39:25 for some reason that 1:39:27 I don't know, abandoned it 1:39:29 completely. 1:39:31 Yeah. 1:39:33 Is Bitcoin Cash, though, 1:39:35 is it actually being used 1:39:37 anywhere near? Because I know 1:39:39 people who use Litecoin. 1:39:41 Bitcoin Cash, 1:39:43 I don't... 1:39:45 I've never even heard of people using 1:39:47 it for anything. 1:39:49 It depends on who you are talking to 1:39:51 because if you are talking to Bitcoin Cash 1:39:53 people who are actually deep 1:39:55 in their own cut, then 1:39:57 you will hear the exact same 1:39:59 bullish sentiment and adoption 1:40:01 stories that you are going 1:40:03 to hear from Bitcoin Moxes 1:40:05 if you are talking to them 1:40:07 about adoption in Africa, 1:40:09 adoption in El Salvador. They have 1:40:11 pretty much the same version, 1:40:13 their own versions 1:40:15 of the same stories, 1:40:17 but their own chain activity 1:40:19 shows that they are usually 1:40:21 averaging around 100 kilobyte blocks 1:40:23 and that's it. At least last time 1:40:25 I looked at it. 1:40:27 As someone who 1:40:29 supports Bitcoin, 1:40:31 I would tend to 1:40:33 support the idea of using Litecoin 1:40:35 more than Bitcoin Cash 1:40:37 just because I'm not too... 1:40:39 I just think that Charlie Lee 1:40:41 doesn't kind of do the... 1:40:44 shenanigans that people in the Bitcoin Cash have done, like trying to basically take the name. 1:40:51 And I mean, you guys know all the stories. 1:40:55 Super. Can I ask you a question about Handcrank? 1:40:58 If you're interested in chatting for a bit more. 1:41:03 I am? Who's asking? 1:41:04 That's me, Henry. 1:41:06 Wow. Really? 1:41:08 OK, sure. If you're willing to take up space in the drivechain thing to talk about Handcrank, 1:41:13 I'm happy to talk about it. 1:41:15 Cool. My question was, well, it was about drivechain in that, you know, what did you learn about 1:41:21 drivechain or what issues were you thinking about that led you to develop something of a similar 1:41:26 nature? 1:41:30 It was mainly, well, partly it was the difficulty that we're having with getting immersion to 1:41:37 Bitcoin Core. Whenever I run into a roadblock or often when I run into a roadblock, I try to find a 1:41:42 way around it. So one thought that went into my mind was, what if we what if we just do it without 1:41:47 them? You know, what if we just figure out a way to do it and do a run around around Bitcoin 1:41:51 Core? But the second thing was I was reading, I was actually reading through the BIP300, you 1:41:59 know, BIP. And it seemed to me that essentially the essence of drivechain is to find a way to make 1:42:08 a Bitcoin address that miners can vote on how to spend the funds in it. 1:42:13 And I just thought it sounded like he's using something that's effectively a type of time lock to do 1:42:18 this. And since we already have time locks in Bitcoin, I've wondered if there was a way to just kind of 1:42:24 change the way we use them to do the same thing or use them in a novel way to do the same thing that BIP300 1:42:31 is trying to do. So I spent some time leading up to writing Handcrank. I spent some time trying to 1:42:39 rephrase, reframe what exactly the hashrate escrow is doing. And I came up with a description of it 1:42:49 that sounded like it was faithful to the original, but also possible to implement by just doing funky 1:42:56 time locks. And that ended up being Handcrank. So I wrote out a proposal for how you could use regular 1:43:03 time locks to create a Bitcoin address that miners could vote on how to spend the funds in it. And then 1:43:10 once, if we implement that, or if I implement that, or if anyone does, I suppose, then you have something 1:43:15 that's very similar to drivechain, but doesn't need a new opcodes or doesn't need a new, well, in some 1:43:23 sense, it still needs a software because miners would still need to run this extra software. But at 1:43:28 least you wouldn't be asking anyone but miners to modify their node. So yeah, that it seemed to be kind 1:43:36 of well received, but I haven't implemented it yet to show people how it works. And I think it's a bit 1:43:41 confusing. It's more complicated than drivechain itself. So implementing it and then demoing it for 1:43:47 people would really help with helping people understand how Handcrank is supposed to work. 1:43:54 Super. One of the struggles of advocating for drivechain, or anything like it, is that people tend to be 1:44:03 less excited about the architecture of sidechains, then they might be about a specific sidechain that 1:44:11 offers a specific feature. For example, if you tell people, let's have sidechains on Bitcoin, that doesn't 1:44:18 tell them exactly what they would be using a sidechain for. But if you tell them, there could be a 1:44:22 sidechain that uses Bitcoin's unit of account, but Zcash privacy technology, or a sidechain that is like 1:44:29 Bitcoin, except it has very large blocks for lower fees, or a sidechain that has peer to peer oracles, 1:44:36 like Hivemind, or a sidechain that has a focus on facilitating DNS in a self sovereign way, which even 1:44:42 Satoshi was excited about a little bit. Those are different applications, oracles, DNS, scaling, 1:44:49 