0:00 So we are going to have a conversation that I think is very important in the moment that we are right now in Bitcoin and with a lot of what is happening in the world, really. 0:13 And I am very happy, Paul, that you have taken time from your schedule to come here and talk to us about Drivechains and what they are and what they could mean for Bitcoin. 0:27 So I am very much looking forward for this conversation. 0:31 This is going to be recorded and posted as a podcast afterwards for those that can't be here live. 0:38 But, yeah, I think that the best thing to start will be just give a little introduction of yourself in case that some of the listeners may not know exactly who you are. 0:50 Okay, sure. So I have been a Bitcoin researcher for a while, and I wrote a long time ago, I wrote an essay about nothing is cheaper than proof of work. 1:03 I actually wrote one before that that was called Long Live Proof of Work back in 2014, and then Adam Back linked to it from BitcoinTalk.org. 1:12 And that was like the big break. 1:14 And then since then, I have been presenting at various conferences. 1:18 I travel all around the world and go to Bitcoin meetups. 1:24 And most relevantly, I have been the author of BIP300/301, which is Drivechain collectively. 1:33 Drivechain is something that uses those two BIPs. 1:35 The purpose of Drivechain is to allow people to switch software so they can switch as if they switch to an altcoin, but it's an altcoin that has no new coins on it. 1:46 So it's 21 million Bitcoin only, and yet it gives us the freedom to move to a completely different piece of software with new developers who may disagree with each other or may hate each other. 1:59 They may want completely different things. 2:01 You have small blockers, large blockers. 2:03 You could have zk-SNARKs, ring signatures, EVM, your own virtual machine, whatever. 2:11 You have all the freedom of launching a completely different piece of software, and you have the freedom of people who just disagree with each other and don't like each other. 2:19 But despite that, there is never a new coin. 2:23 And so that's a tiny intro of me and a tiny intro of the idea. 2:31 Yeah, yeah, that's a great place to begin. 2:35 I think in case people haven't paid attention to all the Drivechain conversations, like what you are describing is you're using Bitcoin as the main settlement layer. 2:47 And then you're allowing trustless connections with what we think of as sidechains. 2:55 And you're allowing Bitcoin to be bridged from the Bitcoin main chain into the sidechain. 3:01 And the sidechain doesn't have to work the same way as Bitcoin works. 3:06 You can create this blockchain with different parameters and you can have something that is more like Ethereum and you can have a sidechain that is more like something like Solana or like Monero. 3:18 And you can have all these different versions, but it's all tied to the Bitcoin main chain because the way the bridge works, you're never breaking that 21 million coins across all the different sidechains. 3:32 There can only be 21 million Bitcoins. 3:35 Yeah. 3:37 Yes, that's it. Exactly. 3:39 All right. Perfect. I encourage the audience to make as many questions as they can, since we have Paul here. 3:45 I think it's a great way to to start thinking what this could be for Bitcoin and how it actually works. 3:53 Manu, is there something you want to add to the conversation? 3:57 Hi, Paul. How are you? 3:59 How are you? 4:01 This is very happy in Argentina, but not so. 4:04 Welcome to the Money On Chain community first. 4:09 I've been following you for many years, actually, so very happy that you are with us today. 4:15 And yes, I have many questions, but maybe trying to go directly to the main issue is after so many years of you proposing this and I've been reading your proposals and listening to you. 4:36 And I have never heard about any risk on implementing Drivechains, but I have read some. 4:45 But maybe it would be interesting if we can recap which are the main reasons why some Bitcoiners resist to the BIP300/301. 5:00 Of course, I'm biased, so you should get it from them. 5:03 I really think that they misunderstand the idea, though. 5:08 I actually think it's all irrational. 5:10 It's all just a misunderstanding. 5:12 A lot of it is someone is working on a different L2, so they don't want this to succeed. 5:19 Or even it's a case where someone originally might want this to succeed. 5:23 Like imagine if you really wanted a feature, such as maybe you're like a large blocker. 5:29 You push for large blocks on layer one and then you don't succeed and you try to maybe get the extension block, but then that doesn't work. 5:37 You try SegWit2x and then finally you launch Bitcoin Cash, the altcoin. 5:42 And now it's like the last thing you want is for BTC to actually obtain the feature. 5:47 You wanted it to be that if large blocks are a winning idea, then Bitcoin Cash would be the winning investment. 5:56 I think that's a lot of it. 5:58 I can give you what they say the risks are, but they don't make any sense. 6:02 People say there's a risk of miners stealing the funds, but it doesn't make any difference because miners can already steal the funds from the Lightning Network. 6:12 And that doesn't matter anyway because the user is going to choose what type of security model and what kind of risk they would like to take. 6:24 So really none of it matters. 6:27 Every coin starts on L1 main chain. 6:32 The user has to voluntarily send them into the Lightning Network or into the Drivechain. 6:38 So giving people an option that they might like in the future. 6:45 It's like you go to your favorite restaurant and there's a new item on the menu. 6:49 It doesn't matter if it might be bad. 6:52 But the way it will work in practice is people will put $20 in at first and then they'll say. 6:56 So then other people will try to come up with other critiques. 6:59 Some kind of reason that says, okay, how is this going to harm everyone else? 7:02 And just the absurd lengths to which they take some of the reasoning is just so bizarre. 7:09 They say they have to chain together these weird steps where they have to say maybe it might give some people an incentive to do this or whatever. 7:17 So what they say is something like miners will make a ton of money from these sidechains because they'll be so popular. 7:23 And then some miners will not take the money and those miners will be at a disadvantage and then they'll go out of business. 7:31 Which isn't a ridiculous thing to say. 7:35 It's literally exactly the same in every way as if they had said something like some miners will not censor layer one transactions. 7:45 It's exactly the same. 7:47 Some miners will censor and some won't. 7:49 And then the ones who censor, they will pass on transaction fees that they won't get. 7:55 And then they'll go out of business or something. 7:57 Some miners will light their own money on fire and other miners will not light their own money on fire. 8:05 It's like the whole point of the difficulty adjustment is that uncompetitive miners are kicked out. 8:12 So that's always happening. 8:14 And this is why I tell those critics, should we just remove the upward difficulty adjustments from Bitcoin? 8:20 Should we just remove proof of work from Bitcoin? 8:22 Because that's really the implication of this argument that says we feel bad for some miners that go out of business because they don't take advantage of what this is and what it really is. 8:32 It's basically for free. 8:34 The only requirement is that the miner partner with a sidechain node that already exists, which costs basically nothing. 8:41 So basically for free, the miners all get access to huge amounts of additional revenue in return for basically doing nothing. 8:50 They have to maybe do a couple of tiny things, but it's basically nothing and it has nothing at all. 8:59 It's not even comparable to if a new ASIC comes out that's like twice as efficient. 9:03 Every single miner must have a business plan of upgrading to that ASIC. 9:08 You can't be half as efficient. 9:10 So it's no different from what they always do all the time in every other context. 9:15 So this is some of these weird things. 9:18 They make up a bunch of stuff. 9:20 They try to use bad words and tie them to this idea. 9:22 Like they say stuff about MEV, like Ethereum has MEV, Miner Maximal Extractable Value, or Miner Extractable Value, depending on who you ask. 9:30 And this is all a misunderstanding of how it works. 9:33 Whatever defects the sidechain software has, they stay over there. 