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Thank you for your attention.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Oh my god, I don't like this.

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This is a random Christmas music playlist.

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This is good. I like this.

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How about Jingle Bell Rock?

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There we go. Classic.

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Jingle Bell Rock

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So we're supposed to be waiting for Sergio.

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And I don't exactly remember the Argentina Daylight Savings Time situation.

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But I'm sure it'll work itself out.

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out.

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Meanwhile, we got some beautiful music.

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Jingle around my car.

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Whose sleighing in the janglin' field.

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That's the jingle bell ride.

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Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell ride.

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Jingle bell ride, jingle bell

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[Music: Jingle Bell Rock]

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of primes. We go riding in the one -post lane.

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up, Jingle Heart, jingle booty.

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Jingle and round the clock.

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stand on the matals and let's jingle and be.

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That's the Jingle

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Wow, what great Christmas music.

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Okay, Sergio, is this you? Are you Rootstock?

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No. Probably not.

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Oh, here he is.

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Cool. Let me get more of this background music.

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Nice.

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Nice. Cool.

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Can you hear me, Paul?

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Yes, I hear you now.

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Oh, great, great.

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Excellent.

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How are you doing?

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I'm doing great.

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Hey, congratulations on Argentina being now a Mecca of liberty and, you know, all the good things.

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It's going to last a couple of months until he's out by a mob of French opposition.

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I mean, he's doing the right thing.

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It's smart to rip off the bandaid and try and just get as much done on day one as you can.

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I suppose, but there will be suffering.

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And so nobody's happy.

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Like, everyone knows that it's necessary, but nobody's happy about it.

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Right, right.

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Yeah.

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It's a difficult thing to, because, you know, it's a very easy thing for the government to just come in and say, we'll send everyone checks or we'll give everyone a job.

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Yeah, nobody likes being in bankruptcy.

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Like, everyone feels like somehow it's better to keep the checks going.

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But we know what happens in the end.

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Well, we Argentinians know very well what happens in the end.

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Maybe in other countries it's yet to be seen.

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Our people still doubt about what hyperinflation means.

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But here in Argentina, we know that it ends with a total collapse of bank society and everything else.

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And it's very painful.

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There is a joke that I heard once when I was affiliated with a certain economics department back in the day.

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And the joke was something like this.

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It's a pity that we are an example of luxury.

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You are a very unusual.

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Yeah.

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But hey, maybe we'll get some good.

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I honestly think, see, if you want to pull off something like that where it's going to be difficult, you do need someone with a little bit of a personality, which that guy seems like he has, you know.

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Yes, yes.

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But it's very, there is a thin line between having personality and being kind of a clown.

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So people are still in doubt of what side he is.

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Right, right.

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But the last thing that people lose, and this is very strange, like it's hope.

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I have always been pessimistic about Argentina politics.

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But it seems like people have endless hope, even in the worst possible situations.

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And so let's try to use that hope to change for the better.

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But, you know, hope can last very, very short periods if people start having nothing to eat or, yeah.

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Yeah.

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It's painful.

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Well, yeah.

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I mean, hopefully we'll get some Bitcoin.

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We'll get a critical mass of Bitcoiners in there.

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I was talking with one of the CEOs of a wallet that is very used in Argentina.

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It's called Lemon Wallet.

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And I think they have like 3 million or 3 or 5 million Argentinians using cryptocurrency or stablecoins and Bitcoin, like a mixture of them, which is quite a lot of users.

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So it's very interesting.

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I think like one of the main uses of sidechains, and this is probably something that we are going to touch in this space, is that financial inclusion is one of the most important use cases.

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And this is interesting for me because when I joined this Bitcoin movement, I joined because of my background in security.

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I have absolutely no good understanding of economics and no interest in social progress, like what happens with you on the bank.

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But I came to realize that it's one of the main forces pushing for Bitcoin understanding and Bitcoin adoption.

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It's a very powerful force, like being a bank and having no access to financial services is one of the main forces that you are going to reach out to Bitcoin and try to understand how it works.

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Cool. Let's get into it then.

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So I remember you as being one of the first people. I went to MIT, I think it was like 2016, the MIT Bitcoin conference, and you were like, oh yeah.

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This was like right after I had published the November 2015 Drivechain post.

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And you were like, oh yeah, this Drivechain thing is probably better then.

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And I was like, what? I can't believe that someone said that.

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I was like, wow.

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This was back in the day. It was a long time ago. We were all still very starry eyed about lightning.

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And you went on MIT and you said, I'm sorry, but I'm going to use Microsoft Windows to give this talk.

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I hope that doesn't offend anyone.

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Yeah, I'm not using Microsoft Windows anymore, but at that time I used to.

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And because I had a previous medical equipment company and we used embedded Windows for our device.

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So I was more at Windows.

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But early in my life, when I was 18, I was a Linux kernel hacker, like adding security features into Linux kernel.

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So I started with Linux, I ended up with Windows, and now I'm mostly a Mac OS user.

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But I still value the Linux knowledge and all.

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Okay, so yeah, what happened in 2015, I think, is that the Blockstream paper about sidechains made us all excited.

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And suddenly, as you know, everything stopped.

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There was a huge pause and we all got surprised that all this energy was kind of going nowhere.

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Because these Blockstream researchers, they discovered that basically their solution didn't work.

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Or at least it was not as decentralized as they thought it could be.

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Basically because if miners can censor transactions, then they can censor any view of an existing sidechain.

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Like they can censor any kind of fork, and they can choose whatever fork is the honest fork.

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So when you presented your ideas of drivechain, I said, okay, this is theoretically the only way we are going to solve the problem.

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For me, it was like a moment where I said, okay, so if this is an unsolvable problem, then the only solution would be drivechains.

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And it happened that many years later, in a paper about interchange communication by Alexei Samyatin, you probably know him.

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Yes, I do. Yeah, he's great.

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He proved basically that there is an impossibility result, which is that there is no free lunch.

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There is no possibility of fully decentralized communication between sidechains, between blockchains that are not synchronized.

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By synchronized, I mean like one being the rollup of another and the underlying blockchain being able to settle these rollup transactions.