fungibility, those are examples of sidechain applications that are proof that there is blockchain 1:44:56 technology other than mere simple payments on Bitcoin, that should be on blockchain and can be on 1:45:02 Bitcoin in a layer two. So which of those or some other application on a sidechain excites you and is the 1:45:11 one that you use as an example to explain the value proposition of sidechains? Like, are you most excited 1:45:17 about a privacy sidechain, an oracle sidechain, a DNS sidechain, or a smart contracting sidechain or 1:45:23 something else? 1:45:25 The ones that I hear the most about are a sidechain with Monero's privacy, a sidechain with Liquid's 1:45:32 opcodes, and a sidechain with bigger blocks. And so those are the ones that I try when I'm trying to tell 1:45:37 people what drivechains could could bring us, those are my go to's, say it could bring us all of those 1:45:42 things. Personally, I'm not interested in the first two of those. Because I'm quite happy with using 1:45:51 Coinjoins as a privacy mechanism. And I'm quite happy with Bitcoin scripts, flexibility as a 1:45:56 scripting language. But the one that personally appeals to me is a big block one. I think, 1:46:02 especially in times of fee congestion, like right now, it's nice to be able to say, you know, if we had 1:46:07 a drivechain, all of this activity, you could open up lightning channels on a drivechain and not have to 1:46:13 pay, you know, $60 to do it. And that'd be great. So that one actually personally appeals to me and the 1:46:20 other two don't. 1:46:20 So I just wanted to inject one thing that it's entirely possible that Monero's and the Coinjoins 1:46:36 expectations on whatever privacy that they could provide, completely break under pretty believable 1:46:47 and simplistic assumptions on an adversary's behavior and access to information. So it can be 1:46:54 us in a sentence, you pseudo anonymously receiving donations, like you have a donation address, it can 1:47:01 be a B47, or some silent payment address or, or it can be like Monero addresses are not actually, you 1:47:14 know, show up on chain. So you have a lot of privacy when you publish a Monero address. So you receive 1:47:20 donations, micropayments from a passive adversary like E and say you are purchasing a pizza in a 1:47:28 pizza joint from time to time from these donations and other stuff that you get, you're purchasing a 1:47:35 pizza, and they got your name and home address, because otherwise, how would you get your pizza, 1:47:41 right? And basically statistical analysis completely breaks your anonymity. Doesn't matter what, or 1:47:51 potentially completely breaks your anonymity if you are just a normal user who Coinjoins or just uses 1:47:56 Monero and just normally receive donations and spend them on pizza. That's all it needs, right? And 1:48:02 either they are using EVE as payment provider, or they are using an accounting software that EVE has 1:48:10 access to, because the data is in the cloud or whatever. And EVE can send you micro donations, 1:48:15 because basically, you are doing something that they don't like, like publish open source, 3d 1:48:22 printable, WAPON parts, templates, or whatever other online activity you do. So that's just an 1:48:32 interesting thing that I discovered not long ago that I wanted to interject that we may actually need 1:48:39 some better privacy than what Coinjoin or, you know, Monero can do. 1:48:59 All right. Everyone is welcome to come on up to the stage if you have a question or comment. Or if you 1:49:06 want to chat about Drivechain or anything related to it. Come on up to the stage, raise your hand, 1:49:13 and you can ask questions to anyone here. 1:49:20 Drivechain is Bitcoin Improving Proposal 300 and 301. It's been around since 2015. That was when the 1:49:26 idea was first introduced in a blog post by Paul Sztorc on truthcoin.info, his blog on economics of 1:49:34 Bitcoin. 1:49:51 All right. Anyone have any more thoughts? We've been going for about two hours now. This space meets every 1:49:59 Monday and Thursday to talk about Drivechain. Follow LayerTwo Labs to get notifications of these 1:50:05 spaces. In the nest here in this space, there's a bunch of tweets that are interesting and significant 1:50:13 recent tweets. We have one from supertestnet, one from Adam Back, and two tweets from LayerTwo Labs 1:50:24 about. If you go to the very first tweet, you can see a list of the resources that are available, including 1:50:31 the Drivechain website, drivechain.info. Our Telegram group has over 700 people in it. And there are videos 1:50:39 on YouTube. And there's, of course, the GitHub repository with all of the code, including code for the 1:50:46 Thunder sidechain and the Zcash sidechain and a whole bunch of other interesting sidechains that Bitcoiners 1:50:54 will be able to use. So the idea of Drivechain is that once we have Drivechain, every technology from every 1:51:00 altcoin can be copied into a sidechain. And then Bitcoiners can use that technology, whether it's for scaling, 1:51:08 privacy, oracles, DNS or something else. They can use it on Bitcoin for Bitcoiners using Bitcoin's unit of 1:51:15 account, sending the transaction fees to Bitcoin miners, basically stealing all the good ideas from all of the 1:51:22 altcoins, and giving them no rationale for having an altcoin at all. When Vitalik wrote the Ethereum white paper 1:51:30 in 2014, at the very beginning, he talks about how creating an altcoin gives him freedom to create new features 1:51:39 without the limitations of Bitcoin's limited extensibility. So that wouldn't have been something he could have 1:51:45 said had Drivechain been enabled at that time. Because once we have Drivechain, then every protocol, virtually any, 1:51:56 can be cloned into a Bitcoin sidechain without the use of a federation. Instead of a 15-party federation, it's more 1:52:04 peer-to-peer, and therefore Bitcoin would have stronger narratives, potentially. 