0:01 Hello, and welcome to Drivechain Twitter Spaces. 0:04 Today is Monday, March 20th, 2023. 0:11 This is Henry at LayerTwo Labs. 0:13 I'm thrilled to have this conversation with all of you today, 0:18 those listening live on Twitter, 0:20 as well as those who listen on demand later. 0:24 Drivechain is picking up steam every day. 0:29 We are seven years into this epic quest 0:32 for peer-to-peer sidechains on Bitcoin. 0:39 The inspiration for Drivechain is so fascinating. 0:45 Drivechain would enable greater extensibility for Bitcoin. 0:49 It would enable other protocols to be built 0:52 on top of Bitcoin in a way that would internalize 0:55 to Bitcoin the value created on those other protocols. 1:00 So instead of a new protocol being an altcoin, 1:04 which competes existentially 1:06 for monetary premium against Bitcoin, 1:09 the other blockchain would be a merged-mined sidechain 1:12 of Bitcoin with a miner-controlled two-way peg, 1:17 meaning that demand for the token of the sidechain 1:22 is demand for Bitcoin, 1:24 and fees paid on the sidechain 1:26 are fees paid to Bitcoin miners. 1:31 So what Drivechain's all about is enabling Bitcoin 1:35 to be a multi-chain system 1:39 in which there is a base layer 1:42 where BTC is the native asset, 1:46 and then there are a multitude of sidechains 1:50 where synthetic Bitcoin is the asset, 1:54 the primary asset, 1:56 and all of the demand for the sidechain token 2:00 is indirectly demand for Bitcoin. 2:03 So the vision, in its most optimistic sense, 2:09 is a vision that all of the altcoins 2:12 could be instead sidechains of Bitcoin, 2:16 and this vision would have Bitcoin 2:21 without competition as an L1, 2:24 and this vision, in its most optimistic sense, 2:28 would include an extraordinary high amount of fees 2:33 paid to the Bitcoin miners forever from fees, 2:37 and a huge market cap for Bitcoin, 2:40 and imagine if all the altcoin users were Bitcoiners, 2:44 were using Bitcoin as their layer one 2:47 to support their sidechain, 2:49 then they would all be supporting Bitcoin 2:51 politically and socially and economically, 2:54 and the whole crypto community would be united on Bitcoin. 2:58 That's the Drivechain vision, 2:59 and I think if Drivechain were adopted, 3:02 then some degree of that vision would be realized, 3:07 maybe 5%, maybe 95%. 3:10 We don't know unless we try it. 3:14 So there has been for many years now in Bitcoin, 3:16 since 2015, an ongoing interesting debate 3:20 about the merits of Drivechain, the pros and cons. 3:23 There definitely have been major misunderstandings 3:27 about Drivechain, and that has led to a lot of confusion 3:32 and dissent, skepticism, and criticism, 3:36 all of which has been thoroughly discussed and debunked, 3:39 I think, in the Drivechain literature, 3:42 which is at drivechain.info and elsewhere. 3:46 Drivechain.info is a great resource for Drivechain. 3:49 Another great one is Fiatjaf's website, 3:53 which is fiatjaf.com, and then you click on Bitcoin, 3:57 and then click on Drivechain, and then you'll see his essay. 4:00 Fiatjaf is the creator of Nostr, 4:03 and one of Drivechain's most vocal supporters. 4:08 He has written tweets like, 4:11 if we don't adopt Drivechain, 4:14 then all the work of thousands for the last 13 years 4:17 will have been in vain, 4:19 which implies Bitcoin might fail without Drivechain, 4:22 which is a view I personally sympathize with. 4:26 I think it's critical for Bitcoin to maintain 4:29 its market cap dominance and grow that dominance 4:33 and not allow its competitors to have a larger value, 4:37 to have a larger user base, 4:38 to have a larger economic presence, 4:42 to have a larger network effect. 4:45 All of those things are important 4:46 with respect to maintaining Bitcoin's narrative 4:49 of monetization, 4:51 its narrative of becoming the world's money, 4:53 becoming the platform for the world's blockchain activity. 4:59 So one of the ideas that we should relinquish 5:04 is this notion that blockchain is only good for money. 5:10 Instead, we should adopt Satoshi's view, 5:13 which is that blockchain can do a multitude of things, 5:17 and the market should decide, 5:21 and developers should have an open mind 5:23 about what the market may want, 5:26 and developers for Bitcoin should design, 5:30 should ensure that Bitcoin is designed in a way 5:33 that allows for people to do what they want with it. 5:36 Because if we're judgmental and officious and puritanical 5:42 about what Bitcoin should be and how it should be, 5:46 then other protocols will have a more permissive, 5:51 flexible design, and they will accrue value 5:54 because users will have to go to them for what they want. 5:59 So I think that the more capitalistic free market approach 6:04 is to have Bitcoin include extensibility 6:08 so that its higher layers can be used 6:11 in whatever way people want to use them, 6:14 and that way people don't have to leave Bitcoin 6:17 to do the things they want to do. 6:19 And what do they want to do? 6:21 They want to have blockchain-based, 6:26 peer-to-peer-inspired arrangements 6:29 for all kinds of applications, 6:31 like larger blocks for scaling, 6:36 complex code for privacy, 6:40 and perhaps name service, 6:44 and Oracle networks, 6:47 and other interesting applications. 