9:39 And it is merge mining and Blind Merged Mining of 301. 9:45 That transforms all of that into just an L1 transaction fee. 9:50 So everything is already firewalled off. 9:54 Everything is already converted to just L1 transaction fees. 9:58 So if you're against L1 transaction fees, then would you be against removing all L1 transaction fees from Bitcoin itself? 10:06 So that's my rambling answer. 10:08 I don't think there are any risks. 10:10 What the idea does is it takes the unused OP_NOP5 and uses it to count to 13,000 over and over again. 10:17 That really can't be risky. 10:19 But even if it were, we could just shut OP_NOP5 off the exact same way we turned it on. 10:25 Ctrl-Z. 10:27 This is probably the least risky concept in all of Bitcoin's history, I think. 10:33 And I'm not a technical guy, so for me, you will need to have a lot of patience. 10:41 From my understanding, there is no risk against, for example, if we compare, for example, with RSK. 10:52 In RSK, it is a sidechain, and the only difference in implementing a Drivechain will be that the payout will be trustless. 11:06 Is that right? Is that correct? 11:09 Yes, it's hard to summarize. 11:12 And of course, people have furious debates over what trustless means. 11:15 But the federated model is deficient compared to the model of BIP300 in a few ways. 11:23 One is the federated model you have to pick. 11:26 You have to preemptively choose a bunch of pubkeys that control everything. 11:32 And the question is, how do you pick this? 11:34 You say, oh, there's 15 different people or whatever, but you don't really know. 11:38 They could all be the same person. 11:39 How do you know? 11:41 And how do you know that at every stage of the project, they will have an incentive that is aligned with yours? 11:48 So in BIP300, it's just this big time horizon, three months worth of blocks. 11:54 And the miners, you don't have to pick any identities ever at any point. 11:59 It's an automatic process. 12:01 And the miners are already going to be permanently incentive aligned with you because they are the ones who will get all the transaction fees. 12:09 All the future transaction fee revenues, which should be a decent amount and growing probably forever. 12:18 They get all that and they are the ones who are always paid in BTC on all chains, including L1. 12:25 So they are the most sensitive to the Bitcoin price. 12:28 They are the ones who have already invested. 12:30 They have invested in ASIC chips. 12:33 But the best thing of all is that the whole thing is procedural, which is to say it's automatic to add new sidechains, drop, add sidechains, deposit, withdraw. 12:43 Whereas with the federated model, you have to pick these people. 12:47 There has to be a date when you pick them and then there's a fixed group and then the group cannot be changed, which is not good. 12:54 Whereas in the mining process is constantly, because of the difficulty adjustment, is constantly firing anyone who's an underperformer. 13:02 So there's more dynamism. 13:06 But yeah, if you wanted a short answer, I would say yes, that the federated model is trusting some people or trusting with the process that chose those people. 13:17 Whereas in BIP300, it's basically the same idea as L1 Bitcoin itself, where you trust the proof of work, which is definitely not infallible, but I think it's pretty reasonable. 13:34 Yes, I think at least it sounds like if you can have something like Rootstock without the federation, would that be a better model? 13:44 According to them, yes, of course, because they have always insisted since day one that they wanted to not use the federated model and they wanted something procedural and algorithmic. 13:56 So they have always insisted that they would prefer that and they still insisted to this day and they're right, I think. 14:03 Yes, yes, and that is part of the reason why we wanted to have these conversations. 14:08 I am also surprised that this kind of conversations doesn't happen more often. 14:13 I always see in the big podcast scene, the same people going around talking about the same things. 14:21 And a lot of times these type of ideas don't get the air they deserve. 14:26 I just have a little conjecture that the podcast industry has evolved a certain way and it's not very much like CNN or Fox News or something where they're just telling people what they want to hear. 14:40 And the more nuanced and complicated something gets, the smaller the audience gets. 14:46 And they want to maximize the number of eyeballs and maximize the number of whatever, the ad revenue indirectly, I think. 14:54 Yeah, yeah, that definitely plays a big role. 14:58 They're all businesses making business decisions. 15:02 But I wanted to ask you about, because you said that there's a lot of the criticism that Drivechains receive that are not very in your view, that don't make much sense. 15:15 And I often wonder if these kinds of criticisms that we hear are not just maybe masking something like, if I say that Drivechains are a good idea, I am validating a lot of experimentation that happened in the altcoin space. 15:35 And for a long time, a lot of people have been telling us that all altcoins are shitcoins. 15:40 I don't know if you have any thoughts. 15:41 No, I think you're 100% correct. 15:44 I think that's exactly what has happened. 15:46 They worry that in the time between we admit that sidechains, just any sidechain, because it doesn't have to be BIP300. 15:56 Any person who works on a sidechain technique would validate the altcoin experimentation. 16:02 And so yeah, it's like in the time between we admit that's a good idea, then we have to contradict ourselves. 16:09 We have to say, wow, the EVM, Ethereum and DeFi, this is the future. 16:14 And this is part of the future. 16:17 So then you admit that and then it's like you have to hope that people will come to BTC. 16:21 So I think you're 100% right. 16:23 And I would only add that it speaks to the extreme pessimism that people actually have about Bitcoin. 16:31 They really think like they don't really believe that it will succeed on its merits. 16:38 They just think it will succeed because of being memed really hard or like shutting down conversation about things that the user likes. 16:48 So they just think it's all like post-modernist arbitrary. 16:55 It's just a meme. 16:57 It's just like cultural relativism and whoever spreads the fastest and whoever's the most intolerant will win. 17:05 And they don't actually believe in Bitcoin's properties and features as actually something that will easily allow it to defeat rival cryptocurrencies and then the rival fiat currencies. 17:18 It's an irony. 17:21 Yes. If Bitcoin is what it's supposed to be, then it should have no problem competing openly. 17:29 I think we have another guest. QR, do you want to ask a question to Paul? 17:35 Hi, Tomas. Yes, thanks. 17:39 Good morning, everyone. 17:41 Paul, I guess that a federation for a sidechain should pose any potential risk to the people in the federation, right? 17:55 But there shouldn't be any risk for the people on layer one, correct? 18:02 Is there any risk that is posed against Drivechains regarding what effect their existence could bring on to other users of Bitcoin layer? 18:17 I don't really think so. 18:19 It was designed from the ground up to not have everything. 18:23 The whole point of the sidechain idea is to have blame fall on only the right people. 18:28 So if a sidechain developer creates a terrible sidechain and it's a disaster, then it only affects the reputation of the developer who created it and the users over there who may lose their money. 18:40 I really would flip the question around and say, what risk are we taking in BTC if we really adopt a policy that we permanently will not pursue any alt technology? 18:56 I think that is a crazy risk to take, especially when we could do it more or less for free. 19:02 We're going to say that we will never under any circumstances, no matter what we learn, no matter what is invented, no matter what we learn about our own things that we try that don't really work out. 19:15 We are just committed to if anything that was invented anywhere else first, we will not take that thing. 19:23 I think that's a huge risk. 19:25 And what could happen on L1, again, on L1 it's just counting to $13,000. 19:30 And it is slightly diluting the focus of the miners. 19:34 But it doesn't really, if the miner earns like $5,000, let's just say, I'm just making these numbers up or whatever. 