1:52:15 Does anyone have any closing thoughts or final comments for conversation? If not, we can wrap up. But I'd love to hear 1:52:29 anyone on stage talk more, or anyone else come on up to the stage, if you'd like. 1:52:34 Yeah, we can keep on going. I have a quick point regarding what you talked about just recently. Because I see a lot of 1:52:43 criticism that Drivechains will enable shitcoins for Bitcoin. But I think that seems like a weird argument, because the 1:52:52 whole point of a Drivechain is to have Bitcoin, the unit of account, on a sidechain, right? So you're not supposed to 1:53:00 have another token on the Drivechain. Although it might be possible to do that. So I see a lot of people criticizing 1:53:10 Drivechains because of that. Not sure if you have any thoughts regarding that. For me, I like Drivechains because it's 1:53:17 using BTC, the unit. I don't want to speculate on another coin. So that's why Drivechains are good for me. But it's 1:53:26 theoretical that someone could make a Drivechain with BTC, the unit, but also another staking coin or whatever, on that 1:53:35 Drivechain. So yeah, what do you think about that? 1:53:39 Yeah, but we already have them on the mainchain, right? There are at least three or four ways now that you can put 1:53:46 quote-unquote shitcoins on Bitcoin. So whatever. 1:53:51 Hampus, I think you're exactly right. The entire purpose of Drivechain is oriented toward the strengthening of 1:53:59 Bitcoin's network effect, enabling every protocol to use a synthetic Bitcoin as its unit of account. So instead of people 1:54:07 using Monero for privacy, they could use a Monero Drivechain, which would use Bitcoin, a synthetic Bitcoin, as its unit of 1:54:16 account. And the only way to create that token is to put Bitcoin in the hashrate escrow. In other words, as Adam Backwood has 1:54:23 tweeted, Drivechain is about maximum innovation, but minimal seniorage. Seniorage being the economic phenomenon of money 1:54:34 printing from the creation of more units of money. So I agree with you entirely. 1:54:42 Yeah, and I've also asked some altcoiners that I know if they will use a Drivechain if it had the same technology as their 1:54:51 shitcoin or altcoin, and they basically confirmed that they will do that. So it seems like the best way forward overall to go 1:55:01 ahead with Drivechains and innovate without affecting the mainchain. 1:55:08 I think SuperTestNet had a question for you earlier, if I recall correctly. 1:55:16 Ask you about Lightning. 1:55:17 I think that was me. So how do you see how sidechains could be integrated to Lightning Network, if you have thought about that? 1:55:29 Yeah, I mean, Lightning can work over multiple chains, basically. And especially works good if it's the same unit of account. So 1:55:41 there's no speculation or option. So I foresee the mainchain will have Lightning, of course, but then you could have multiple Drivechains, 1:55:54 not necessarily one big block Drivechain, because I still think big blocks are bad, regardless if it's on a sidechain or not. So you could still 1:56:06 have an interoperable internet of Drivechains, you could deploy Lightning with that. And you can still have the problem with the network 1:56:16 graph or channels for Lightning nodes. So you could implement something like trampling routing, where you don't need to know the whole 1:56:25 channel network over all Drivechains, you just need to know your base, basically. So something like that would work out, I think, if you think long, long, long term. 1:56:38 Do you think rendezvous routing would work well? Like, let's assume you have a sidechain and the mainchain, and you have an entity that has a node on bot, 1:56:48 and they create a virtual channel between the two, and then you can just create an invoice with rendezvous routing, and you can naturally pay it with the 1:57:00 existing software, maybe? I don't know. 1:57:02 Yeah, I think trampling routing would be like a specialization, right? So you will pay the service provider to find the path for you, because Lightning still 1:57:12 scales horribly for the channel graph, right? To know all the nodes and stuff. So I think that's basically Drivechains and Lightning over those 1:57:21 Drivechains, plus trampling routing is an attractive way to scale up as well. And yeah, it's all interoperable and stuff, so yeah. 1:57:36 Excellent. Welcome to the stage, Stack. 