6:50 In other words, the cypherpunk dream 6:52 of technology-based society, 6:56 moving more commerce and human activity to the blockchain, 7:02 and is one way to give people more options 7:07 that are more reliable and powerful 7:11 in the realm of technology, communication, and commerce. 7:14 So Bitcoin should enable all of that 7:16 and let the market decide. 7:18 So Drivechain's all about enabling a multitude 7:20 of sidechains on Bitcoin that are peer-to-peer, 7:23 miner control pegs. 7:24 It would be an interesting step forward for Bitcoin, 7:27 and perhaps something that would strengthen 7:31 Bitcoin's community in many ways at this moment. 7:40 Everyone is welcome to come on up and chat if you'd like. 7:46 We have these spaces twice a week on Mondays 7:49 and on Thursdays at 9.30 a.m. West Coast time. 7:54 I'm in Los Angeles, and it's my pleasure 7:57 to be a part of LayerTwo Labs and host these conversations. 8:02 I used to host them as a volunteer. 8:05 So I just did it as a volunteer, 8:08 and I found my way as a result of that to this company, 8:14 which is one of the parties 8:16 that is highly focused on Drivechains 8:20 and making Bitcoin more expressive, more interesting, 8:24 having more developers in Bitcoin, 8:27 not losing development and users to altcoins. 8:30 In case people are interested in just a summary 8:33 of what Drivechain's all about, 8:34 let me give my personal take. 8:36 Drivechain's about increasing the extensibility of Bitcoin, 8:40 increasing the things that people can build on Bitcoin. 8:43 It's all about innovation for Bitcoin, 8:46 and there are a bunch of interesting 8:48 secondary possible results from that. 8:51 So number one, what we know for sure 8:55 is that Drivechain is designed 8:58 to enable a miner control two-way peg 9:00 and blind merge mining. 9:02 So to put it in plain English, 9:05 Drivechain enables enhanced facilities 9:11 for Bitcoin sidechains. 9:13 Drivechain enables enhanced facilities 9:15 for Bitcoin sidechains. 9:16 It gives people more options 9:19 for how they wanna have their sidechain on Bitcoin. 9:23 But the profound economic consequences of that, 9:28 in my view, would be potentially 9:31 layer one ossification being achieved, 9:34 or at least, to put it more mildly, 9:37 a higher degree of potential ossification 9:40 might be achieved as a result of Drivechain, 9:43 because when you increase extensibility, 9:45 when you increase the extensibility of Bitcoin, 9:48 you therefore reduce the pressure 9:51 that the community experiences on an ongoing basis 9:55 to upgrade Bitcoin on layer one, 9:57 because you don't need to change layer one as much 10:00 if you can do more things on layer two. 10:02 So that is what ossification of layer one is all about, 10:05 and Drivechain would strengthen 10:08 Bitcoin's layer one ossification. 10:10 It wouldn't guarantee it for 1,000 years, 10:12 but it would strengthen it 10:14 in the view of Drivechain proponents. 10:17 Drivechain would also potentially increase the fee revenue 10:20 that layer one miners receive. 10:22 This is the security budget problem of Bitcoin, 10:25 that the fees are low, generally speaking, 10:29 in the view of some analysts, including me, 10:32 and Drivechain would aim to increase them, 10:38 which would solve the security budget problem. 10:41 Of course, one might point out, 10:42 well, Henry, the fees are going up lately 10:45 because of ordinals and inscriptions, 10:47 but I think that is not going to be a permanent feature 10:51 of Bitcoin's fee market, 10:53 and I think in a year from now, 10:55 we'll see fees back down to a dollar a transaction 10:59 and back down to half a million dollars a day in fees, 11:04 not much more. 11:06 Right now, we might be over a million dollars a day in fees, 11:09 but over the last five years, during many periods, 11:12 the fees weren't very high. 11:13 There's occasional spikes. 11:16 The whole fee market conversation is so interesting. 11:19 It is not the only inspiration for Drivechain, of course, 11:21 and back when Drivechain was conceived, 11:23 no one was even talking about the security budget problem. 11:27 Using the word security budget, 11:28 that term came into being in 2018 11:31 with a blog post by Jordan McKinney, 11:35 who naturally has become an Ethereum-focused developer 11:39 because of the security budget problem and other issues. 11:44 A lot of Bitcoiners have left Bitcoin 11:47 to create in the altcoin space 11:50 because of the lack of Drivechain, in my opinion. 11:54 So that's another inspiration for Drivechain. 11:56 It's all about keeping the Bitcoin community together 11:59 and avoiding hard forks and avoiding attrition. 12:02 So hard forks are a form of attrition, 12:05 but there can also simply be attrition 12:07 in the form of just total departure from Bitcoin 12:10 and building in a more expressive platform like Ethereum. 12:14 So what Bitcoin would do is enable expressive platforms 12:17 like Ethereum as sidechains. 12:19 In fact, there is a clone of Ethereum 12:21 in the Bitcoin testnet, 12:24 in the Bitcoin Drivechain testnet. 