0:00 Hello, and welcome to Drivechain Twitter Spaces. Today is June 30th, 2023, and we are excited to have a chat with everyone who would like to chat about Drivechain. 0:14 Drivechain is Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 300 and 301, a powerful upgrade for Bitcoin, potentially Bitcoin's last upgrade of a significant nature, introducing advanced sidechains, advanced sidechains to Bitcoin, making Bitcoin able to absorb innovation from other protocols, 0:43 bring it to Bitcoin, and bring in all that value, users, fee revenue, network effect, narratives, everything. Come on up to the stage if you'd like to chat. Raise your hand if you're in the audience and you'd like to banter about Drivechain today. 1:03 Welcome to everyone who is joining. Welcome to those who listen after it's recorded to listen on demand. We have a speaker. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Mr. Block6Datasets. How are you? 1:25 Hey, I'm doing great. I've been checking out the BIP300, 301. It's an awesome protocol. I guess you would say the interoperability of the network with other chains. A lot of people are sleeping on this protocol, but it's actually the solution. 1:49 Cool. I agree. It's an exciting topic. It's awesome that you're learning about it. What Drivechain has the potential to do is have Bitcoin absorb all of the value of the altcoins by copying all of their code. 2:11 Altcoins that are clearly good and valid, like Monero and Zcash, clearly, indisputably legitimate projects, Bitcoin would copy them, and then Bitcoin would be able to absorb their users and value and fees, potentially. 2:31 Some people say, why do we need Drivechain? All the altcoins are bad. They're all bad. Well, altcoins have tremendous value. Anyone who says they're illegitimate is making a judgment, and that judgment is disputable. 2:47 And what's indisputable is that the market signals indicate that there is substantial value in altcoins today. So what is Bitcoin's strategy to absorb that value and make Bitcoin the one-stop shop, the big tent for every blockchain project that has value? 3:06 Well, today the strategy mainly is for Bitcoiners to be toxic in their rhetoric, and that is not a viable strategy. If Amazon were to stop innovating but instead just to start taking out negative ads against its competitors, it would not last long. 3:30 The way forward is innovation, and we have to have Bitcoin be a platform of many innovative and experimental efforts. 3:41 And the only way to do that is to have a way for Bitcoin to copy the code of altcoins, and the best way to do that is to have sidechains that are better, because then Bitcoin can have a multitude of sidechains, maybe 100 or 200. 3:58 Drivechain allows there to be many, and then Bitcoin could copy that code and potentially absorb those users, fees, network effect, and narrative. 4:10 So instead of the privacy community being in altcoins and the smart contract community and the large block scaling community for sending micropayments, there's all kinds of different technologies like oracles that should be on Bitcoin, and instead they're mainly on altcoins. 4:31 Today, Bitcoin sidechains are small. 4:33 Excellent efforts by people at Blockstream and Rootstock to create sidechains on Bitcoin so far using federated sidechains have only seen a little bit of success. 4:44 But with drivechain, those sidechain communities would be stronger and better and bigger. 4:49 So that's the drivechain view. 4:54 It is the correct view, I believe. 4:57 And it's a minority view. 4:59 Right now, things aren't looking good. 5:01 Bitcoin has an exciting community, but underneath the surface, perhaps, things are hollowing out. 5:11 It looks good now that we have the market cap crown like we always have had. 5:18 But the question remains for astute observers. 5:21 For astute observers, the question remains, is Bitcoin going to survive? 5:26 Are things as good as the optimists would have you think? 5:31 Ethereum is already half of the value of Bitcoin. 5:34 What if the flippening were to occur? 5:37 What would we say and do? 5:39 How can it be prevented? 5:43 How can we make Bitcoin stronger? 5:46 The answer is embracing innovation. 5:50 Embracing innovation and experimentation. 5:53 So innovation and experimentation need to come in a way that's safe, that doesn't harm Bitcoin. 6:01 So that's what drivechain is. 6:03 Drivechain is designed to allow for there to be a sidechain and those who opt into it benefit from it or suffer from it. 6:11 And those who haven't opted into it don't benefit or suffer from it. 6:16 Although, actually, they do benefit. 6:18 So if you're on the mainchain and you're not even going into a sidechain, you still benefit from the existence of those sidechains. 6:25 So it's a win-win for everyone. 6:29 Yeah, it's an opportunity for, you see a lot of these, you know, Bitcoin offshoots such as Ordinal's, BRC20. 6:44 But you have a lot of different communities that can now integrate and create different projects with Bitcoin by utilizing a drivechain. 6:54 And I think this is actually a true solution than opposed to utilizing a lot of those centralized swaps or so-called bridges, 7:01 which the back end of it when you settle the account is being facilitated by a third party, which is not true decentralization. 7:11 So, yeah, definitely on board. 7:24 Welcome, everyone who's joined. Raise your hand. Come on up to the stage. Join us and chat. 7:30 Happy Friday. Hope everyone had a good week. 7:33 It's been one week since our last talk. We meet every week on Fridays to talk about drivechain. 7:39 Everyone's welcome to come on up to the stage and chat. 7:42 Hello to those familiar faces in the audience. 7:46 Come on up to the stage and chat if you'd like, if you're free. 7:51 Thanks, everyone, for joining. 7:53 Everyone who joins helps us get our message out. 7:56 Bringing in your friends and followers, resharing and liking the space is helpful. 8:04 Thank you for everyone who's contributed anything to the drivechain movement. 8:09 This is a very important movement. 8:13 And we strongly believe we'll be vindicated. 8:16 Either Bitcoin will succeed with drivechain or fail without it. 8:21 That's what we believe. 8:23 We believe drivechain is essential for the survival of Bitcoin. 8:27 And when we say survival, we mean, does Bitcoin become the world's money or just something else? 8:34 If something else becomes the world's money, Bitcoin will have failed. 8:39 And that other project will have succeeded by being better. 8:46 And we believe that it's essential that people recognize this now, not when it's too late. 8:52 Once Ethereum is twice the value of Bitcoin, it's a little bit too late to start thinking about fixing things. 9:01 So the time to act is now. 9:06 And there are a lot of exciting developments going on. 9:10 The drivechain code is being rebased by an OG Bitcoin Core developer. 9:17 In the coming months, perhaps, that work will be done. 9:20 And then there'll be a pull request to Bitcoin Core on GitHub. 9:25 This has never before happened. 9:26 This will be the first time ever that the drivechain code has been submitted in a pull request to Bitcoin Core. 9:36 It'll be an exciting time to observe the discourse on this project. 9:41 If just a few key names come forward and support it, that could sway a lot of the people. 9:47 And we're very excited about that possibility. 9:50 There is more interest now in drivechain than there's ever been. 9:54 There's more support. 9:55 There's more understanding. 9:57 The idea is more mature and developed and refined than it's ever been. 10:04 Welcome to everyone who's joined. 10:05 Come on up to the stage if you'd like to speak. 10:07 We're just getting started here. 10:09 Happy Friday. 10:13 Let's do our weekly check on the Bitcoin fees. 10:17 I like to go to blockchain.com. 10:20 Click on the word Explorer at the top. 10:24 And then click on Charts. 10:26 And then click on Mining Information. 10:28 Let's see where the fee market is today. 10:30 As we know from reading Paul's posts at truthcoin.info, we should check the total transactions fees, USD. 10:38 And what I see right now is that the fees are down, just like the drivechainers predicted. 10:46 We're far below the high that was created by ordinals. 10:50 At the height of the ordinals boom, the fees are down. 10:56 At the height of the ordinals boom, the total fees were $17,700,000 per day on May 7th. 11:11 So a month and a half ago, basically, there was a spike where the ordinals and inscriptions sent fees to $17 million per day. 11:19 Right now, we're at $1.1 million. 11:24 So we are way below the spike. We're over 90% below the spike. 11:34 Hey, Michael, thanks for joining. 11:39 Hey, Henry, good to hear from you again. 11:42 Hey, I'm multitasking a little bit, but I overheard you say that drivechain's proposal was submitted for mainnet. 11:52 I understand drivechains are only on testnet right now. 11:56 Could you maybe explain a little more what that means? 11:59 Because to me, that almost sounds like an ETF filing, right? 12:03 Like you go to someone to get something approved, but obviously it doesn't work that way in Bitcoin. 12:10 So can you explain on that a little bit? 12:13 Sure. Yeah, what I said wasn't exactly what you just said. 12:16 What I said was that the drivechain code is being rebased currently. 12:21 LayerTwo Labs has retained an OG Bitcoin Core developer, Luke Jr., to rebase the code. 12:28 And he will submit a pull request in the future. 12:33 That's what I said, in the coming months, perhaps. 12:36 So it has not been done yet. The pull request has not been done yet. 12:43 So does all that make sense? 12:46 Yeah, thanks for clarifying. I appreciate that. 12:49 Sure thing. 12:52 Welcome, everyone. Come on up to the stage if you'd like. 12:55 All are welcome to share thoughts and ideas, the latest developments. 13:00 As I was saying a moment ago, the fee market spiked on May 7th. 13:06 There was about $18 million of fees paid because of ordinals and inscriptions. 13:11 And now we're at $1.1 million per day, approximately. 13:18 So the fees are way down, over 90% reduction in fees from the spike. 13:25 So what this tells us is that the security budget problem is persisting. 13:31 And it's essential that Bitcoin collect fees from every blockchain in the world in order to send a lot of fees to the miners. 13:39 Ordinals and inscriptions do not appear based on the most available evidence to be sending the fee market to the moon. 13:51 Welcome to the stage, Dr. V. 14:00 How's it going? What's on your mind? 14:03 Dr. V. 14:05 Hey, how are you, man? It's good to be here, Blok. How are you, sir? 14:10 Hello, everyone from South Africa. 14:13 Just saw the space, wanted to pop in. 14:16 Yeah, man, I've been speaking with Blok for a short while, just on how we could integrate some of the Bitcoin safety and the technology with healthcare. 14:27 And especially dentistry in South Africa, which is the industry that I'm in. 14:31 And it's been, I've tried to do some research on what is available and had some ideas. 14:38 But I was wondering with the drivechain, would that then allow for easier implementation of, you know, let's say applications and so into healthcare? 14:47 Would that be something that I could do a little easier? 14:50 Because I'm not one of the most proficient programmers or anything. 14:55 I'm just a dentist. 14:56 But I recently got into crypto with the Zen protocol, which changed my life. 15:02 I completely fell in love with it and the effects and everything on it. 15:06 But then, I don't know if Blok knows this, but his guidance has been quite, quite a lot. 15:12 I do respect the man quite a lot and, you know, take his advice. 15:16 So any, you know, would that be possible? 15:20 Is it something that one could then more easily implement to industries and so? 15:23 And just any information, but thanks for having me. 15:27 I really appreciate it. 15:29 Sure. Great question. 15:31 I haven't seen healthcare related ideas with respect to drivechain. 15:35 But more generally, any innovation that would use a blockchain would be potentially able to be greatly strengthened by existing as a Bitcoin sidechain. 15:48 And therefore, if there is an idea that is powerful and useful for people, it would be best for the Bitcoin community and for the world. 15:57 If it is introduced and used always as a sidechain of Bitcoin instead of being an altcoin. 