1:57:42 Thanks for putting this together. I have a few questions here before you guys end the show. So I think the previous speaker and person might have answered my first question, 1:57:52 which is, is Layer, is the Drivechain a Layer 2 type solution, and would it be competing with Lightning? That's my first question. Second question is that we have the 1:58:04 old situation going on with the BRC20. Will there be another solution on the mainnet, or is this going to be a Layer 2, Layer 3 type solution, which will at least hope to avoid 1:58:17 congestion on the mainnet? And then when we talk about shitcoin, there are shitcoins, and then there are other attempts at innovation using Bitcoin, right? So how do we go ahead and enable more 1:58:32 innovation using a Drivechain or a sidechain, like what you guys call a Drivechain here, without being on the mainnet? I was not here earlier, so I'm not sure if you guys answered all those questions. So I'm just trying to, like, connect all the dots. 1:58:51 Those are all great questions. Would anyone like to answer those? We've heard Mies talk a lot. Moonsettler, Hampus, Super, anyone like to? 1:59:05 I can answer the Lightning question, of course. Yes, Lightning works over Drivechains, and it also works interoperable with the mainchain, which is quite interesting. You can have bridge nodes that can talk with both the Drivechain and the mainchain. 1:59:21 So that method works, and it works even better if it's the same unit of account, which it is with Drivechains, right? You still have BTC, the unit, so it's all just fine. That's the primary scaling vision I have personally for Bitcoin, to use Drivechains and Lightning over Drivechains. 1:59:43 Because I still think that, like, Lightning is just a better payment network for small payments in general. Like, on-chain is not that great for small, fast payments. And we've seen that with the full RBF debates that we had, like, some months ago. 1:59:59 And I think that's settled now, right? So I think that Lightning for small payments is the way to go, and that applies to Drivechains as well. 2:00:09 Stack, your questions were really great. Thank you for responding to them. I'll add my two cents. Basically, Drivechain is all about enabling a new kind of sidechain on the mainchain. 2:00:30 Bitcoin. So right now, Bitcoin has some sidechains, but they all involve a 15-party federated multisig. 2:00:37 All of them. Liquid, RSK, and all the rest. And the sidechains are very small. 2:00:43 There's only about $100 million worth of Bitcoin sent to those sidechains. 2:00:49 And arguably, if Drivechain were enabled on Bitcoin, then Bitcoin would have a much stronger narrative 2:00:56 associated with its sidechains, because the sidechains would be more peer-to-peer, 2:01:02 because they would not involve that 15-party federated multisig. 2:01:08 Instead, the Bitcoin miners, which is a dynamic global multitude with an enormous economic 2:01:15 commitment to Bitcoin, they would be involved in an important way in the security model of the 2:01:21 sidechain. So as Adam Back says, Drivechain sidechains would be more peer-to-peer than 2:01:29 the first generation of sidechains, which have been all including a 15-party multisig federation. 2:01:36 So the idea of Shitcoin would be an altcoin that uses a technology which is available on a 2:01:44 peer-to-peer Bitcoin sidechain. Right now, a lot of blockchain technology is not available 2:01:50 on a peer-to-peer Bitcoin sidechain. And therefore, the altcoins have a strong narrative. 2:01:57 They can say, hey, if you want to do Monero or Zcash or Ethereum kind of stuff, 2:02:04 you can't do it on Bitcoin and you can't do it on a peer-to-peer Bitcoin sidechain, 2:02:09 so you have to do it on our altcoin. Therefore, buy our altcoin. That's what they can say. 2:02:14 But if Drivechain is adopted, then arguably, the narrative for Bitcoin will be much stronger. 2:02:22 The narrative will be every technology that's good can be put into a Bitcoin sidechain using 2:02:29 peer-to-peer technology. So by strengthening the facilities available to Bitcoin sidechain users, 2:02:39 Drivechain is aimed at strengthening Bitcoin's narrative and potentially 2:02:44 strengthening Bitcoin economically in terms of its price, 2:02:47 miner revenue, variety of technology on top of Bitcoin, increasing the number of builders 2:02:54 and thinkers and innovators who focus on Bitcoin instead of focusing on altcoins. 2:02:59 So it has the potential to change Bitcoin a lot. No one can know for sure what would happen 2:03:04 if Drivechain is adopted, but Drivechain proponents believe that it could be very, 2:03:10 very good for Bitcoin in all the ways that we're describing. 2:03:14 Quick question. This is going to be off the mainnet, correct? 2:03:18 That is why it's a sidechain? 2:03:22 Yeah, it's a protocol. It's a blockchain that is not Bitcoin, but it's attached to Bitcoin using a 2:03:30 peer-to-peer two-way peg, and the two-way peg moves value between the sidechain and the mainchain. 2:03:38 Kind of like what Lightning does, but a different type of Lightning, 2:03:41 which allows you to do a lot more than what Lightning does. 2:03:46 It's a different kind of sidechain, which can be harmonious with Lightning, 2:03:50 because you could have Lightning on the sidechains. 