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And we should explain that the cure is worse than the disease, because this is sort of making all this other stuff a mandatory part of the L1 consensus.

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Well, I mean, that can be very good, but it's kind of like contrary to the sidechain idea of having these all be like separate projects that have their own life.

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Yeah, if we remember this blockchain paper, the only possible way of building the sidechain was basically reusing the Bitcoin header, reusing the Bitcoin transaction outputs.

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It was super tied to the Bitcoin blockchain format.

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And so the possibilities for experimentation were expanded, but not really much.

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Like you could not have an account based ledger or any other type of ledger that was not based on UTXOs and Bitcoin headers.

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So, yeah, it was limited. And with drivechain, there is no such limitation.

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So, yeah, so for me, the drivechain would be something like, but I remember having a conversation with you at that time and I said, this is not something you're going to be able to push forward without first having a real use case of millions of people onboarded and ready to switch to drivechain.

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I'm still kind of on that side, like I built Roostock because of that.

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And I, not only myself, but the group of founders of the Roostock projects were all in the idea that there were needs that need to be solved as soon as possible regarding financial inclusion.

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And Bitcoin was going to be the anchor and the store of value for the future.

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And so these solutions would need to be connected to Bitcoin, but Bitcoin would not change if there was not a huge use case ongoing for that.

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And I hope that that happens, like Roostock is growing.

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There's a lot of people using Roostock in Latin America and in many other parts of the world.

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And I hope that someday everyone sees that we need drivechains and we need better support for sidechains because like all these communities expecting a better bet to be created.

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Yeah, they're all very slowly coming around.

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Yeah, well, I value your work on trying to port these Zcash sidechains and EVM sidechains into Bitcoin.

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I would just encourage you to try to deploy them with imperfect technology of federations or whatever you can find and show that you have a huge community of users that wants to switch to drivechain.

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Because I see your efforts in the community and your opponents are pretty much very stubborn.

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I don't know. What do you think about that?

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Yeah, I think you're probably right.

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I think what we're going to do is, I mean, it's hard because the feature is the peg.

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So to do it with a different thing would be, it wouldn't really be a proper test.

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But I think we're going to make like a Cygnet version with some fake money.

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And then we'll release that and then maybe even some other kind of test net networks that has all the features.

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Because I do think that it's certainly too much to ask for a layperson to them to grasp all this theoretical stuff.

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A story that I often tell is that when I first found Bitcoin, I really put a huge amount of time researching it.

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And then I really still did not understand it at all until I got coins from Gavin's faucet and sent them to myself.

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And so, for example, I didn't know how confirmations worked at all.

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I thought you had to keep the software open and collect them.

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I thought it was like BitTorrent or something where you had a seeding or something.

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And I really didn't understand.

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So most people will need to see the software.

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Even then, that'd be too much for most people.

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The critics, I think, they are in the unfortunate position of having committed too much.

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They have dug themselves in too deep.

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And now they kind of made a name for themselves.

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And it's only – it's actually a very small number of people with any credibility.

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It's like three people who – and then there's a lot of kind of people who just kind of assume that those three people are correct.

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Which is why it doesn't offset the – most people now think that I am right.

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And there's all kinds of whole host of other things.

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Like there's really no alternative.

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So I agree completely with what you were saying about the – this doesn't work.

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I'm kind of an expectator of every single podcast that you participate with defending drivechains.

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And generally with Peter Toll on the other side.

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And I find it very hard like to be on the drivechain side.

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Like it's – you bring a lot of economics reasons and just they're difficult for people.

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It's simpler for people to think about, you know, oh, I cannot be a miner because if I have to run a hundred – I don't know why this hundred number comes.

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Always come a hundred drivechains.

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Like a hundred drivechains will populate, you know.

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So it's very simple for them to see, okay.

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But for me it's like – I try to think of it like bitcoiners don't mind what is happening on the drivechain side or sidechain side.

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Like if there is a hundred and 99 of them are useless or they are, you know –

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Bitcoiners, if they are not using them, they should not care.

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And if miners are using third party node infrastructure providers, like bitcoiners that are not using them should not care.

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And even if they – I mean even if you are using them and you care, you can push.

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I mean market forces will push on those miners that instead of just querying one provider, they query five different providers.

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And they do a majority, you know, voting.

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And if all of them agree that the best block is a certain hash, then okay, that's the real best block.

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Yeah, it's really no different than any other mining innovation.

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Like if you find a new block, you run a full node and then blocks come in.

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And then someone tells you, did you know that this block was mined with hydroelectric power?

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And you are like, wow, amazing. That's amazing.

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And then they tell you, actually, we were kidding. It was mined with coal power.

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And then you are like, oh, okay. And then you are like, actually, it was hydroelectric.

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It's like you don't know. You only do the proof of work.

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This is what Peter doesn't understand.

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It's the difference between the proof of work versus the actual work.

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And he also just doesn't buy the idea that the miners compete, which is weird.

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I'm sure he thinks that he does, but he doesn't really.

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So it's kind of a bizarre scenario to be in.

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Everything that he thinks is wrong, basically, like the miners don't need to run.

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The hundred nodes or any nodes, they can defer to a node run by the pool, the pools can defer to each other or to regular users of the sidechain who are not even miners.

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But even if there was a requirement, it wouldn't matter. But I give another way that the miners compete.

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I give a point for Peter Todd in this regard. I think that what we should have is like a layer of different solutions with different security tradeoffs.

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And I agree that the Bitcoin network, like the Bitcoin node, should be as lightweight as possible, which probably you also agree, and that it should be very easy to mine.

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And probably you don't agree on that. But I do agree that keeping Bitcoin lightweight for miners and for users has a value.

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Well, I think that it is a misunderstanding of what we're keeping light. So we do want all the node costs to be low.

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But if you want mining costs to be low or to always be mining, to always be profitable at certain scales, then what you're really arguing against is the upward difficulty adjustment.

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But really, no one would seriously say, oh, I think that we should just set the minimum difficulty to one or to min diff or whatever it is.

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I'm sure you know better than I. It's actually some other number. But if you just set it to the minimum level and then just do that forever, because that would be rejecting proof of work.