16:04 So we have an open mind about the potential for blockchain to be used in many different ways. 16:10 And we think that drivechain would greatly strengthen that. 16:15 Thanks, man. 16:17 I would be so grateful to you. 16:19 I'm going to. 16:21 I've added you already. 16:23 But then any information or anything or anything that I could perhaps help out with or to spread the word or, you know, as long as I can work closely with you guys, perhaps learn a little bit more and then, you know, maybe launch some. 16:36 Well, I would definitely launch it with. 16:39 With this in mind, because, I mean, as I've said, Block's opinion, I respect quite a lot and he knows what's right and what's wrong. 16:47 It's something that I've noticed with him and just with the drivechain, the little bit that I've heard now is just falling into place with everything that I wanted to do. 16:56 Because initially the plan was, you know, going from an altcoin chain EVM and then inscribing onto block on the Bitcoin blockchain. 17:07 But if drivechain just allows it so much easier, there's the way forward. 17:12 What you've said, I mean, you caught me with the initial words when I just signed in of it being the future and what the success of Bitcoin would mean. 17:22 I'm fully on board, brother. 17:23 If that's OK with you, I would love to learn more, get more involved, just learn what I can do, how I could implement it. 17:31 And perhaps if you have the time, perhaps guide me sometimes. 17:34 I would be very grateful. 17:36 I would be so happy to. 17:38 Thank you for your questions and comments. 17:41 So go to drivechain.info and layer2labs.com. 17:45 Those are the best places to see the information and get started getting involved. 17:50 So drivechain.info and layer2labs.com. 17:58 Welcome to the stage, Paul. 18:03 And welcome the others who've joined. 18:06 Anyone, please drop your comments. 18:09 I mean, share your comments, speak your mind. 18:12 No need to raise hands. 18:14 Everyone who's joined in the audience, you're welcome to come on up to the stage and share a comment or question about drivechain. 18:20 Thanks for your interest. 18:22 So we meet every Friday to talk about drivechain, which is Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 300 and 301. 18:29 A very powerful upgrade for Bitcoin that would enable advanced sidechains, bringing many new kinds of technologies to Bitcoin, boosting Bitcoin's value. 18:40 Fee revenue for miners, network effect, larger user base, rapid, more rapid adoption, more rapid Bitcoinization. 18:49 Making Bitcoin a hub for innovation and experimentation. 18:54 On top of a conservative and more ossified base layer. 18:59 So it gives everybody what they want. 19:02 The digital gold Austrian conservative Bitcoiners get a more hardened base layer, a base layer less susceptible to bad changes and frequent adjustments. 19:15 And the scientists, innovators and builders and developers who want to experiment and innovate, they get the advanced sidechains which enable innovation in a safe partitioned manner. 19:29 So everybody gets what they want with drivechain. 19:32 It could potentially bring home to Bitcoin the large blockers, bring home to Bitcoin the privacy altcoin communities, bring home to Bitcoin the builders. 19:41 Every blockchain community might migrate to Bitcoin, boosting Bitcoin's value tremendously. 19:48 If drivechain is adopted. 19:51 It's a big if. We need support and interest, understanding and engagement. 19:59 Otherwise, Bitcoin will suffer by continuing to not have a higher degree of experimentation and innovation. 20:10 Coming up to the stage, raise your hand and ask a question, share a critical comment, whatever you want to say. 20:16 Don't be shy. 20:17 Maybe you can explain to some of the listeners what this is able to do, how it integrates with other blockchains for some of the new listeners that are joining the space. 20:33 Yeah. So an advanced sidechain is one where the interesting new technology that's experimental and innovative and that's different than Bitcoin mainchain can exist in a way with Bitcoin that boosts Bitcoin's value. 20:56 So there could be a privacy sidechain and there are no coins on it at first. 21:03 But then people send their Bitcoin to that sidechain. 21:06 They use a synthetic Bitcoin to transact confidentially. 21:10 And then when they're done, they can burn that sidechain coin by redeeming their mainchain Bitcoin. 21:15 So there's a two way peg between the mainchain Bitcoin and the sidechain. 21:22 And unlike the federated sidechains today, there would be no socially selected privileged group of people who are controlling the Bitcoin in the sidechain. 21:32 Instead, it would be the Bitcoin miners, a diverse, global, highly distributed, dynamic set of parties. 21:39 And anyone can be a Bitcoin miner. 21:41 So there's no social barrier to entry into that set of people. 21:45 And therefore, it's more more peer-to-peer than the sidechains of today. 21:50 In the words of Adam Back, who likes drivechain, he has said the sidechain would be more peer-to-peer if drivechain is adopted. 21:57 And he also stated last year that activation of drivechain could have been potentially more useful and valuable than taproot. 22:08 So there are some significant names in the technical community who favor drivechain as the next and perhaps the final upgrade for Bitcoin. 22:18 Fiatjaf, the creator of Nostr, also endorses the project emphatically and has for years. 22:25 And many others like Mike Tidwell of TabConf. 22:30 And we have a whole list of them. 22:32 If you go to our website, LayerTwo Labs, you can see a list of people who've shared favorable comments on drivechain. 22:39 If you click at the top or on the word friends. 22:42 Welcome to the stage, Ebolr. 22:47 What's up? 22:49 Thank you. 22:51 I just have a couple of seconds. 22:53 I just want to throw in my question. 22:55 I'm a drivechain supporter. 22:56 I've been a drivechain supporter for a long time since I've tested it. 23:03 I found it very promising. 23:08 My question is, I see more talk about rollups. 23:17 These days, rollups for Bitcoin. 23:19 Validium rollup is one that some people think will be possible. 23:23 My question is, Josh, what are the benefits that we will miss if we go the rollup way instead of drivechain? 23:37 Well, rollups and sidechains are kind of similar. 23:46 But a sidechain has more flexibility. 23:49 You have total flexibility. 23:50 And maybe a rollup is more narrow, but it's slightly more secure, maybe. 23:58 But the flexibility of the sidechain is really key. 24:03 And the whole loose coupling of the SPV proof, that is really key to the whole idea. 24:09 Because the idea is that in a world with innovation, people are going to disagree about what the blockchain should contain. 24:17 And that is the problem that sidechains solve, that rollups do not solve. 24:23 Rollups are just like packing more of what's already possible on one blockchain. 24:28 Kind of like packing the luggage tighter on the airplane or something. 24:37 So you can't really do anything too new. 24:40 And so the novelty is key for sidechains, I think. 24:43 But we should do both, really. 24:45 It's kind of silly that we wouldn't do everything that we could possibly do to make the underlying project a success. 24:54 Yeah, I agree. 24:57 I have one last question. 25:00 Honestly, what do you think? 25:03 Because drivechain is something that exists for quite a while already. 25:08 And I know that, I think it was during the block size war. 25:13 Drivechain was a possibility, but the community chose for, let's say, a different path. 25:21 But for today, what do you think is the reason why there's not much enthusiasm? 25:28 People are not just enthusiastic about drivechain? 25:32 Yeah. 25:33 Block size war actually was not good for Bitcoin and not good for sidechains especially. 25:41 Because what happened was the people who would have normally, like the problem that sidechains would have solved instead, they decided to fight this war. 25:51 It said that everyone could have stuck together. 25:54 And then after the sides split, now the large blockers, they really want Bitcoin Cash to succeed. 26:00 So the last thing they want is for Bitcoin BTC to get larger blocks somehow. 26:07 And then similarly, the small blocker side just feels like, you know, they just think something like, we won. 26:15 Getting rid of Bitcoin Cash was a good thing. 26:18 Getting rid of large blocks was a good thing. 26:19 Getting rid of large blocks was a good thing. 26:21 This proves that the right way to go is to be toxic and resist all change and kick everyone out. 26:30 The more people who kick out, the better. 26:34 So unfortunately, the whole culture changed for the worse, leaving people to believe this overconfident, complacent attitude. 26:48 Where people just think, we don't need to do anything, we're just going to win. 26:55 The only thing we need to do is resist innovation, resist changes. 27:00 So that is, they are one and the same. 27:03 If the block size war kind of ruined people's understanding of what the sidechain is for. 27:13 And so that's part of it. 27:14 And I think the culture has really never recovered. 27:17 Not until the wrong people are invited to different... 27:25 Which type of person gets attention on Twitter or at big conferences is not anyone who wants to grow the community. 27:37 It's the toxic people. 27:39 Yeah, I have a feeling that the whole ordinal movement is maybe doing something about that. 27:47 But I think we are still far away, much too far to bring some new innovation to Bitcoin. 27:58 Paul, what is your outlook on the ordinals and inscriptions development? 28:03 Is that something which you think will be for the next year or to further a source of actual technological innovation in terms of the variety of things that are being done using that path of development? 28:18 Or do you think that we've seen what happens which is just NFTs and then that's probably it? 28:24 Well, I think what people really like is something that solves the problem they have and people also like novelty. 28:31 So I think the novelty has been wearing off for ordinals. 28:35 I think what ordinals... In my perspective, the ordinal story is one where people... 28:44 It shows how frustrated people are with the boring status quo and that there's a group of people who just want something new to happen and they want things to be fun. 28:57 And that's what the story really is to me. 29:00 I don't know about anything else. 29:02 I think, like, to me it does seem like a perfectible task to just do inscriptions and ordinals. 29:09 So I think the word fad is a decent word. 29:15 I don't know the exact timeline, but I do think that part of why they're interesting is because they are new and I think it's a perfectible task. 29:29 You know what I mean? It'll get old. 29:31 It has to get old because it's just not that complicated. 29:36 So I think the idea that people want to store files on the blockchain is real and that idea will be with us permanently and really has always been with us and should always have been with us. 29:50 And so I think that idea will stay with us and I'm just not sure that people will love these NFTs. 30:10 I think the NFT idea is also with us forever and people actually will like it. 30:14 Someone will figure that out. 30:16 They'll make an NFT of every NFL play or something. 30:22 And so I think that the ideas are with us, but I don't know. 30:27 As far as something that will boost Bitcoin transaction fees, I don't think it will be a permanent big boost. 30:40 Thank you. 30:41 Thank you. 30:43 Another question I've had recently is, it seems like the drivechain critics for years have been split. 30:49 Some think that the sidechains would be insecure and others think that the sidechains would produce a lot of MEV. 30:58 But of course, those are mutually incompatible objections, correct? 31:03 It can't be that the sidechains will be robbed by the miners, but also produce a lot of fee revenue. 31:09 Right. 31:11 So they have to make up their mind. 31:14 Is it that the miners will steal or that the sidechains will be very successfully large? 31:18 And if it's the latter, then they say, OK, well, they'll be large, but it'll diminish the decentralization of the main chain due to the MEV. 31:29 So we have to just crush this MEV confusion. 31:33 It's like a hand wave, people who mentioned like, oh, the MEV is bad and therefore it's better that all of that activity be on Ethereum. 31:40 What is your view on the long term future of blockchain economics? 31:45 Will MEV be something people talk about forever as a problem or will it be revealed as a non-issue? 