2:03:52 Yes, and you can actually have Lightning on the sidechains that can do stuff that 2:03:57 the Lightning on Bitcoin mainchain can't do, because the rules change on the Bitcoin 2:04:02 mainchain a lot slower, and it's a lot harder to actually try out new stuff. 2:04:07 So it's also possible that the Lightning network on 2:04:11 drivechains or sidechains will be simply better than the one on mainchain. 2:04:16 So now, how do we work with that sidechain on our nodes? 2:04:22 How would that get implemented on the node? Just a quick question. 2:04:27 The set of people who are running Bitcoin mainchain node are different and overlapping 2:04:33 with the set of people running the sidechain node. You don't have to run the mainchain node. 2:04:38 No one has to. People will do it if they want to. 2:04:42 So this system, drivechain, relies on capitalism. It relies on incentives. 2:04:46 Some people will have an incentive to run the sidechain node. 2:04:49 Other people have an incentive to run the Bitcoin node. 2:04:53 Some people have an incentive to be a miner. 2:04:56 The whole system is like Bitcoin, where every sidechain lives and dies on its own. 2:05:01 However, there is a synergy, a collaboration, a capitalistic order that will emerge, 2:05:07 where everything will be linked together harmoniously. 2:05:11 So there'll be a large community of people using the Thunder sidechain for low fees, 2:05:16 some people using Hivemind and BitNames and BitAssets and other planned sidechains 2:05:23 for their specific purposes, whether they want privacy, DNS, scaling or smart contracts. 2:05:29 There'll be a sidechain for each of those. 2:05:31 So no longer will any developer have to leave the Bitcoin community to do something new. 2:05:36 Instead, they can stay within the Bitcoin community and build the sidechain. 2:05:40 And if they build a really good one, then they'll get tons of users and they'll make a lot of money 2:05:46 because the sidechain node operators are able to retain a small amount of the fees 2:05:52 on the sidechain. 2:05:54 99% of the fees are sent to the Bitcoin mainchain by design. 2:05:59 That's what we expect due to market forces. 2:06:02 Virtually all of the fees will go to the mainchain miners, 2:06:04 but a tiny amount will be retained by the sidechain node operators. 2:06:09 And that's their incentive, just like people have an incentive 2:06:12 to facilitate lightning and collect a small fee from lightning activity. 2:06:17 So there's actually a profit motive for people to develop great sidechains and run the nodes. 2:06:26 Now, here comes another question. 2:06:29 So, kind of like what we have right now with the BRC20s, 2:06:32 not everybody has a positive initiative or a positive objective. 2:06:38 There could be a negative impact for somebody creating a sidechain, 2:06:41 so it intentionally impacts the flow. 2:06:46 The flow into the mainchain. 2:06:49 Have we thought about that? 2:06:51 Yes. 2:06:52 From the very beginning, Paul designed Drivechain to have... 2:06:56 Paul and his co-author CryptAxe designed Drivechain to have a feature where 2:07:03 if the Bitcoin community thinks that a certain sidechain is harming users 2:07:10 or harming Bitcoin in general, 2:07:13 such as if a Drivechain sidechain is interfering with other sidechains or the mainchain somehow, 2:07:18 then that sidechain can be terminated by the community acting through the will of the miners. 2:07:26 So the miners would have the power to express the will of the community to terminate a sidechain. 2:07:33 So it can be turned off if there's a problem. 2:07:36 Also, if the entire Drivechain experiment is somehow not a good idea, 2:07:40 the whole thing could be forked out of Bitcoin. 2:07:43 So it's something which has all kinds of optionality. 2:07:48 And of course, it's also important to emphasize that anyone who never goes into a sidechain 2:07:54 wouldn't be affected by the failure of a sidechain. 2:07:57 So the whole thing is optional. 2:07:58 It's very capitalism-oriented where you don't have to go there. 2:08:02 So it's kind of like if someone builds a store, 2:08:06 you don't have to go into that store. 2:08:07 You don't have to shop there. 2:08:08 You don't have to buy anything there. 2:08:11 It kind of reminds me of all the dApps that were on the Ethereum blockchain. 2:08:17 You don't have to use the dApps. 2:08:19 It's up to you. 2:08:20 It also reminds me of the new protocols that came up on the internet 2:08:25 back in the early days of the internet. 2:08:28 So, all right. 2:08:29 Makes sense. 2:08:30 I'm here for it. 2:08:31 Just here to learn. 2:08:32 Thanks for answering the questions. 2:08:36 Thank you. 2:08:37 Great questions. 2:08:38 Everyone else here is welcome to come on up to the stage and share your thoughts, 2:08:44 ask a question or comment. 2:08:47 Everyone in this audience, all of you can raise your hand and come on up if you'd like to. 2:08:54 This is Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 2:08:55 We meet every Monday and Thursday. 2:08:57 We are all about developing understanding and education for Bitcoiners to understand 2:09:03 what Drivechain is all about. 2:09:05 Drivechain has a lot of potential. 