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So that's the other weird thing is that all these people who think they're against drivechain, they're really against proof of work. They just don't realize.

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Well, the argument would be that if there is a massive attack or catastrophic scenario where big mining pools break, and now we are in a 2011 state where everyone is running their own hardware at home or hidden below ground in shelters, then maybe running your own full node and mining, it's important.

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Right. If there is a nuclear war.

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Yes, of course. But remember, a BIP300 doesn't affect that at all, because you don't need to run, you know, about blind merge mining.

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And even without blind merge mining in the protocol, they don't need to, like you just still just run Bitcoin Core and then you have your hasher and you point it at a pool and no one is willing to argue against playing pools save the small miners.

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So it's pools that bail the small miner out.

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Otherwise, the small mining would be impossible and they would be dead.

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But so the pools are always going to exist.

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And this is another thing Peter doesn't understand is that the pools add up to 100 percent and they have to be a certain percent size.

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So there's if every pool is behaving perfectly, then there will be an infinite barrier to entry.

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You won't be able to get in because they're all doing everything.

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No, none of the existing pools is making a mistake.

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But if the pool is doing something weird, like censoring transactions that pay fees, then they will, you know, then that's the opportunity for the new pool to.

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Yes, to jump in.

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But if there is none, then there's no there's nothing going wrong so that you cannot.

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But I think we kind of want.

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So I think he has he has sketched out an idea that he thinks that he he has.

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And he's sort of clutching onto it, this idea that should be very easy for someone to start a new.

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Start mining.

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But the difficulty goes up, total miner costs go up and and mining becomes viable or non-viable at different scales.

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That has nothing to do with this is just the difficulty adjustment.

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You know what I mean? Like whether or not you need a block erupt or an S-19 or an S-9.

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This depends on other things.

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The market price has nothing to do with the 300.

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Yeah. And there's nothing to do with running nodes.

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You don't need to run the software nodes of the sidechains.

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So he thinks that you do, but you don't.

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Well, but it's all irrelevant anyway.

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So basically, he coinflates like running a Bitcoin node with running anything else.

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And I think he shouldn't talk about sidechain nodes at all, because he if he is not interested in sidechain nodes.

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Well, he doesn't have nothing to say about sidechain nodes.

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So that's that's the thing.

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Like Bitcoin can be the most decentralized network and sidechains could be whatever they have to be.

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Each one of them like centralized or decentralized or whatever.

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And that's the whole idea.

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Like you give the market the possibility to compete into trying to find the best possible sidechain technology.

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And so hardcore Bitcoiners should not care about that.

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But I have an argument.

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And before this space, I wrote some points of some argument that's generally not discussed, which is the future of Bitcoin without

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drivechains. And let me, if I have a few minutes, read this or talk about this point.

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Like it's impossible to correctly assess the benefits of drivechains without understanding the future of Bitcoin without sidechains and

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drivechains. Right. So we have to imagine, right, what would be the future.

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And the Bitcoin network will will become a payment network between big enterprises, large Bitcoin holders and maybe financial

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institutions if we cannot bring it back to the people.

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Right. It will be very expensive to transact on Bitcoin and the price continues to rise and more companies have Bitcoin treasuries.

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It's going to be impossible for the normal user or the unbanked or you and me, basically.

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So we will be totally excluded from on-chain layer and we'll be like the pariah of Bitcoin, like having Bitcoin locked forever because it

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will require more fees to spend them back, the value that we hold.

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OK, so there is no way around that without a block size increase.

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And that will probably never happen because we've experienced the deadlock of the discussion of block size increases and the block

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size wars. And this precedent is like kind of a ghost that is going around over and over.

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So the whole vision for Bitcoin, I think, was to be a peer-to-peer electronic money for the people and not also a new sort of value for

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the wealthy, like it should be for the people.

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And the people are the ones that have bootstrapped Bitcoin and have gave Bitcoin value, like so all kind.

250
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We all agree that the current Bitcoin technology is heading towards being a sort of value.

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That's OK. We are happy because we have accumulated a little bit of Bitcoin.

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So we are happy with that.

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But in the long run, any technology that serves only the rich will be taken down because it will be completely destroyed by the people that are

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forcibly excluded from it.

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OK, so we should not forget that the people is that has given Bitcoin value.

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And if people are excluded from the Bitcoin network, then Bitcoin value would go to zero.

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Like it will be a niche for certain banks and suddenly they will replace it by something else, as they always do, because they will have

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control. So if Bitcoin is going to be used by 0.1 percent of the population, then the remaining population will not just sit calmly and enjoy

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being poor. People do not enjoy being poor.

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So they will execute the 0.1 percent of the super healthy and they will move on with their fiat currency or whatever they have at hand.

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So at this point, having these two of kind of this future that can be can become real very soon, so I think our duty is to experiment and try to find a

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solution for normal people like you and me so that we can still benefit from Bitcoin, hold and use Bitcoin as censorship resistant technology as

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possible. And it's our duty to protect from the fiat collapse.

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And this is what most Bitcoiners think that is coming, a completely fiat collapse.

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And so we, for our families, for our communities, we want them to be able to access Bitcoin before that happens.

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So obviously, no sidechain technology will be as secure and decentralized as Bitcoin and because any sidechain will be based on the Bitcoin miners to

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work. So by definition, it will be less centralized, less decentralized than Bitcoin.

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But the important thing is that people understand the tradeoffs of every layer two, including lightning, which most people do not understand that they are

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making a pure assumption about transaction censorship, right?

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So they take informed decisions and if they have more options, then the better.

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OK, so my last point is like the alternative of confining the billion remaining users to this failing fiat system is frightening and it's a condemnation for

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them to keep being poor or become poor.

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So the alternate future where altcoins proliferate without a clear store of value, while altcoins are much more centralized than trade chains can ever be, it's a

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future of basically crypto inflation and cycles of fraud and all kind of things that will let us back to the fiat system.

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There should be a store of value for these ecosystems to flourish.

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If not, then we will go back to the worst incarnation of fiat, which is basically CBDCs, right?

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So I think it's our duty to push for sidechains and let people experiment.