31:54 What are your thoughts on that? 31:56 I don't think the people who are complaining about MEV really know what they're saying. 32:02 On one hand, they're saying it's bad if miners make more money. 32:07 But if so, then they're complaining against merge mining and they are complaining, you know, Satoshi invented merge mining. 32:14 So they're in a weird situation. 32:19 On another hand, when they say MEV, they're not literally referring to like the Ethereum MEV. 32:27 They're being more abstract. 32:29 But the question is, how abstract are they willing to go? 32:32 They're saying like if the miners, if heat coming off the miners would encourage a miner to live in a location where they can use the waste heat from the miners to dry fruit or grow fruit in a greenhouse. 32:48 And does that count as MEV? 32:51 So I just think it's what it really is, is it's arguing against the success of the side, saying the sidechain to be very successful, be very popular, generate a lot of fees, have a lot of activity. 33:03 And they think that would then divide the attention of the mining pool operator. 33:09 But really, the mining pool operators attention is already divided. 33:12 So it's like, let's say Bitcoin, you earn, let's say you earn $10, whatever, $10 a day. 33:18 It doesn't make sense, but just say whatever you like. 33:20 $10 a day for the layer one, and then $12 a day for all the layer two sidechains. 33:26 So they think, well, now they care more about the sidechains than layer one. 33:29 But the thing is, even if you removed all the layer two sidechains, they still would only care to the tune of $10 per day or whatever it is. 33:38 And so then there's all the other things that they could care about in their life. 33:42 And what we want is successful Bitcoin, we want successful miners. 33:46 Also, the success of the sidechains would, of course, boost the price of the coin, which hits the block subsidy on layer one and all the transaction fees on layer one. 33:56 It moves those up whenever the price is higher. 33:58 It's all about the higher price. 34:00 So that is the security model, so to speak. 34:06 In that sense, what they call MBV is a good thing, and we want to maximize it. 34:14 But really, they just don't know what they're talking about. 34:17 They just think some shitcoin thing on Bitcoin. 34:21 They don't realize that the whole point of sidechains is so that it's not on layer one Bitcoin Core. 34:26 So the whole point is to not do it. 34:28 So they're just really confused. 34:30 To understand what they might be saying, what they're trying to say is that there's a certain kind of transaction in a smart contract which would create a profitable opportunity for a miner to try to reorg the sidechain. 34:48 The other thing they don't understand, though, is the sidechain is its own piece of software. 34:53 If it reorgs, your layer one node is unaffected. 34:59 So it could reorg all day, who cares? 35:02 Right. 35:04 So only those who opted in would have anything to do with that. 35:08 Right. 35:10 It's literally no different than if Ethereum had MBV and reorged, which it does. 35:16 So it's literally no different from the current situation. 35:20 Other than Ethereum is using Bitcoin now instead of ETH. 35:25 That's the only difference. 35:30 In the history of Bitcoin, has there ever been a very substantial reorg? 35:40 Well, yes. 35:43 But there's never been a reorg attack. 35:48 But there have been mistakes made by the developers that have accidentally triggered reorgs. 35:53 Including one by Satoshi, this value overflow thing. 35:56 In both cases, it was like within five hours, within six hours, things were caught. 36:02 The level DB database lock thing. 36:06 They were caught and the chain was redone. 36:10 And once someone did a double spend, but only as like a science experiment. 36:13 And they returned the money to whoever they double spent back in 2013, I think. 36:19 And so the real answer is no. 36:24 Because even though there have been some, they only lasted a few hours. 36:29 And they were early on and they were very unrepresentative. 36:33 And nothing really bad happened as a result. 36:41 Understood. Thank you. 36:43 Welcome everyone who's joined. 36:45 Raise your hand to come on up to the stage and chat about Drivechain with us. 37:00 Well, Paul, one of the exciting things that's happening is the rebasing of the code. 37:06 In that 2020 white paper from Blockstream on Liquid, 37:09 they mentioned two or three concerns about Drivechain. 37:14 One is whether the miners might steal. 37:19 And then they also mentioned it's unclear what the incentives might be. 37:23 If Drivechain were adopted, it could be complex incentives. 37:27 And then the third thing is about the code. 37:29 So that third objection will be eliminated. 37:33 For those who are focused on the code and want to review a reference implementation 37:39 and a complete specification, a fully rebased code, 37:44 they'll have that opportunity once this work is done. 37:47 So in the near future, in the coming months perhaps, 37:50 the Drivechain code will be fully rebased. 37:52 And everyone who's ever objected to Drivechain because the code wasn't, 37:56 you know, submitted in a pull request, 37:59 they will be satisfied insofar as they made that line of critique. 38:05 So that'll be an exciting change for the movement. 38:10 Well, yes, it's the obvious sort of next step and final step. 38:21 Yeah, great. 38:30 Welcome, everyone who's listening and also welcome to those who listen later. 38:35 This is a recorded space so people can listen on demand after it's over. 38:39 But right now, come on up to the stage and share a question or comment. 38:44 Everybody who's listening, raise your hand if you'd like. 38:47 I see a lot of familiar faces in the audience. 38:50 Welcome to everyone who's a fan of Drivechain, a critic of Drivechain, 38:55 or just curious to learn more about this Bitcoin improvement proposal. 39:00 It's one of the most well-known of all of the Bitcoin improvement proposals 39:05 in terms of its years of development, its very substantial following, 39:12 and its reach, its potential to greatly strengthen Bitcoin. 39:20 It's one of the more exciting ideas that's ever been put forward, 39:24 trying to rejuvenate the sidechain movement in Bitcoin. 39:28 Right now, we only have a few quite small sidechains. 39:32 It's just a tiny part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. 39:35 But with Drivechain, it could become a tremendously valuable feature of the ecosystem. 39:41 Something which greatly diminishes the role of altcoins in the economy. 39:48 Because we would copy all of the good technology from altcoins into Bitcoin, 39:54 potentially absorbing all of their users, all of their value, all of their number go up, 39:59 all of their fees, all of their network effect. 40:04 Lots of people complain about altcoins. Lots of Bitcoiners say altcoins are evil, altcoins are immoral, they're all scams. But they don't have an idea for eliminating altcoins. 40:18 Drivechain can do that. Drivechain has potential to eliminate altcoins. This is the one idea, more than any other, that has the potential to make everyone think there is no point in even trying to launch an altcoin. 40:34 Because everybody will be launching Bitcoin sidechains when they have a very good idea for a blockchain. 40:43 So what is a Bitcoin sidechain? Well, if Drivechain is adopted, the Bitcoin sidechains will share Bitcoin's monetary policy, so there's no money printing, and share Bitcoin's miners through merged mining. 40:59 So the sidechain gives you Bitcoin's monetary policy and miners, but the features and technology and software of something other than Bitcoin. 41:10 So that's the amazing relationship there is you get the best parts of Bitcoin, but you also get experimentation and innovation. 41:19 So you have Bitcoin's hash rate and Bitcoin's monetary policy, but the features of a privacy coin or the features of a large block version of Bitcoin or the features of Ethereum or something that's never even been launched. 41:34 There are ideas out there that have never been created as an altcoin, but they would be created as a Bitcoin sidechain. 41:41 For example, HiveMind, the peer-to-peer Oracle network. 41:48 Welcome to everyone listening. Come on up to the stage, raise your hand. 41:53 Hello to all the familiar faces. 41:55 Welcome, Bitcoin biohacker. 42:00 What's up? 42:01 I was just wondering, could this be done on Lightning, which is a Layer 2 protocol? 42:14 I think the answer is no. 42:15 It is not possible to use Lightning to build an unlimited variety of protocols on top of Bitcoin. 42:31 However, Lightning and drivechain work hand in hand. 42:35 They go together very well, because there could be Lightning on top of any of the sidechains, just like there's Lightning on top of Bitcoin. 42:49 So these ideas, Lightning and drivechain, are complementary. 42:54 They work well together. 42:56 There could be good sidechains. 42:57 Welcome to the stage, BitCode. 43:00 Hi, everyone. 43:02 Can I make one comment only about the Lightning, the difference between drivechains and Lightning? 43:08 I mean, it's a totally different thing anyways. 43:11 But Lightning is different. 43:14 It's not the same as Bitcoin. 43:16 It's not the same as Bitcoin. 43:17 So can I make one comment only about the Lightning, the difference between drivechains and Lightning? 43:22 I mean, it's a totally different thing anyways. 43:25 But Lightning is centralized, and we aim to increase the space with decentralized things. 43:37 So drivechains are, I think, the best and only solution for this. 43:48 Yeah, there's a great article, if you're interested, on Lightning at truthcoin.info. 43:57 So you can see what Paul Sztorc has written on this. 44:04 I'll share it. 44:06 Here we go. 44:08 Lightning Network Fundamental Principles. 44:18 So if the drivechains are the alternate pegs, or whatever word you want to think about the drivechains, 44:35 would each individual sidechain potentially be as centralized as Lightning, or how would they be different? 44:48 So whether something is decentralized or centralized has to do with whether the validation is localized to ordinary people. 44:58 So with Bitcoin, it is highly decentralized because an ordinary person can afford to download a copy of the blockchain and validate it completely. 45:10 So they can be sure that they were paid in Bitcoin. 45:14 Rather than having to go somewhere else and ask a third party to validate for them, the validation is localized to the ordinary person level, the ordinary user. 45:24 So that's the meaning of decentralization in our view. 45:29 And the level of decentralization on sidechains would depend on the cost of validating them. 45:36 Some sidechains would be cheap to validate, other sidechains might be a bit expensive to validate, 45:42 and people would be able to opt in completely voluntarily to any or none of the sidechains. 45:50 Just like with Lightning, people don't use Lightning who don't want to. 45:54 No one has to use it. The exact same thing is true. 45:56 So what Drivechain is all about is letting people choose, letting the consumer decide what level of decentralization she prefers. 46:07 So whatever you want to do is fine. 46:10 Drivechain lets the consumer decide rather than forcing the consumer to choose between Bitcoin with its particular features and the ones that it doesn't have. 46:21 The user has to go to an altcoin. 46:22 Instead, with Drivechain, the user can stay with Bitcoin and simply opt in to whichever sidechain is preferred. 46:44 Let's hear another question. Come on up to the stage. Anyone? Share your questions and comments. 46:53 We would love to hear your thoughts on Drivechain. 47:05 I do have a question. 47:10 Fantastic. 47:12 My question is as follows. 47:16 What are the changes that you will need on Bitcoin in order to be able to do Drivechain? 47:25 And to what extent are they the same changes you will need to do a rollup on Bitcoin? 47:36 So Drivechain introduces two opcodes to Bitcoin. 47:41 One is in BIP300 and the other is in BIP301. 47:46 And therefore Drivechain is a soft fork of Bitcoin, not a hard fork. 47:51 And these changes are important and necessary for the creation of the Drivechain architecture, which is a peer-to-peer two-way peg for sidechains that involve no trusted federation, no trusted privileged party. 