2:09:07 It's an idea which is eight years old. 2:09:09 The Bitcoin community has been thinking about it for a very long time. 2:09:14 And now, more than ever, there is energy and understanding around it. 2:09:19 There are very famous Bitcoiners who are in support of it vocally, 2:09:24 like Nostr creator Fiatjaf, Handcrank creator SuperTestNet. 2:09:30 And Hompas is here, creator of Blixed Wallet. 2:09:36 And there's also many others who I personally made a long list of. 2:09:40 It's over 50 people, all of them recognizable names. 2:09:43 And there's hundreds more in our Telegram group and elsewhere who are supportive on Twitter, 2:09:48 on Reddit. 2:09:50 We have over 100 people. 2:09:52 There's various groups and venues where Drivechain is discussed and the energy is building. 2:09:57 There's a lot of interest in this. 2:09:59 One of the curious things about sidechains is that many of the Bitcoiners who love sidechains 2:10:05 leave Bitcoin and do altcoins. 2:10:07 And then they no longer have an incentive to advocate for sidechains within the Bitcoin 2:10:12 community because they're now an altcoiner. 2:10:15 So they leave the Bitcoin community and they know that it would be good for Bitcoin to 2:10:20 adopt Drivechain. 2:10:22 But they have no incentive to say that anymore because they've now become an Ethereum developer. 2:10:28 For example, so what Paul has wisely warned about, he has warned that Ethereum is targeting 2:10:39 a design similar to Drivechain. 2:10:42 And if the Ethereum roadmap works, which is a big if, but if it works, then in the very 2:10:48 end of their roadmap, they will achieve small blocks on layer one with a high degree of 2:10:54 extensibility to support layer twos that have a peer-to-peer architecture and manifold 2:11:01 features and capabilities and customizability. 2:11:03 In other words, Drivechain. 2:11:05 So we want Bitcoin, the original and most ethical project in the whole space, to be 2:11:11 the big winner. 2:11:12 We want Bitcoin to have $100 trillion of value and 8 billion users. 2:11:17 We want to eliminate all of its competition. 2:11:20 We want Bitcoin to be the layer one for every blockchain application, for every protocol. 2:11:24 We want every developer building on Bitcoin. 2:11:28 And the way we get there is, at this time, to adopt the upgrade for Bitcoin, which is 2:11:34 available and well-developed and understood and conservative, and that is Drivechain, 2:11:41 we believe. 2:11:42 So making Bitcoin sidechain stronger, more peer-to-peer and enabling stronger privacy 2:11:49 and scalability and oracles and DNS for Bitcoiners. 2:11:58 It's very exciting. 2:12:00 Moon Settler, you've talked about it taking 10 to 20 years for Drivechain to fulfill its 2:12:05 potential. 2:12:08 But there is a possibility that immediately after Drivechain is adopted, there could be 2:12:16 momentous transformation. 2:12:18 There could, for example, we could see a tidal wave of billions of dollars flow from Monero 2:12:26 and Zcash users. 2:12:28 From those communities, they could hypothetically drop their altcoin because they are focused 2:12:34 on privacy and utility more than just number go up. 2:12:38 So some of these altcoin communities are focused on utility, and therefore they're going to 2:12:42 be interested in something that's better than what they're doing. 2:12:46 They're not simply Dogecoin holders where they're loyal to Doge. 2:12:50 So, for example, imagine you're a very privacy-oriented blockchain user and currently you're 2:12:56 using Zcash and Monero. 2:12:57 And then Bitcoin comes along and launches the Zcash Drivechain sidechain. 2:13:04 And now it's possible to do Zcash-level privacy with Bitcoin's unit of account, which is the 2:13:12 best of all worlds, because then you get the high-tech privacy of Zcash with the economic 2:13:19 unit of account of Bitcoin. 2:13:21 Bitcoin has the lowest volatility of purchasing power of any token on any blockchain. 2:13:27 It's the most stable. 2:13:28 It's not very stable, but it's the most stable of all of the others. 2:13:32 So the best thing for privacy-oriented blockchain users is to use Bitcoin's unit of account 2:13:38 with the privacy of Zcash. 2:13:40 And that is what this sidechain can deliver. 2:13:44 But of course, if it were a federated sidechain, it wouldn't be good because then the federated 2:13:49 sidechain would be susceptible to government attack. 2:13:52 But if there's no federated sidechain and instead the miners, the dynamic global multitude 2:13:57 of miners control the Bitcoin in the hashrate escrow, then we have something to work with. 2:14:03 So I feel that there could be a tidal wave. 2:14:05 And in fact, Adam Back said that. 2:14:07 In a recent conversation he had with Brad Mills, Jamison Lobb and Austin Alexander of 2:14:14 LayerTwo Labs, Dr. 2:14:16 Back said that in the 2014 white paper by Blockstream, when that paper was published, 2:14:24 right after that publication, there was a moment in the Bitcoin community and the whole 2:14:28 altcoin community where everyone thought maybe Bitcoin would absorb all of the value of all 2:14:35 the blockchains. 2:14:36 Of all the blockchains, potentially because of sidechains. 