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So even if drivechains might not be perfect technology, and I think we can do a lot to improve sidechains and drivechains, the perfect is enemy of the good.

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And drivechains will evolve, they will become better.

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And just waiting for this perfection to magically appear when there are hard mathematical impossibility results that prove that it's not going to happen, like we need to make some

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compromise, then just waiting does not help.

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So I think that to be like the ones that drive this future where everyone has access to Bitcoin is our responsibility.

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So that's why we should push for drivechains.

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And with all this I've said, I think I can become a politician now because it sounded like big speech to me, at least.

285
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Sounded good.

286
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I liked it.

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I mean, one thing I'd like to emphasize about, you know, this is just me rambling, but you're like, when I first proposed this idea, I just kind of thought it was like one idea among many, like drivechain, whatever, lightning, state chains.

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Now, what has happened over the last eight years is I've actually, I'm really, really pessimistic about every other idea.

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I think they've all shown themselves to be much, much worse.

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And they are really terrible.

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Like we had Anthony Riard last week and he is very polite and, you know, he was like in a good mood, but the actual content was like, he was saying, well, I don't think lightning works.

292
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And it has all these sort of list unsolvable problems, you know, flood and loot, onboarding, et cetera, complexity, privacy is terrible.

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And then he would even say stuff like, we would ask him like some pretty simple things and he would be like, well, you know, they never want, VCs, they never want someone who's going to invalidate their investment thesis or so.

294
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So it seemed like, but even with something like ARK, what I'm kind of thinking of now is that you don't want to have a big mismatch between the L2 fees paid to someone versus the L1 fees.

295
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You know what I mean?

296
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Like if maybe at all, there's like an ARK super node or there's a bunch of lightning LSPs, the actual, you know, there's like whatever, like a trillion transactions on earth a year, you know, give or take.

297
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And, you know, you get, you take 10 cents from that, from each and that's a hundred billion dollars, 100 billion a year in revenue.

298
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And it just really can't be like 99.9 billion goes to an ARK super node and then, you know, the last one thousandth goes to the L1 Bitcoin miners.

299
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Like that just, that is like unfixably broken.

300
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That's it will never work.

301
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Yeah.

302
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So it would be like a disaster.

303
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For me, sidechains, like there is no black and white definition of sidechains.

304
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And so for me, sidechain means basically Bitcoin alignment, like being able to transfer Bitcoin back and forth from the Bitcoin network to the sidechain and assuming that the sidechain does not have a token that competes with Bitcoin in becoming a store of value.

305
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Right. So it's about alignment.

306
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And so alignment means that you have to pay back, you have to bring value back to the Bitcoin network.

307
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So one way to align that is with merge mining and more with blind merge mining.

308
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So you have full alignment of this, giving back to the security budget of the L1 while you secure this L2.

309
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So that way you only can have the real protection that miners are giving you by running and supporting the drivechain.

310
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If a drivechain is basically just another token thing, then there is actually no security at all by the drivechain.

311
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There is just no hard, I mean, you can have obviously the fees that they would be able to get if they keep using the drivechain.

312
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But they still are, I think they are still Bitcoiners and they want to grow their Bitcoin value and not other tokens value.

313
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So I think that the alignment is very important.

314
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Absolutely. Peter, so yeah, blind merge mining, which is a tiny little improvement I made to regular merge mining, just invented by Satoshi.

315
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And you have been tinkering with it yourself.

316
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Yes.

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And I just bring this up because Peter, he really couldn't figure out why I had separated BIP300 and BIP301.

318
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Even though I thought it was pretty straightforward because, of course, merge mining can be used for something that is not a sidechain.

319
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So it would be used for an altcoin such as Namecoin.

320
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So I thought that was, but also because I thought, I was hoping that people would make different versions and possibly improve upon it.

321
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And especially the block time thing in mine is stuck.

322
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But I think you were tinkering with it.

323
00:35:41,461 --> 00:35:47,021
Yeah. So first of all, I think that coinflating, like putting these two ideas together was a mistake.

324
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Like you can fully push for blind merge mining without even thinking about drivechains and the opposite.

325
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Like two very different ideas.

326
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The fact that there is an overlap for me, it's kind of a secondary thing.

327
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But because there is this argument that you need to run a node to be able to participate in the drivechain, a sidechain node.

328
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But blind merge mining makes you not run a sidechain node.

329
00:36:17,261 --> 00:36:19,060
So this is just confusing.

330
00:36:19,060 --> 00:36:21,101
Correct. Yeah, that's not really the reason why.

331
00:36:21,101 --> 00:36:22,341
Yeah, they're two separate things.

332
00:36:22,341 --> 00:36:23,180
Yeah, it is confusing.

333
00:36:23,180 --> 00:36:24,980
Well, that's partly why I separated them.

334
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But then now, you know, you get criticized for everything you do.

335
00:36:29,221 --> 00:36:36,540
So for me, it's very important that any sidechain, not only this based on drivechain, but any sidechain, including Woodstock,

336
00:36:38,180 --> 00:36:46,021
it's able to be blind merge mined because the MEV problem is, for me, it's real.

337
00:36:46,221 --> 00:36:54,661
Like we've seen the problem, what happens in other networks like Ethereum, where you have the centralized exchanges.

338
00:36:54,740 --> 00:37:00,500
There is a lot of MEV that can be taken and sandwiched attacks and for running back, running and all.

339
00:37:01,261 --> 00:37:05,261
And I think that maybe you know more than me about that.

340
00:37:05,261 --> 00:37:22,260
But for the mining markets, to be fair, there should be no, I mean, no patents, no hidden algorithms, like no, I don't know, secret way of finding MEV opportunities.

341
00:37:22,581 --> 00:37:31,461
Like if they are, and these are really secrets, then it's a super strong centralizing force.

342
00:37:33,341 --> 00:37:34,861
You're 100% right.

343
00:37:34,861 --> 00:37:36,341
And I fully agree with you.

344
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But having discussed this topic for so long, there is even a rebuttal to that, which is that Liquid is basically a fully centralized version with respect to the transaction fee revenue, because all the revenue just goes to Blockstream.