48:08 But instead, the entire Bitcoin mining ecosystem is involved in the management of the two-way peg. 48:17 So that's the answer, is there would be a soft fork to introduce BIP300 hashrate escrow and a second opcode for BIP301, which relieves miners of the responsibility of running the node. 48:33 It makes it optional for miners to run the node of a sidechain. 48:37 So all miners would collect the fees from the sidechain, whether or not they run the node of the sidechain. 48:45 That's called blind merged mining. 48:48 So those are the two innovations of Drivechain. 48:51 First, hashrate escrow. 48:53 And second, blind merged mining. 48:55 And each involves one new opcode. 48:59 Oh, nice, nice, nice. 49:02 And the second part of my question, the reason why I ask this is, the second part of my question is actually, if you would enable Drivechain, are you for any reason, 49:14 excluding the possibility to do rollups in the future or are they not related at all? 49:23 They're a little bit related in the sense that if Drivechain is done, then rollups, if they are a good idea to be used on Bitcoin's mainchain, will come faster to Bitcoin's mainchain. 49:37 So Drivechain is an accelerator for good ideas and a decelerator for bad ideas. 49:45 The way this works is that right now the Bitcoin community deliberates on which changes to make to the mainchain. 49:54 But with Drivechain, deliberation wouldn't be the only way that the Bitcoin community chooses which changes to make. 50:02 Instead, if there are 10 good ideas out there for a change to Bitcoin, if Drivechain exists on Bitcoin, then those 10 ideas can be implemented as sidechains. 50:16 So there could be a clone of Bitcoin, but it has CTV included as a sidechain. 50:23 And there could be another sidechain that has APO. 50:26 And there could be another sidechain that has SysAg. 50:29 And there could be another sidechain that has Simplicity. 50:32 And there could be another sidechain that has other changes. 50:38 And each of those sidechains would accrue value if they're used and wanted by consumers and if they're stable. 50:50 So Drivechain would enable ideas in Bitcoin's technical community to compete for value. 50:59 And therefore, instead of mere deliberation, Bitcoin would improve through a process of competition. 51:06 And that economic competition would be a powerful improvement to the way that the Bitcoin community chooses how to make changes. 51:15 So if rollups are a good thing for Bitcoin and people want them on a blockchain, then that sidechain would accrue value as Bitcoiners opt into that sidechain to use its features. 51:28 And it would accelerate the adoption of that on mainchain, perhaps. 51:33 So that's the way that Drivechain is harmonious and synergistic with the rollups movement. 51:38 One of the experts on rollups for Bitcoin, the author of BitcoinRollups.com, John Light of Sovereign, has visited our space and said that he likes Drivechain and rollups coming to Bitcoin. 51:55 And he thinks that because Drivechain is an older, more conservative idea, I don't want to misquote him, but he said something to that effect. 52:03 That he would think that it's probably better to have Drivechain happen first because its technology is less esoteric than the rollup zero knowledge technology. 52:16 And therefore, let's do Drivechain first and then test rollups on a sidechain. 52:21 And perhaps if that would be very successful, bring rollups to Bitcoin mainchain as well. 52:27 Welcome to the stage, Wicked. Always nice to chat with you. 52:31 Also, welcome to the stage, Austin, my colleague. 52:34 Hey, guys. Thanks for putting on this space. 52:37 Drivechains are definitely something that I have yet to really explore, to be honest. 52:45 One of the things that you were just talking about, having various sidechains for different ideas. 52:53 And you said, kind of like alluding to the stable one surviving would be good for the ecosystem and whatever. 53:03 And I was just wondering, what happens if a sidechain becomes unstable? 53:07 Yeah, that's a great question. 53:09 Yeah, that's a great question. 53:11 So the original design of Drivechain and the way it was introduced at the very beginning contemplated exactly that concern. 53:19 So the answer has always been consistent and correct, which is that the will of the Bitcoin community expressed through the miners is empowered to terminate any sidechain that is problematic. 53:32 So if there is a sidechain that is reducing the value of Bitcoin or interfering with other sidechains, and there are some complicated potential ways that that can happen. 53:44 If there is a blockchain that's problematic in the Bitcoin ecosystem because of Drivechain, then the miners would be able to terminate that Drivechain sidechain. 53:55 And therefore it would be eliminated. 53:57 And also if there were ever a problem with Drivechain itself, it could be solved forked out. 54:03 So Drivechain is an idea with unbelievably high upside and virtually no downside, understood in the way that I just described. 54:13 Where if there's a problem in a sidechain or in Drivechain itself, it could be removed. 54:18 And the potential gain from adding Drivechain is the potential for embracing and absorbing all of the value and good ideas from all of the altcoins, as well as the ideas that haven't yet been developed. 54:31 So imagine we do Drivechain today and then in a year from now, a brilliant person has a brilliant idea for a new blockchain. 54:39 Is that person going to build it as a Bitcoin sidechain or are they going to build it as an altcoin? 54:44 If we adopt Drivechain, we greatly increase the chances that that person will build their brilliant idea as a Bitcoin sidechain. 54:54 And then Bitcoin users, including those who never use sidechains, will have their token appreciate and their miners gain revenue because of the success of this Bitcoin sidechain. 55:06 Whereas without Drivechain, this brilliant idea that's coming in a year from now, hypothetically, would almost certainly be built as an altcoin. 55:15 This brilliant person would say to himself, hmm, I could either go to the Bitcoin community and lobby for months and years to get my idea included in Bitcoin. 55:24 Or I can just embrace freedom and launch my own altcoin that competes with Bitcoin for users and value. 55:31 So we want to make it very permissionless and easy as much as possible for people to build on Bitcoin. 55:40 Like that narrative, build on Bitcoin, that's something which Drivechain is all about. 55:45 Drivechain would strengthen that narrative a lot. 55:48 And also there used to be this narrative in Bitcoin that if there's any good idea out there, Bitcoin will adopt it. 55:55 And what we see now is that there's hundreds of billions of dollars of ideas out there that have accrued value and they're not on Bitcoin. 56:05 But if Bitcoin had better sidechains, then most or all of them might flow to Bitcoin, bringing all their users and value. 56:13 So that's what we feel. 56:16 How does that strike you? 56:19 That all sounds pretty good to me. 56:22 So I guess a little bit more technically, let's say a sidechain does fail or become unstable. 56:31 What happens to people's pegged in Bitcoin? 56:35 I guess how is it then pegged out? 56:40 How does that whole mechanism work? 56:45 Austin, do you want to talk for a bit? 56:48 I want to talk people's ears off. 56:50 It's always great to have more voices. 56:53 If anyone else on the stage, Michael, any DriveChainers here want to share their takes, then please chime in and answer these excellent questions. 57:03 Sure, I can speak to the peg out. 57:06 So let's try to see if I can get it as simply as possible. 57:09 Basically, three months worth of activity in the sidechain is hashed into one 32 byte hash. 57:16 That hash is then included in the proposed withdrawal transaction on the Bitcoin mainchain. 57:24 So as we know about hashes, you can hash the largest data set or you hash the Bible and it comes out to one hash. 57:38 And then you add a single period to the end of it and it's a completely different hash. 57:42 So very quickly, anyone who is so inclined can just at a moment's glance between the two hashes see whether or not the proposed withdrawal transaction is actually applicable to the sidechain or is the actual valid proposed withdrawal for the sidechain. 58:07 And then that proposed withdrawal transaction needs something like 13,000 blocks to be mined on top of it. 58:20 Basically, each block producer, I guess more accurately, when a block is found, it can include an upvote or an affirmative vote for that proposed transaction. 58:38 It can abstain or it can downvote that proposed transaction. 58:44 Those transactions expire after six months. 58:49 And so you need 50% plus one of blocks in that six month period to upvote that transaction for that transaction to be considered valid. 59:02 What do you think, Henry? Is that a good job? 59:05 Yeah, that was better than I could do. That was excellent. Thank you for this. 59:09 I've listened to Wicked a lot in his spaces. He's very technically minded. So I appreciate you chiming in there. It's very helpful. 59:19 Wicked, please share more questions. We'd love to have your thoughts at this moment if you have any other things that come to mind. 59:27 What's your take on what you've heard so far about Drivechain today and at other times? How do you feel about the project? What are your concerns or what do you like the most? 59:37 Man, honestly, I don't quite know. I mean, that's why I'm here. Like I said, I haven't done very much research into it myself. 59:53 I'm kind of like, you know, I'm one of those like, you know, NPCs that just kind of follows the crowd, whatever the hot topic is, admittedly. 1:00:02 So, you know, but hopefully Drivechain will become the hot topic at some point. 1:00:08 And then, you know, yeah, it's absolutely vital that it becomes the hot topic because we need the number to go up. 1:00:16 Drivechain, I mean, I've been acquainted with it for many years, but it wasn't until I realized that this is the most important thing we can do to pump the coin that I really became obsessed because all the technical stuff is really cool. 1:00:30 And, you know, maybe we can, you know, and there's a lot of truth to it. 1:00:38 You know, Bitcoin can, you know, free humanity and blah, blah, blah. 1:00:42 But the price is the most important metric of how far along we are to that goal. 1:00:48 So whether or not you're purely financially motivated, which I think is absolutely fine. 1:00:55 In fact, it's probably the best thing is that we get as many of those people involved as possible. 1:01:01 Or, you know, you're very self-righteously motivated to, you know, bank the unbanked or whatever. 1:01:10 I don't know. 1:01:11 The price is still the most important metric on how far along we are to whatever goal you're trying to accomplish that got you into Bitcoin. 1:01:23 And the higher the price goes, the more powerful the aggregate Bitcoin holding community is, the network is, it's absolutely pivotal. 1:01:35 And I don't see anything that comes even close in terms from a technical perspective. 1:01:43 I mean, you know, we can talk about socially or whatever, market wise, whatever. 1:01:49 The best thing we can do technically to advance Bitcoin and make this number go up and get even richer is to add drivechain. 1:02:00 It completely kicks the legs out from under whatever the narrative of whatever your shitcoin du jour claims to be for. 1:02:15 Because now you can just completely copy it one to one on top of Bitcoin. 1:02:21 So every developer becomes a Bitcoin developer and actually really, really absolutely pivotably important is that it aggregates Bitcoin liquidity. 1:02:32 Aggregates, I mean to say it aggregates the liquidity of all of these shitcoin markets into Bitcoin. 1:02:39 Probably not like one to one, but even if it just like takes 10% of all of the like net liquidity and adds it to Bitcoin market liquidity, that's a huge boost. 1:02:52 Because the foundationally speaking, the like the foundation of Bitcoin's utility is in its liquidity, in your ability to use it to trade for very large amounts of value, whether that's in US dollars or services or whatever. 1:03:12 We just need Bitcoin to continue to become more and more liquid. 1:03:17 And this helps to steal at least some of that liquidity from those shitcoin markets and bring it into Bitcoin, which I think is extremely, extremely important. 1:03:29 And it does the same thing with the security budget. 