0:03 Hello and welcome to Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 0:07 This is Henry at LayerTwo Labs. 0:10 We are excited to share with you another conversation on BIP300 and BIP301, 0:19 a transformative opportunity for Bitcoin to gain much greater extensibility, 0:27 enabling fascinating and exciting privacy protocols, scaling protocols, Oracle protocols, DNS protocols, and much more, all built on Bitcoin. 0:40 As Dr. Adam Back of Blockstream has described, Drivechain is about innovation, maximalism, and avoiding altcoin seigniorage. 0:53 That great description can be elaborated upon in this way, I would say, 0:59 that Drivechain is all about maximizing the potential of what can be built on blockchains, 1:05 while at the same time completely trying to eliminate altcoin seigniorage. 1:13 So what is altcoin seigniorage? 1:16 Altcoin seigniorage is where someone creates a peer-to-peer protocol in which there is a native token and a monetary supply. 1:28 And Bitcoin was the first blockchain with a native asset, and that created absolute scarcity, 1:42 and ever since then, there has been a proliferation of additional protocols, 1:48 and almost all of them have not been Bitcoin sidechains. 1:54 Instead, each of these protocols has been, in most cases, an independent blockchain, 2:00 or a blockchain built on top of another blockchain that isn't Bitcoin. 2:05 However, Bitcoin, because of its fantastic fundamental attributes, 2:10 has been where most of the value accrual has occurred throughout the history of blockchain. 2:19 And what Drivechain aspires to do is make Bitcoin the one-stop shop for all of the potential building that can be going on in the blockchain realm. 2:32 So instead of building only a simple protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain with a single layer, 2:41 instead, in addition to Bitcoin and in addition to Lightning, 2:45 there can be a vast array of fascinating and very productive protocols built on top of Bitcoin. 2:54 And in the case of sidechains, each of them is a protocol, each of them is a blockchain, 3:00 because every blockchain is a protocol. 3:04 However, with sidechains, the fascinating event can be that the blockchains that are sidechains on Bitcoin 3:12 don't have a native token different than Bitcoin. 3:17 So when the sidechain is first created using Drivechain, there would be no tokens on the blockchain. 3:25 And then tokens would be sent one by one from the main chain of Bitcoin to the sidechain. 3:37 So, for example, at the first moment in time, when the sidechain is created, there would be no tokens on it. 3:49 And then Bitcoiners would send their Bitcoin through the two-way peg, 3:54 and thereby tokens would be created on the sidechain, 3:59 while at the same time an equal number of tokens would be locked in the two-way peg called hashrate escrow. 4:08 And after that, when the Bitcoiners are finished using the sidechain protocol, 4:17 they would be able to send their tokens back through the two-way peg, 4:22 and this would burn tokens on the sidechain while releasing them on the mainchain. 4:29 Thereby, this design would achieve at all times the maintenance of 21 million 4:39 as the limit of Bitcoin tokens universally throughout the whole system, 4:44 throughout the ecosystem of the mainchain and its multitudinous sidechains. 4:51 So that's the Drivechain vision. 4:53 We have one mainchain called the Layer 1, and then the sidechains. 4:58 There could be dozens of them, even hundreds. 5:02 And the total number of Bitcoin throughout all of these blockchains, 5:06 both the mainchain and all the sidechains, 5:08 the total number of tokens of Bitcoin would be 21 million, never any more. 5:15 So that's why Dr. Back described Drivechain in that way, 5:21 referring to it as innovation maximalism with altcoin-seniorage avoidance, 5:27 because we avoid the altcoin-seniorage. 5:30 So if someone wants to build an exciting new privacy protocol 5:34 or an exciting new protocol for scaling like Bitcoin with large blocks 5:39 or other kinds of exciting protocols, there would be no minting of new tokens. 5:45 Instead, there would only be the 21 million limit of Bitcoin tokens. 5:50 And that's what's exciting because this enables Bitcoin potentially 5:54 to absorb all of the innovation and all of the value and fees and users 6:01 and excitement that altcoins have had. 6:04 All of that could be internalized to Bitcoin. 6:07 All of it could be absorbed by Bitcoin, making Bitcoin much bigger and stronger. 6:12 It's a huge opportunity for Bitcoin. 6:15 And we're excited to be talking about it today. 6:20 Welcome to the stage, my colleague, Ian. 6:22 How's it going, man? 6:24 Pretty good. How are you? 6:26 Pretty good. Pretty good. 6:28 Another day, another drivechain conversation. 6:30 I mean, it's pretty awesome, don't you feel? 6:32 Like at this moment, we're seeing people tweeting about sidechains like today. 6:37 Adam Back, one of the coolest names in all of Bitcoin, 6:41 tweeted, sidechains now! 6:44 It's great, isn't it? 6:47 Yes. 6:49 Yeah, go ahead. 6:52 He has a sidechain. 6:55 Blockstream is one of the leaders in the sidechain space. 6:58 They had a brilliant paper published in 2014 on sidechains. 7:02 And then years later, they published another excellent paper on their project, 7:06 which is called Liquid, which is they're really doing a great job 7:11 at trying to explore the possibilities for sidechains without a soft fork. 7:17 But some thinkers at Blockstream, including Adam Back, 7:21 are excited about the possibilities that drivechain can bring. 7:28 Right. 7:30 And what I was thinking is, like, what can we do to get drivechain onto Bitcoin? 7:37 For instance, Chad GPT says that getting drivechain implemented onto Bitcoin 7:42 would be a significant undertaking due to the decentralized nature of the network. 7:49 But is it decentralized truly if it's hard to change it? 7:56 Or does that mean it is actually more decentralized because it's hard to change? 8:02 Yeah, the whole discourse on decentralization is very complicated 8:08 because there is no universal understanding of what the word decentralization means. 8:15 So among the various articles and essays that have been written 8:20 about the meaning of the word decentralization, 8:23 one of the most notable, I think, is Paul Sztorc's article from 2015 8:31 called Measuring Decentralization. 8:34 So what he tries to do in that article is identify a concrete metric 8:40 for the decentralization of Bitcoin. 8:44 And he considers various possibilities, 8:47 possibilities around metrics that measure the activity in mining, 8:52 metrics that measure the number of nodes on the network, things like that. 8:57 And the metric that he arrives at is this notion that 9:04 as the cost economically of a Bitcoin full node goes down, 9:11 then Bitcoin's decentralization goes up. 9:14 So that's the metric that one can arrive at when contemplating 9:20 what does decentralization really mean? 9:23 So I think that's a compelling answer to the question of what is decentralization? 9:29 So we can say that when it's cheaper to validate Bitcoin, 9:34 meaning when the cost of a full node goes down because the blockchain is lightweight, 9:40 then Bitcoin has high decentralization. 9:43 So people who like this metric, who like this understanding, 9:47 they tend to say that what's really good is having a small block size, 9:57 and that increases the decentralization of Bitcoin. 10:01 But as I said, everyone seems to have a different understanding of decentralization 10:05 and this field of crypto economics is so new 10:10 that there is no consensus right now on what the word means. 10:14 So Balaji Srivasanan, one of the pundits in the crypto space, 10:19 he once published an article that talked about how decentralization has 10:25 like eight different components or variables, 10:28 and he had this elaborate formula for talking about it. 10:32 So there's all different opinions on what it is. 10:36 But the one I'm going with, the one that I think drive-changers tend to like, 10:40 is that Bitcoin's decentralization increases when the economic cost 10:46 of owning a full node goes down. 10:51 And that means the cost of the computers, the cost of the bandwidth, things like that. 10:55 When the total cost of being a full node running Bitcoin goes down, 10:59 then Bitcoin is more decentralized. 11:03 And to grok it, to grok the connection between the cost of a full node 11:08 and the amount of decentralization, 11:12 all we have to do is remember that the word is decentralized. 11:16 It kind of refers to like physical space, like how far are you from something. 11:23 And basically, suppose you want to validate Bitcoin, 11:28 suppose you want to know that you've been paid. 11:31 Well, if it's very cheap to do that, then you don't have to ask anyone else. 11:35 You don't have to go anywhere. 11:37 You don't have to call up a friend. 11:39 You can just validate independently, so you don't have to go anywhere. 11:43 So that decentralizes the network in that sense, 11:46 that each party locally can validate that he or she has been paid Bitcoin, 11:52 and that decentralizes the network. 11:56 What do you think about that proposition 11:59 that decentralization has to do with the economic cost? 12:03 I see that word decentralization tossed around a lot. 12:06 I remember when Jack Dorsey tweeted about making something on Twitter, 12:12 building something on Twitter, 12:15 and then the founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, tweeted at him, 12:20 like, why don't you build it on Cardano so it will be fully decentralized? 12:24 And I was like, wait, he's basically the CEO of Cardano. 12:29 How can anything with a CEO be decentralized? 12:34 I see that a lot in crypto. 12:37 Like, oh, this is decentralized, but you're the CEO of it. 12:41 Are you sure it's decentralized if you're the CEO? 12:45 Because, like, there's no CEO of Bitcoin, 12:48 although one could argue maybe there are. 12:51 Like, there's like a board of directors of Bitcoin, 12:54 like an unofficial board of directors. 