19:41 Let's say they earn $5,000,000 a day from L1 BTC. 19:45 And then we turn this on and they earn additionally $100,000,000 per day. 19:52 So they earn $105,000,000. 19:55 So in one sense you can say a miner's concentration has been diluted. 19:59 But in a different sense you can just say they still care about L1 to the tune of $5,000,000 a day. 20:07 So they care kind of the exact same absolute amount. 20:11 You know what I mean? 20:13 What if they play poker on the side? 20:16 So we're going to say that anything that anyone could ever do in the economy would dilute miners' concentration. 20:22 So I just don't see it really. 20:25 I thought about it for a while and I think what's happening is I think a lot of people are just hearing about it for the first time. 20:31 And they want to take their time thinking through it all. 20:34 But I just don't get it. 20:35 To me the bigger risk is that Bitcoin is replaced by a different currency, a different cryptocurrency. 20:41 We should worry about that. 20:43 We should wake up every day thinking about, okay, what can we do to stop that from happening? 20:47 Because that will affect the L1 Bitcoin users, right? 20:51 The price goes to zero, the project's dead, everyone's humiliated. 20:55 There's no mining. 20:57 If the price falls to zero, there's no proof of work. 21:00 The whole thing is dead. 21:01 And I think it's just the network effects of money are very strong. 21:04 So I think they all compete. 21:06 It's winner take all, loser lose all. 21:08 Yeah, my point is that if the miners are paid in Bitcoin, in any case, there's no competition there. 21:16 And if the people that choose to send resources to the sidechain, which is basically to send resources to an address, do it on their own will, under their own will, I don't know how you say that. 21:30 Then there's no problem, right? 21:33 Because it's like sending your money to, I don't know. 21:37 Yeah, not to me. 21:39 I asked this exact question to Peter Weil when I was in Amsterdam several years ago. 21:48 I'm going to be back in Amsterdam next week. 21:51 But I was like, this is basically the same series of questions. 21:56 The user is free to destroy their own Bitcoin, right? 21:59 They're free to send it to BitcoinEaterDon'tSend, which is this address that would eat the Bitcoin because no one knew the private key. 22:07 But they're also allowed to sell their Bitcoin for goods and services or sell their Bitcoin and buy an altcoin. 22:12 So this is just spending your own Bitcoin that you own into a BIP300 script. 22:20 Yeah, I see that very similar. 22:23 I live in Argentina, right? 22:25 And I see that very similar to some decisions that people in the government take, say, using as an argument that they are taking care for you. 22:35 So they do not consider you as being enough, have enough autonomy to make your decisions, right? 22:44 I think that people in Bitcoin should take care of making the protocol secure, right? 22:52 And enforcing that what you want to do is done, right? 22:57 But nothing else. 22:59 I agree with you. 23:01 Where is the owner? 23:03 Sorry. 23:05 Yeah, no, I agree with your saying that you're free to burn your own Bitcoin if you want to. 23:11 Yeah, you're the owner. 23:13 You're the sovereign owner. 23:15 If you can't do something, if there's stuff with it that you can't do, then you're not really the owner anymore. 23:21 But yeah, I don't get it. 23:23 I think this is also where this idea is tricky to understand. 23:26 You have to be very intelligent to understand this whole Drivechain idea. 23:30 But what I mean by that is it's like the customer is no one who's a Bitcoiner right now. 23:36 The customer is like someone who would use Solana or something. 23:42 So it's deliberately off-brand. 23:47 It's saying, listen, do you want something that has a node that no one can run and is an EVM, super fast EVM nonsense chain? 23:59 And it's like everyone in Bitcoin is like, no. 24:01 But that's not really the point. 24:02 The point is like we have a restaurant and we serve only one thing. 24:06 We serve hamburgers. 24:08 But there's all these other restaurants on the street and it's just like we could sell all that other stuff too. 24:13 And network effects. 24:15 Network effects are the key to winning. 24:17 Most people are going to use the money that their friends use. 24:21 I can think, for example, about the biggest stable coin, which is USDT, which is outside the blockchain because it's fiat money. 24:43 For example, if you want to exchange your Bitcoin for dollars for any reason, you would, I don't know, you would take that. 24:55 I don't know if I'm doing the right economic thought. 25:01 But if you are taking the resources out of the blockchain, but instead if you're using the Bitcoin backed stable coin, like DollarChain, then you would be actually keeping your Bitcoin in movement, right? 25:17 In any case, Bitcoins are always there, right? Because you're exchanging them by dollars, but the Bitcoins remain, right? 25:25 But if the dollars are used on the sidechain, then the Bitcoins, in this case miners, right, keep on receiving the transaction fees because the dollars continue to be used in the Bitcoin environment, right? 25:45 That's one simple reason. I mean, in the end, it's the same that you said about the miners getting additional fees, right? 25:55 Yes, and I think another point that people often don't think about with the whole Drivechain situation, and the way that I'm thinking is that, OK, maybe the Bitcoin more maximalists don't see the value on the altcoin space because of their own reasons. 26:16 But they should still be able to at least accept that that space is attracting the most amount of developers and the most amount of brainpower and mindshare is going over there to experiment with all this stuff. 26:32 So you can bring all these people and have them develop use cases for your asset. 26:39 I think it's quite… First of all, yes, USDT is so popular. People love the product. I'm shocked personally. I'm very surprised. 26:49 But if you go to Asia, people don't even want to be paid in BTC. They just want USDT. They love USDT. Can't get enough of it. 26:59 But I think you're right that it's not just that you have to think that you don't like any of the altcoins. You also have to say something like, in your head, you have to say Bitcoin Core is the best and will always be the best under all circumstances for everyone. 27:17 And I just think that it's really bizarre. I just don't understand. When else would we say that? Like one television show is the best television show for everyone or something? 27:25 Especially now when you have so much turnover and so many people try different ideas. 27:30 But yeah, it's so easy to just point at a few ideas because 99% of the altcoins are terrible. 27:36 And it's very easy to just either point at that in average or to just pick out specific failures that are very salient. 27:45 And that's just a very easy thing to do. But what should also be easy is to just say, of course, we want a situation where someone could invent some new thing. 27:55 Because, of course, there was a day before each of us had heard about Bitcoin for the first time. 28:00 You were coasting through life and you thought the best thing that you had ever discovered was something other than Bitcoin. 28:08 But then you discovered Bitcoin and you're like, wow, this is my new favorite thing. So you can always have a new favorite thing tomorrow. A new favorite thing. 28:16 If we don't have sidechains, then that thing will have to be a different coin. 28:23 Whereas if we did have sidechains, it would just the existing BTC investment would not be disturbed. 28:28 So it's pretty straightforward, I think. 28:32 We just lost Rodolfo Andragnes. I think you know him, right? We have it now. 28:39 Let me add him because he was telling me to ask you something, but even better if he asks yourself. 28:48 Yes, hello. I have two questions. 28:52 First, it's more a personal for myself question, which is what needs to happen to change your soft confirmation to the Bitcoins to a strong confirmation to the Bitcoins this November and come down to discuss cross-pollination with Sergio and Alexei from Italy? 29:14 Yes, this is one of them. 29:16 Oh, my gosh. I've been doing a lot of traveling and it's very time consuming, but I really would like to go. 29:23 Everyone has told me how great it is. 29:25 There's no better place in the crypto space this year than Argentina in November. 29:32 That's what I think. So I don't know where you've been lately, but I know where you should be in November. 