1:03:31 Whatever some marginal percentage of all of the money that's being spent to secure these shitcoin networks will come back into Bitcoin, which is also extremely, extremely important. 1:03:45 So, you know, I used to be like, you know, maybe this is like, I don't know. 1:03:49 I just think now the only the most important thing is just to get the Bitcoin price up. 1:03:53 We need Bitcoin to be the network to be worth trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars. 1:03:58 And the more trillions of dollars it's worth, the more difficult it is going to be to defeat it. 1:04:05 And the more we can leverage it in order to actually accomplish those high minded, self-righteous goals of, you know, banking the unbanked or censorship resistant payments or, you know, whatever, freeing humanity, whatever you want to say. 1:04:23 I don't know. And we can also get all the people holding Bitcoin even richer. 1:04:29 And I think on the whole, that's a good thing, because probably many and most of them have ideologically or more aligned with me than Jerome Powell or Janet Yellen or, you know, whatever that lady is from Europe. 1:04:48 The European Central Bank, who I refuse to remember her name, any of those monsters. 1:05:00 Yeah, I mean, I generally think that the argument, you know, of basically putting shit coins on their back foot is a pretty good one. 1:05:10 Right. Like instead of it being a defensive argument saying, you know, like, you know, shit coins are XYZ and they're kind of pointless. 1:05:19 You can just be like, well, you can build that on Bitcoin. So why are you building a shit coin and shine a light on the fact that they're doing it just to, you know, dump on retail or make a quick buck or whatever? 1:05:32 Which is kind of like part of what we're arguing already, but then it becomes abundantly clear if it's possible to build it on Bitcoin without needing a separate token. 1:05:44 Because right now they have plausible deniability, but with the post drivechain, it's all just threadbare. 1:05:52 The fact that the only utility of a shit coin that remains is just to enrich the founders. 1:06:01 Yeah. One of the questions I have. So with sidechains enabled by drivechain, is the peg always one set to one set or can that be tinkered with? 1:06:13 Well, the peg is a market. Oh, there's maybe two questions you could be asking here. One is like, could you have when you move the coins to the sidechain, like they hypothecate with like added decimal places or something? 1:06:31 Or the other thing is like, would the market price it out of a one to one peg? 1:06:39 So two things. And both are kind of related to the first option there. But like, yeah, could you have more decimals? So could you have a sidechain that has like millisets? 1:06:49 Would be question number one. And then question number two is, could you have a sidechain that has inflation such that you do have a market that's basically accounting for whatever the inflated supply is on the sidechain and then aggregating the coins back to their equivalent Bitcoin value when you peg out? 1:07:11 Well, for the first question, I think is you definitely could. You can just like if you had an ETH clone or something where, you know, or some sort of sidechain that facilitated micropayments, maybe you would need further divisibility and you'd have put millisets or whatever. 1:07:34 That actually doesn't change the actual denomination any. It just adds more divisibility. 1:07:43 Repeat the second question again. 1:07:46 So maybe the second one could be like a time variable that inflates the supply over time or something. 1:07:55 Well, as far as the Bitcoin that's on the sidechain goes, according to the rule set, that should only be allowed via deposits. So I don't think so. 1:08:11 I guess what it would be is like, you know, you peg into the sidechain, right? And depending on the time you peg in, it would facilitate how many of the sidechain tokens you receive. So the longer you wait to peg in, you know, the more of the Bitcoin sidechain tokens you receive. So in effect, there's like an inflation rate basically. 1:08:39 It's like there's zero inflation ever because of the follow-up. 1:08:43 On-chain, right. On-chain there's zero inflation. But in the sidechain, could you? 1:08:47 I mean, maybe somebody who creates the sidechain code could write something in there where they can like steal a percentage of deposits or something. But that's the only way I could see that like technically working. And I don't see why anybody would want to deposit into a chain where value is taken from you. 1:09:07 Yeah, because it's a really, really good idea. 1:09:10 Well, somebody could just copy it and remove it. It'd be like Zcash. Zcash essentially has that kind of with the dev tax and you've created a Bitcoin sidechain or a zSide, which was, I believe, the first kind of in-production sidechain that was created that Paul gave his stamp of approval for. 1:09:41 And that includes no dev tax. And if somebody were to like create a clone saying, oh, we're going to make one that's even more similar to the actual Zcash because we're going to steal some of the money. I don't think that would be anybody would find that preferable. 1:09:58 Yeah, I mean, I think I think the correct answer is technically speaking, you can do all sorts of stuff. It's just would anyone actually. 1:10:08 Would that would that. Well, there's two questions. Like, would anybody actually want to use it? But but also would would miners allocate to some like really extractive or very, I don't know, subpar sidechain in that in that perspective? 1:10:28 Would miners allocated a slot? Because the thing about the sidechains is that that they need to be given like a slot so that numbered one through 256 so that the entire network can like be in agreement on which sidechain is which or, you know, I guess that's kind of an easy way to explain it. 1:10:53 So there's 256 maximum slots. 1:10:56 There is, but technically there's infinite maximum slots because you can add 256 more should should it fill up, you kind of just do a second soft fork like you, you do a second dip 300 fork and then two, you can do 256 more slots if you need it. 1:11:16 I don't know if that would ever be needed. And also, each sidechain could have sidechains or, you know, it could get really meta. 1:11:25 Well said. Just adding to that, if when you have a two way peg wicket, it's like the gold market. As an analogy, there are gold coins and there are gold bars. And the two way peg between those two commodities, gold coins and gold bars, because they are distinct things, is the two way peg is the fact that people. 1:11:49 One make it the other and go back so bars can be melted into coins and coins can be melted down into bars and that two way peg causes the two to always trade one for one. 1:12:04 The two to always trade one for one. So because there's a two way peg between bars and coins, they trade one for one almost all the time. If they didn't trade one for one, anybody would arbitrage. They would convert one into the other to capture the higher purchasing power of the more valuable one. 1:12:22 The same exact mechanism of economic incentives would occur in drivechain, where the synthetic Bitcoin on the sidechain is going to trade one for one with the main chain layer one Bitcoin all the time. 1:12:39 If they deviate, then professionals would peg out or peg in and force up the value of the less valuable side of the peg. And this arbitrage will occur all the time. It occurs in other markets, too. In the financial markets, there are professionals who are maintaining two way pegs in a thousand different markets and they make money that way. 1:13:04 They perform a service for the ordinary user. The ordinary users in drivechain wouldn't be going through the peg. They would be swapping on the secondary market instantly. They wouldn't be waiting for any peg. So it's like the futures market where there's a lot of professionals who engage in the futures market performing a service for the rest of society. 1:13:26 Right. Or just like liquid Bitcoin. I mean, if we want an example that is already here. No one actually pegs in and out with liquid Bitcoin. They just use a secondary market to get some if they want to use it. 1:13:39 You're exactly right. There's a two way peg there. Of course, in the drivechain view, we believe that the reason why federated Bitcoin sidechains haven't seen enormous adoption is that there is a socially selected set of people involved in controlling the Bitcoin sent to that two way peg. 1:14:02 So it's trusted. Same trust model is Coinbase or Gemini, where if the parties were found and coerced or colluded. I mean, I think they're all good people at those projects. But in theory, in theory, if they were colluding or coerced, then the Bitcoin could be robbed or destroyed. 1:14:23 So therefore, what we want is sidechains that are designed to be as robust as Bitcoin itself. Sidechains that are fully peer to peer, where anyone can participate by mining, can participate in the security model. And therefore, no one is privileged. That's the essence of drivechain is that no one is a privileged party. It's just like Bitcoin, fully peer to peer. 1:14:45 So then we're assuming here that instead of trusting the federation to keep the peg in the models we have now, like with Liquid, we're trusting that the majority of the miners will do it, right? Like we're putting the trust onto the miners, which is kind of, I mean, we're already trusting them in a sense anyway. 1:15:07 Yes, that's exactly right. As Satoshi said at the very beginning of Bitcoin, he wrote a number of times, including in the white paper, that Bitcoin depends on the majority of hash rate being controlled by honest parties. If they were to collude to attack Bitcoin, then there would be a 51 percent hostile, perpetual, devastating attack. 1:15:30 So it's important that Bitcoin become massive and the miners have extremely high revenue forever from transaction fees. And that's one of the really exciting angles of drivechain that has developed in more recent years is there has been a growth of understanding that merged mining is a powerful solution to Bitcoin's transaction fee reliant economic security model. 1:15:55 In other words, we want to have a source of miner revenue from transaction fees be very high. And if we don't have that, then in the long run, Bitcoin's miner revenue would fall as a result of halvings of the subsidy. 1:16:10 And right now, the vast majority of transaction fees are paid to other blockchain miners or validators. All these transaction fees, like over 90 percent of all transaction fees on blockchains are not going to Bitcoin miners. They're going to Ethereum people or people on other chains. So we want to gather fees from every blockchain and bring them to Bitcoin miners and drivechain would do that potentially. 1:16:37 That's pretty interesting. So where do you get that? I guess where do you get that number from? You're saying 90 percent? 1:16:46 Yeah. You can go to a blockchain fee monitoring website. There's a bunch of them that are popular and you can see where are the fees paid every day. Is Bitcoin number one or is it number five or is it number 10? Where are all these fees going? Like Ethereum has massive fee revenue. Every day people are paying to use different applications on Ethereum. Bitcoin generally most days I think has less. 1:17:12 Yeah. You know what? That's interesting. So right now, fees on average, I think the past four year average has been hovering around about four or five percent of total block reward relative to the subsidy. And so if we did get all of that fee revenue from all blockchains and we effectively 10x what we have now. 1:17:38 And that would mean we'd basically be at a one to one fee versus subsidy at the moment. And then you have the subsidy in a year and then all of a sudden 75 percent would be, well, it'd be, let's see, what's the math there? You have one, keep the other one the same, then two thirds would be from fees, right? And then of course, another halving would make it even more. But yeah, that's interesting. 1:18:02 Yeah. So cryptofees.info is the website. There are others too. It's always good to check more than one to make sure you're getting good information. But cryptofees.info is saying Ethereum is getting about eight million in fees per day and Bitcoin is getting about one million in fees per day. Roughly 7.8 million versus 1.1 million. And you can see the averages. So what it looks like is that Ethereum has a multiple of the Bitcoin fees. 1:18:32 So it would be very good for Bitcoin to have more fees for its miners. It would actually increase the value of Bitcoin probably, because one of the main ways that the altcoiners criticize Bitcoin and try to undermine Bitcoin's narratives and popularity is the altcoiners frequently, like there are some ethmaxies who tweet every day to over 100,000 followers. 