13:03 Let's run through a really exciting set of tweets that I recently collected. 13:11 I wanted to find an opportunity to talk about these, 13:15 and it was just a couple days ago they were collected, 13:19 and there's a whole bunch of them. 13:22 I find each one fascinating. 13:25 This thread was put out, it got a lot of attention, 13:28 and I really enjoyed collecting these. 13:31 In recent times, there's been a bunch of prominent Bitcoiners, 13:37 very well-known, like Adam Back and others, 13:41 who've increased the amount of tweets they've put out 13:44 and articles and podcasts where they mention how sidechains 13:49 and drivechains specifically, among other ideas, 13:53 are very exciting for the future of Bitcoin 13:56 and how sidechains open up new possibilities. 14:00 So let's go through these today. 14:03 I feel a lot of momentum building up around drivechain, actually, 14:07 especially since the Bitcoin conference. 14:10 Yeah. 14:13 So let's see what Adam wrote. 14:15 Do you want to read it? 14:18 It's in the nest. 14:24 Or I can take it away. 14:25 Should I do it in a British accent? 14:27 No, that'd be great. That'd be cool. 14:29 I think we're going to need a big P2P sidechain 14:32 for the next billion users. 14:35 To benefit from unseasable, sensor-resistant Bitcoin, 14:39 opcodes to support P2P sidechains like drivechain 14:43 at LayerTwo Labs, P2P at Liquid, and at Rootstock.io. 14:48 Rootstock. 14:50 Wait, what is Rootstock again? 14:51 Pardon my ignorance. 14:53 I remember. 14:54 No, they're one of the sidechains. 14:56 That's okay. 14:58 I mean, this space is so complex, 15:00 and there's so many great projects that it's hard to keep track of all of them. 15:03 Rootstock is a years-long great project 15:09 where the founders like Sergio Damien Lerner and Gabriel Kerman 15:16 designed this awesome sidechain. 15:19 It is the most successful and robust merged-mind sidechain on Bitcoin. 15:25 It generates, according to Gabriel Kerman a few months ago, 15:28 in this Twitter space he spoke about how he likes drivechain 15:31 and how Rootstock is generating about three Bitcoin per month 15:35 for Bitcoin miners. 15:38 And one metric that Bitcoiners are often amazed at 15:42 is if I tell them the truth, 15:44 which is that half of Bitcoin's hash rate 15:48 is merged mining Rootstock. 15:51 It's a little-known fact, 15:53 but I guess some of the largest pools in Bitcoin are merged mining it 15:57 or just a very large number of smaller miners, 16:00 such that about half of the hash rate is merged mining Rootstock. 16:04 And this is quite a fact 16:08 that this phenomenon is going on at that scale, in that way, 16:12 by that metric. 16:14 So, so many Bitcoin miners are merged mining Rootstock 16:19 because, of course, they want that extra revenue. 16:22 So, merged mining is really exciting to me personally 16:27 because, like, I've always been interested in Bitcoin's 16:31 so-called security budget problem. 16:34 So, merged mining, I feel, I think, 16:38 you know, in my humble opinion, 16:41 because I'm not a technical expert, 16:43 but merged mining is maybe a very promising solution 16:48 for Bitcoin to have great fee revenue in the future. 16:52 So, in order for Bitcoin to succeed, 16:55 I think the community eventually is going to realize that, like, 16:59 there's only a few ways forward in terms of the fee revenue. 17:03 Like, either the fees will grow a lot without any changes to Bitcoin 17:08 or they'll stay low. 17:11 And they've been low for a long time. 17:13 There have been fee spikes in the past, 17:15 but they've stayed low for a long time. 17:17 And if merged mining were to increase a lot, 17:22 then Bitcoin would have much higher fees paid to the miners. 17:26 And Drivechain could accomplish this. 17:29 Drivechain is very much about merged mining. 17:31 In fact, of the two Drivechain BIPs, 17:34 one of them, BIP301, is entirely focused on merged mining. 17:38 So, there's, like, a huge opportunity here for Bitcoin 17:42 to boost the merged mining that's going on. 17:46 And this will fund the miners in the future. 17:50 But there's actually a lot of interesting intellectual debate 17:54 about whether that's necessary. 17:56 For example, Pierre Richard, 17:58 one of the intellectuals in Bitcoin who I think is working for Riot, 18:04 the mining company, 18:05 he has said in recent tweets that we don't really need high fees. 18:11 So, the fee revenue, if I recall his tweet correctly, 18:14 he said the fee revenue isn't important. 18:19 And if the fees are low, that's okay. 18:22 Because in his view, if I recall correctly, 18:25 he tweeted that as long as someone isn't attacking Bitcoin, 18:28 there's no need for high fees. 18:30 But I wonder what he would say to the idea 18:33 that we should have a very strong level of fees 18:37 and that to make an attack unlikely, 18:41 to make an attack more expensive, 18:44 and that way it would be preventative. 18:49 It would be kind of like a barrier to the idea of the attacker 18:54 even getting interested in attacking. 18:55 Because then they would know already that it's going to be so expensive 18:59 that there's no point in trying to do the attack. 19:01 Does that make sense? 19:03 Right. 19:06 Cool. 19:08 All right. 19:09 Let's go to the next one. 19:12 The next one is by Fiatjaf. 19:15 And it's awesome. 19:17 He writes, drivechain is our only hope. 19:20 So, I don't know what Fiatjaf sounds like, 19:23 although actually we do because he has that great podcast. 19:27 He publishes a podcast on YouTube. 19:30 I think that's the only place where he puts it out. 19:32 It's just a YouTube video. 19:33 And it's actually not him. 19:35 It's not him pictured. 19:36 I don't think he shows his picture usually. 19:38 He's like Satoshi. 19:39 He kind of keeps a low profile. 19:41 But he does have the YouTube channel, 19:48 and then he's just playing video games. 19:50 Is he Brazilian? 19:53 I don't know. 19:54 I have no idea where he's from. 19:56 He had Portuguese on his GitHub account, so I was wondering. 19:59 I was like, oh, Fiatjaf. 20:01 Is he Brazilian? 20:02 That's cool. 20:03 I didn't know that. 20:04 If that's true. Yeah. So, that might be. I don't know. 20:12 But it's really cool that he's a consistent supporter of drivechain. He also speaks favorably 20:18 about many other projects. He's a very much innovation-focused member of the Bitcoin community. 20:24 He created Nostr, which although it's not a blockchain, it is very harmonious with Bitcoin 20:32 in the view of many in the community, it seems. And it's viewed as like an exciting 20:38 open-source project that blends well with Bitcoin's values and can be kind of like a 20:45 communication layer for the Bitcoin community, an alternative to things like Twitter, which are 20:50 highly centralized. We should be on Nostr more. We should be getting into that more definitely, 20:57 shouldn't we? Yes. 21:01 I like the idea of Nostr as a comment section for every web page. 21:06 Yeah. 21:07 Like, because news articles, you know, they'll turn off, you know, like Baltimore news or the 21:12 Baltimore Sun, they'll like never allow comments on their articles. So, we need Nostr for that. 21:22 The next one is Mike Tidwell. He writes, I support drivechain, BIP300 and BIP301. 21:34 Pretty awesome. He wrote that recently and it's pretty cool. He is the co-founder of TabConf 21:45 and that's the Atlanta Bitcoin Conference. It's really awesome that Mike does such a great service 21:51 by running that conference. TabConf, the Atlanta Bitcoin Conference, is considered 21:57 one of the main forums for Bitcoiners to share their technical ideas. So, it's a great compliment 22:05 to the Bitcoin Conference in Miami, the Bitcoin Magazine Conference, because TabConf is more of 22:13 like, I think, a kind of wonky, more like technically minded meeting as opposed to 22:22 the larger, more kind of public sort of commercial Bitcoin Magazine Conference, 22:29 which is where they have El Salvador's president announcing stuff and kind of big, 22:34 splashy things like that. Whereas my understanding is that TabConf is a lot more technical, 22:38 which is pretty cool for those in the community who like to dig into those details. 22:48 So, the next one we can go to, let's see. Here's a great one. This is probably my favorite of all. 22:56 One of my favorite people in all of Bitcoin is SuperTestNet. So, I shared that one in the 23:01 nest. I'm sharing all of these in the nest so people can follow along. We have a lot of people 23:05 who listen like on demand after the space is over. Like, for example, I think Fiatjaf told 23:13 me once that he doesn't listen live. So, some people listen on demand and others listen live, 23:19 depending on their availability. And so, this next tweet that we're putting in the nest is 23:25 from SuperTestNet. He writes, I support drivechain BIP300 and BIP301. It was cool that he 23:34 wrote that because SuperTestNet is one of the great developers in the Bitcoin space, along with 23:42 many others. And actually, it was great. I had an opportunity to meet him at the conference, 23:51 and he's a big supporter of drivechain. And he's a builder who has created sidechain related 23:58 ideas. So, that's cool. And I really appreciate his support. And I've said before, I think he's 24:06 one of the people who really seems like a really genuine Bitcoiner and that he really cares about 24:11 the protocol. He really cares about the science, about the technical ideas. And if you ever have a 24:19 chance to talk with him, it's very clear that he really is just all about Bitcoin and creativity 24:29 within the technical realm. It's just a really great member of the technical community. It's 24:35 people like that who are driving the movement forward with innovative ideas. And I think it's 24:44 just so cool that he understands drivechain. He supports it. I once asked him, do you support it 24:48 kind of? Or do you support it a lot? He said, I am very pro drivechain. That's what he said. 24:55 I am very pro drivechain. That was just great. And because he had recently created this thing 25:01 called HandCrank that allows for something similar to drivechain. It's some kind of variation. 