29:40 Just one country that has nearly hyperinflation, a big Bitcoin community. 29:47 And just now the government has proposed to implement a CBDC. 29:53 So it's like perfect place to be in the universe. 30:02 I still need to convince you. 30:04 Don't forget about the elections, Manu. 30:08 Oh, we have. Oh, yeah, of course. 30:10 Yeah, that guy. That guy seems like a real a real whole lot of fun. 30:15 How long? When is the election anyway? 30:17 It's one week. It's the 22nd of October. 30:21 Yes. So 22nd. It's the first election. 30:24 And if we go to Balotage, if we have a second round, it's on. 30:27 It's one week after LaVitConf, which is 19th of November. 30:31 Yes. So you could even stay and see if we get a new liberal president on stage in Argentina. 30:39 But this one was one of the things. 30:41 So please keep thinking about coming down to LaVitConf and have also a live discussion on Drivechain itself. 30:48 Yes. With the Bitcoin community. 30:51 No, but my I will. 30:53 But my only my only two cents to this is I don't agree, really, that it's just a thing about we are against everything that happens in the space. 31:04 Yes, I think they are that yet have not been some concerns about. 31:12 Yes. OK. The main thing, though, is that only happens on the sidechain world. 31:17 It only it's between the person who constructs the sidechain block and the users who get scammed over there. 31:24 And it has no effect. It has no actual effect on anyone on L1 or anyone using any other sidechain. 31:31 So it may it encourages certain types of vertical integration, but not the kind with L1 miners or L1 Bitcoin nodes. 31:42 And actually gave a whole presentation on this long before Mav was invented in 2016 in May. 31:48 If you go to drivechain.info slash literature and you scroll to the very bottom. 31:54 I gave a long presentation about this idea of the sidechains attacking each other and affecting each other. 32:00 And this is partly why the several overlapping reasons why the miners should be in charge of the sidechain drop ad and the withdrawal, 32:10 because they will then if there are sidechains that attack other chains, then the miners will have to weigh that against any benefit that chain adds to the rest of the Bitcoin community. 32:24 They should optimize the whole thing. But there's no sense in which they are like led into any kind of disaster or something. 32:32 It's all just conditional payments to mine like miners get five dollars if something happens. 32:36 So the MEV thing, I think it's just giant. It's the timeline is like we made an Ethereum sidechain and then Ethereum talked about Mav. 32:43 So then people thought, oh, that will bring Mav to Bitcoin. But it's it's only bringing Mav to the Ethereum sidechain. 32:50 Yeah, but my my my side question was related to to in Bitcoin space, you have things that come and go. 32:58 You have discussions that come and go and we don't take immediate action. 33:03 Yes. And discussions take two, three, four years. 33:06 And the right thing has been running since long. Yes. 33:09 In the space as a discussion. Do you think this is a matter of time or do you think it's a matter of touch? 33:17 I think the discussion will will finish in a positive way. 33:25 Or do you think this. How are you feeling? 33:28 The discussion, because shortly, a few months ago, we have active the discussion again. 33:35 So what do you think it will eventually happen with this? 33:38 I think the long run they will it must eventually happen for because there's all kinds of different things that will eventually happen. 33:46 There will be the security budget issue in the very, very long run. 33:50 The miners will want to get paid instead of getting a diminishing amount of money that shrinks to zero. 33:57 They would want to have a growing amount of money that asymptotically approaches the infinities. 34:03 But that's one. The other one is that more people be more creative. 34:06 The more alt tech will be invented. 34:09 So there will be stuff that is actually good. 34:12 That's not just like aspirational. 34:14 They'll be like stuff that does what you might call. 34:17 They'll be like cool privacy tech. They'll be cool scaling tech. 34:20 They'll be able to school stuff like whatever zk-SNARK people invent. 34:23 Eventually, someone will invent something that's so new that it makes the zk-SNARK look like just a virtual tree or something. 34:31 People keep inventing new stuff. 34:33 I think also a lot of problems in Bitcoin like the cult problem will get worse. 34:38 The idea that it becomes this is mostly I think just North American Twitter. 34:42 But it's just like the idea that only a certain set of views is correct and everything else is just shrinking. 34:49 Ratchet turning that where it's basically saying eventually everyone will just get canceled. 34:56 It'd be like the political left. 34:58 People cancel themselves. 35:00 So that will become more intolerable. 35:02 I think also people will slowly add things like covenants or whatever. 35:09 They'll add OP_CAT or something. 35:11 And since all that you need for BIP300 is to count to 13,000, 35:16 someone will just eventually figure out how to do that in some kind of hacky roundabout way. 35:21 And at that point, it will just make no sense not to stop BIP300 35:25 because you'll just have an inefficient BIP300 that wastes a bunch of bytes 35:29 and probably memory and consumption and all kinds of other stuff. 35:33 There's many overlapping reasons why I think it will eventually happen. 35:40 I think it probably was a better idea in 2015. 35:43 I ignored it because we went with SegWit and we went with all in different directions. 35:47 So I was just going to find whatever. 35:49 And it seemed like we were doing fine. 35:51 The big question was how to deal with the large blockers. 35:54 And they forked off. 35:56 And they forked off and the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed. 35:59 And then, like, whatever, COVID happened and the government printed a bunch of money 36:02 and the price went up. 36:03 So all in all, things have gone just fine. 36:06 That's why I neglected to push the idea more actively until recently. 36:12 But that's my kind of rambling answer. 36:16 Thank you, Paul. 36:19 I have one question. 36:22 Do you think it's because I read and I listened to many people just shouting against BIP300 36:31 and also understood that the miners are able to implement this as a soft fork. 36:41 Correct me, I'm not a technical guy. 36:43 Yes, that's correct. 36:45 Is it possible for Drivechain just to be implemented with a soft fork? 36:51 If you oppose, there is nothing you can do. 36:54 Because from my understanding, no one can oppose Rusto. 36:59 Because it is happening outside. 37:01 And a miner is choosing to mine. 37:05 You are correct. 37:07 There's no sense in which someone could stop the miner-activated soft fork of BIP300. 37:12 Except in the very narrow, exceptional sense that they could try to stop anyone from using Bitcoin. 37:20 They could blacklist a certain UTXO or something. 37:23 But you'd be playing cat and mouse if you did that. 37:26 And ultimately, the winners would be... 37:30 You'd either have to remove proof of work from Bitcoin or something else. 37:34 Something equally as drastic. 37:35 So basically, the answer is that yes, miners could activate at any time. 37:39 And something weird that I would like to stress is that we could actually have Drivechains with no soft fork. 37:45 It would just be that... 37:47 Because the soft fork is to keep the miners on a short leash. 37:51 But you could do it as a kind of just handshake deal with the miners today. 37:57 The miners could all just agree. 37:58 Okay, we will follow these rules. 38:00 There's no code enforcing it, necessarily. 38:04 So any miners... 38:07 They don't have to run the 13,000 count. 38:09 They don't have to do the three-month slow withdrawal. 38:13 But you would have something that works immediately. 38:16 But that would actually be not very good. 38:17 Because it involves much more trust among all the participants. 38:21 And much more likelihood that someone will get stolen from. 38:24 So these are all bad things. 38:26 And that's why we want BIP300 to constrain the miners. 38:29 That's the goal. 38:31 We don't necessarily even need the soft fork. 38:35 We need it per se, but there's no reason not to pursue it. 38:38 The modern hatred of the soft fork is very irrational. 38:42 And I think must come to an end. 38:44 Because it's just this bizarre situation. 