1:18:57 They tweet like Evan Van Ness or Justin Bonds or others. Almost every day they have a tweet saying, for like the hundredth time, they say Bitcoin is going to have to do inflation. And they point to the fact that OG Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd has tweeted in support of this and has written essays about why it should be explored and considered. 1:19:20 So, you know, adding tail issuance to Bitcoin, which as drive chainers, we think that would be devastating to Bitcoin's most powerful value proposition is absolute scarcity. So a fork that would introduce tail issuance that would continue the subsidy in perpetuity would undermine the prospect of a high real return for Bitcoin holders. 1:19:41 As the world demands more Bitcoin, we don't want the supply of Bitcoin to continue growing forever. So we don't want to have to do inflation on Bitcoin. 1:19:52 But we need the miners to have high revenue to secure the proof of work blockchain. 1:19:57 So the only alternative is to boost transaction fees. 1:20:02 Or, you know, as Jason Lowery has tweeted, have the government tax people to pay the Bitcoin miners. 1:20:07 But I don't think taxing is good, nor inflation. 1:20:11 The best result is a free market endogenous value creating solution such as merged mining, which Satoshi himself explicitly invented and 1:20:22 endorsed. He said we would collect fees from every network in the world, increasing the total strength. 1:20:28 So this idea was at the start of Bitcoin and Bitcoin's own creator supported it. 1:20:36 Yeah, I mean, the way I see it, so, you know, I mean, I'm of the belief that Bitcoin is probably going to succeed regardless. 1:20:45 And the thing I'm most worried about, honestly, is like, is like, does Bitcoin succeed as a network that is only meant for, you know, the top 10 million richest entities in the world? 1:20:59 And they're the ones who are paying all the fees necessary to secure the network because, you know, this fixed supply asset is just continuously increasing in value that they're, you know, it's worth paying those fees. 1:21:12 But it closes out everyone else who can't afford to pay those fees. 1:21:16 Or does it become a network that, you know, we figure out ways to allow, you know, the whole world to use it. 1:21:25 Right. And so. 1:21:27 I don't know, like I'm, I guess, you know, what I've been trying to understand, you know, the past couple of years when I really started to look more into Bitcoin and I am new here, by the way, I haven't been around for very long. 1:21:43 But, yeah, what I'm trying to understand is like, how, how does Bitcoin scale to the world without, you know, fucking up everything? 1:21:54 Right. Like, like, we know, we know one way that we can't do it. 1:21:58 Right. We're not going to increase block size. 1:22:01 I think that's been pretty much proven that is a bad idea. 1:22:05 So how else do we do it? 1:22:06 Do we do it on sidechains? 1:22:09 Do we do it on, you know, second layers? 1:22:13 Obviously, you know, lightning isn't like a means of scaling self custody. 1:22:18 So that's not really going to work. 1:22:20 Scales payments, custodial payments, I think. 1:22:23 But like, yeah, I don't know. 1:22:25 So so, you know, like, I think sidechains is an interesting proposition in this regard. 1:22:32 Just curious. I'm just curious, like, you know, and this is kind of I don't want to derail the conversation away from sidechains. 1:22:38 But like, what is what is your thought on ARK? 1:22:41 I don't know if you've looked into that as much, but like, that's kind of been on the forefront of a lot of people's minds. 1:22:47 That's a great question. Before we turn to that, I just want to briefly mention the tweet I just posted in the nest from Adam Back this year writing. 1:22:56 And you can see it in the nest at the top of this room. 1:22:58 He wrote, I think we're going to need a big peer to peer sidechain. 1:23:02 I think we're going to need a big peer to peer sidechain for the next billion users to benefit. 1:23:07 And he goes on to talk about Bitcoin. 1:23:09 The point is that as drive chainers, we believe that large blocks are an important part of Bitcoin's ecosystem in the future. 1:23:17 Large block sidechains, not main chain. 1:23:19 In fact, we have a favorable view on, you know, the discussion to decrease the main chain block size. 1:23:27 But our priority is simply enabling sidechains such as Adam Back's description of a large block clone of Bitcoin is the same as Bitcoin, but it has larger blocks. 1:23:37 And that would enable people to opt in completely voluntarily if they want to, to a less decentralized but more scalable version of Bitcoin. 1:23:48 And then get out of it whenever they want to come back to main chain when they're finished. 1:23:51 You know, like you would keep some money there for paying your coffee bill, but then you would keep maybe your savings on main chain, things like that. 1:23:58 So, yeah, large blocks are part of the scaling roadmap. 1:24:01 We believe this is essential for Bitcoin's long term future. 1:24:05 Like if we can't onboard a billion people tomorrow, non-custodially, we won't. 1:24:10 They'll onboard either to altcoins or they'll onboard to Coinbase and then Bitcoin won't be succeeding as a peer to peer system. 1:24:18 But, yeah, thanks for asking about ARK. 1:24:20 We're happy to like talk about that as well. 1:24:22 Maybe before we go to that, I actually think, you know, keeping it on sidechains is probably a good focus for this room. 1:24:29 But so if we're talking about making a sidechain with, you know, big blocks and we're saying it's less decentralized than, you know, main chain. 1:24:44 You know, I mean, basically the idea there is that whoever is maintaining that ledger will essentially be in control of it. 1:24:53 Right. I mean, if there's only a certain amount of nodes running for that sidechain, then what's the difference? 1:25:00 Between that and then just having like, you know, Coinbase with their internal ledger, like what's the difference there? 1:25:10 I missed the first part of that question, but I think was the question like if there's only four sidechain nodes, what's the difference between that and Coinbase? 1:25:19 Right. Yeah. Like I guess so in the context of scaling to billions, if we're scaling to billions who are paying for coffees on their sidechain and the transaction set is just, 1:25:28 you know, exploding, right? 1:25:30 Like it's basically only super, super technical industrial scale, you know, people will be able to run nodes for it. 1:25:38 Then what's the difference between that and then just having like a centralized ledger like Coinbase? 1:25:43 Yeah, it's all about it's not about the quantity of nodes. 1:25:47 It's all about the cost. 1:25:48 So a regular person, if you work at Coinbase, you know, like you can't if you don't work at Coinbase, you cannot run the Coinbase ledger. 1:25:58 The cost is basically infinite. 1:26:01 And so but but it so it hasn't if there's only if the nodes are so expensive that only like three or four people in the entire world could plausibly run a full node, then that would be pretty bad. 1:26:15 But that would still be kind of better than the Coinbase case where it's just literally impossible. 1:26:19 You know, like Bill Gates cannot run. 1:26:22 He could spend all the money he likes, but he you know, he doesn't he's not in charge of the Coinbase, you know, ledger. 1:26:28 What you'd have to do is buy Coinbase, basically. 1:26:30 So that's like if the buy 51 percent of Coinbase and then install himself as CEO or something. 1:26:36 So that's like the cost. 1:26:38 Yes. All sidechains would be permissionless, right? 1:26:41 It's what we're saying. Yeah. 1:26:43 The big three hundred permission, permissionlessly able to run nodes for them, I guess is what I meant. 1:26:49 Yeah, exactly. The it's just open source software and there's no no no like identity has been hard coded in there. 1:26:57 It's just software. 1:27:00 So, yeah, but the good news is, even though people are quite right to be concerned about the cost of running a full node, and I wrote an essay measuring decentralization back in 2015 September about that. 1:27:16 And that's key. 1:27:17 That's absolutely key. 1:27:18 But even though that is absolutely key, first of all, sidechains don't affect the layer one node cost at all. 1:27:25 But of course, the users of the sidechain have their own nodes that they have to run. 1:27:29 Even, you know, like I have like looked it up and it's honestly to run even a one gigabyte node. 1:27:36 You know, the bandwidth we set aside the fact that you may want to run it over Tor or something, which is sort of not possible today. 1:27:42 But if we just for we just do our little napkin math, a one gigabyte node, which is not what you know, a one gigabyte node is like, you know, we would not need that for many, many years. 1:27:53 We'd start off with like one eight megabyte node that grows geometrically to like 800 megabytes over 10 years or something. 1:27:59 And then when that one fills up, we just have to start a second one off. 1:28:02 We'd have like eight or nine thunder sidechain. 1:28:05 So this is just napkin math of just taking like an utterly extreme point far away. 1:28:12 And it's sort of saying like if we had a one gigabyte node, which is like honestly as big as anyone could imagine, gigabyte blocks every 10 minutes. 1:28:21 Even that, you know, I did some numbers in my post in the appendix and I researched I looked up what, you know, what software and hardware Jamison Lopp used to his node tests. 1:28:31 And I looked up what is all this cost? 1:28:33 What is the bandwidth cost? 1:28:34 Where's the hard drive cost? 1:28:36 You know, I looked up even the electrical cost. 1:28:39 It's really like, you know, it's like it's like whatever, like basically less than two thousand dollars to get started. 1:28:45 And then like a couple hundred dollars a month. 1:28:48 So that's for a one gigabyte node. 1:28:51 You know, if you add in a bunch of, you know, I like to multiply everything by two, you know, to like margin of error. 1:28:58 So, so that's high, but that's, you know, that's far from something where only four people in the world can afford it. 1:29:04 It's, it's, you know, and it's something that if push came to shove, you know, like plenty of people would would have it. 1:29:12 You know, if we lived in a world, this type of world, obviously, Coinbase, Kraken, BitGo, Blockchain.info, like all those people would pay that, you know, that's like... 1:29:25 Isn't BSV one gigabyte? 1:29:28 I don't really remember. 1:29:29 I think they tried to get rid of the middle limit completely. 1:29:32 They, Bitcoin SV, unfortunately, is, I liked when we had this, the Bitcoin Cash split, because it was very bad in many ways. 1:29:44 But one thing that was kind of interesting was that it gave us a little bit of a free experiment at first. 1:29:50 But unfortunately, Bitcoin Cash didn't do a very good job of competing. 1:29:55 I think competition is good. 1:29:56 But the problem with BSV is it's so, it has so much baggage, that it is not even really a real software project. 1:30:05 There's almost nothing anyone can learn from it about anything. 1:30:08 Yeah, because I was gonna ask, like, you know, why is it that it seems like, well, they only got like three Node runners left, right? 1:30:16 So like, why is it that? 1:30:17 This happened, I think, with Solana, similarly, there was like, down to the last node, or something. 1:30:22 It's all just run by the Solana Foundation or something. 1:30:25 And they do like an Infura, they sell API access to it. 1:30:28 So that would be, at that point, it is the same to answer, that's where it becomes basically the same as, but what I'm saying is, if you're just a little smart, you can, you can get one gigabyte, you should be able to get something that survives for much less. 1:30:46 And I wrote a different post called, I think it's called the small transactions, the actual size of Bitcoin transactions are almost twice as big, for no reason, we can actually cut, we can cut them in half. 1:30:59 Satoshi made just some of these funny decisions, like he has like a four byte version number that no one uses. 1:31:05 So there's a lot of decisions, you can basically cut them kind of in half, which we would do on the specialized large block sidechain, and you can do things parallelization and other things. 