12:26 They have two clones. 12:27 One is of Zcash and the other is of Ethereum, 12:30 and people interested in details about that 12:33 should check it out and learn about it there. 12:35 You can download software. 12:36 You can run the node. 12:38 You can do all kinds of things 12:40 and join the Telegram group 12:41 where over 700 people have joined, 12:44 and there's active discussion every day. 12:47 Every day of the year, 12:48 people are chatting about Drivechain 12:50 on the Drivechain Telegram group. 12:51 It's free, it's public. 12:53 Join, learn, and listen, and participate. 12:57 You can go to the Telegram group 12:59 by going to drivechain.info 13:03 and then you click on Telegram, 13:05 and then it'll take you to the Telegram group. 13:08 You can use your name like I do, 13:09 or you can use a pseudonym like Satoshi did. 13:13 Either is fine. 13:15 You don't have to dox yourself that you're a DriveChainer. 13:19 Drivechain is a little bit controversial. 13:22 Some people in Bitcoin really don't like it. 13:25 Peter Todd doesn't like it. 13:27 Shinobi doesn't like it. 13:30 Many people do like it, though. 13:33 Many of the most notable Bitcoiners support Drivechain. 13:36 We've got Adam Back, we've got Fiatjaf, 13:40 and I personally made a list of a huge number of them, 13:45 like over 50 people who have tweeted 13:49 about Drivechain favorably to varying degrees of support. 13:53 We've got Adam Back saying on stage last year, 13:56 Drivechain, this is the founder and CEO of Blockstream, 13:59 co-founder and CEO. 14:01 Pretty cool, and arguably could have been more important 14:04 or useful than Taproot. 14:06 So that's a pretty good statement. 14:08 He also wrote props to Truthcoin and team 14:12 for implementing and validating Drivechain design. 14:15 So, wow, implementing and validating Drivechain design, 14:18 a pretty crystal clear note of support. 14:23 And then more recently, 14:25 he slightly increased the tone of his rhetoric. 14:29 I noted that. 14:30 He tweeted more recently, 14:32 we're probably going to need sidechains slash Drivechains 14:37 where we're going to onboard the next billion users soon. 14:44 So he's saying we need Drivechains soon. 14:49 Quite a statement. 14:52 So I look forward to seeing his rhetoric increase in nature. 14:57 Fiatjaf has written, Drivechain is our only hope. 15:02 We need Drivechain or all the work thousands 15:05 in the last 13 years will have been in vain. 15:09 So that is the creator of Nostr 15:12 who has endorsed Drivechain in those terms. 15:17 There also have been favorable comments 15:20 by people like Ruben Samson who wrote, 15:24 I would like to see Drivechains happen 15:26 and run it as an experiment and see how it goes. 15:30 Of course, with Ruben, I must be very respectful 15:34 to the context in which he said that quote. 15:37 And I don't want to be confusing anyone. 15:42 He has not stated that he supports Drivechain right now. 15:48 In the context of his whole statement, if you read it, 15:51 he basically is saying he thinks it's interesting 15:54 and he's not sure if it would work, 15:56 but he would like to see if the community supports it, 15:59 he would be very interested to see how it goes. 16:02 So he has what you could describe 16:04 as a neutral or favorable opinion. 16:07 I wouldn't call him a outright supporter 16:10 in the way that Fiatjaf or Adam Back 16:13 seem to be based on their statements. 16:16 And you can read a whole bunch of other people. 16:19 I've collected over 50 different people's tweets 16:22 and articles on Drivechain at the website, 16:26 drivechain.info forward slash friends. 16:30 So that's it, drivechain.info forward slash friends. 16:33 Some of the people in the audience here 16:35 will see their own statements in this list. 16:39 So anyone who tweets about Drivechain, 16:41 I'm gonna see it and I'm gonna put it on this list 16:44 if I like it. 16:45 So that's what happens. 16:47 And then, yeah, so just to kind of wrap up, 16:51 the summary, the way that you summarize Drivechain 16:55 says a lot about how you think about it 16:57 and what you think is at stake. 16:58 So some people would say Drivechain, 17:00 oh, it's not necessary, it's just no good, uninteresting, 17:04 but I see it profoundly important to Bitcoin 17:08 that Drivechain would increase Bitcoin extensibility, 17:12 meaning the ability to customize 17:14 and create on top of Bitcoin as a developer. 17:19 And that's what it's all about. 17:21 That's how Adam Back talks about it. 17:22 He just uses the word innovation and the word extensibility. 17:27 So it's all about making Bitcoin more interesting. 17:30 It's all about growing Bitcoin with high-tech new ideas 17:33 on these sidechains. 17:36 And the three or four consequences of doing that 17:40 that are so impactful potentially, 17:42 which I like to add to the discussion are, 17:45 once you get that innovation and extensibility, 17:48 what you will also get from Drivechain quite possibly is 17:51 layer one ossification, higher fees, 17:55 and migration of altcoin development 17:58 and users and value to Bitcoin, 18:01 meaning higher dominance for Bitcoin, 18:04 lower value for altcoins. 