38:46 Where the soft fork is this great invention. 38:49 Where only the people who want to use it. 38:52 There should be some various miners. 38:54 And a few miners and a few users. 38:57 Like 55% of miners and a few users who want to opt in. 39:00 Those are the only ones who must upgrade. 39:03 And so this is a very voluntarist, useful institution. 39:08 And it was unfortunately ruined partially by SegWit being a block size increase. 39:12 Being a mandatory block size increase, I think. 39:16 Okay, I have to go for now. 39:18 But I'll be back. 39:20 Hey guys, I managed to come back for now. 39:22 For just a little more time, I think. 39:24 But anyway. 39:26 What's this about Moonsettler saying. 39:28 What is this about? 39:30 Increasing profitability with increasing share of hash rate. 39:34 That's no more true of the sidechains than it would be of reorg risk on L1. 39:40 Their argument around that was that actually it is different. 39:45 And I'm not sure which is better, actually. 39:50 But if you would reorg. 39:53 So let's say that you would have to reorg L1. 39:56 To replace a sidechain block. 39:59 By replacing the bid. 40:01 That would mean the person who made the bid is actually getting their coins back. 40:05 Because that transaction would be invalid. 40:08 And basically it did not happen. 40:10 So it would actually risk the Blind Merged Mining operation for non-mining pools. 40:16 But we probably don't. 40:19 I think both Bitcoiners are not too keen on having L1 reorgs duke out this kind of stuff. 40:27 So I don't think most people would prefer that. 40:30 But that would be one solution to the issue at hand. 40:34 Yeah, but what is the issue though? 40:37 The issue is that someone... 40:40 Did you read the article by the way? 40:42 Yes. 40:43 He doesn't have real thoughts. 40:45 You don't understand. 40:46 At the bottom of the piece, he starts with a blank piece of paper. 40:49 And he writes, therefore Drivechain is a bad idea. 40:51 And then he just tries to connect. 40:54 And try to connect. 40:56 All of it is really legitimate. 40:59 Why don't you go ahead and say whatever you think it is that he came up with. 41:03 Yeah, so the entire reason I even came up in this space is just to share and mention that post that I made. 41:12 I tried to share it, but I did not see it. 41:15 I don't see the nest, so I shared it three times. 41:18 Anyhow. 41:19 I just shared the Bitcoin Magazine article that you were talking about a couple of minutes ago from Shinobi. 41:27 Yeah. 41:28 So what I wanted to say... 41:30 But you know that each time I give a huge reply though. 41:33 It's in my Twitter highlights. 41:35 Yeah, yeah. 41:36 So what I wanted to say... 41:38 What I came up here to say is that I feel you are making a really bad job of... 41:45 I'm not saying steelmanning, but just representing the gist of the critique. 41:49 Yes, what is it then? 41:51 What is the critique then? 41:52 Why don't you tell me? 41:53 Critique? 41:54 It's in the post. 41:56 That line there. 41:57 Yeah, but in what way does someone with more hash rate become more profitable? 42:02 Because they decrease the risk. 42:05 First of all, they really don't have to bid in the mempool. 42:10 So they lower the risk by not bidding in the mempool. 42:13 And they also decrease the risk of getting their sidechains... 42:17 No, but I think, again, this is a big... 42:19 The Blind Merged Mining is only supposed to happen when the full node is very expensive. 42:23 So it's just a partnership. 42:25 It's just if the miner chooses to partner with a full node that they don't run themselves, 42:29 it just makes that trustless and private. 42:32 It doesn't change anything else. 42:34 Yeah. 42:35 So the other part of this that Shinobi was more focused on... 42:38 Yeah, but what was the first part? 42:40 The first part was this. 42:42 Simply this. 42:43 If there is significant MEB, if there is a lot of money, like multiple times of what is Bitcoin's subsidy 42:48 and their one fee revenue, multiple times of that, 10 times, 100 times, whatever, 42:52 coming in total from sidechains. 42:55 Right, yes. 42:56 So when you have that situation, let's say, because that would be like the desirable outcome in some way. 43:02 So if someone is very bullish on Drivechains, someone wants Drivechains to solve this, 43:06 then that is their ideal scenario, that Drivechains are very successful and a lot of this. 43:12 Right, yes. 43:15 So in that case, it is absolutely very significant how much risk someone exposes themselves in prime merge mining. 43:23 And the whole vertical integration and centralization arguments is trying to highlight that this can actually... 43:30 This changes the deal that we have with mining pools right now, 43:33 where with the size of the mining pool, you only have decreased variance. 43:37 That's the only thing you have. 43:39 And it's diminishing returns. 43:42 Yes, because there's also a dis-economy of scale, which is the block withholding. 43:48 I'm not sure if you're totally familiar. 43:53 You are breaking up, Paul, I'm sorry. 43:57 I'm not hearing you. 44:01 Do you guys hear, Paul? 44:02 No, maybe he's standing. 44:04 I don't know if I can do anything differently about whatever this is. 44:07 No, we can listen to you. 44:11 You are all trained, so it's probably normal. 44:13 I think we just have to deal with this. 44:15 All right, so the point is... 44:17 Yes, but the pools have economies and dis-economies of scale. 44:20 And right now, there are various sizes. 44:23 Some are big, some are small. 44:25 Almost none of them are less than 2%. 44:28 That's the current size. 44:30 The point is, if you introduce a dynamic where, 44:33 by derisking the Blind Merged Mining activity, 44:37 you can actually create significant differences in revenue per tera hash 44:44 with the pool sizes. 44:46 And that's bad for Bitcoin. 44:47 No, but why? 44:48 Why is that different? 44:51 What do you mean, why is it different? 44:54 You just take the Blind Merged Mining revenues 44:57 and just imagine that they're L1 fees. 45:00 It's one L1 fee that pays a huge amount 45:02 versus everyone paying slightly more. 45:04 So if everyone pays slightly more L1 fees, then... 45:07 This is the point. 45:09 There is no bidding in the man pool after a while 45:12 because it's economically ruinous. 45:14 And that's the point with the vertical integration 45:17 and economy of scale argument, 45:19 is that it will simply not happen. 45:21 And at that point, the small pools are just completely fucked. 45:24 They are raking in like fifth or tenth or hundredth of the revenue 45:28 than the big pools are per tera hash. 45:30 And that's game over. 45:32 No, but why? 45:33 Why are they raking in a different amount of money? 45:37 No, what do you mean? 45:38 Why do you keep saying yes? 45:40 You haven't actually explained anything. 45:42 I'm saying yes because by asking that question, 45:45 it answers my real question. 45:47 I was curious if you understand these arguments. 45:50 Basically, that's my main question. 45:53 And if you are saying you don't understand them... 45:56 You don't understand them. 45:58 Listen, what you're saying is yes. 46:01 So what you're saying is vertical integration means that... 46:07 I don't even know what you're saying. 46:09 But I know what you're saying is he is misunderstanding 46:12 the reorg risk would be discounted. 46:16 I'm saying that after a while, 46:19 if this dynamic that has been outlined there is going on, 46:23 after a while there simply will be 46:25 no not vertically integrated sidechain block finder 46:28 because they will go bankrupt. 46:30 And after that... 46:32 Are you saying... 46:34 Can you just say whether or not you believe 46:37 everyone will use 301 or not? 46:42 What do you mean everyone? 46:44 What do you mean? 46:46 When you say vertically integrated, 46:48 you mean they are not using BIP301. 46:50 They're running nodes of everything. 46:53 They can technically use it, 46:55 but they will not be in the mempool. 46:58 Because there is a difference. 47:00 There is a difference. 47:02 Paul, there is a difference. 47:04 If you bid with the mempool, 47:06 but what you find... 47:08 BIP301 does not require anything to be in the mempool. 47:12 Yes, that's the point. 47:14 That's the point. 47:16 Yes, but why do you say if then? 47:18 It makes no difference. 47:20 Okay, so when, by the time 47:22 the vertical integration happens, 47:24 it will not be in the mempool. 47:26 There will be no significant bids in the mempool. 