2:14:40 And he said that altcoin prices collectively fell for a moment. 2:14:45 So for some period of time around that publication of that paper on sidechains. 2:14:50 So let's get that again, but in a bigger way. 2:14:53 Let's pursue a vision where drivechain is adopted and then potentially the entire privacy 2:15:00 altcoin community moves to the privacy drivechain. 2:15:03 And then that would be about $3 billion of value. 2:15:07 And they would not come as the first users of the sidechain, but instead first the Bitcoin 2:15:12 community. 2:15:13 So imagine the Bitcoin community sends 1% of its value to this Zcash drivechain on Bitcoin. 2:15:19 That's, well, Bitcoin has a $400 billion value. 2:15:23 So right away, that drivechain would have $4 billion of value. 2:15:28 And then that would be bigger than either Zcash or Monero. 2:15:31 So then they would come over, too. 2:15:32 And now we have like a $7 or $8 billion privacy sidechain on Bitcoin, a high tech, amazing 2:15:40 community of people all working on Bitcoin in a sidechain venue. 2:15:44 So that's an exciting vision. 2:15:46 It doesn't take 20 years to imagine that happening. 2:15:48 There could be a flip where the whole altcoin privacy community moves to Bitcoin, maybe. 2:15:55 And the same thing could be true of others, of other projects that have communities that 2:16:00 are focused on utility and technology and not just loyalty to the coin for speculation 2:16:06 purposes. 2:16:11 So my point is that we could see drivechains succeed rapidly once it's adopted. 2:16:17 It wouldn't necessarily take 20 years. 2:16:30 All right. 2:16:32 Does anyone have any further comments or questions? 2:16:35 Anybody want to chat? 2:16:44 It's a lot to take in. 2:16:46 This is my first time hearing about this. 2:16:47 So I'm still kind of processing it. 2:16:50 My concern, if I'm allowed to speak my mind, is that I'm not going to be able to do it. 2:16:58 Speak my mind is that, you know, we have the current issue with some of the innovation 2:17:03 we have going on on the Bitcoin blockchain that I think is the total distraction from 2:17:08 the main objective, which is trying to free ourselves from this centralized control of 2:17:14 us being able to create our own value. 2:17:16 And I don't think we are there yet. 2:17:20 So creating sidechains for some distractions, which we're already having a lot of with this 2:17:26 BRC20, might be a disadvantage in the median time. 2:17:33 Or, you know, that's just my thoughts. 2:17:36 That's what comes to mind. 2:17:38 Well, what are your thoughts on the following? 2:17:40 Right now, over $10 million per day, over $10 million per day is being paid to the Bitcoin 2:17:51 miners. 2:17:52 And just three months ago, or even one month ago, it was where it usually is, which is 2:18:02 half a million. 2:18:03 So right now, we have 20 times higher fees on Bitcoin than we used to. 2:18:11 So do you think it's a distraction and an unproductive and unfavorable circumstance 2:18:17 that the Bitcoin miners are now getting 20 times more revenue per day from fees? 2:18:24 Good question. 2:18:25 So when I think about that, I think about some of the comments that the Ethereum folks 2:18:31 will say that Bitcoin is not decentralized because of the miners. 2:18:36 So that makes a lot of sense. 2:18:39 That is unusual, but my understanding was that Satoshi's plan for maintaining the Bitcoin 2:18:45 standard economy was that once we reach $21 million, then the incentive will be there 2:18:51 for us to all be involved and have a reason to have a node. 2:18:59 But are we jumping ahead of the $21 million? 2:19:02 Or, of course, maybe we should limit the power that the nodes have, because that's another 2:19:07 centralized point of impact that centralized powers could use to impact the growth of Bitcoin 2:19:14 in the long term. 2:19:15 What you see, trying to charge 39 or 30% taxes on the miners. 2:19:21 So yeah, we can start looking for other options that will bring other people into the space. 2:19:26 So the question now will now be, what will it cost for you and I, somebody out there, 2:19:31 to run their own sidechain without the big expenses that the folks running the miners 2:19:39 are accumulating? 2:19:39 So it's, you know, that's a lot of give and take. 2:19:45 I know, I know, I know I said a lot and I kind of connected a lot of dots there. 2:19:51 I think everything you're saying makes sense. 2:19:53 The drivechain vision is that people can do whatever they want with Bitcoin and that 2:19:59 they will naturally find a home in the sidechain that facilitates their preferred features 2:20:07 and uses. 2:20:08 So it's fine that people are paying a lot for layer one block space, because when we 2:20:15 have drivechain, people who want a cheaper experience can opt in to the low fees and 2:20:24 large blocks on a sidechain. 2:20:31 And it's great that people are using Bitcoin. 2:20:33 If all of the activity and money and value and people and attention and narrative that 2:20:39 Bitcoin currently has were instead happening in Ethereum, that would not be a good thing 2:20:44 for Bitcoin's long-term viability. 