18:06 For example, suppose the Zcash users 18:10 were to completely migrate, 18:12 completely migrate from the Zcash altcoin 18:17 to the Zcash sidechain, hypothetically. 18:22 If they were to do that, 18:26 the value of the Zcash altcoin would approach zero 18:30 and the value of Bitcoin would be higher as a result. 18:36 There would be an increase in Bitcoin's value 18:38 and a complete devaluation of the altcoin. 18:42 The users would have left Zcash 18:44 and would have used a almost identical version of Zcash 18:49 as a Bitcoin sidechain. 18:50 And one of the benefits of this 18:51 is that the value of their token would be, 18:55 it would be a token which is a synthetic Bitcoin. 18:57 That's a phrase I use to describe 18:59 the native token on a Drivechain. 19:02 I don't think anyone else says it that way, 19:04 but a synthetic Bitcoin, 19:06 meaning it's redeemable for Bitcoin. 19:09 It trades at almost exactly Bitcoin's value all the time 19:14 and its fees are paid to Bitcoin's miners, 19:18 almost 100% of them. 19:21 And you're basically using 19:26 what could be described as like a Bitcoin economically, 19:30 even though technologically it is distinct from Bitcoin 19:33 in various interesting ways. 19:36 It has a different security model 19:39 and it has a different transaction fee market. 19:42 So there's a different block space, 19:45 but more or less the main benefit, 19:48 I think practically speaking is 19:50 someone who likes extreme privacy 19:52 and is using Zcash as a result of that 19:55 would quite possibly prefer to use Bitcoin. 19:59 As the unit of account, but with Zcash privacy. And that is the intent of the Zcash sidechain, 20:06 of the Zcash sidechain, the Drivechain called Zside. So it's very exciting. Maybe the whole 20:14 privacy community would get very into it. Because those are simply people who are, 20:19 as I understand, Bitcoiners who like strong privacy. They want the best possible privacy. 20:26 And getting extreme privacy with Bitcoin involves a user experience that 20:32 might be not as good as the user experience in Zcash. And Zcash is using the highest tech 20:40 privacy technology. So it'd be great for people to be able to use Bitcoin, but also Zcash at the 20:47 same time. And that's what the sidechains are all about. You're getting Bitcoin's economics 20:51 with the software of an altcoin. So that's what a Drivechain is. It's software that's 20:58 different than Bitcoin's layer one, but the unit of account trades one for one with Bitcoin. The 21:04 fees are paid to Bitcoin. So you're in the Bitcoin community, but you're doing something 21:09 different than Bitcoin layer one. So the vision of some Bitcoiners is that all you need is layer 21:18 one Bitcoin and lightning. That's it. We don't need any more soft forks, taproot. It's even 21:26 controversial whether that soft fork should have been done because now we have the wizards doing 21:31 their inscriptions and it's controversial. See, the DriveChainers see it the opposite way. The 21:36 DriveChainers want more things like that. They want more excitement, more demand for Bitcoin, 21:42 more building in Bitcoin, more interesting stuff in Bitcoin. Rather than having Ethereum have 21:49 200,000 different interesting projects, we should have all of that on Bitcoin. 21:53 Because what's going to happen eventually, if one is pessimistic about Bitcoin, is that 21:59 eventually there'll be a really interesting idea on blockchain. And if we don't have Drivechain, 22:06 then it's possible that that really interesting idea will only be possible to be built outside 22:12 of Bitcoin. So if you want to oppose Drivechain, if you want to oppose it, you have to be confident 22:21 that there will never be a good idea that can be built on a Drivechain. 22:29 And that can't be built on Bitcoin without Drivechain. So a person who's opposed to 22:34 Drivechain has to have that extreme confidence, or they would have to have confidence that 22:39 there are risks to Drivechain adoption that outweigh the benefits. We have some very cool 22:46 people in the audience. I recognize some of the names. If anyone would like to come up and chat, 22:52 they are welcome to. Hello, Mr. Lerner. Pleasure to have you in the audience. If 23:00 you're interested in coming up and chatting, you're welcome to, as is anyone else. 23:08 We have these spaces twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, and they are intended for free form 23:15 conversation, open conversation about Drivechain, about BIPS 300 and 301. 23:29 Drivechain was conceived at first in 2015. The BIPS were authored by Paul Sztorc and CryptAxe. 23:39 And it's one of the most interesting ideas that I've ever encountered in my life. I think there's 23:45 a huge amount of potential for Drivechain to be transformative in the crypto space. 23:52 It could strengthen Bitcoin potentially enormously. Personally, I see it as an opportunity 24:00 to strengthen not only the security budget, but also the value of Bitcoin. 