1:31:17 So I think there's, while it's true, we should be obsessed with keeping the layer one block size small, and layer one node as easy to run as possible. 1:31:26 It is, it is not really the case like that the current block size limit is, you know, the upper limit. 1:31:34 Mr. Big Code has his hand up, he's had his hand up for a while. 1:31:39 Yeah, well, I love this conversation about miners and what is the connection with the drivechains and what can bring in the future. 1:31:49 And what I think, I mean, this is all from experience and following and all these years, like, what this can can bring through subsidies and subsidies to fees to the miners is actually a lot of money. 1:32:08 If those fees and everybody comes, you know, on the drivechain and create sidechains and all the fees go to miners, we need to know that the miners will, the number of miners will increase. 1:32:23 And I think with a good subsidy through fees, the hash power will increase, but will not be kind of adding more miners to get more profit or more Bitcoin or stuff like that. 1:32:41 So, we'll be kind of increasing the hash rate, but even if the block size of the main chain is small, then the blocks will be mined quicker. 1:32:55 And also, this opens another area of mining, I mean, using the miners for heating and using the, for example, sidechains for securing other networks like electricity grids or broadband networks and stuff like that. 1:33:17 So, I think drivechains will bring so much utility to the world, not only to Bitcoin. 1:33:26 I appreciate your enthusiasm. 1:33:28 When there is a higher hash rate, the blocks are not mined quicker because of the difficulty adjustment. 1:33:33 But I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. 1:33:37 And regarding block size in general, it's just one example of an infinite number of ways in which people in the Bitcoin community might disagree. 1:33:47 Drivechain at its core, originally and most importantly, is about solving disagreements in the Bitcoin community. 1:33:56 And this expresses itself in many ways. 1:33:58 The fact that this problem hasn't been solved, the fact that we don't have a multitude of successful sidechains, it has many different symptoms. 1:34:09 One of the symptoms is the growth of toxic Bitcoin maximalism, which is a cope that tries to deny the validity of innovation and experimentation outside of Bitcoin. 1:34:19 Another symptom of the lack of drivechain is the low fees paid to Bitcoin miners and the knowledge that everyone has with every passing day, when the fees continue to be low, that in the far future, Bitcoin might need to resort to inflation like Peter Todd and others suggest. 1:34:40 And there's other symptoms, the growth of altcoins, the success of Ethereum. 1:34:45 But if drivechain were adopted, there's a possibility that all of the good innovation would flow to Bitcoin and then the whole world would more rapidly Bitcoin eyes. 1:34:54 So we believe that the success of Bitcoin might depend on the success of a sidechain ecosystem that would reduce the infighting within the Bitcoin community and enable experimentation and innovation to happen on Bitcoin sidechains in a way that boosts Bitcoin's value and fees. 1:35:14 So, Wicked, I appreciate your optimism and your view that Bitcoin will succeed with or without this change. 1:35:24 But. For many people in the drivechain community, they arrive at a more stark outlook, which is that Bitcoin, although it's number one today, will not necessarily be number one. 1:35:38 And as Bitcoiners often say, we're so early, right? 1:35:41 We're very early. 1:35:42 Well, the fact that we're so early is sort of a double edged sword. 1:35:45 Like there's no guarantee that Bitcoin will be number one in the coming years. 1:35:51 I mean, the altcoins are growing all the time. 1:35:53 There could be a really good idea tomorrow that someone has. 1:35:56 Do you think that person is going to launch it as a Bitcoin sidechain? 1:35:59 Do you think they'll just stay within the Bitcoin community and wait five years for their idea to be finally adopted? 1:36:06 Or would they launch an altcoin tomorrow easily? 1:36:10 Or would they build it on Ethereum? 1:36:12 So we think that Bitcoin's number one, but it won't necessarily always be there unless we focus hard on more innovation and experimentation and less on toxicity. 1:36:22 Yeah, I mean, I guess this gets into maybe a conversation that is just very speculative. 1:36:29 But the way I see it is Bitcoin's really the only cryptocurrency that has had a distribution phase in the beginning that was not driven by greed. 1:36:45 And I think that's what plagues all new cryptocurrencies now, even if their creators don't mean for it to happen. 1:36:53 If there was a really good idea for a new crypto and, you know, let's say the creator doesn't do a massive pre-mine, what's going to happen? 1:37:01 You know, everyone who's in the know is going to say, well, that's that's a great idea. 1:37:05 And they're going to buy up all the fucking coin. 1:37:07 Right. So then immediately it already becomes centralized. 1:37:12 So I think right off the bat, you know, this is part of the reason why Bitcoin keeps winning is because it had this initial phase of distribution, an initial phase of discovery. 1:37:21 That is, you know, you can't replicate. 1:37:24 Right. Like you literally cannot replicate it as hard as you try to. 1:37:29 You know, you could have the best idea in the world, but you're still going to have a centralized shitcoin because the people in the know are going to buy it all right off the start. 1:37:38 Or you're just going to pre-mine a bunch of it for yourself because, you know, it's the best idea. 1:37:43 So, I mean, this is part of the reason why, you know, I think you can't really beat Bitcoin no matter how good your idea is. 1:37:52 Right. Like it's just you can't really make I don't know. 1:37:55 And again, this is subjective. Right. 1:37:57 I guess it's just what I think. 1:38:00 But I mean, that's that's kind of the way I see it. 1:38:03 But, you know, all that said, I do want Bitcoin to succeed in every way that we're talking about. 1:38:08 And I especially want Bitcoin to succeed as, you know, a global money that everyone can use. 1:38:16 And I think what I've been struggling with the past couple of years, you know, as I've kind of explored this space and learned more and more about Bitcoin is that it does seem like unless we do something, it's going to become, you know, really money for the haves and have nots are going to be using Satoshi denominated eCash or IOUs. 1:38:38 And I don't want to see that world. Right. Like I don't want to see a world where it's the rich people on their yachts, you know, giving the peasants some floaty life life toys to play with. 1:38:51 You can yank them at any time. That's not a that's not a very fun world. 1:38:55 So, you know, anyways, I mean, I do. Yeah. So with all that said, I think, I don't know, the more and more I think about drivechains and and as I said, I'm thinking about it for very long, but it does seem like a really interesting and good idea and definitely one worth exploring more and more and more. 1:39:17 I think, you know, it's obviously been around a long time. A lot of people thought about it for a very long time. 1:39:23 One of the things that I'm curious about, though, like why? So in your opinion, why is it that it hasn't really caught on? Like, why? What is it that you know, what's what's the most contentious aspect of it that makes people reluctant about it? Because like, that's what I don't really understand is it sounds really good. Right. Sounds like a really good idea. So why? Why is it taking so long? 1:39:48 There have been some ideas that were like there are some criticisms that were put forward by some thinkers in the community that criticize drivechain, which we think are incorrect. 1:39:57 So that was one reason. 1:39:59 Another reason that's more of a layman phenomenon is throughout the Bitcoin community, there hasn't been a sense of urgency to do a major change in recent years as Bitcoin hasn't had the threat of a flippening recently. 1:40:14 So for the last five years, Ethereum hasn't hit an all time high in market cap against Bitcoin. 1:40:21 So there hasn't been a sense of urgency and people therefore get complacent when they're first when they're winning a race that are going to try to run even faster. 1:40:29 So that's one reason. 1:40:31 So it's a combination of just psychology and the fact that the competition hasn't been good enough to threaten superficially Bitcoin, but we feel that structurally it's imperative for the success of sound money and freedom that Bitcoin be as best as possible. 1:40:48 So even if there weren't any altcoins in existence, even if Ethereum and all the altcoins didn't exist, there would still be as strong a case for Bitcoin to have advanced sidechains. 1:41:01 So this is not about preventing the flippening. 1:41:04 This is about making Bitcoin as good as it possibly can be. 1:41:08 And as a side effect, Bitcoin would crush the altcoins. 1:41:12 So even if there aren't any altcoins and there's no sense of urgency about losing a race to them, we still have to win the race of rapidly Bitcoin is in the world. 1:41:22 That's that's the only way to get sound money. 1:41:24 Fiatjaf. The creator of Nostr has tweeted about this. 1:41:27 Bitcoin has to grow as fast as we possibly can have it grow. 1:41:31 We don't want slow growth. 1:41:32 We want a blitz scale and cover the whole world where everyone's using Bitcoin as soon as possible. 1:41:37 And that way, as Friedrich Hayek said in the 80s, the only way we'll ever rest the government's control of bit of money away from the government and return money to the free market is by having some sly roundabout thing that grows that they can't stop. 1:41:55 So if Bitcoin grows really slowly, then the government, the statists might be able to suppress it enough. 1:42:01 But if we grow rapidly, that's better. 1:42:04 And sidechains can help with that a lot. 1:42:07 And when we're talking about the world using Bitcoin, we're saying the world using actual Bitcoin, right, not just Satoshi denominated IOUs. 1:42:20 Well, if it's if it's peer to peer and it's a sidechain. 1:42:25 And the unit of account is Bitcoin. 1:42:27 So as I said earlier, the sidechain is different from the main chain. 1:42:30 OK, so when we talk about real Bitcoin, we believe in the future people will mean Bitcoin and its sidechain. 1:42:37 It's because those are simply layers. 1:42:39 Right. Just like a gold bar is the same as a gold coin is the same as gold in the ground. 1:42:44 It's all gold, but it takes different forms. 1:42:47 Similarly, a unit of Bitcoin maintained on a peer to peer sidechain is Bitcoin. 1:42:53 It's different than main chain Bitcoin. 1:42:55 There's different layers of decentralization, different fees you would pay. 1:42:59 But the thing that the sidechain shares with the main chain is the same hash rate. 1:43:03 It's the same miners. 1:43:05 OK, that's one. 1:43:06 The other is the same monetary policy. 1:43:09 So there can never be more than 21 million units in circulation across all of the sidechains and the main chain. 1:43:15 They're all buying into the same monetary policy. 1:43:18 So we're talking about Bitcoin, just like lightning. 1:43:21 People talk about sending Bitcoin around in lightning, you know, that is distinct from sending Bitcoin around on main chain. 1:43:27 But it's still Bitcoin. 1:43:29 So that's what we think is Bitcoin needs to become multi chain, multi chain with a single monetary policy. 1:43:36 Multi chain with a single set of miners. 1:43:41 So the OK, so there is a mechanism to make sure that there's no inflation on sidechains, then. 1:43:48 Yeah, they just said that, yeah, the two way peg. 1:43:50 So there's only so many synthetic Bitcoin on the sidechain as has been since on the main chain to the two way peg, that is to say to the hash rate escrow. 1:44:00 So there could be, let's say, Bitcoin or send one percent of their Bitcoin to a sidechain. 1:44:06 That would mean that, you know, one percent of 21 million has been sent to that sidechain. 1:44:12 And now there's that many synthetic Bitcoin on the sidechain. 