345
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So there's a wallet controlled by Blockstream.

346
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So in that case, there's nothing the miners can do, no matter how much effort they put in to take back the edge that Blockstream gets for free.

347
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And so it's kind of like an infinite MEV situation, which I find ironic.

348
00:38:10,701 --> 00:38:21,501
That doesn't, of course, it doesn't necessarily invalidate anyone's argument, but it's the same people who cheer on Liquid will quibble about MEV being honest.

349
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If there are two separate revenue models that have no connection, let's say, as you generally mentioned, like mining and selling T-shirts or mining and cooking cookies with the excess heat that miners produce, like the second is very different from the first.

350
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Like creating mining pool T-shirts and mining has very little to do, there is no operation overlap between the two, while creating cookies out of excess heat does have an overlap with the mining operation.

351
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And if there is a huge overlap between MEV extraction and the mining operation, then I think we have a problem because it's not just like anyone can do it.

352
00:39:08,981 --> 00:39:14,900
No, there is an incentive to integrate vertically in that particular case.

353
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So for me, solving MEV, it's very important for sidechains and drivechains.

354
00:39:19,461 --> 00:39:31,981
And so what I was working is like, I know your proposal for, even if I don't like much the B301, because generally I think you could have done a better job writing those BIPs.

355
00:39:32,140 --> 00:39:45,741
I do love the idea, but I was thinking more about, you know, the BIP, that's the, the, the Blindmerge Mining Proposal in BIP301 basically is tied to the Bitcoin block rate.

356
00:39:46,140 --> 00:39:52,701
And we've seen for all other networks, including Rootstock, that people expect much higher block rates.

357
00:39:52,701 --> 00:40:01,101
People expect almost instant confirmation for everyday use and everyday defy uses for payments for anything, almost.

358
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People do prefer instant confirmation or near instant confirmation.

359
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So that is a huge blocker.

360
00:40:07,741 --> 00:40:22,621
Like, I know that you've, you've been playing with an EVM drivechain compatible sidechain, but it probably won't work as you expect, because people are so much used to instant feedback from, from blockchains.

361
00:40:23,420 --> 00:40:25,821
Not, not the case with Zedcash.

362
00:40:25,821 --> 00:40:34,221
A Zedcash drivechain would probably do work because people may accept that for super private transactions, they can wait 10 minutes, right?

363
00:40:34,551 --> 00:40:41,111
Right, exactly. Yes. And the version we have is tied to the Bitcoin block time.

364
00:40:41,111 --> 00:40:56,471
Yeah. So, so my proposal where I, I have a document I have not published yet, so maybe it's not good to, to, to, I should publish first, but the idea is of the, the Bitchain is creating a sidechain that only works for bidding.

365
00:40:56,471 --> 00:41:21,990
Like, it has a lot of limitation that makes very ineffective for anything else. I mean, apart from bidding for, for sidechain blocks, like, it would be a blockchain having like 30 seconds block time, same as Rootstock, maybe a little bit less, like 20 seconds block time, because we know that mining pools are efficient enough to update their blocks, their templates at that frequency.

366
00:41:22,231 --> 00:41:47,591
And it would probably have the same format as a Bitcoin blockchain, just to make it very digestible for Bitcoin miners to, to, to use. And, and, and it will be like, maybe it's at the beginning, it would be like federated, but with a dynamic setting where it assigns keys, basically to the major, to the major, let's say 20 miners.

367
00:41:48,231 --> 00:42:14,311
So they are kind of in control of this, this bidding. But the important thing is that the amount of funds that this bidding chain need to have on chain is very limited. Like, you don't need to have $100 million. You may be, you only need to have enough funds to pay for the next block, because afterwards, you can, you can swap against Bitcoin, or you can move, peg in, peg out.

368
00:42:14,470 --> 00:42:22,711
So basically, you only need the funds that are enough for bid for the next, let's say, one hour of blocks. And that's all. So,

369
00:42:23,671 --> 00:42:25,430
Yeah, this is like a little bit of a cash.

370
00:42:25,430 --> 00:42:25,911
Yeah.

371
00:42:25,911 --> 00:42:27,671
Sort of like a, it's like a buffer.

372
00:42:27,671 --> 00:42:55,511
So the incentive to steal for the miners to, to become, you know, if they have a majority of, of stake in the control of signatures to steal that small amount of money is negligible. Like, they wouldn't break their own business, which will be perfect, because they will collect the biddings from every potential sidechain, including drivechains. So it would be completely stupid, right?

373
00:42:55,991 --> 00:43:10,310
And then you could put like, a lot of effort, like doing pruning, pruning all blocks, pruning, you could even prune the UTXO set, like making UTXO disappear after one year. So it could be so much lightweight.

374
00:43:10,310 --> 00:43:11,271
Yes, absolutely.

375
00:43:11,271 --> 00:43:15,830
Because you just need it for the bidding process. And by doing so, you...

376
00:43:15,830 --> 00:43:39,431
I think every drivechain, just not to interrupt you there, just I think every single drivechain can, should have, could have a UTXO commitment. And then after a year, you could delete because you're already in a situation where six months of catastrophe will destroy the chain. So why not use the UTXO commitment and restore from there? Anyway, you were saying, so we have this buffer, we have this cash, miners are not going to steal from it.

377
00:43:39,431 --> 00:43:39,830
Yes.

378
00:43:39,830 --> 00:44:02,871
It's going to be very lightweight, very high performance, very efficient. And this is what organizes the interblock time of the other chains that are on top of it. So it's really like, this is like L2. And then these blockchains are like L3. And then if they have a lightning network, then we've made it to L4. They're called the marketing department. L4, Sergio chain.

379
00:44:02,950 --> 00:44:31,190
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that this change should, I don't think it should be the breach for other layers. I think that other types of blockchains or sidechains can be breached. But this is just for coordination of the block bidding mechanism. I think it's a great, great idea. And I've computed the amount of resources you would need in terms of like memory, bandwidth, and it's just a small percentage of what Bitcoin already consumes.