24:04 Not only the economic value, but the political momentum of Bitcoin. Because right now, 24:15 one of the weakest things going on in Bitcoin is that about half of the entire crypto community 24:21 are people who are primarily not invested emotionally in Bitcoin. They're instead 24:26 interested in altcoins. So Bitcoin only has a fraction of the political and cultural support 24:35 and energy that it could. If the entire cypherpunk cryptocurrency movement were in Bitcoin, 24:42 it would be much better. But instead, the community is fractured where many people are in 24:49 Ethereum or other projects. And therefore, Bitcoin has fewer members in its community, 24:55 which limits its cultural support, its political support, its ability to stave off bad regulation. 25:05 It would be so helpful if all of these altcoiners were instead on Drivechains. 25:13 I'm very excited to see that there are some parts of the cryptocurrency community 25:19 that are trying to advocate for Drivechain, not only theoretically, but by actually building 25:26 Bitcoin sidechains. The greatest example of this is the Rootstock community, where 25:35 brilliant people have built a sidechain on Bitcoin that it seems to me is as close to a 25:42 Drivechain as possible. I'm excited to see people doing that, people building real things and truly 25:50 having actual economic activity on Bitcoin sidechains, which demonstrates the value of 25:56 sidechains to a great extent. There are tens of millions of dollars of value in Bitcoin sidechains, 26:05 including Rootstock specifically. And there are Bitcoin every month that are paid to 26:14 Bitcoin layer one miners through Rootstock merged mining. Merged mining is an idea that is so 26:21 important and is really underappreciated within the Bitcoin community because Satoshi himself said 26:28 back in August of 2010 in writing that merged mining could strengthen Bitcoin in the future. 26:37 He wrote explicitly that he viewed all the networks in the world would be merged mined 26:44 with Bitcoin. So Satoshi thought that every blockchain would be a merged mined Bitcoin 26:50 blockchain, that every single blockchain would be using Bitcoin as its layer one, so to speak. 26:58 It's too bad that that's not true. Ethereum is not merge-mined with Bitcoin. Dogecoin is not 27:03 merge-mined with Bitcoin. Numerous projects are not merge-mined with Bitcoin, but the greatest 27:09 of all the merged mined blockchains on Bitcoin is Rootstock. So people who want to see not just the 27:16 theoretical vision of Drivechain, but the actual efforts to build currently, I think should focus 27:26 on Rootstock as the project which is at the forefront of building on Bitcoin sidechains. 27:33 Another great project, of course, is Blockstream's Liquid, although it isn't merged mined. So I think 27:39 it's not quite as close to a Drivechain as Rootstock is because Rootstock has that merged 27:44 mining going on, which is an important part of the Drivechain vision. So Drivechain has 27:51 two features. One is the two-way peg and the other is merged mining. And Drivechain is two 27:57 different BIPs. The more important one, the main one, is BIP300, hashrate escrow, 28:03 miner-controlled two-way peg. And then the second one, the secondary one, is blind merged mining, 28:11 which enhances merged mining by enabling miners to have running of the sidechain node as an option 28:18 rather than mandatory. One of the unfortunate parts of the current state of Bitcoin discourse 28:29 is that merged mining is not universally applauded. Some Bitcoiners think that merged mining isn't 28:34 good, even though Satoshi said it's fine and great. And also, it's been around for 13 years. 28:42 It's been around since the beginning, or at least 10 years. There's been a whole decade 28:46 of merged mining, and never once has there been a major problem as a result of merged mining. 28:52 Or as far as I know, there's never been any problem. Bitcoin miners have received a humongous 28:59 amount of money. If you were to add up all of the income that Bitcoin miners have received 29:04 from merged mining other blockchains, it probably is north of $20 million or more. 29:14 And if we strengthen the facilities available to sidechains, maybe merged mining can be 29:22 an enormous amount of Bitcoin miners' income. Paul Sztorc has a view, if I recall from his blog 29:30 posts, that in the far future, like maybe 10 years after drivechain is adopted, we might see 29:37 the, we might see over half of all fee revenue coming from merged mining. So it's an opportunity 29:48 that's of great importance for people who understand the security budget problem. 29:53 The security budget problem was what inspired me at first to get into 29:58 drivechain. However, I've come to understand that it is not at all the most important reason to do 30:05 drivechain. And in fact, when drivechain was first conceived, the security budget problem wasn't even 30:12 known. The inspiration for drivechain was a different problem that's very much known in 30:17 Bitcoin, which is the problem of hard forks and the problem of a lack of extensibility. 