47:28 That means small miners 47:30 either run the sidechain nodes 47:32 or they don't get that revenue, basically. 47:34 And even if they try to get that revenue, 47:36 they have enormous reorg risks 47:38 compared to the big players 47:40 who find blocks much more often 47:42 and can secure that. 47:44 No, this is why it's a contradiction now. 47:46 Why? 47:47 You understand that when you say 47:49 the small miners are at a disadvantage, 47:51 that's only because 47:53 they must run 47:55 a sidechain node. 47:57 But BIP301 allows them to escape. 48:00 It only allows them to escape 48:03 when the bidding happens in the mempool. 48:05 That's the only scenario. 48:07 The problem with running a sidechain node 48:09 is that it will only provide 48:11 50th of the miner extractable value 48:13 by collecting the fees. 48:15 No, that's not true. That's not true at all. 48:17 No, that's correct. 48:19 No, wrong. 48:21 How can you, 48:23 you're such a smart guy, 48:25 and yet you fall for all this BS. 48:27 It's so obviously false. 48:29 You don't really understand. 48:31 I know you disagree on that. 48:33 On the other hand... 48:35 But why do I disagree? 48:37 I don't disagree because 48:39 I understand the argument, 48:41 and I don't necessarily see it happening, 48:43 but I understand the argument that there is 48:45 literally no upper bound in the competition 48:47 required to extract the maximum MEV. 48:49 There is no upper bound on that. 48:51 In the protocol or in anything. 48:53 No, that has literally nothing to do with it at all. 48:55 There's literally nothing whatsoever to do with it. 48:57 But it has. 48:59 It has, because if you can't extract... 49:01 No, listen, let me just... 49:03 Could you please stop talking for a second 49:05 while I explain it to you? 49:07 If there's MEV on the sidechain, 49:09 then someone on the side... 49:11 This is what I explained to Alex B, 49:13 and this is why he deleted his space 49:15 in a humiliation, 49:17 but I have a copy of it. 49:19 If there's MEV on the sidechain, 49:21 someone will... 49:23 There's like a... 49:25 The searcher will optimize the block 49:27 not only for the L2 49:29 transaction fees, 49:31 but also for the MEV added value. 49:33 So say it's $5 worth of fees 49:35 and $2 worth of added value. 49:39 Are you following this so far? 49:41 Yes, but I would prefer 49:43 if you said $2 of fees 49:45 and $30 of added value. 49:49 What difference does it make? 49:51 What did you prefer to see? 49:53 It makes a difference, 49:55 because running the sidechain node 49:57 will give you $2, 49:59 and running a fucking huge map searcher 50:01 will give you $20. 50:01 Okay, fine. That's exactly what doesn't matter at all. So this is when you say stuff like that, that's when I know that you didn't read any of the stuff. You didn't even read BIP301. You didn't read the post. 50:13 The person who bids in the mempool will pay $20, so they'll pay $19.9. That person will have nothing to do with L1 BTC or Bitcoin Full Node at all. 50:25 From the point of view of the miners, it won't make any difference if it comes from MEV or from L1 transaction fees. None whatsoever. 50:32 You are back to bidding in the mempool. We just left that word in the argument before, and you are back to bidding in the mempool. 50:40 But we are talking in a vertically integrated world where those that run the sidechain node, small miners, are getting $2 per block, and those that run the MEV searcher are getting $20. 50:51 No, absolutely not. How can you say that? Why do you keep repeating that when it's not true at all? 50:57 Because this is my understanding. I could be wrong. 51:00 Yes, you are wrong. Now let me explain something else. The issue of whether or not they choose to run the sidechain node, which in my view includes the MEV. 51:11 Just say every sidechain node is an MEV node. Just assume that's the case. It makes no difference. 51:17 Now, when you say the vertically integrated world versus the non-vertically integrated world, if you are playing rock, paper, scissors, and one of them is paper and the other is rock, you can switch back and forth however you like until the cows come home. 51:32 So it makes no difference if the argument is built on one or the other because the miner can just flip-flop whenever they like. 51:40 So if the sidechain node is producing enormous profits that exceed revenues, if they do that, then it makes no difference. 51:51 Can you guys give me a second? I'm sorry about that. 51:55 Yes. So the sidechain, it's like it doesn't matter if the person who is bidding in the mempool in the 301 world, they run basically a different version of a sidechain node that collects more fees. 52:13 Okay, Paul. 52:17 I know, but this is what you don't seem to understand. 52:22 Either the cost is low, in which case it makes no difference if the miner runs it or not, or it's high, in which case some of the smaller miners will start to shirk it by just partnering with a node that already exists. 52:37 So it's only the small miners that will use 301. 52:41 If the argument about the reorg risk is also wrong, though, because there's no additional reorg risk if you are a small pool any more than there is with regular Bitcoin Core today. 53:00 If there was, though, it wouldn't even make any difference. None of this makes any difference at all. 53:05 So for example, the bidding in the L1 mempool, if you bid up to, let's say you only bid half of the value of the block, this will lead to decreased revenues for everyone using 301, and then they will try to figure out a way of stopping that from happening. 53:26 But even if they didn't, and even if none of that mattered, all they would mean ultimately is that all the pools, we live in a world where there are 25% pools instead, or pools of some different shape or size, and none of that makes any difference either. 53:39 It's because of pools. 53:41 So what's the cheapest move, Paul? What's the cheapest move for a small miner that does not get that sweet sidechain revenue? 53:49 Join the 5% pool. 53:51 Join, join. 53:53 A small miner is doomed without a pool anyway, so we should be very grateful that pools exist, because otherwise it would be impossible to have small miners. 54:03 So this is just another restatement of that, so it's irrelevant in that way as well. It's just completely irrelevant in five different ways. This makes absolutely no difference. 54:12 You're making logical jumps, Paul, and then you can come to the conclusion that it's irrelevant, but no. You are ignoring the core arguments, I believe. 54:22 And it's okay. It's completely fine if you don't understand each other. That just means we have to talk more. 54:28 No, I understand them all. 54:30 I'm not sure, because you are saying things that this is irrelevant, that won't happen, that just don't make sense to me. 54:38 What difference would it even make if everyone had to join a 5% pool that's already the world that we live in? 54:46 So even if all this, everything you said, none of which is really true, but even if it was, it wouldn't make any difference. 54:55 Okay. Anyhow, my main point was basically that this is a better representation. What I wrote is a better representation of the opposing arguments than what you said in the beginning. 55:08 I listened to it. So that was my main argument. 55:11 How about this? I can explain it like this in a different way. Let's say the miners partner with an L2 full node in some way other than BIP301, such that someone gets a reward, they get a payment on L2, not in the L1 mempool. 55:34 But it's just based on, because the whole point of, the whole point, it's so hard to even know where to begin, because none of it makes any difference anyway. 55:44 Because the whole reason I invented Blind Merged Mining, which I think I regret at this point, because it just gives more fuel to the hopelessly confused people out there. 55:53 So I think, because the whole problem isn't real anyway, because it doesn't matter what the miners, first of all, it doesn't matter what miners' fixed costs are, because if their fixed costs rise, then the difficulty adjustment will just decrease. 56:06 But it also doesn't matter because every miner shirks the fixed costs. They shirk the node costs. They have one node that does all the work for everyone, which there's nothing bad about that at all. 56:16 It's a superstitious belief that there's something bad about that. 56:19 And then the belief that the sidechain node costs can rise and become significant is also false. 