380
00:44:31,271 --> 00:44:53,271
Like, it's like, I was mentioning, like having 20 sidechains at the same time, it was like 20% of the, it was kind of a 20% block increase, like compared to the Bitcoin block. So yeah, so it was not important in the sense like it was, if you consider that a block...

381
00:44:53,591 --> 00:45:02,070
Even at the fast block time? How fast was the block time get because of that? Well, instead of 600 seconds, it would be how much? What is the time?

382
00:45:02,711 --> 00:45:04,950
With the time of the block of the bitchain?

383
00:45:05,591 --> 00:45:16,151
Well, what I'm saying, what increase in speed of the drivechains do you get in return for the 20% increase in?

384
00:45:16,551 --> 00:45:44,551
Well, you can go to 20 seconds, up to 20 seconds block. And below that, you have the problem that mining pools do not update their workers so often. So if you press them, like, if you incentivize them to do that, they might get less efficient in Bitcoin, actually in Bitcoin mining.

385
00:45:44,871 --> 00:45:46,950
And so, so the consequence...

386
00:45:46,950 --> 00:46:11,191
That's not the efficient point, certainly. And then the other thing is like, there's like human attention is like this, it's like extremely very sensitive to like, any lag. So like, the first second, everything matters a ton. And then there is a rule of thumb that I heard the creator of Myst say or something like they needed to be two seconds of the computer freezing at most. So then it's two seconds.

387
00:46:11,191 --> 00:46:30,871
And then if you're going to wait more than two seconds, I personally, I think like two seconds, 30 seconds, two seconds, 20 seconds, there's not much of a difference. I'm already waiting more than two seconds. I'm moving my attention to something else. So I feel like you don't get any benefit anyway. So that's, that's pretty good for a 20% increase in cost. That's very good.

388
00:46:30,871 --> 00:46:53,031
So I think that's a, that's a, would be a good... And then if we, if we make this, this BitChain a drivechain itself, then it would be perfect because we wouldn't need, you know, this dynamic multisig of miners based on their hash rate, which was something that I thought would be the mechanism to implement it.

389
00:46:53,031 --> 00:47:22,871
Yeah. I mean, a similar idea is just that, a similar category of idea. I mean, that sounds like a great idea. I look forward to reading the paper because the interblock time, I mean, that was true for the Ethereum sidechain, we just sort of rescaled the parameters to like 10 minutes. And we were just kind of like, I don't know if anyone, if everyone will hate this or whatever. I mean, we're just going to test it internally and play with it. But, but that would be, that is a difference. And I get questions about that. There's only some of the few good questions that I get are about

390
00:47:23,390 --> 00:47:52,070
does it have to have a 10 minute block time? And then I give us some answer about the sidechain can do whatever they want, but I don't have a very specific thing to show people. But I just wanted to give an idea of something in another category of like, using drivechain to build something else. That is like the idea that just if you had the mining pools, if they do pay per share, then paying them out every 10 minutes is very difficult.

391
00:47:52,830 --> 00:48:02,751
As it is now, but if they could just use the L2 chain, the payment chain, then it's very easy. You just, it's a payment like any other payment, you know, it's like buying anything.

392
00:48:02,751 --> 00:48:16,991
One of the things that I designed many years ago for Rootstock is a decentralized mining pool. Like it works, it was based on something called SmartPool, which was a paper someone made, I don't remember who.

393
00:48:17,230 --> 00:48:31,510
And I actually improve it and make it work on Rootstock. So basically, you could do everything like proving that you mine a number of shares and getting paid and everything on top of Rootstock.

394
00:48:31,510 --> 00:49:01,471
And the problem with any decentralized mining pool, and this is a very deep problem that Bitcoin has, and people should fix this, but it seems nobody's working on that, is that there is this block withholding attack on mining pools that basically prevents, it requires a centralized system to statistically detect if workers are

395
00:49:01,471 --> 00:49:04,950
cheating by withholding blocks. And there are a couple of...

396
00:49:04,950 --> 00:49:28,350
Yeah, very, very few people know about this. It's very, very widely known. And in fact, I bring it up to miners and they say, oh, that's not profitable. And I say, and then I don't know what to say, because sometimes I just say, oh, like, even though I know that I did the math myself, and I have like a funny little Excel spreadsheet that I did in 2017 that I posted on my blog in a mining...

397
00:49:28,350 --> 00:49:54,350
But this is a fascinating, this is a fascinating attack. And I know it happens in practice too, because some people who are top, the head of a mining pool, they will sometimes direct miners to change their hash to like different ports or different something to try to like sniff out like what's happening and who's impersonating someone else. Anyway, it's a fascinating topic.

398
00:49:54,350 --> 00:50:22,831
See, so, so yeah, for me, yeah, we were talking about the block rates and financial inclusion requires high block rates. That's, that's for sure. So, so, well, maybe, but I mean, I think people should have the option. What I'm, my point of view is the developers, they should be able to have a blank canvas. And if they want something, they should be able to get it. And that's between them and the user.

399
00:50:22,831 --> 00:50:44,831
I don't want to try to top down design the whole thing, like too much. But I think that in general, you know, how do most people buy? I mean, if you buy things on Amazon, they have, then you don't need, you don't need a fast interblock time, you know, because they can cancel the order. If you buy something in a store, it's shoplifting, like they have you on camera, maybe they can just call the police.

400
00:50:44,831 --> 00:51:06,831
Well, there is a very old proposal by Emi Gunzirer, which is called Bitcoin NG, which the idea is quite simple. Basically, you choose, you choose a leader based on proof of work. And then you just stream blocks to the network until the next proof of work leader is chosen. So basically,

401
00:51:06,831 --> 00:51:18,831
that's a good idea. It does have an out of band fee problem, though, because you have to split the fee. So I kind of thought it was not great. It's okay. Well, it's a good try. You know him.

402
00:51:18,831 --> 00:51:46,831
There are some other drawbacks, especially related to MEV and oracles. Like, if you are going to create many blocks, and you know you're going to create many blocks in advance, then sometimes you can manipulate oracles, because you can just buy in a block, and then sandwich something and then sell in the following block, because you have full control of all the blocks in a certain time span. So it has some problems, especially when connected with DeFi.