30:22 Drivechain would increase extensibility, enabling developers with new ideas to build on Bitcoin 30:27 sidechains instead of building on an altcoin, or instead of trying to fork Bitcoin, they could just 30:33 do something new on a sidechain, a peer-to-peer sidechain. Right now, every sidechain on Bitcoin, 30:42 as I understand, is federated. And the sidechains are trying as hard as they can to develop ideas 30:50 that make the federation as good as possible, as decentralized as possible. Some federations 30:57 have very cutting-edge ideas that include hash rate as a component in the design. 31:04 So they're doing everything they can to get close to drivechain. But drivechain would enable even 31:10 further degrees of decentralization, an even higher degree of decentralization to be achieved. 31:17 Because the most decentralized party on earth probably would be the Bitcoin mining industry. 31:22 It's a multitudinous, dynamic, enormously large economic operation that involves a huge number 31:30 of people all over the world. And having that party control the peg is the best arrangement 31:36 possible, far better than having a decentralized party. And that's what drivechain is all about. 31:44 Far better than having 15 signers that are individuals that are socially chosen 31:51 involved. So hash rate is something to leverage and rely on because of the economic design, 32:01 the self-interested, mutually distrusting nature of Bitcoin miners results in an emergent order 32:08 that is reliable and incentive compatible. So that's the exciting experiment of drivechain. 32:14 Once again, anyone who is in the audience who'd like to come up and chat is welcome to. 32:23 You can raise your hand and come on up and chat. 32:26 We have some familiar faces in the audience. Moon Settler, always great to see you here. 32:35 There have been a number of really great tweets on drivechain recently. One of the ones I enjoyed a 32:41 lot was a statement by Jameson Lopp. He wrote an article about Bitcoin development and ossification 32:50 recently. And I thought it was so great. Why don't we take a look at it? 32:57 So he said in his article, implementing drivechain or validity rollups would not only improve 33:12 overall network speed and capacity, but would also allow developers to test out various solutions in 33:19 a way that keeps the underlying base layer safe. So what Jameson Lopp is saying there, 33:26 in my view, is that drivechain or validity rollups would allow for ossification to a greater extent 33:37 on layer one, meaning less pressure to change layer one in order to allow people to do new things. 33:49 Or more precisely, what he's saying is that drivechain or validity rollups would enable 33:54 experimentation by developers on second layers in a partitioned manner, 34:01 meaning keeping the base layer safe. So he's actually talking there not about ossification. 34:05 He's focusing more on innovation and experimentation in a partitioned manner. 34:12 So that's one of the key concepts of drivechain is that the sidechains are partitioned, meaning 34:22 that if the sidechain fails, it doesn't harm the mainchain. 34:28 Just like if Ethereum were to fail, it wouldn't technologically impact Bitcoin, 34:36 generally speaking. So they're separate, they're partitioned. One of the problems, 34:42 of course, is that if developers have to do altcoins to do innovation and experimentation, 34:48 that's not good because they're not testnets, they're real money. So if you have an altcoin 34:58 that tests something and it turns out to be very good, and the test is very successful, 35:04 and then it grows a lot, then it starts to, unfortunately, diminish Bitcoin's network effect. 35:13 So it's much better for Bitcoiners to be able to run tests 35:18 within Bitcoin on sidechains than be forced to go do altcoins. 35:25 And because of Bitcoin's lack of extensibility, because of the lack of drivechain, there is a lot 35:32 of cultural confusion within the Bitcoin community, I think, where there are popular narratives 35:39 within Bitcoin that are just not right, unfortunately. Mainstream Bitcoin discourse 35:45 today, so-called toxic Bitcoin maximalism, includes a rejection of the idea that innovation 35:54 within blockchain is valuable and that there needs to be an end to altcoins, but 36:05 those same people don't support drivechain, generally. And therefore, I think they're 36:13 coping. I think they're saying, well, Bitcoin doesn't have extensibility, you can't build 36:21 Zcash on Bitcoin, you can't build Monero on Bitcoin, but those projects are no good, 36:28 they're not worth anything. When the truth is, it would be better for Bitcoin to enable 36:34 drivechain, and then those projects could be on Bitcoin, and we wouldn't have to criticize those 36:41 projects and denounce them. It's not good for the Bitcoin community to be focused on denouncing 36:51 altcoins. It would be much better for the Bitcoin community to be focused on enabling 36:56 innovation on Bitcoin so that developers don't have to go to altcoins. So one of the other 37:02 cultural mistakes within Bitcoin's community, one could argue, is a complete denial, a denial 37:11 of the value of any altcoin, even though there are clearly some altcoins that have value. 