25:09 So, I wanted to know, in light of his invention of HandCrank, did he still support drivechain? 25:14 And he affirmed that, yes, he still supports it very much. So, that's cool. That's cool that he's 25:20 a builder and he's a creative experimenter and creates interesting variations on things. And 25:26 it's just brilliant that he has the technical knowledge to create something that's similar 25:32 to drivechain, but different. So, he really is like a true builder and creative thinker. Pretty cool. 25:38 I have a question about testnet. Not Super Testnet, but the testnet. Why doesn't the Bitcoin 25:44 testnet allow more BIPs to be tested on there? Why don't they basically allow all the BIPs 25:53 on the Bitcoin testnet and just let us see what happens? Do the same group of maintainers 26:02 sort of control the Bitcoin testnet GitHub code that they do the main chain? And why aren't people 26:09 more like, oh, like if they disagree with drivechain or BIP300 or BIP 119 or whatever, they say, 26:16 like, oh, I'm against it. But why don't they just say, put it on the testnet and let's see what happens? 26:25 Well, I think maybe drivechain will come to the testnet soon. 26:30 I mean, we already have a testnet of drivechain within the drivechain community, 26:35 but having it on the signet or the testnet and these other kind of more 26:45 well-known kind of collaborations would be important. I think that right now, the 26:51 drivechain code is being rebased. And once it's fully rebased, then it would be possible to put it 26:59 with the rebased code on the testnet if that's what the collaborators who are involved in the 27:05 testnet would like to do. I don't know the answer to your question of whether the set of people who 27:12 are the core maintainers also participate directly in the administration of decisions around the 27:21 testnet. I would imagine that it's a different set of people who are kind of dedicated to that 27:26 testnet activity, because within the Bitcoin ecosystem, thinkers sometimes specialize. And 27:36 testnet activity is fundamentally different in some ways than the live maintainership role. So 27:43 it's a very great question. I don't know the answer, but I think that's a really good question. 27:48 And maybe we can follow up outside the space and find out and then talk about it next time. 27:57 Let's see. The next one is pretty provocative. Pretty provocative tweet here. This is from Mike 28:03 in space. He's a longtime drivechain supporter. I've never spoken to him live, but he likes it 28:11 and he writes, you MFers want all-time high, get BIP300 activated. You're welcome. 28:16 You're welcome. So it's a pretty lively take on the topic. I think Mike in space is also the 28:27 creator of the Bitcoin stamps protocol, which is like an NFT-related activity where he is placing 28:40 images on the blockchain. And I don't own any of these stamps and I don't know too much about it, 28:46 but I think that with the taproot and SegWit activities of the recent years and months, 28:55 there is this newly discovered like ordinals, inscriptions, and stamps activity, which is 29:03 occupying a large amount of block space, exploiting, if that's the right word, like the 29:08 SegWit discount for the signature data. And people are using that to write images onto the blockchain 29:17 in a novel way. And this is controversial because of course it occupies block space that could have 29:23 been used for payments. So he's really into that and he's doing these stamps and they're 29:32 taking up a lot of space if I understand correctly. So we'll see where this goes. I'm not sure if it 29:37 can ever be stopped. We should lean into that all-time high tech, ATH tech. We should lean into 29:46 that to get drivechain adopted because it's so true. Bitcoin will hit incredible new highs with 29:53 drivechain. It seems like it's a no-brainer. Totally. I think that's great. I mean a lot of 30:01 drivechainers like it for that reason. So I agree with you. 30:08 I think you're totally right. Ultimately there's a bunch of different reasons to support 30:13 drivechain. A person can do it like Adam Back does where it's all about love of innovation. 30:19 And that's also what Mike Tidwell has said. He's tweeted that he hopes drivechain is adopted not 30:25 to get more value and fees away from altcoins to bitcoin but instead he would like drivechain 30:32 adopted because of love of innovation. So there are some people who are kind of like scientifically 30:38 oriented and they love drivechain for the science reasons. But you're totally right 30:46 that what Mike in Space has written resonates potentially with many people because it's all 30:53 about just making money for bitcoiners. So if bitcoin were to go up in value a lot 31:01 because of drivechain then that would be great. How would that be not good? 31:06 Isn't the whole point of bitcoin to like Satoshi said way back in the day. He said 31:13 it'll either be very low or very big. So I think what Mike in Space is writing here is that he 31:20 wants it to be very big and drivechain can help make that happen. So let's continue with our 31:32 review. Here's another one. One of the really great members of the bitcoin community. There are 31:40 so many who likes drivechain is Vlad and he is the creator and editor-in-chief of a bitcoin magazine 31:50 called Bitcoin Takeover. They have a really great online presence with all kinds of podcasts and 31:58 articles. There's also a physical magazine and it's cool. So he has written that he supports 32:06 drivechain and his exact words are merged mining is a pretty big deal. Yes it's also why I support 32:13 the idea of drivechains. So I think what he's saying there probably is what we discussed earlier 32:19 which is that drivechain has the potential to increase the fee revenue of the miners in bitcoin 32:27 and if the fee revenue can increase a lot then the security budget problem as it were 32:35 would be solved. In other words if merged mining can send a ton of transaction fees from sidechains 32:45 to bitcoin mainchain miners then there would be no security budget problem and that would be great 32:53 because it would not be good for bitcoin to have to resort to an inflation fork. 33:01 And that's the pro drivechain view. Peter Todd he takes a different view respectfully. 33:07 He takes a different view which is he thinks that it would be okay if bitcoin were to 33:15 do inflation meaning you know as he says tail issuance like have bitcoin for example have like 33:21 a one percent annual inflation rate forever. So instead of maintaining the 21 million hardcap 33:28 Peter Todd is interested in the possibility of there being inflation on bitcoin. He's tweeted 33:34 many times about it only once or twice has he ever written I support an inflation fork. 33:41 Most of the time when he writes about it he does in a more muted fashion endorse the idea. For 33:47 example he'll say he'll write something like you know we should consider this. Right like Monero 33:54 has a tail emission that started in May 2022 and forever like from here on their block reward for 34:02 Monero will be 0.6 XMR per block forever. So Monero is doing that. Interesting. I wonder how they came 34:12 up with 0.6 because it's to state the complete obvious it's less than one percent. It's not a 34:19 round number. On the other hand the number six is considered perfect by some mathematicians 34:27 historically like I think Pythagoras and others you know the kind of mathematicians and philosophers. 34:34 They you know they think that like the number six is very good. So I mean I doubt that's the reason. 34:40 I'm sure it wasn't aesthetic and perhaps they just they reflected on what would be the right amount 34:46 and of course it's hard to pick the right amount and it's also very difficult to adjust it because 34:51 if you if you change the amount you know if one year it's 0.6 and the next year they have to 34:56 change it to 0.7 that requires the community to like make a decision and change things which is 35:02 difficult and annoying. So the really great thing about drivechain in my opinion one of the great 35:08 things is that if merged mining can work really well to increase the fees then there wouldn't 35:15 ever be a need to like decide how much should we inflate should it be 0.6 percent like Monero 35:22 or should it be 0.1 percent or should it be one percent. Like no one knows what the right 35:28 answer is and whatever we decide we might have to change you know three years later because what if 35:33 what if it's too much and then we're spending too much on inflation so it's harming bitcoin's 35:39 value accrual you see because if you do inflation you that basically imposes a cost on people who 35:46 hold bitcoin because their their real return from holding is lowered by the inflation it's lowered 35:56 relative to what the value of a bitcoin would have been without the inflation. So bitcoin might be 36:03 still going up in value but in theory any inflation would reduce that rate of value accrual 36:12 because there's more bitcoin in the world chasing a limited amount of goods and services. 36:17 So also I think one of the main objections to inflation or tail issuance is that if bitcoin 36:24 were to decide to change its monetary policy then there would be yet another discussion in the 36:30 future about further changes. So again and again the bitcoin community if it were to embark on 36:38 inflation would have to inflate again and again and that would be unfortunate. It would be 36:43 unfortunate to have that disruptive factor in the discourse since one of the fundamental value 36:50 propositions and narratives of bitcoin has always been its absolute scarcity and how that you know 36:56 that's one of the memes that has strengthened bitcoin throughout the decade is there's only 21 37:02 million. So I think it's important we preserve that. Welcome to the stage Paul. We're chatting 37:07 about the recent thread that we put out under the LayerTwo Labs handle on twitter of the dozens of 37:18 notable bitcoiners who've lately voiced their support or reaffirmed their support for drive 37:24 chain for all different interesting reasons like Vlad the most recent tweet we're discussing. Vlad 37:30 is the excellent creator of the bitcoin takeover magazine and like me he finds the merged mining 37:38 aspect of drivechain very exciting and that's the reason why he supports drivechains like 37:44 some others who also like how the fees how the fee revenue can be a huge benefit to bitcoin. 