403
00:51:46,831 --> 00:52:15,831
But it's a potential solution. And one of the things I learned in the last five years is that the enormous amount of research that was triggered by altcoins, essentially by Ethereum, the amount of research work done on zero-knowledge, like SNARKs and STARKS, and fully homomorphic encryption,

404
00:52:15,831 --> 00:52:34,831
and multiparty computation, and witness encryption, and everything that has matured on the latest years, it's because people realized how fascinating it is to be free to build on top of a financial platform.

405
00:52:34,831 --> 00:52:35,831
Absolutely.

406
00:52:35,831 --> 00:52:40,831
And we wouldn't have seen this advance.

407
00:52:40,831 --> 00:52:44,831
Yes, we would. It would have all been on Bitcoin.

408
00:52:44,831 --> 00:52:45,831
Yeah, another thing.

409
00:52:45,831 --> 00:52:49,831
If it was 2015, it would have been different. It would have all been on Bitcoin.

410
00:52:49,831 --> 00:53:17,831
One of the arguments, I think Peter's third argument, is that people are chasing money, easy money with tokens and ICOs. But I disagree with that. If we had this technology, any Bitcoin developer, any open source Bitcoin developer would be thrilled to be able to implement privacy preserving technology like Zcash on top of Bitcoin. You don't have to give him money, he will do it for pleasure.

411
00:53:18,831 --> 00:53:32,831
You're absolutely 100% correct. I mean, what they try to do is they don't like, they know that they can't go down the road of saying that Bitcoin Core has some kind of flaw, or is in any way imperfect.

412
00:53:32,831 --> 00:53:54,831
So they have to say this is perfect and they have to delegitimize any other design or any other tinkering, any other invention. They have to say, okay, like whatever, we never wanted Zk-SNARKs anyway. As soon as Zcash comes out, they have to say Zk-SNARKs are bad, you know, because it's a shitcoin.

413
00:53:54,831 --> 00:54:13,831
So this is why it's really killing the Bitcoin project not to have sidechains. And it's been, it has been terrible to behold, even though Bitcoin has been enormously successful over the last eight years, we are also kind of getting worse in a large number of ways.

414
00:54:13,831 --> 00:54:29,831
Well, I still have hope that one of these new silly opcodes that maybe it's for softworking to be too, like CAT or any simple thing, basically allows you to do full dragchains without anyone noticing.

415
00:54:29,831 --> 00:54:53,831
Like, for instance, BitBM is capable of doing a lot of things, even if it is super restricted, and you don't have Zcash, any prevout, which would simplify it enormously, and you don't have CheckSig from stack, which would make it so much secure and shorten the challenge transactions.

416
00:54:53,831 --> 00:55:07,831
Like, even with BitBM, you can build so much things that I think that at the end, we will manage to get dragchains working without any help from the community.

417
00:55:07,831 --> 00:55:08,831
And at that point...

418
00:55:08,831 --> 00:55:12,831
It's certainly inevitable. No, it absolutely is inevitable. Yeah.

419
00:55:12,831 --> 00:55:25,831
So at that point, you know, core developers would maybe would say, okay, let's make it easy because it's already mainstream and everyone is using and it's so complex that maybe it's easier to just do it, right?

420
00:55:25,831 --> 00:55:27,831
Support it officially. Yeah, maybe.

421
00:55:27,831 --> 00:55:43,831
I have another argument for specific for hashrate scrolls and not, I mean, I always try to separate hashrate scrolls from dragchain, because I think that dragchain is more your proposal, while hashrate scrolls is more like the concept, right?

422
00:55:43,831 --> 00:55:47,831
I don't know if you agree with that, but I try to separate that.

423
00:55:47,831 --> 00:55:55,831
And I was super interested in hashrate scrolls at the beginning also because Rootstock is a federated sidechain.

424
00:55:55,831 --> 00:56:02,831
We know a lot of improvements like the Popay, with HSMs that are tamper-proof, key extraction is impossible.

425
00:56:02,831 --> 00:56:04,831
It's an autonomous system.

426
00:56:04,831 --> 00:56:15,831
But yet people distrust because they cannot fully verify who are the ones that are running these devices or the root of trust for the hardware attestation.

427
00:56:16,831 --> 00:56:28,831
It's very hard to make them believe that the firmware is running on devices and it's signed by the root of trust and everything is good because they cannot see the code.

428
00:56:28,831 --> 00:56:36,831
I mean, they can see the code, but they cannot validate the legitimacy of the people participating, right?

429
00:56:37,831 --> 00:56:44,831
So for me, hashrate scrolls is a new layer of protection on top of any federation.

430
00:56:44,831 --> 00:56:49,831
Federations have shown in practice that they can be super secure.

431
00:56:49,831 --> 00:56:57,831
Like, for instance, Liquid Federation or Rootstock Federation, or I think BitGo, RAP-BTC thing, like multisig.

432
00:56:57,831 --> 00:56:59,831
It's secure. It has not been broken.

433
00:56:59,831 --> 00:57:07,831
We never had a security incident in particular part of the Rootstock pack, for instance.

434
00:57:07,831 --> 00:57:17,831
So we know that we can make them super secure, but we cannot make them open and people still distrust because they cannot fully verify it.

435
00:57:17,831 --> 00:57:28,831
So my proposal for hashrate scroll back in 2015, or by the same time you proposed the drivechain, was to add an opcode.

436
00:57:28,831 --> 00:57:40,831
In my case, it was called contact knowledge that allows you to combine a federation with a hashrate scroll so that you could do a lot of interesting stuff.

437
00:57:40,831 --> 00:57:53,831
Like, for instance, you can do, like, one of the main problems of federations is that, you know, you can, there is a risk that government sees the equipment, like sees the HSMs or sometimes sensor things.

438
00:57:53,831 --> 00:58:01,831
So the sidechain cannot keep going. It's just blocked forever because there is no way to withdraw the funds.

439
00:58:01,831 --> 00:58:11,831
So one potential use for a mixture of federation and hashrate scroll is that indicates that the hashrate, that the federation stops working.