37:17 They have more scalability, they have more privacy, fungibility, 37:25 they have projects that are focused on exciting and important ideas like oracles, 37:31 they have more expressiveness, there are more things that can be done. 37:38 So it's not good for a technologically inclined community to have an anti-innovation mindset, 37:47 where, you know, it's like imagine if the Ford Motor Company were to say, 37:52 we don't think anything that Chevy is building is right. None of those cars are good. Everyone 37:57 should just buy a Ford, no one should buy a Chevy, no one should buy an Audi, no one should buy a 38:02 Porsche, everyone should just buy Ford. Ford is the only good company because it was the first. 38:08 Ford had the first car, and therefore no one can ever invent cars again. The invention of cars is, 38:15 you know, this is kind of like what Bitcoiners think, like the invention of Bitcoin is like, 38:21 you know, the invention of digital scarcity is somehow a singular event 38:24 which can never be duplicated again. This whole Robert Breedlove style philosophy 38:31 that because Bitcoin was first, therefore it's the one and only forever. That is not quite right. 38:39 But if drivechain is adopted, if drivechain is adopted, then all of the hopes of such people 38:45 might be vindicated. He might actually get what he wants then. He might see 38:50 all of the altcoins diminish, maybe. It can't be promised, but it's possible. 39:00 Welcome to the stage, Moon Settler. 39:02 Moon Settler. 39:06 Delighted to have you join. 39:12 It looks like his connection might not be working. Sometimes these Twitter spaces have 39:16 had glitches where it's hard to let people on stage, so hopefully we won't have that today. 39:23 Unfortunately, it looks like it's hard for him to connect. 39:27 I was really hoping he would be able to connect. Moon Settler is one of the people who I've really 39:33 enjoyed having in these spaces. He always has a really good, sophisticated view on drivechain 39:43 and related topics. 39:50 In order to inspire this conversation, I'm going to put up a tweet in the nest from John Light. 39:56 It's the tweet that I read aloud from Jameson Lopp's article. 40:03 Well, we've been going for about 40 minutes now. I've talked the entire time. 40:09 My goal with these spaces is to have people join, listen, and learn and speak. 40:16 Sometimes we have a critic of drivechain on stage. Sometimes we have a critic of 40:20 drivechain on stage. Sometimes we have a critic of drivechain on stage. 40:24 I'm so excited to see what happens in this space. Whatever happens, I think I'll be happy. 40:27 I'm so excited to see what happens in this space. Whatever happens, I think I'll be happy. 40:40 Because in my view, if drivechain doesn't happen on Bitcoin, I think Bitcoin is going to have 40:47 problems, very serious ones. I think those problems already exist due to the lack of 40:54 drivechain. In my personal opinion, the drive chainers will be vindicated 41:01 in the future whether or not drivechain is adopted. If it's adopted, I think it'll be 41:05 successful. If it isn't adopted, I think that will be consequential. 41:13 I'm excited about the drama in this space. I'm curious to see what happens. 41:18 Will drivechain be adopted and what will happen as a result of its adoption or non-adoption? 41:25 I'm very excited to observe this space evolve in the future. The only part that's not so great is 41:33 how long it takes. It might take years for this to play out. It might take a decade to see what 41:40 happens. A person has to have very low time preference, as the Austrian economists like to 41:48 say. Low time preference to understand whether drivechain is going to achieve everything it's 41:58 designed to achieve. It'll take maybe a generation to find out the course of Bitcoin's future. 42:04 Will Bitcoin become the world's money or will it drift into a small and irrelevant 42:12 part of the economy? It looks like someone else just had trouble connecting. 42:18 The speaker named YOLO. Unfortunately, there might be a problem with Twitter spaces. 42:25 Going forward for the next space on Thursday, I'm going to try to fix this. I'll try signing out 42:32 on my phone from the account and logging back in. I'll try things like that in case that might fix 42:38 any glitch that's occurring. We've had problems in recent spaces with people joining. Once or 42:43 twice, someone couldn't join. This time, it looks like no one can join. There's some problem with 42:48 Twitter spaces. Elon Musk has fired a lot of the employees there. Maybe the person who runs the 42:56 Twitter spaces today is out sick. Maybe that's what's going on. I want to mention a few things 43:05 about drivechains development. We have a new Discord channel. The Discord. It's for a whole 43:15 bunch of different groups, including Rootstock, Liquid, and Drivechain and others. Stacks. 43:24 I believe it's called Second Layer. The number two, and then the letters ND, and then layer. 43:33 You can join it. There are people there chatting about all these different Bitcoin 43:40 second layer projects. It's been created as a community to bring together the whole second 43:47 layer community. Everyone interested in sidechains and layers for Bitcoin. 43:55 One of the interesting projects in the space with regard to layers on Bitcoin is Stacks. 