37:49 Yes that is an important reason. 37:58 I think that speaks to an old there was an old idea of Satoshi's that the 38:06 transaction volume in 20 years would either be very very small or very very large 38:13 and that's I think what merge mining is getting at is that revision. 38:20 Yes absolutely yeah Satoshi thought that. Of course it's interesting how he thought that 38:31 and he also explicitly thought about in the bit dns thread how we could collect fees from all 38:37 the networks increasing total strength and yet Satoshi also wrote somewhere else that 38:42 maybe there would be miners who would always be willing to process transactions for free. 38:47 So it was so interesting how brilliant Satoshi was that he was able to see into the future and 38:53 realize that it would be it would be valuable for there to be high fee revenue but he also 39:00 down here in the uh where we have the little the tweets that are what is this called like 39:04 the frame or whatever this is yeah the nest the nest yes that's a silly name 39:12 but it's good it's a good lineup of tweets. Yeah I'm basically posting them one by one 39:18 from the thread that we that I created um recently a few days ago where 39:27 I just I just collected a whole bunch of bitcoin drivechain supporters. So the next one to chat 39:32 about is Eden Yago. Uh Ian do you want to you want to read it maybe you can do it in Eden's 39:39 excellent accent if possible. I don't know I don't know how he sounds is he Israeli? 39:44 I don't know that he is I don't actually know this but I think he's sort of is he German or something I've met him many times. 39:53 He I don't know the answer to that question but I had the chance to meet him recently when he stopped by the LayerTwo Labs booth at the recent conference and he's incredibly friendly a brilliant person and I recommend everyone listen to him on podcasts because 40:12 and not because he's a drivechain supporter but because he has an amazing personal story. I recall his pod and I told him this when I met him I said your your personal family story of fleeing from oppression and how bitcoin has a personal significance to you because of your personal family experience. 40:33 It was very resonant and I would love to hear those podcasts again. It's probably not hard to find one where he talks about that because it's it's a really great part of of his presence as a bitcoiner is how his own family fled from oppression and how that is one reason why he understands bitcoin well and what inspired him also to create his protocol sovereign which is on the excellent platform Rootstock that. 41:03 Has platform so many great projects like that. 41:07 He says the only thing missing from bitcoin is that ability to adopt any feature or technology without changing main chain. 41:14 I have a question actually for Paul. So I was thinking so the miner escrow in drivechain is a six month. Is it six months in between. 41:32 It has six months to succeed before it fails and it can succeed as quickly as three months. 41:39 And so like a miner who is mining a sidechain transaction do they have to wait months to get the sidechain fees transaction fees. 41:51 Sorry I'm busy retweeting some great tweets including a sidechains now. 41:56 What was the question. 41:58 Do the miners have to wait a few months to get the transaction fees from the side from the sidechains. 42:05 Well this is a this is a question that I think from far away is very hard for people to understand. 42:12 But if you use the software is much easier to understand. 42:14 So if you use the software you know that everything every message on the sidechain has its own fee. 42:19 Those are collected via merge mining. 42:22 So this is why it is important to have the two bits separate. 42:26 Actually because every sidechain message pays its own fee and the miners collect those fees. 42:33 But a message withdrawal pays two fees. 42:39 One fee is the sidechains transaction fee that every single sidechain message must pay. 42:44 And then the second fee is a main chain fee when the withdrawal transaction is finally broadcast on layer one. 42:52 And so there's actually two separate sets of fees for the withdrawal. 42:57 And the one is collected in real time just like every single message every single sidechain message. 43:04 And then the other is the withdrawal fee that one is paid when the transaction finally goes through. 43:10 And the the sidechain constructs the withdrawal. 43:15 There's only a few every you know there's only a few every year. 43:18 So there's like four trains leaving the station every year. 43:23 And so it sorts it will automatically the protocol sorts to people on layer two based on this layer one fee. 43:31 So the layer one fee it could be very high because it has people jostling to get onto the train. 43:39 Although the train of course can hold like 20,000 people. 43:42 So it may also not be that high. 43:44 But the point is there's two different fee rates. 43:46 So one is collected every single sidechain message pays a sidechain transaction fee. 43:52 And those are collected in real time every 10 minutes with merge mining. 43:56 And then the withdrawal fee is that is paid when the on the one whatever one miner includes pushes the transaction over the line. 44:11 Unfortunately miners do not really get anything if they like upvote. 44:15 If they merely upvote you know 13,000 blocks upvoting to make that withdrawal transaction included. 44:22 So maybe someone could come up with some kind of harebrained scheme where they all share credit or something. 44:28 But that would probably be over complicating it. 44:31 And that is not how it works. 44:33 Basically the way it works is if you don't upvote a withdrawal then no one gets that transaction fees from that. 44:40 So if you upvoted at least you have a shot since mining is pretty random. 44:44 At least you have a shot same shot as everyone else in the block that mines the big fee withdrawal transaction. 44:52 I added to the nest an additional tweet from the outstanding thinker John Light who writes. 45:11 I am aware of only one project publicly working on bringing zero cash to Bitcoin and that is LayerTwo Labs Zcash drivechain. 45:19 I hope they get support and I also look forward to. 45:27 I'm looking for the tweet now the full version. 45:32 It's part of a long thread. 45:35 So to read the rest of it I have to actually find. 45:38 And I also look forward to seeing more projects work on bringing this important privacy tech to Bitcoin. 45:43 And then he has in that tweet he quote tweeted Paul. 45:46 So what we're seeing here is that some of the more technical thinkers in the Bitcoin community are very curious about the potential for more privacy for Bitcoiners. 45:58 More fungibility by using a sidechain. 46:01 Adam Back has tweeted the same thing that he's interested and excited about the Zcash sidechain. 46:08 That's pretty cool. 46:09 Ian what do you think about like the privacy community. 46:14 And because I know that you're knowledgeable about Monero. 46:17 How do you feel about the possibility of bringing those cypherpunks the privacy focused blockchain users back home to Bitcoin. 46:26 So you know because they've left and to some extent it'd be great to bring them home onto the. 46:34 It'd be great. 46:36 Sorry I got a call cut out. 46:37 It'd be great to bring them home to Bitcoin wouldn't it. 46:42 Yeah and honestly Zcash would work better as a Bitcoin sidechain than as a standalone currency. 46:50 Personally I would like to see Zcash remove all public transactions and be privacy only privacy by default shielded transactions all shielded. 47:01 So maybe you know Zcash would be more successful as a Bitcoin sidechain with totally shielded transactions and then the dark web would probably embrace it. 47:13 Because I think the only like hesitation from the dark web about Zcash is that it's not private by default. 47:21 All the transactions aren't shielded. 47:24 Although I'm not an expert on that. 47:26 But it would be nice to see it as a Bitcoin sidechain and preferably without a CEO like it has at a electric coin company. 47:42 Awesome. 47:44 I agree. 47:45 Many of the drawbacks of Zcash are things that are just dropped if they are a sidechain. 47:52 So they just don't even need to. 48:00 Yes. 48:01 They don't need to like have like the what you might call the they have like a dev tax. 48:07 They have this company. 48:09 They have people represent them. 48:11 So. 48:22 Moving forward on our list there is a really great set of ideas and insights that come from Andrew Bailey a philosopher who is very interested in Bitcoin and he supports drivechain. 48:36 He's run the drivechain code and tweeted about it. 48:40 And he's part of a collection of philosophers who like drivechain. 48:44 As I understand there's Troy Cross and other than Brett Rettler and Andrew Bailey and Craig Wormkey. 48:52 They're like a like a four part team of philosophers from each from a different school. 48:59 I think. 49:00 And like I think one of them is at in Wyoming and another one and Andrew Bailey is in Singapore and they all write about drivechain and Bitcoin or at least Andrew does write about drivechain specifically. 49:16 And they have an open mind about it. 49:18 It's really awesome to see his support. 49:20 And I think he has a great book coming out with his fellow philosophers Bitcoin from a philosophical angle. 49:30 All right. 