1:44:16 If everyone decides to stop using that sidechain, then all of those sidechain tokens will be burned and all of the Bitcoin will be released from the hash rate escrow. 1:44:26 That's the two way peg. 1:44:28 The value can move in both directions back and forth. 1:44:31 And that's why they trade one for one, because arbitrageurs will maintain the peg at a one to one ratio. 1:44:43 We've got 15 more minutes left for questions. 1:44:46 Thanks, everyone who's asked any. 1:44:48 Come on up to the stage and share your thoughts if you'd like. 1:44:51 We meet every Friday to talk about drivechain. 1:44:54 You can get involved in the ways described on LayerTwo Labs dot com. 1:44:58 You can download our software. 1:45:00 You can run the test net software and you can read the bits that are on GitHub. 1:45:08 And you can also participate in our telegram group, which has different subgroups for technical questions, for chatting off topic, for chatting about drivechain. 1:45:19 Lots of different ways to get involved. 1:45:20 So if no one else has any questions, I'll ask another one. 1:45:29 Yeah, please. 1:45:30 So, I mean, it sounds like with, you know, with sidechains, there's really no reason to have further, you know, upgrades to the base layer, right? 1:45:43 Yeah, I mean, it sounds like, you know, with sidechains, there's really no reason to have further, you know, upgrades to the base layer, right? 1:45:55 Because you can always just, you know, any functionality that you'd want on the base layer, you could always just clone and add into a sidechain, right? 1:46:05 Exactly. 1:46:06 It could be the BIP to end all BIPs. 1:46:07 But at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, like sidechains will accelerate good ideas and decelerate bad ones. 1:46:14 Because after we have advanced sidechains, people will say, OK, if you have a change you want made to Bitcoin main chain, maybe it's a good idea, but first prove it in a sidechain. 1:46:29 Let's see how much value and stability it can accrue and demonstrate. 1:46:34 So if rollups are a good change or if Sysag or CTV, anything that people think might be a good change could be demonstrated with real Bitcoin by those who voluntarily opt into the sidechain. 1:46:46 So, I mean, in that sense, it seems like, I mean, it seems like anyone working on any other, you know, soft fork proposals should really be supporting sidechains so that they can just get a fast track into implementing their, you know, whatever it is they want to, you know, kind of upgrade Bitcoin with, right? 1:47:10 I mean, it'd be a much, it seems like it'd be a much faster track. 1:47:14 Yeah, there's a lot of sidechains and then do it that way. 1:47:17 There's a lot of very friendly and favorable discourse between the different communities that are interested in soft fork for Bitcoin, because the one thing they have in common, aside from an interest in Bitcoin, is knowledge that it is worthwhile sometimes to change Bitcoin. 1:47:34 And these are communities that are focused on a change. 1:47:37 So we have a friendly relationship with a number of them. 1:47:40 People came by our booth in Miami and shook hands with us, like Adam Back, you know, speaks favorably about drivechain, also is favorable about simplicity. 1:47:51 Jeremy Rubin stopped by, is very friendly towards, you know, our community and also has an idea of his own. 1:47:58 So people who understand Bitcoin, you know, should change and that changes are needed for Bitcoin to be better. 1:48:03 They have that shared understanding. 1:48:05 So the whole Bitcoin technical community, you know, is interested in innovation and experimentation, because these are the kinds of people who tend to be developing the ideas and are really knowledgeable about the value of having more innovation and experimentation in Bitcoin. 1:48:21 So, yeah, drivechain is harmonious with all of those ideas in the sense that we're talking about, where they could, ideas could be tested on a Bitcoin layer with real money by those who want to try that. 1:48:33 Well, we've got 10 minutes left in our chat today. 1:48:46 Who wants to share some more thoughts? 1:48:49 Go for it. 1:48:51 Yeah, I was thinking about. 1:48:54 So we have the amendable RBF. 1:48:59 We have that code, but it's not active by default. 1:49:03 So drivechain will probably have that hurdle to clear as well. 1:49:08 You'll have to get the code added and then we'll have to get 50% of the miners to actually enable it. 1:49:17 Would that be correct? 1:49:24 Paul, did you catch that question? 1:49:27 Might be a good lesson for you if you're here. 1:49:36 Is the question about how drivechain would be activated? Is that what you're asking? 1:49:42 Like as a software? 1:49:44 Yeah. 1:49:45 Yeah, like it would be disabled by default when it was first added. 1:49:50 Well, I mean, any soft fork is, you know, disabled in the sense that no one has to upgrade to that version of Bitcoin. 1:49:59 So, I mean, you could just keep your node as a previous version and never have drivechain. 1:50:05 But I mean, if you were to upgrade to a new version of Bitcoin post, you know, an activation of drivechain, then I suppose you would have that, you know, that ability to use it, right? 1:50:18 Did I get that right? 1:50:19 Exactly. 1:50:20 Yeah. 1:50:21 It's backwards compatible soft fork. 1:50:23 Yes. 1:50:24 That's right. 1:50:26 So currently the code is being rebased. 1:50:28 And then if it were activated on Bitcoin, the community would prepare and conduct that as done in prior soft forks like SegWit 2017, Taproot 2021. 1:50:40 And then, you know, after activation, the sidechains would begin to launch in the manner described in the BIPs. 1:50:47 So read BIP300 to understand the process by which a sidechain is launched. 1:50:53 And yeah, it would be very exciting. 1:50:57 It would be a huge, exciting change for the narratives around Bitcoin. 1:51:01 You would see headlines like Bitcoin is embracing a path towards greater innovation and experimentation. 1:51:09 You know, and people who are interested in the price of Bitcoin would talk about how this has the potential to absorb the value and send altcoins to zero as the communities migrate to Bitcoin sidechains. 1:51:24 Adam Back has talked about this, how there was a moment in 2014 when the Blockstream white paper came out on sidechains, how there was a moment where the altcoin prices fell and people all thought this is Bitcoin's moment where it's going to absorb every other blockchain community and be the one stop shop, the big tent for everything on blockchain. 1:51:45 And then that didn't quite happen. 1:51:49 And now we have this enormous ocean of altcoins out there. 1:51:53 So Dr. Back is envisioning how a drivechain might revitalize that narrative and in a more sustained way, absorb all of the innovation, users, fees and value to Bitcoin, sending the altcoins to zero and making Bitcoin absorb everything, which would speed up Bitcoinization and align the entire blockchain community on a single project, a single foundation. 1:52:23 I think, so like, I'm not a coder or anything, but it seems like with, we have the people promoting mempool, RBF full, and it's not really like activated yet. 1:52:48 Or I think the actual option in Bitcoin Core software is like Bitcoin mempool RBF full equals zero. 1:53:04 And like, that's the default. 1:53:10 So it's been in there since version 0.12. 1:53:14 That's a great question for the Telegram group. 1:53:17 We have a lot of people in there who are extremely technical, like Paul Sztorc, CryptAxe, the co-authors. 1:53:24 He was asking about mempool RBF and if it has any relevance to drivechain. 1:53:33 Oh, he was asking about mempool RBF and if it has any relevance to drivechain. 1:53:42 Oh, it's kind of unrelated, but that is an interesting topic that people have disagreed over for many years. 1:53:53 Well, my specific question was about how mempool RBF full has not been activated yet, even though it's been in the Bitcoin code since 0.12. 1:54:06 Yes, the technical community fell more on the side of this is going to be the equilibrium behavior, so we might as well just do it. 1:54:14 Whereas there are a lot of practitioners, which ironically includes John Carvalho. 1:54:21 He like almost always groups with the Bitcoin dev mailing list, but instead he is hard against, is kind of unusual. 1:54:30 But the practitioners are just like, we use Bitcoin in the real world and we don't want easy RBF. 1:54:40 And in practice, it's just the cost of maliciously replacing transactions is very high because in practice, someone has to like write their own software to do that. 1:54:51 Convince people to download it, which is not free. 1:54:55 So they thought, why are we providing this service in the free Bitcoin wallet that we recommend to everyone? 1:55:01 This RBF thing is not is not good because what it does is it makes every single payment potentially suspicious and reversible up to the first confirmation. 1:55:16 And so anyone who wants to send it, who wants to prove that they, you know, all the payments that would not be reversed, people who would never have downloaded the software, the modded software. 1:55:29 The honest people there are now all the transactions are mixed into the suspicious bucket. 1:55:35 So it is an intriguing. 1:55:40 Topic of like should Bitcoin Core always do the selfish equilibrium or should it just try to. 1:55:49 Lean into providing software that is best for sender and receiver. 1:55:55 Even if it could be circumvented. 1:55:57 So we're going to have to wrap in just three minutes so you can have the final question, Bitcoin biohacker. 1:56:04 Always great questions from you and everyone. 1:56:06 Thank you, everyone who joined the stage. 1:56:08 We'll be wrapping shortly. 1:56:10 We have a hard stop in three minutes. 1:56:12 We'll be back next Friday. 1:56:14 Follow us here, LayerTwo Labs on Twitter for more of these spaces. 1:56:19 We meet every Friday. 1:56:20 Usually at the same time, 1 p.m. 1:56:22 Eastern. 1:56:23 And in the meantime, you can go to Layer2Labs.com to read more, read the BIPs, download our software, read the essays by Fiatjaf, the creator of Nostr and SuperTestNet, outstanding Bitcoin focused software engineer. 1:56:37 Those essays in favor of drivechain are very compelling and come from very experienced people. 1:56:42 So there's so much to learn and understand about this project. 1:56:45 A lot of reading to do, whether you're a technical or not. 1:56:48 There's something for everyone. 1:56:50 All right. 1:56:51 Take it away for your last question. 1:56:54 Well, I guess like a node, I'm not really sure what the question is, but I was wondering if the software is optional, would it be opt-in? 1:57:09 Well, I guess like a node, I'm not really sure what the question is, but I was wondering if the software is optional, would it be opt-in? 1:57:23 I mean, assuming we have a drivechain software, would it be opt-in or would it be one by default and we have to opt-out? 1:57:32 Well, people have a weird position where they just think like if you're not running the, there's like a soft coercion because you have to run the latest version because it's the one that stays up to date with all the different bug fixes and optimizations. 1:57:45 So people think I'm kind of railroaded into running the latest version. 1:57:52 And also they'll think something like, they'll think, how do I phrase this? 1:57:58 They'll say like, okay, people releasing the latest version, they think, well, I'm on the hook for supporting all this code. 1:58:06 I got to maintain all this code. 1:58:08 So in practice, there's kind of just like one latest version. 1:58:11 And in that sense, every single pull request is sort of mandatory. 1:58:16 But it's actually not literally mandatory. 1:58:18 And you could release a different version, like a different version of each future release of the software. 1:58:24 You could have like the drivechain version and the non-drivechain version. 1:58:28 You could just run the non-drivechain version. 1:58:30 But, yeah, we would need a hashrate majority to activate, to run, a hashrate majority to be running the software that enforces BIP300 in order for it to activate via miner activated soft fork. 1:58:44 Well said. 1:58:45 Well, that is our hard stop, but we'll be back. 1:58:49 Hey, thanks, everyone. 1:58:51 See you later. 1:58:52 Thanks, everyone, for joining. 1:58:53 See you soon. 1:58:54 Check us out in the Telegram group in the meantime. 1:58:56 Drivechain talk. 1:58:57 You can find it at drivechain.info or layer2labs.com, the link to our Telegram group.