56:26 It's just not possible, because plenty of regular users must be running the sidechain node for free, people who aren't mining at all. 56:34 So the whole thing is like... 56:36 I agree with most of that, Paul. 56:38 It's all just nonsense. 56:41 I agree with most of what you said, but the one thing that I just don't understand how you can come to this jump, this reach, is the assumption that there is no significant difference in cost to running a sidechain node and to find the maximum MEV, especially when we are talking about weird stuff like cross-domain MEV. 57:04 I agree with you that we have a pretty significant disagreement there. 57:07 The cost is not relevant, though. 57:10 This is why I asked Alex to write down a numeric example. 57:16 And that's why I'm going to ask you to do the same thing. 57:18 Just write it down on a piece of paper. 57:19 The sidechain is going to pay $100 in fees. 57:22 And if you pay... 57:24 The sidechain node costs $3, so it's $97. 57:28 But if you run a more expensive node that costs another $40, then you can collect another $3,000 in fees. 57:37 So it's whatever that is. 57:40 $2,960 plus $37. 57:44 So it's $3,007 or whatever. 57:48 I don't know. 57:49 Don't do math live on a recorded space. 57:51 So now it's... 57:53 That number... 57:55 It doesn't even matter. 57:56 You see what I mean? 57:57 This is a palace affair. 57:58 It has nothing to do with L1. 58:00 On L1, they'll bid up to $3,699. 58:04 And no one will know. 58:06 No one will know if it came from MEV or something else. 58:09 So, basically... 58:11 Again, I believe this is where the main disagreement is. 58:14 Some people say that the expertise that is required for extracting a significant amount of MEV and the computational upper bound... 58:24 By the way, this is a very different computation than it is required for hashing for Bitcoin. 58:29 Of course. 58:30 But again, it has nothing to do. 58:32 Less dense physically and have different properties. 58:35 So even more prone to centralization than Bitcoin mining. 58:38 Because miners are getting pretty good at packing miners into containers and shipping them into remote locations. 58:45 Let's say that in order to do the MEV, you have to cut off your own legs. 58:50 So it doesn't matter how expensive it is. 58:53 Yeah, so the point is... 58:54 I feel this is some disconnect. 58:56 People are saying that this expertise and this computational power that is pretty much unbound by the protocol that can be required for this. 59:06 They are saying this is a centralizing effect and will affect miner decentralization. 59:11 Right, but it won't though. 59:13 Yeah, you are saying this is complete nonsense and it's not even worth entertaining and they are wrong. 59:19 But I don't think they understand your reason for saying that and I'm not sure that you understand their reason for saying that. 59:27 So this is a weird situation. 59:29 There is no sense in which you can gain more money by running the searcher as an L1 miner versus as the sidechain BIP301 bidder person. 59:42 But you can accept that it's possible that it will have a cutoff limit for these in computation and cost and infrastructure. 59:52 Yes, but that has nothing to do with it though. 59:56 No, no, no, but I told you it doesn't matter if you have to cut off your legs to do it. 1:00:01 It doesn't matter how expensive it is because the L1 miners aren't paying. 1:00:04 The L1 miner pays nothing. 1:00:06 They don't even pay the sidechain full node costs in 301. 1:00:10 And 301 only applies if the costs are significant anyway. 1:00:13 If the costs are insignificant then it's a moot point and it makes no difference who pays because no one cares. 1:00:18 I wish I could understand what you mean by this sentence. 1:00:24 I don't understand what you mean by it. 1:00:26 You just wipe things off the table basically. 1:00:29 That's what happens. 1:00:31 But you have to write an example and you have to follow the BIP301 logic. 1:00:35 You understand the person who's bidding, the person who's bidding, they are someone on L1 who has their own sidechain node. 1:00:44 Maybe they don't show it to anyone else in the whole world. 1:00:47 They only show it to two or three other people. 1:00:49 The L1 miners never see it. 1:00:52 On 301 they bid in the L1 mempool and they say put this hash in this certain spot and we will pay you. 1:01:03 I, the sidechain Simon, the sidechain full node, pays Mary, I will pay you $3006. 1:01:11 And the miner has no idea what's going on in the sidechain. 1:01:15 That's why it's called Blind Merged Mining. 1:01:17 So they have no idea. 1:01:19 They just know the hash. 1:01:20 And they say okay, someone is bidding $47 to put this hash in for sidechain slot 3 and someone is bidding $3006. 1:01:28 This bid is not atomic with a payout. 1:01:32 We already talked about this. 1:01:34 This bid is a very risky thing. 1:01:36 It's not atomic with a payout. 1:01:38 The key is it has risks. 1:01:42 But those risks are already, those are inherent to, it has no US dollar purchasing power risk. 1:01:49 So the sidechain is paying, maybe the sidechain is paying 8 Bitcoin. 1:01:54 But because it's a sidechain that reorgs frequently or because it's a sidechain where the withdrawal is very slow, 1:02:02 that 8 Bitcoin is only worth $3,000. 1:02:06 But it has an objective value because these are new coinbase transactions and not L2 transactions. 1:02:12 So maybe if it was 8 L2 they would be worth like $36,000 each or something. 1:02:17 I think we should take the mod to the Friday Drivechain space if it's okay with you. 1:02:22 Because I'm afraid we will lose. 1:02:23 We will lose a lot of people if this continues. 1:02:26 And I really want to understand you. 1:02:28 There are the highlights and find where I reply to Tidwell and then I have four slides with happy faces. 1:02:33 And then maybe that will help. 1:02:35 Yeah, we will definitely talk about that because I have something to say about it. 1:02:39 All right. 1:02:40 Okay, great. 1:02:41 Guys, I also have to go again in about 10 or 12 minutes. 1:02:45 So yes, I would love to. 1:02:48 Don't worry. 1:02:49 We've been like, I think, two hours already. 1:02:52 I will leave only if you have any questions. 1:02:55 Let's try to get some cool questions. 1:02:57 If someone has any like really new question or whatever or something, then we'll see if we can get anyone. 1:03:03 Yes, hello. 1:03:07 He is muted. 1:03:08 Oh, there we go. 1:03:09 Yes, hello. 1:03:10 When it comes to running a public company, how do you guys feel about marketing this to people? 1:03:14 Because so far, the reception I've seen from the boardroom has been not very positive. 1:03:18 People aren't really receptive. 1:03:20 I'm wondering, how do you guys going forward? 1:03:23 I know it's a matter of mining and it's a large global enterprise, but what's the plan? 1:03:28 I think I don't actually want everyone to understand it. 1:03:30 So I have LayerTwoLabs.com slash friends list, which is like many of the top people over there still. 1:03:39 Sorry, I didn't understand what you said. 1:03:41 Henry from BlockFi, is he still over there? 1:03:44 Yes. 1:03:45 Hell yeah, Henry's a good friend of mine. 1:03:47 We go way back. 1:03:48 Yeah, he's very nice. 1:03:51 He made the list, actually. 1:03:52 He started that list. 1:03:53 So that was his idea and his project. 1:03:56 So I think a lot of people, I've actually seen this before many times. 1:04:00 Like I remember in 2013 when Peter Todd was hated by everyone for supporting small blocks. 1:04:04 And then like people came around to his point of view. 1:04:06 And then like Jeremy Rubin, everyone hated him a year ago, two years ago. 1:04:10 Now everyone likes CTV. 1:04:12 So a lot of this is just, if you meet people in person, they're very supportive usually. 1:04:18 I mean, I get invited and people even pay for me to come and speak at their meetup. 1:04:22 And I get invited to spaces like this all the time. 1:04:24 You heard that they're trying to get me to come to LaBitConf. 1:04:27 So it's true, there's a few people on Twitter who don't like it. 1:04:34 You have to do what's best for most people most of the time. 1:04:38 And there's really no possibility ever of doing something that will please literally 100% of the people all the time. 1:04:45 Especially if they don't read the BIPs or download the test software or make any kind of real attempt to understand what they're talking about. 1:04:52 And especially in this particular industry where lots of people gain or lose money as a result of which investments pay off or become popular or something like that. 1:05:02 So I think it hasn't been going great. 