49:33 Now for one of the really big names. 49:37 Eric Wall. 49:39 He likes to provoke. 49:40 He never shies from a debate. 49:43 And he once tweeted not long ago that it's been seven years since since truth coin wrote the original drivechain blog post. 49:54 If you went back in time and told me that seven years later no effort has been made towards merge mine sidechains but that the same people who oppose them were upset. 50:04 The theory and existed. 50:05 I'd laugh in your face. 50:06 So this point here is that drivechain would have been good for Bitcoin. 50:12 It wasn't adopted so far. 50:14 And yet the toxic maximalist movement exists where people want to dismiss and condemn the features and use that's going on outside of Bitcoin. 50:29 Even though Bitcoin isn't able to platform those features in a peer to peer manner so far since no two way peg exists for sidechains yet. 50:39 That's peer to peer. 50:42 So he has it exactly right. 50:45 And he's quite pessimistic on the prospects of drivechain adoption. 50:50 But I am optimistic that he'll be very pleasantly relieved to learn that drivechain is gaining support within the Bitcoin community especially among its leading thinkers. 51:06 And we could be at a moment at this time where there is a recognition that for greater extensibility for greater network effect value accrual fee revenue innovation and also the benefits of ossification on the lower layer. 51:23 Drivechain is a multifaceted exciting upgrade for Bitcoin. 51:30 And there's a lot of excitement and funding towards seeing it happen and getting the code rebased having it go through its final stages of vetting and adoption and finally activation. 51:46 You have noticed a lot of momentum building around drivechain especially like in the last month. 51:56 Awesome. 51:57 Because of these great spaces. 51:59 Yes. 52:01 Or maybe. 52:03 OK. 52:04 I just tweeted the space. 52:06 Maybe more people. 52:07 I should have probably joined it earlier on. 52:10 Probably the algorithm like probably the algorithm like it probably knows that the space it lives for a short time and then it dies off after a certain time. 52:22 So it probably doesn't promote any space that has been running for a little while. 52:33 All right. 52:34 The next tweet is going to be from Sovereign Matt, one of our occasional guests in this Twitter space as a listener and perhaps a speaker if I recall. 52:47 He writes BIP300 fixes this rather than polluting the Bitcoin blockchain with NFTs. 52:53 You give the NFT enthusiasts a Bitcoin sidechain to do their NFT scamming. 53:00 I wouldn't. 53:01 This is Henry speaking. 53:02 I wouldn't. 53:03 I wouldn't call it scamming as he has. 53:05 But OK. 53:06 Returning to his tweet, smart Bitcoin miners will secure and mine the NFT sidechain for additional revenue from fees granted. 53:15 So there you have it. 53:17 This is someone who takes the nuanced view that he thinks it's a scam to do NFTs. 53:25 On the other hand, he wants the fees, which I think is an acceptable viewpoint and I respect it. 53:29 However, I personally feel like it's not really a scam because there's. 53:41 I mean, these NFT buyers, they know. 53:44 They know what they're getting in most cases, I would think they're just buying art that's somehow linked to the blockchain and that's OK. 53:53 What do you think, Ian? 53:54 What's your take on NFTs? 53:55 Tell us in detail. 53:59 I think they're kind of stupid, but obviously there could be a system of private property rights. 54:09 Like since Bitcoin is a system of private property rights, a global system of private property rights that exists outside of the government, arguably for the first time in history. 54:20 You know, NFTs are trying to solve. 54:23 They're trying to make a system of intellectual property rights that exists outside of the government. 54:28 So I agree with what what the problem they're trying to solve. 54:32 I don't know if they have solved it, though. 54:43 Believe it or not, I think I can think of some I wouldn't like invested in NFTs like a way of earning income, you know, to like feed my family or whatever. 54:51 But I would say that there are some clever things that can be done with the NFT that I don't think people have really realized or talk about, which is just that, you know, I don't do this myself. 55:04 But what you could do is you could make money secretly in crypto. 55:09 And then if you wanted to turn it into taxable income, you could you could create a an NFT and then buy it from yourself at a low price and then sell it back to yourself for a high price. 55:22 And then you have as long as you held it for more than a year, you have a long run capital gains tax and you have basically the lowest tax rate. 55:30 You have a certain you have, I think, like one hundred thousand. 55:34 You can make one hundred thousand dollars a year. 55:36 You'd have like a 15 percent income tax rate or something. 55:40 So that's kind of a that's kind of a much clever way of it's like a fundamental value of NFT that people don't really talk about. 55:47 I don't know if anyone is doing that. 55:49 I'm sure someone is doing it. 55:50 But that is at least something to keep in mind when people are so they want to shoot from the hip and go lose it, lose their minds and say NFTs are really, really bad. 56:05 There's actually a case where they are libertarian and putting more money in it, taking more money out of the government's pocket and putting it into the citizen's pocket, which is kind of a paradoxical, surprising. 56:18 Counterintuitive, not. 56:21 Unexpected thing. 56:27 It's like the fine art market scam. 56:31 Exactly. 56:33 But now it's for everyone, not just for everyone. 56:36 Exactly. The key, the key part of it is the interesting thing about it is that it does rely on you being able to issue an asset and you being able to like manipulate its price like completely in order to work. 56:49 So it weirdly, it weirdly requires the NFT. 56:56 Whatever, you know, for the mechanism. 57:00 It takes the appraiser out of the scam. 57:04 Yeah. And of course, you can't do it if the price is really floating and moving around. 57:09 This greatly reduces the effectiveness of this strategy. 57:13 So the more the more fake it all is, the more fake the market is, the more like manipulated the prices, the better it works for this purpose. 57:22 So that's kind of an interesting thing. 57:26 So don't be so quick to just say, oh, everyone in NFT world is being scammed. 57:31 Maybe it's theoretically possible that zero percent of them are being scammed. 57:36 And it's all just an accounting trick. 57:39 Uncle Sam is being scammed. 57:41 Uncle Sam is the only one. 57:50 All right. 57:52 That speaks to a larger point, though, about. 57:55 You don't know, just because the innovation doesn't make sense to you, doesn't necessarily mean you should. 58:01 Accident, you know, like a lot of things like I remember when Uber Eats came out, I thought this is so stupid. 58:07 This has nothing to do with me getting a ride home when I'm drunk or whatever, you know, what is Uber? 58:12 But now I use Uber Eats all the time. 58:14 And, you know, you forget that an innovation can take many different forms. 58:20 And like the Uber Eats one is the supply side. 58:22 They have all these workers who are driving around and they thought, you know, it'd be really nice. 58:26 And now I just think this is the most decadent service. 58:29 Like this is one of those things where if you take a time machine into the past, you would really miss, right? 58:33 You'd be like, oh, I just opened this app and just food disappeared on my doorstep, the food that I want. 58:39 And then you take a time machine back and you'd be like, oh, no, it sucks. 58:45 Like the 90s suck now. 58:47 There's no Uber Eats. 58:49 So, but when it first came out, I thought it sucked. 58:51 And when Snapchat first came out, I thought that was stupid too. 58:54 I was like, why can't people just screenshot? 58:56 But I missed something about Snapchat also, which is that oftentimes there is, people are easy going and they don't, 59:06 they like being in a casual zone where stuff isn't remembered. 59:11 And they say, well, you know, I understand that when I'm on Snapchat, I'm not supposed to be secretly saving the photos 59:20 or taking a picture with a different phone or whatever. 59:23 So you kind of understand. 59:25 So it works good enough for 90% of the cases. 59:28 And it's just, there's a niche for something more casual in a world where all of us are being recorded 59:33 and monitored all the time for everything, a million percent. 59:37 So those are things that I thought they were the stupidest idea in the world when they came out. 59:42 And, you know, now they're like billion, billion, billion dollar companies that. 59:47 Affect people's lives every day. 59:49 So just because you don't understand what some, 59:54 why you're like, what are people getting out of this? 59:57 That's not a reason to ban that thing. 1:00:02 Instead, you should be saying someone out there created this. 1:00:05 They must get something out of it. 1:00:07 I'm so happy for them. 1:00:13 And I'm so curious about which are the overt reasons 1:00:16 for doing it that they say out loud 1:00:18 and which are the covert reasons 1:00:21 that can't be explained out loud, but which exist. 1:00:29 Well said. 1:00:31 The next one is a little bit technical 1:00:33 and maybe you can explain it for those in the audience. 1:00:38 Like we have some very technical people 1:00:40 like Sam Parker here. 1:00:41 Maybe you can elaborate, Paul. 1:00:43 What do you think Greg Slepak meant 1:00:45 when he decided to announce in his tweet 1:00:49 that I've shared in The Nest 1:00:50 that he likes drivechain more than in the past 1:00:54 because of the possibility that Stratum V2 1:00:58 could create more, you know, 1:01:02 stability in the realm of like miner activity. 1:01:05 Do you know what he might've meant there? 1:01:07 Because it's great to see. 1:01:09 Well, he really didn't like it in the past at all. 1:01:12 He was a big hater. 