2:20:49 So there's an interesting debate going on right now within the Bitcoin community, whether 2:20:54 the additional people and money and value is good or whether it's somehow an attack 2:20:59 and spam, a plot by evil people. 2:21:03 There's all kinds of theories out there. 2:21:05 I think that the right view is the one found here in this room, in this space, in this 2:21:11 conversation, which is that we want capitalism, innovation and user preference to govern what 2:21:19 happens on Bitcoin. 2:21:22 And all we all we need to do is just enable more, more peer to peer sidechains. 2:21:28 To help that happen. 2:21:30 I agree. 2:21:31 I think that would that would slow down the overload, increase more bandwidth. 2:21:37 That's basically what you're saying here. 2:21:39 Provide availability for more bandwidth. 2:21:48 Well, we've been going for two and a half hours now, longer than we usually go. 2:21:54 Longer than we usually go. 2:21:55 Usually our spaces are just 90 minutes. 2:21:57 Today it's been an hour more. 2:22:04 If we have answered all the questions for today, then we can adjourn for next time. 2:22:08 Next time will be Thursday, 9.30 a.m. 2:22:12 Pacific, 12.30 p.m. 2:22:14 Eastern. 2:22:17 We meet twice a week. 2:22:18 I welcome everyone to return. 2:22:19 Please come back. 2:22:20 Bring your questions. 2:22:23 And we'll talk more every Monday and Thursday. 2:22:26 This is Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 2:22:28 We're focused on Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 300 and 301. 2:22:33 You can read more about it at drivechain.info. 2:22:37 You can read the BIPs on Bitcoin's GitHub. 2:22:40 You can watch the videos created by LayerTwo Labs. 2:22:44 There are many of them. 2:22:45 There's dozens of videos. 2:22:47 And lectures. 2:22:50 There's essays on truthcoin.info, which is the blog of Paul Sztorc, 2:22:56 the co-author of the Drivechain BIPs. 2:23:00 So everyone's encouraged to engage, learn, and debate and understand. 2:23:05 That's the only way these BIPs will ever get adopted, is if the Bitcoin community 2:23:09 understands what we think is the correct understanding of how sidechains work and 2:23:14 why they have a valuable value proposition. 2:23:19 Until Bitcoin adopts Drivechain or something like it, 2:23:23 Bitcoin will not have peer-to-peer two-way pegs for Layer 2s. 2:23:29 And as long as that's the case, Bitcoin is not going to have as much extensibility 2:23:34 and features that it should have. 2:23:37 And it'll continue to lose users who will instead choose altcoins, 2:23:42 like Ethereum, primarily. 2:23:49 So it's great if Bitcoin can regain the narratives of being able to platform all 2:23:53 kinds of applications and technology. 2:23:56 And that way it doesn't have to turn away users to altcoins. 2:23:59 In the long run, only one blockchain will be the Layer 1 for the whole world. 2:24:04 In the very long run, because of the power of network effects, 2:24:09 there will be only one blockchain that is the Layer 1, 2:24:12 and it will have a whole bunch of Layer 2s with two-way pegs. 2:24:17 That's going to happen. 2:24:18 It's inevitable because of the power of network effects. 2:24:21 There will be one dominant chain. 2:24:24 Will it be Bitcoin or will it be Ethereum? 2:24:27 As Drivechain proponents, we believe, at least I do, that Drivechain is instrumental. 2:24:32 And if Drivechain or something like it isn't adopted, then Bitcoin will be under threat. 2:24:38 And today's fee crisis, the crisis of high fees, isn't the worst thing. 2:24:43 In fact, fees that are high are good, but a flippening would be bad for Bitcoin. 2:24:48 So in order to prevent the flippening, and in order for Bitcoin to have high fees forever, 2:24:54 and in order for Bitcoin to become the Layer 1 for every protocol, 2:25:00 it would be great to have Drivechain or something like it. 2:25:03 I say something like it because that rhetoric is something that I learned from Junseth 2:25:08 in conversations where, you know, Drivechain is not necessarily perfect. 2:25:15 It's not necessarily the only possible solution. 2:25:17 However, it is the best one that's available today. 2:25:21 And that's why we support it. 2:25:23 And we welcome, you know, tweaks and criticisms and improvements or ideas. 2:25:28 So this isn't about any one person or any one project. 2:25:32 It's about making Bitcoin better and developing peer-to-peer, two-way pegged sidechains 2:25:38 so that Bitcoin can have a vibrant set of Layer 2s rather than what it currently has, 2:25:42 which is just a few rather small projects that have not accrued billions of dollars 2:25:48 and massive amounts of users. 2:25:50 We need Bitcoin to have Layer 2s that have billions of dollars of value 2:25:54 and massive numbers of users. 2:25:56 That is how Bitcoin will win. 2:25:58 Because people want oracles. 2:26:00 They want large blocks. 2:26:01 They want strong fungibility. 2:26:05 They want all kinds of experimental and innovative technology on blockchain. 2:26:10 And Bitcoin should be the place that they come for that. 2:26:13 Because if Bitcoin doesn't offer it, something else will. 2:26:16 And then that protocol will be on track for global monetization and strong narratives. 2:26:26 All right. 2:26:26 I'll see you all on Thursday. 2:26:29 Looking forward to it.