44:04 Stacks had an ICO and as a result has an altcoin. 44:10 It's a large project and it's been interesting to listen to their spaces and learn about it. 44:19 The lead designer there, Munib, has tweeted about drivechain only a few times. I've read all the 44:25 tweets that he's written about it. He never criticizes it. He just says that drivechain 44:32 is theoretical. I think he has an accurate view that drivechains are not currently possible on 44:41 Bitcoin. I think his project is an example of what happens when there are no drivechains possible. 44:50 When there are no drivechains possible, you end up with altcoins like Stacks. 44:55 If drivechain were adopted, then that project would probably 45:02 over time migrate toward a drivechain design. As a result, the STX token probably would lose value. 45:10 One could suggest that maybe Stacks doesn't have an incentive to advocate for drivechain. 45:21 Doesn't have an incentive to advocate for drivechain. Whereas in Rootstock, there isn't 45:27 an altcoin at the center of the project. There's nothing stopping them from advocating for drive 45:36 chain and therefore they do. I view Rootstock in comparison to Stacks. Rootstock is more aligned 45:42 with drivechain in my understanding. I think it's great that there are a bunch 45:49 of different projects out there that are all using Bitcoin in different ways. My personal 45:53 approach is to be friendly and civil and focus not so much on criticizing. Instead, it's good 46:00 to focus on building and providing a path forward and not trying to bring down and criticize and 46:09 and undermine what others are doing. 46:16 So that's the attitude we have at LayerTwo Labs and me personally is just an attitude of positivity, 46:23 of friendliness and intellectual community, you know, open dialogue. 46:32 Not at all toxic Bitcoin stuff. In fact, I think the maximalist, the identity of maximalism really 46:42 belongs to drivechain because drivechain is the idea that it would be possible perhaps to have 46:48 all the altcoin users come to Bitcoin, use sidechains and therefore the altcoins would go to zero. 46:54 Bitcoin would have a maximum market capitalization. In my opinion, the only coherent 47:03 understanding of Bitcoin maximalism is to say that Bitcoin's market cap should be 100% 47:09 of the crypto market cap and it's been going down for a long time. So I think that 47:14 the establishment is not succeeding and I think that we see the cracks forming. The cracks are 47:20 forming in the system. Something is needed. There's a change that's needed. The security 47:26 budget problem is ongoing. The altcoins are growing. The lack of ossification leads to 47:34 endless debates about soft forks. So those are all problems that result from the lack of drivechain. 47:44 So if we get drivechain, if we get extensibility, if we get miner control pegs, 47:49 then we get layer one ossification potentially. We get higher fees potentially and we get altcoin 47:56 users migrating to Bitcoin sidechains potentially. That's the drivechain vision as I understand it. 48:03 The innovation and extensibility results in higher fees, higher ossification and higher dominance. 48:13 A lot of people don't understand that whole justification for drivechain. 48:21 And instead they view drivechain primarily from the security budget angle or from the 48:28 angle of competing with altcoins. But actually the best justification for drivechain, 48:34 the most fundamental one, has to do with the fact that there's a lot of people who 48:40 don't understand that. The most fundamental one has to do with 48:47 increasing extensibility and innovation. All of the other things would flow. All of the 48:54 other good things would flow from higher extensibility and higher innovation on Bitcoin. 49:01 The other things that would flow from that are the ossification, the fees, and the dominance 49:11 of Bitcoin. 49:18 Well, we've been going for almost an hour now. And sadly, the few people who wanted to join 49:27 had technological issues. I think it's Twitter's fault probably. But I apologize on their behalf. 49:35 On Thursday, I think the issues might be fixed and we can talk about any ideas that you have. 49:45 In the meantime, please find me and others in the drivechain talk telegram group. 49:53 And if you have ideas on how these spaces can be run differently or better, please let me know. 49:58 I'm Henry. I can be found in drivechain talks telegram group or on Twitter. 50:06 And I look forward to seeing you all again. Thanks for being here. 50:10 Drivechain also has a Reddit that I post in. It's not very active right now, 50:15 but everyone's welcome to post there if they'd like. So if you go to reddit.com slash drive 50:20 chains, it's there. Today, I will post Jameson Lopp's article on there. And I've posted others 50:30 on there as well. There's a telegram group and then we also have drivechain.info. And you can 50:40 also check out layer2labs.com for information. There's a whole bunch of different websites and 50:45 places to go to learn about drivechain. Well, that's it for today. Thanks everyone for being 50:53 here. See you next time on Thursday.