1:01:14 But I think, you know, some nice people went around to him 1:01:17 and they gave him a smile and a nod. 1:01:24 And they, then he kind of decided, 1:01:26 I think sort of what really happened 1:01:28 was he kind of didn't like the idea 1:01:30 and he shot from the hip. 1:01:33 He hastily, angrily disliked the idea. 1:01:37 And I don't know if you're familiar 1:01:39 with how the internet works, 1:01:40 but sometimes, you know, someone will like snark someone 1:01:44 and then someone will snark someone back. 1:01:45 And then there's like a giant flame war that erupts 1:01:50 that can happen. 1:01:52 And so basically he was like against the idea, 1:01:54 but he didn't have very good reasons, I think. 1:01:55 So, but he was determined to cling to, 1:02:01 which is a good thing because he, 1:02:04 every idea should get scrutiny, 1:02:06 including drivechain, of course. 1:02:08 So he did give it a lot of criticisms, 1:02:11 but I think what happened was over time, 1:02:13 he kind of realized that he didn't have much 1:02:17 of a leg to stand on, except this one aspect, 1:02:21 which is that especially after SegWit2x 1:02:25 and after the SegWit blockade in particular, 1:02:29 the pre-SegWit2x, 1:02:32 there was this view that mining was too centralized. 1:02:35 The miners were too coordinated. 1:02:37 They knew each other too well. 1:02:38 They would do favors for each other, 1:02:40 such as blocking SegWit. 1:02:43 People like Roger Veer could get to the miners 1:02:45 and mining pools and, or Ant Pool, 1:02:49 like there was something like Jihan Wu makes all the chips. 1:02:52 So if he says that you have to do something, 1:02:55 then he cracks the whip and everyone falls in line. 1:02:58 So this was this idea that arose 1:03:00 that the mining was too centralized 1:03:01 for these sidechains to be secure. 1:03:04 Stratum V2 is an idea for, 1:03:07 um, 1:03:09 that supposedly will help that problem. 1:03:12 I don't actually think that it will. 1:03:14 I was, I did the mining, 1:03:16 I did a mining panel at Bitcoin 2023, 1:03:18 and there was a leader of a mining pool there 1:03:23 who said something along the lines of Stratum V2 is, 1:03:29 what people mean when they say Stratum V2 1:03:32 is they're talking about the job negotiation, 1:03:35 which it allows the, 1:03:37 it does a lot of important things 1:03:39 that are not controversial 1:03:40 and that everyone agrees should be done, 1:03:42 like, you know, like authentication and stuff. 1:03:44 So, so it's a huge improvement. 1:03:47 But one of the things it does 1:03:48 is it allows the small miner to propose a job to the pool 1:03:53 that the pool can just reject. 1:03:56 They can say, but I think I found a block 1:03:58 that pays even more in transaction fees, 1:04:00 or it includes these censored transactions. 1:04:03 And they propose it to the mining pool. 1:04:05 And then if the pool rejects it, 1:04:06 that miner can just sort of, 1:04:08 they have some kind of a, 1:04:09 they at least know that the pool is censoring 1:04:11 and they can like switch to a different pool, 1:04:13 something like that, 1:04:14 and propose the block to a different pool. 1:04:16 So the idea, which is a good one, 1:04:18 this job negotiation idea is a very good one. 1:04:22 It increases the, 1:04:23 we want to always reduce everyone's leverage. 1:04:26 So in particular, we want to reduce the pool's, 1:04:28 everyone is 100% in agreement on this, 1:04:31 that we want to reduce the pool's ability 1:04:34 to censor transactions. 1:04:37 And this is what Stratum V2 tries to do, 1:04:39 but I don't think it actually does that. 1:04:40 I mean, it's not actually Stratum V2, 1:04:42 it's job negotiation. 1:04:43 And the job negotiation doesn't really have teeth 1:04:45 because the pool can just turn it down, 1:04:47 which means that it's not really that different 1:04:49 from what already happens today. 1:04:53 And I don't think that the people who push Stratum V2, 1:04:56 those are people on Twitter who don't mine. 1:04:58 I don't think any real miner at all actually supports, 1:05:03 maybe even Stratum V2, 1:05:05 maybe they don't even care. 1:05:06 I think that this is one of the illusions 1:05:09 created by Twitter, 1:05:10 but it's a talking point that politically, 1:05:14 it sanitizes the idea of the mining being too centralized. 1:05:19 No one has ever worked out 1:05:20 how to define this mining centralization argument, 1:05:24 which is, except for me, 1:05:25 and what I just told you now, 1:05:27 which is this idea that Tianwu makes all the, 1:05:30 someone has to, 1:05:32 someone out there can tell miners what to do, 1:05:35 even if it's not in the best interest 1:05:36 of the Bitcoin protocol, 1:05:37 and they'll do it. 1:05:39 I don't really believe that, 1:05:40 but at least that's a definition of what it is. 1:05:42 And Stratum V2 is the magic spell that people say 1:05:45 to convince themselves that this problem has been fixed. 1:05:49 So that's nice. 1:05:51 So I think all in all, 1:05:57 all's well that ends well. 1:05:59 A great Shakespearean play that everyone should watch. 1:06:03 I think the BBC has them all for free now. 1:06:05 They're on YouTube or something. 1:06:08 What a great way to end an afternoon. 1:06:11 Yes, very well said. 1:06:13 Thank you for that explanation. 1:06:14 And yes, Greg Slepak, 1:06:16 when I read the old emails 1:06:18 from the Bitcoin dev email list from years ago, 1:06:21 back in like 2015, 1:06:23 he was having like lengthy paragraphs 1:06:26 back and forth with you about merged mining 1:06:28 and things like that. 1:06:29 So it's really interesting to see thinkers like that 1:06:33 who've contributed a lot of content 1:06:35 to the discussion about Bitcoin, 1:06:38 evolving in their views 1:06:39 with the latest understanding and perspective. 1:06:43 So that's awesome. 1:06:44 And I've enjoyed the one or two conversations 1:06:47 that we've had with Greg here, 1:06:49 and I hope he comes back. 1:06:50 Very friendly guy, very smart. 1:06:53 The next tweet- 1:06:54 He's a great guy. 1:06:55 Yeah, yeah, he's a great person, 1:06:57 as are so many people in the community here. 1:07:00 I remember him, I think from maybe it was 2016, April. 1:07:05 He's very interesting. 1:07:06 He attended, we attended a workshop on digital identity, 1:07:09 which partially, partially some of it, 1:07:15 it was partially to prepare for that workshop 1:07:18 that I laid out some of the, 1:07:19 I reviewed the Namecoin, Satoshi's Namecoin ideas. 1:07:23 And I tried to tweak them a little bit, 1:07:26 hopefully improve them. 1:07:27 There was a, Greg Maxwell, one of the most, 1:07:32 I always feel kind of weird about him 1:07:33 because he was responsible for sidechains 1:07:35 and kind of never delivered. 1:07:36 But one of the things, 1:07:37 one of his many interesting things that he's done 1:07:40 is he wrote, I think he wrote this article 1:07:41 called A Namecoin That Doesn't Suck, 1:07:44 which was on the old Bitcoin Wikipedia. 1:07:47 And that was a very interesting one as well. 1:07:49 And so I tried to take into account 1:07:54 all this info when I prepare for that workshop, 1:07:57 which was run by Chris Allen, 1:07:58 who's obsessed with digital identity, 1:08:01 self-sovereign identity, he calls it. 1:08:04 And so, yeah, that was fun, fun time. 1:08:08 Yes. 1:08:10 Our next tweet to discuss is from Isaac Fane. 1:08:14 He correctly describes one of the most interesting 1:08:17 and least discussed parts of drivechain. 1:08:21 In the discourse, rarely do we see someone 1:08:24 who has studied it to understand 1:08:26 that one of the key differences 1:08:28 between drivechain and federated sidechains 1:08:30 is that drivechain establishes a framework 1:08:34 for launching sidechains without the need 1:08:37 to go through the work, the inefficient work 1:08:40 of selecting people socially 1:08:43 to participate in a federated multisig. 1:08:47 Instead, there's a framework in drivechain 1:08:50 to reuse the proof of work of the Bitcoin miners 1:08:53 in a seamless and peer-to-peer way. 1:08:56 So what he writes is, let's see, 1:08:59 why it's great. 1:09:01 Drivechain provides a canonical, easy-to-reuse pattern 1:09:04 for launching sidechains 1:09:06 with consistent security properties. 1:09:08 This stimulates innovation and limit risk 1:09:11 with experimental bridge slash federated models. 1:09:16 No second-guessing L1 mining incentives, just launch it. 1:09:20 So that's quite a take. 1:09:21 I'm not sure everyone would love that take. 1:09:23 For example, our dear friend, Moon Settler, 1:09:29 I've been chatting with him one-on-one lately. 1:09:31 He has a conservative mindset, 1:09:33 which I completely support and understand. 1:09:36 And this guy, Isaac, is tweeting, let's just do this. 1:09:40 So I think that the happy medium is, 1:09:43 now that we've had eight years of discussion 1:09:45 on drivechain, thorough analysis, 1:09:48 as Adam Back has tweeted earlier this year, 1:09:51 it's been validated and tested fully. 1:09:55 So the design has been validated and tested. 1:09:58 That was one of his tweets, Adam Back. 1:10:01 So I think Isaac's enthusiasm is shared by many people. 1:10:07 And the next one we should discuss is Moon Settler. 1:10:11 So I'll put his tweet up on the stage. 1:10:15 He writes, and this is quite an interesting tweet 1:10:17 with a lot of nuance, which is typical of Moon Settler, 1:10:20 a very careful thinker who has a lot of things to say 1:10:22 about CTV as well as drivechain. 1:10:25 And I think right now might even be hosting a space on CTV 1:10:30 or was at least an hour ago. 1:10:32 He writes, it is entirely possible 1:10:34 that drivechains could provide tremendous value 1:10:37 with not a single current adopter using them, even once. 1:10:41 So that's not an argument as far as I'm concerned, 1:10:45 I would probably not use them either. 1:10:46 Hard to tell without seeing the utility in action. 1:10:50 And what he means there, I think, 1:10:52 is that the existence of drivechain would deprive altcoins 1:10:58 of their most powerful narrative. 