1:05:04 I did make some changes as a CEO and probably those were... 1:05:09 Being CEO is tough. 1:05:12 Yes, it is tough. 1:05:14 And you have to take responsibility for everything, even when it's other people who are disappointing you. 1:05:20 But it's just, it gets tough. 1:05:22 There's going to be tribulations, the kind of thing where as you receive some kind of pushback, what would you say? 1:05:28 If you wanted to be, I know you're not a salesman. 1:05:31 I know that's not the attempt here. I get it. 1:05:33 True, I'm not. 1:05:34 That doesn't make me understand. 1:05:36 Like why would I want to change Bitcoin? 1:05:39 Yeah, I think partly there is no real... 1:05:42 The idea of changing Bitcoin, it's partly true because of the soft fork, but it's also partly false because of the soft fork. 1:05:48 Because nothing that your existing node is doing today will change at all as a result of BIP300 activating. 1:05:56 It's just an improvement, that's all? 1:05:58 It's more than that. 1:05:59 You don't even have to upgrade your software and it will do exactly what it was doing before. 1:06:03 So every time you are sent money, it will measure confirmations for you and it will check signatures and it will check the box size limit. 1:06:11 It will check all these things for you. 1:06:13 So it's not as much of a change, but I do think that I was ready for this to some extent. 1:06:19 There's some things that don't bother me at all. 1:06:22 So like when the critique is completely false, it's weird. 1:06:25 See, I like Moon Settler so much that I get very agitated when he falls for this weird misdirection or just something that people don't really care about the truth. 1:06:36 And they, like Alex B or whatever, has just made something up and now people trip over it for months later. 1:06:41 But what doesn't bother me at all is when people would say, oh, this is bringing shitcoins to Bitcoin or something. 1:06:47 People clearly don't get it at all. 1:06:50 Then I just think they weren't paying attention before. 1:06:53 Now I have their attention. 1:06:55 They aren't right, but they'll figure it out. 1:06:58 Eventually, it will be very obvious as this idea has already been proved. 1:07:04 You sound like a Litecoin guy when you say it like that. 1:07:07 Eventually, they'll see it. 1:07:09 Let me explain what I mean by that because what I mean is the technology will be tried on other things like tried on altcoins or tried on Litecoin. 1:07:18 There's a million of them. 1:07:21 Eventually, people will learn, even if they just want to do a critique or if they just want to – they'll have to learn something about it. 1:07:29 And then they'll see that there really is no Zcash, the altcoin on Litecoin. 1:07:34 It's just Litecoin now has private addresses where you hide this under the receiver in the amount. 1:07:39 And they'll see that nothing bad is happening. 1:07:41 Nothing else is happening as a result. 1:07:43 So they'll eventually learn all about all of that. 1:07:46 So that's why – that type of thing is inevitable. 1:07:51 So many of the errors are easier to correct. 1:07:53 It's just a matter of time. 1:07:55 But, yeah, it's difficult. 1:07:57 I think, though, it has been going pretty well, to be honest with you. 1:08:01 What you can actually do is you could say – you can go back six months. 1:08:06 You can go back six months and ask yourself something like, how many people were talking about this idea at all? 1:08:12 And then it was like maybe 95% negative, 5% positive. 1:08:18 But then now it's probably like 80% negative, 20% positive. 1:08:22 And if you actually just plot it on a line graph, I actually think that it's only a matter of a few more months, to be honest with you. 1:08:31 Sorry, I didn't quite hear what you said. 1:08:33 War of tradition? Is that out of the art of war? 1:08:35 What makes you – 1:08:36 Oh, yeah, war of attrition. 1:08:38 I think it is just – I'm not sure how I would describe it. 1:08:43 But I would say that it is – it's just a matter – it's like a matter of just continuing to explain why the idea is good. 1:08:55 As I mentioned in the first half, there's a sense in which new stuff will be invented all the time, new covenants and new other ways in which counting the 13,000 will be invented. 1:09:06 New altcoin tech is invented. 1:09:09 Miners will get greedier and want more fees, and their desire for fees will increase. 1:09:15 So I think it is an inevitability. 1:09:18 For me, it's a long-term thing. 1:09:20 I look at it like, why would I introduce something that I don't understand for a slight short-term gain when I know everybody is looking long-term? 1:09:28 I agree. I 100% agree with that, which is part of why it has moved so slowly over the last eight years. 1:09:34 Weirdly, though, it's only by pushing for it aggressively that now people have actually decided to learn about it. 1:09:39 So that's bizarre. 1:09:40 But another thing I would say is even though I agree with what you're saying, the implication is not very good because the implication is no one in Bitcoin will be able to do anything unless everyone in the world understands that thing. 1:09:55 And that just means we're only going to be able to do a very small percent, the most unremarkable percent of all the things that are worth doing. 1:10:03 I disagree. I like it as a secret club. 1:10:05 When I talk to people in the world they don't understand, I like it. 1:10:08 I don't recoil or say, you must take this orange pill. 1:10:11 My name is Morpheus. 1:10:12 The first movie. 1:10:13 The third movie. 1:10:14 It doesn't work. 1:10:17 It's a secret club, and we better get used to that. 1:10:20 That's how it's going to be. 1:10:23 All right. 1:10:24 Anyway, guys, I have to go very soon. 1:10:26 So maybe the last question for today. 1:10:29 And then come on Friday if you wish. 1:10:32 Yes. 1:10:33 Remember, everyone, on Friday, LayerTwo Labs. 1:10:37 That's the name of the account, Paul. 1:10:40 Yes, that's right. 1:10:42 You have a place every Friday to talk about Bitcoin 300 and Drivechains. 1:10:48 So I've been there. 1:10:49 I'm a fan of that spaces. 1:10:51 So please, everyone that is listening to this want to go deeper and to discuss about this with Paul. 1:10:59 He's normally there. 1:11:00 So Friday, I think. 1:11:01 What time is it in Europe on Friday? 1:11:05 Normally? 1:11:06 It's 1 o'clock in Argentina normally, but midday. 1:11:13 Anyway, it's on Friday. 1:11:16 Breaking up a little bit. 1:11:18 Don't worry. 1:11:21 Don't worry, Paul. 1:11:23 I think Moon Settler has his hand raised, so maybe he wants to do a last question. 1:11:33 I just want to ask Paul how he sees this, because it appears to me that there is some wider consensus on that sidechains will be a reality. 1:11:44 Of course, there is a huge disappointment in what we have accomplished so far. 1:11:49 There is some lash back from the early enthusiasm. 1:11:52 But basically, the two philosophies that seem to be battling here is that miners should get the fees from the sidechains versus miners should not get the fees from the sidechains. 1:12:05 That's kind of how the directions seem to be boiling down. 1:12:09 What do you think about it? 1:12:11 I think that's correct. 1:12:13 I agree that is the basic dichotomy. 1:12:16 I think ultimately it's going to be very important for the miners to get the fees because of the difficulty adjustments, but also it's because the miners are the ones who can censor any message from the chain. 1:12:33 As a result, they are the ones who ultimately control what the contents of the blockchain are, and so that's why the fees are important. 1:12:46 Okay, I think maybe you are, I don't know if you're still in the train or whatever, Paul, don't worry. 1:12:53 It was almost like the speaker just waiting for Paul to start speaking. 1:13:01 We are more than two hours and 20 minutes since we started. 1:13:05 So again, Paul, thank you for your time. 1:13:08 Thanks for inviting me, guys. 1:13:10 Invite me again. 1:13:11 It'll be fun. 1:13:12 Come on Friday. 1:13:13 See you. 1:13:14 Yes. 1:13:15 Bye bye. 1:13:16 Thank you. 1:13:17 So bye everyone. 1:13:18 Thank you for joining this space. 1:13:20 Normally we have these spaces on Tuesday. 1:13:24 This has been by far our longest Twitter space in English. 1:13:29 So please join us next Tuesday on these talks with Zato. 1:13:34 Actually, we had one last question that I didn't ask to Paul, but this is a question that we will keep so we can do another space with Paul. 1:13:43 So thank you all for joining.