1:11:01 The most powerful narrative of altcoins 1:11:03 is that something can't be built on Bitcoin peer to peer, 1:11:08 and therefore it must be built on an altcoin. 1:11:10 But if Bitcoin achieves the extensibility 1:11:14 that drivechain would offer, 1:11:15 then all of Ethereum, all of Monero, Zcash, Chainlink, 1:11:21 all of these ideas with each 1:11:22 with their interesting features and tools, 1:11:25 all of those blockchains could be linked to Bitcoin 1:11:28 using a peer-to-peer two-way peg. 1:11:31 And then all of the features and functionality 1:11:34 wouldn't have to exist on an altcoin. 1:11:37 So if those altcoins have any utility, 1:11:40 then that use would perhaps flow 1:11:42 to Bitcoin's sidechains. 1:11:44 And if not, then the altcoins would just cease to exist 1:11:47 because their narrative was removed. 1:11:48 As we know from the Ethereum white paper back in 2014, 1:11:52 Vitalik wrote that to achieve greater freedom, 1:11:57 to create tools on a blockchain, to create features, 1:12:00 we need a new blockchain. 1:12:02 So that's the narrative that launched Ethereum. 1:12:05 Bitcoin can't support it. 1:12:07 But if with drivechain, Bitcoin can support these things, 1:12:11 and therefore the central narrative of altcoins 1:12:13 would be removed. 1:12:14 And Fiatjaf has written to that same effect 1:12:17 that drivechains have the potential 1:12:20 to greatly diminish the narrative and value of the altcoins. 1:12:29 So that's a really interesting take by Moon Settler. 1:12:32 I think SuperTestNet has also written 1:12:33 that he supports drivechain, 1:12:36 even though he's not sure he would actually use one. 1:12:37 So some people have a tentative approach with their money. 1:12:40 And of course, I appreciate that. 1:12:41 We don't want to lose money in something experimental. 1:12:44 But a lot of people want to see it work. 1:12:46 And then once it's working, 1:12:48 they don't want to be the first person 1:12:49 to walk across the new bridge over the San Francisco Bay. 1:12:53 But once everyone's been using it, 1:12:56 then they're comfortable using the bridge, so. 1:12:59 Would drivechain crush the exchanges 1:13:03 like Coinbase and Gemini? 1:13:05 Somebody at the Bitcoin conference, 1:13:07 like I made that argument, 1:13:08 and somebody at the Bitcoin conference said, 1:13:10 no, there would still be exchanges 1:13:12 between sidechain Bitcoins on exchanges. 1:13:18 Is that true or? 1:13:20 Well, I think what is true is that 1:13:24 there's a couple of different points to that. 1:13:26 But one is that the slow return in the Bith 300 system, 1:13:29 the three to six month peg out, 1:13:33 that is inconvenient for people. 1:13:35 So some people would want to sell, 1:13:37 just like we have like a fixed income, 1:13:38 like we have a bond market basically in the real world, 1:13:41 there would be some people who would just sell, 1:13:44 they'd sell the coins on one chain for the main chain coins 1:13:47 and they'd pay some kind of fee or some kind of discount. 1:13:51 And that would probably be very small 1:13:52 because anyone with layer one coins can sell them. 1:13:55 But you would still need like market infrastructure, 1:13:58 you need like OTC 1:13:59 or you need people making markets or something. 1:14:02 So you'd still, that'd be like 99 cents on the dollar. 1:14:04 But that'd be something like a bond market 1:14:05 or like some kind of interest rate thing. 1:14:09 And that, so that would always be the case. 1:14:12 I don't know if that would be anywhere near 1:14:14 what these exchanges make in terms of revenue in their, 1:14:19 you know, altcoin casino world. 1:14:21 They probably are making a lot of money. 1:14:23 One interesting thing to keep in mind about the exchanges 1:14:25 is they are strong, very strong allies of Bitcoin at first, 1:14:31 but as time goes on, 1:14:33 they slowly switch to becoming enemies of Bitcoin 1:14:36 because they actually are in a case where 1:14:40 at the very, very end, 1:14:44 at the very end of Bitcoin's project of taking over, 1:14:47 there won't be a need for them 1:14:50 to exchange their fiat currencies anymore. 1:14:53 At which point this inter-site chain transfer thing 1:14:56 would be their only, 1:14:59 the only thing that we would need exchanges for, 1:15:02 although of course you'd have exchange for different things 1:15:04 for other exchange. 1:15:06 But yeah, I think that's an interesting thing 1:15:08 to keep in mind about the exchanges. 1:15:15 All right, well said. 1:15:18 But yeah, I think for now, 1:15:19 it's certainly the case that this would just add revenue. 1:15:22 They'd have this new revenue stream 1:15:23 because they'd list every type chain. 1:15:24 They'd trade from like, you know, 1:15:26 they'd go from being like 99 cents, 98 cents on the dollar, 1:15:29 99 and a half cents on the dollar. 1:15:30 They would still be trading around. 1:15:33 So for now that is true, 1:15:35 but ultimately the exchanges will flip 1:15:37 and become enemies of hyper-Bitcoinization anyway, 1:15:41 since they're middlemen between fiat and, 1:15:44 they cannot have, 1:15:46 the ideal thing for the exchanges 1:15:47 is that they're all in a state of equilibrium 1:15:51 and no one gains too strong of an upper hand. 1:15:53 So that's an intriguing incentive that they have. 1:15:58 Also, I kind of wonder now, 1:15:59 I mean, they have the most money. 1:16:01 They have tons of money 1:16:02 and we kind of are caught now 1:16:03 in that space where Bitcoin is not, 1:16:05 it hasn't been banned or stamped out, 1:16:08 but it also, 1:16:10 no one seems to be seriously talking about 1:16:13 like hyper-Bitcoinization the way people were. 1:16:15 They very much were in 2010, 2011, 2012, 1:16:18 people were like, how do we get this to take over? 1:16:23 So I do kind of wonder 1:16:24 if that's actually the exchanges, 1:16:27 enormous wealth and their ability to hire people 1:16:29 and their lobbying. 1:16:31 I kind of wonder about that. 1:16:32 I think the bigger thing is, of course, 1:16:35 that just change takes a lot of time. 1:16:37 People don't understand Bitcoin. 1:16:38 Bitcoin is not ready. 1:16:39 Bitcoin is not technically ready. 1:16:40 Like if the traditional financial system collapsed tomorrow, 1:16:44 Bitcoin would not be ready to replace it. 1:16:48 So those are bigger things, 1:16:50 but that's something to keep in mind 1:16:52 about the exchanges, I think. 1:16:54 Well said. 1:16:58 Our next tweet that we should discuss is from Post Capone. 1:17:02 Post Capone is one of the most active members 1:17:06 in the ordinals and inscriptions, Twitter spaces. 1:17:09 And he has a wealth of technical knowledge. 1:17:12 He really understands Bitcoin deeply 1:17:15 and is quite familiar with drivechain 1:17:17 as a really friendly person to chat with. 1:17:20 And he writes, as a reply to something I wrote, 1:17:27 I wrote a tweet about how Bitcoin, 1:17:29 how drivechain potentially solves 1:17:31 the security budget problem. 1:17:32 And he wrote, if BIP300 and 301 could fox it, 1:17:38 then there is at least one fix 1:17:41 that doesn't require a modification of the supply cap. 1:17:45 Given a minimum of 30 years to resolve, 1:17:48 given a minimum of 30 years to resolve, 1:17:50 let's assume there comes to be two fixes. 1:17:55 Evan will still refer to, 1:17:57 oh, everyone will still refer 1:17:59 to the 21 million supply cap as a myth. 1:18:02 Oh, he's referring to Evan, Evan Ness, the Ethereum maxi. 1:18:07 So what happened here was this Ethereum promoter, 1:18:11 Evan Van Ness, wrote about how Bitcoin 1:18:13 will need to do inflation in the future 1:18:15 because of the low fees that are persistently present 1:18:18 in Bitcoin's market for block space. 1:18:22 And I wrote, drivechain could be adopted 1:18:24 and then merged mining could continue. 1:18:26 And then Post Capone wrote, yes, basically. 1:18:30 I could paraphrase him by saying, 1:18:31 yes, Bitcoin could adopt drivechain 1:18:35 and then we could see high fees 1:18:36 and that would avoid the need for tail issuance. 1:18:40 So Post Capone understands 1:18:43 what we're talking about here very well 1:18:46 and is tentatively optimistic 1:18:49 that drivechain could be adopted 1:18:51 and then that would be a fix. 1:18:54 I believe this security budget issue 1:18:56 is something that Bitcoiners really can understand 1:18:58 without being very technical. 1:19:00 Like ossification is rather technical 1:19:04 and network effects are rather technical 1:19:07 as an economic idea. 1:19:08 But this security budget problem, 1:19:10 I think that that can reach a lot more Bitcoiners 1:19:14 than the other rationales for drivechain. 1:19:16 And I think it could captivate people 1:19:19 and get them motivated to understand 1:19:22 the other more complex parts of drivechain. 1:19:25 So it will be interesting to see how the flippening, 1:19:28 sorry, how the halvening in just less than a year from now 1:19:34 motivates more interest in drivechain. 1:19:40 What do you think, Ian? 1:19:41 Do you think that with the halvening coming up 1:19:44 in less than a year, 1:19:45 people will talk about how fees are not very high? 1:19:50 Or do you think that the recent fee spike 1:19:52 with ordinals and inscriptions 1:19:54 is going to dampen discussion 1:19:58 of the security budget for some time? 1:20:01 I think the fact that it's a fee spike 1:20:03 means that it's not gonna affect the conversation too much. 1:20:08 Like if fees went up and stayed high, 1:20:11 then the people, they would have a stronger argument. 1:20:16 But since it's a spike, nobody wants fees to be high. 1:20:20 That argument is weak because nobody wants fees to be high. 1:20:25 So the market doesn't want fees high. 1:20:30 So the idea that transaction fees 1:20:32 will replace the subsidy completely 1:20:35 is so flawed in my opinion. 1:20:39 Thank you. 1:20:41 Cool. 1:20:43 All right. 1:20:45 Well, we've talked about many different tweets today. 1:20:48 The very last I wanna share is one of my favorites. 1:20:53 This is from Gabriel Kerman, 1:20:56 an outstanding member of the Bitcoin community 1:20:59 who has joined us in these Twitter spaces 1:21:02 once or twice in the past 1:21:03 to talk about drivechain, Rootstock, 1:21:07 and his optimistic view for Bitcoin 1:21:11 using sidechains in the future. 1:21:14 Gabriel wrote in this tweet 1:21:16 that I selected and put in the nest now, 1:21:19 and this will be the last one 1:21:20 I think that we talk about today, 1:21:23 that he writes, 1:21:24 "'Absolutely we count on the Bitcoin Core devs 1:21:28 "'to implement the drivechain soft fork 1:21:31 "'as soon as possible to make sidechains 2.0 a reality.'" 1:21:38 So there it is. 1:21:41 We need the Bitcoin technical community 1:21:44 to come together and embark on this deed of courage, 1:21:50 this bold step towards greater innovation, 1:21:54 which not only would make Bitcoin stronger, 1:21:57 but as drive chainers, 1:22:00 we think that it is quite essential 1:22:03 that Bitcoin adopt this change. 1:22:06 Just like SegWit was something 1:22:07 the Bitcoin community came together and did, 1:22:10 and Taproot, drivechain would be something 1:22:12 the Bitcoin community can come together and do. 1:22:16 Led by the technical community 1:22:17 within the Bitcoin community, 1:22:19 drivechain would enable immense value creation for Bitcoin, 1:22:25 sending Bitcoin's price up, 1:22:27 devaluing altcoins, increasing dominance, 1:22:30 increasing the status and reputation of Bitcoin, 1:22:33 increasing the number of users of Bitcoin, 1:22:35 bringing more fees to the miners, 1:22:37 and bringing the world together 1:22:40 for sound money and freedom. 1:22:43 Drivechain would be a big part of that. 1:22:48 It's very exciting. 1:22:49 And what's great is that things are moving forward, 1:22:52 not just in the conversations around drivechain, 1:22:54 but there's actual concrete work being done right now 1:22:57 to rebase the code. 1:22:59 A Bitcoin expert is rebasing the code carefully. 1:23:03 And when that is done, likely this year, 1:23:07 there can be a pull request to add drivechain code 1:23:11 to Bitcoin, making Bitcoin much stronger. 1:23:20 Well, what else should we talk about 1:23:25 or should we wrap for today? 1:23:26 I think we've been going for about an hour. 1:23:29 Yeah, I was gonna say the drivechain pull request 1:23:32 will bring a lot of the rats out into the light. 1:23:35 I can say that. 1:23:39 Like the enemies of drivechain. 1:23:42 But I think that's good 1:23:43 because then they'll have to point to 1:23:45 a specific line of code. 1:23:46 I think it'll actually help in the debate a lot. 1:23:48 So I think I'll do that. 1:23:50 I think I'll send also a mailing list, 1:23:55 Bitcoin dev mailing list thing, 1:23:56 just asking people if anyone actually has any objections. 1:24:03 Or if they are all just, 1:24:04 if everyone's just gonna silently admit 1:24:06 that they don't have them anymore. 1:24:12 Well, that'll be interesting. 1:24:15 Looking forward to that. 1:24:18 That'll be exciting. 1:24:22 There's a lot of great energy that comes from Adam Back, 1:24:27 Mike Tidwell, and many others in the space 1:24:29 who are excited about these possibilities. 1:24:32 And the number of Bitcoiners we've talked about today 1:24:35 is quite significant. 1:24:36 All of the Bitcoiners we've posted in the nest, 1:24:39 and there are many more that we could add. 1:24:42 So many people have tweeted support for drivechain, 1:24:45 and we have brilliant thinkers like Rheindel 1:24:49 asking questions about it, 1:24:50 and exploring options and ideas related to sidechains. 1:24:55 And there's a lot of great ideas out there. 1:24:59 Some of them are very new, 1:25:00 like zero knowledge proofs and roll ups and things. 1:25:04 Others are time tested and more conservative 1:25:08 and very rock solid and less new like drivechain. 1:25:14 And that is a really big advantage 1:25:17 in the intellectual space within Bitcoin. 1:25:20 People in Bitcoin like conservative, 1:25:24 careful, thoughtful, well-studied ideas. 1:25:27 We don't move fast and break things. 1:25:29 We carefully do things 1:25:31 because our project is the most important one. 1:25:34 And that's why drivechain's time has come now 1:25:36 after eight years of maturation and development. 1:25:40 It is now no longer a new idea. 1:25:43 It is a well-studied idea. 1:25:46 And that's a huge advantage 1:25:48 in the market of ideas within Bitcoin. 1:25:53 Paul, why don't you make our final comment 1:25:55 and then we'll wrap until Monday 1:25:58 when our next drivechain Twitter space will be. 1:26:02 Well, I just really like seeing all the tweets in the nest. 1:26:04 So I hope we do that again. 1:26:09 That's kind of cool to see. 1:26:10 I wish I could have joined earlier. 1:26:13 I have important real work to do. 1:26:17 I think in general, 1:26:20 what people should focus on is what... 1:26:25 I think what I tried to do with this project 1:26:26 was very unusual and it didn't really work, 1:26:29 which is to say, 1:26:31 I tried to just come up with the best project 1:26:35 and then I didn't really try to push the project 1:26:39 or kind of politically wiggle it in. 1:26:44 If I could do it over, I probably would do that. 1:26:46 But I just thought we have to stress test Bitcoin itself, 1:26:50 the community, 1:26:51 and we have to figure out 1:26:52 who in the community has the user's best interests in mind. 1:27:00 And so that was kind of important to me 1:27:02 to kind of ask that question. 1:27:04 But as a result, I think that this idea, 1:27:06 which would have really helped the user, 1:27:09 was really strongly delayed. 1:27:11 And I think because of that delay, 1:27:13 all kinds of things happened, 1:27:14 including the rise of altcoins such as Ethereum 1:27:17 and the block size war. 1:27:19 And so it would have been interesting to do it 1:27:23 in a slightly different way, 1:27:26 but I did not. 1:27:27 So I think that everyone should keep that in mind, 1:27:28 that what my focus was on 1:27:31 and what the focus of this idea was on 1:27:34 is what's best for the end user. 1:27:37 And as the end user, 1:27:38 you get to decide what you put your coins into. 1:27:42 You can destroy your coins, 1:27:43 you can sell them and buy Solana, 1:27:47 and you should be able to send them to any kind of script, 1:27:49 a BIP300 script, if you want to do that. 1:27:53 Many of the people, 1:27:54 the large blockers and the scaling war, 1:27:57 we had a very, very, very comfortable nature of, 1:28:01 we were very comfortable taking more risks, 1:28:03 risks of a larger block size and risks of SPV mode. 1:28:07 So that's what they wanted. 1:28:09 And it's liberalism to try to allow people 1:28:14 to do what they wanna do 1:28:15 as long as it doesn't negatively affect anyone else. 1:28:17 In this case, it only positively affects other people else. 1:28:20 In the form of greater transaction fees for all of us 1:28:23 and higher equilibrium difficulty. 1:28:26 So that's all I'm trying to say, 1:28:27 is that this idea, 1:28:30 I didn't really go through channels 1:28:34 of warming up to people 1:28:37 who would have been friendliest to the idea first 1:28:39 and then getting them to tell their friends. 1:28:42 I just kind of put the idea out there. 1:28:45 And so I think now it's a pretty good time to jump ship, 1:28:49 I say, and support the idea 1:28:51 because I think that eventually 1:28:53 the floodgates will burst open 1:28:55 like probably in the next 30 to 60 days. 1:29:01 All right. 1:29:02 Thank you, Paul. 1:29:03 To those who requested to speak 1:29:04 and we didn't have time to hear your thoughts, 1:29:07 please join us next time. 1:29:08 Thank you for everyone who listens 1:29:10 and thank you to our listeners who listen on demand. 1:29:12 These are recorded Twitter spaces 1:29:14 every Monday and Thursday 1:29:15 hosted under Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 1:29:17 You can also- 1:29:18 I'm gonna do it Friday now, I think. 1:29:20 Oh yes, of course. 1:29:21 You're right. 1:29:22 Mondays and Fridays, correct. 1:29:24 As today is Friday. 1:29:26 Mondays and Fridays, twice a week, 1:29:28 Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 1:29:30 And you can also find us on layer2labs.com, 1:29:32 drivechain.info, 1:29:34 our Telegram group, 1:29:36 and also on YouTube and elsewhere. 1:29:40 And of course on GitHub, 1:29:41 where you can read the Drivechain bits 1:29:42 and see LayerTwo Labs' code. 1:29:45 Thanks everyone. 1:29:46 We'll see you on Monday. 1:29:47 And if anyone is golfing friends with Jihan Wu, 1:29:52 tell him about Drivechain. 1:29:55 He actually already knows. 1:29:56 He- 1:29:57 It's really weird because 1:29:59 what happened was he actually offered 1:30:01 financial support for Drivechain 1:30:03 like a week before SegWit2x was announced. 1:30:08 There's actually a long, long story. 1:30:11 It's just the twists and turns of the story 1:30:12 would be very surprising to people, 1:30:14 but yeah, he did. 1:30:15 And then he, 1:30:16 but then what happened was this giant SegWit2x drama 1:30:19 exploded onto the scenes 1:30:20 and it made it just like very difficult 1:30:24 to figure out what to do. 1:30:27 So I didn't take any of his money, of course. 1:30:30 And then he was like, 1:30:32 he exploded and like ejected from the community. 1:30:37 So I don't even know if he, 1:30:39 so he's technically not CEO of AntPool anymore. 1:30:43 I don't know. 1:30:44 That was the idea at the time though. 1:30:46 But yeah, I definitely think it's, 1:30:49 I actually haven't really spoken to miners that much. 1:30:52 So I think we'll probably start doing that 1:30:54 because that's considered, 1:30:55 ever since SegWit2x has been considered impolite. 1:30:58 But I think now we will start talking to them. 1:31:01 So that would be good. 1:31:02 If we're mining pool, 1:31:04 yeah, if we could get people into mining 1:31:07 or who are in the mining pool into the space on Monday, 1:31:12 that would be good. 1:31:14 So keep that in mind. 1:31:17 All right. 1:31:18 Thank you. 1:31:19 Until next time. 1:31:21 See ya.