440
00:58:11,831 --> 00:58:24,831
You can have a time log where the hashrate scroll takes control, basically, of that funds and can continue pushing for the sidechain without any problem.

441
00:58:24,831 --> 00:58:48,831
Or you can do a dynamic setting where you need, let's say, 90% of the functionaries from the federation to sign or 90% of the miners to sign or any, you know, balance, any, I mean, you can put weight on the signatures and weight on the votes, let's say, by the hashrate, by the hashrate scroll,

442
00:58:48,831 --> 00:59:03,831
so that in any case of any of the system failing, you can have the other as a failsafe, as a backup system. And that brings openness. Anyone can participate and still be part of the securing of the funds.

443
00:59:03,831 --> 00:59:24,831
And it also brings a failsafe system where currently what we have in Liquid and in Roostock, it's a time log where after a certain time, there is a second federation, generally smaller, that takes all control of the funds and can bring back them, bring them back to a new federation.

444
00:59:25,831 --> 00:59:39,831
But obviously, no one wants that. No one wants that to happen. It's a last resort thing. But in the case of a hashrate scroll, you can have that live and very tangible that there is a security model that has several layers.

445
00:59:39,831 --> 01:00:06,831
And this idea of having several security layers, which is in computer security, is called defense in debt. It's basically what protects you from your own flaws, from your own mistakes, from your own bugs. So it's, for me, only that particular use case, like, forget about the drivechain, but giving more security to the existing federated sidechains pays for everything, pays for all the work.

446
01:00:09,831 --> 01:00:14,831
Thank you.

447
01:00:14,831 --> 01:00:27,831
Hello.

448
01:00:27,831 --> 01:00:32,831
Hello.

449
01:00:36,219 --> 01:00:51,259
Yes, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Can you hear me?

450
01:00:51,259 --> 01:00:59,098
I heard defense in depth and then I crashed. Oh, so sorry. Okay. I was wrapping up that

451
01:00:59,098 --> 01:01:05,139
just that particular use case, like having a second layer of security on top of federated

452
01:01:05,139 --> 01:01:11,939
sidechain, it's enough for, should be enough for Bitcoiners to be fully engaged and fully

453
01:01:11,939 --> 01:01:18,259
supportive of this. Like, for me, it's a no brainer. Having a second layer of defense

454
01:01:18,259 --> 01:01:24,299
against attacks or blocks in the federated sidechains.

455
01:01:24,779 --> 01:01:30,459
Well, unfortunately, we have too much communism in Bitcoin, where it's like, it has to be

456
01:01:30,459 --> 01:01:40,178
one size fits all. Everyone has to, like, agree or whatever. It won't, like, we can't

457
01:01:40,178 --> 01:01:44,539
have, it should be, if you want to have this certain type of thing, that should be between

458
01:01:44,539 --> 01:01:49,738
you and your users. It shouldn't really be, you know, we should really get, you know,

459
01:01:49,738 --> 01:01:55,259
it's funny, there's an idea, there's a way of, you mentioned before, a way of hacking

460
01:01:55,259 --> 01:02:01,699
together BIP300 without convincing anyone, without changing Bitcoin Core. And, you know,

461
01:02:01,699 --> 01:02:10,058
there is actually an idea. It goes like this. You build a different piece of software that's

462
01:02:10,058 --> 01:02:16,178
like a BIP300 patch, but it's its own application. And it does not touch Bitcoin Core

463
01:02:16,178 --> 01:02:20,778
directly at all. But then you have a, so you have that thing, you have like BIP300

464
01:02:20,778 --> 01:02:25,818
watcher thing or whatever you want to call it. And then the miners run a third piece of

465
01:02:25,818 --> 01:02:30,619
software, which is this tiny piece of software that just runs both. And the only thing it

466
01:02:30,619 --> 01:02:37,619
does is it will call invalidate block on Bitcoin Core if the patch tells it to.

467
01:02:39,019 --> 01:02:44,338
Well, well, the problem is not how you run these components, like if they are separated or

468
01:02:44,338 --> 01:02:49,379
embedded, I think that's not the problem. The moment you invalidate blocks, that's a

469
01:02:49,379 --> 01:02:57,179
soft fork. And I mean, if the community has not kind of approved that, that invalidation

470
01:02:57,219 --> 01:03:04,778
becomes a sin by the community, an attack. So I think it's not how...

471
01:03:05,138 --> 01:03:09,618
Yeah, but think about this, though. If you get 51% of people to run that, then they will

472
01:03:09,618 --> 01:03:14,299
never really see that it has happened.

473
01:03:14,978 --> 01:03:16,739
Well, but it's still happening.

474
01:03:17,418 --> 01:03:19,179
I know, but they will never see that it's happening.

475
01:03:19,858 --> 01:03:26,778
Yeah, I'm not, I don't think that's the way to proceed. I mean, going directly to talk with the

476
01:03:26,778 --> 01:03:32,778
miners and trying to convince them to, for me, it's not the way, right?

477
01:03:33,618 --> 01:03:35,219
But to...

478
01:03:35,219 --> 01:03:38,418
Well, I have not, you know, yeah, exactly. For the last eight years, I have really not done

479
01:03:38,418 --> 01:03:42,539
that. So it's weird that some people think that I am, but I obviously have not.

480
01:03:43,338 --> 01:03:49,299
I take one of the ideas that you don't need to soft fork anything into Bitcoin to bring

481
01:03:49,978 --> 01:03:52,058
interesting infrastructure to miners.

482
01:03:52,099 --> 01:03:59,978
Like, for instance, like the whole BitChain project can be deployed to miners within

483
01:03:59,978 --> 01:04:06,179
Rootstock. Like, they can have, like, we build it, we package it with Rootstock node, and

484
01:04:06,179 --> 01:04:11,019
in the next network upgrade, one year from now or six months from now or whatever, they get

485
01:04:11,019 --> 01:04:16,258
BitChain for free. And that BitChain will be running and they will be able to connect to it

486
01:04:16,258 --> 01:04:17,219
and use it.

487
01:04:17,659 --> 01:04:24,579
So there is a channel because miners are already mining, more than 50% of the miners are

488
01:04:24,579 --> 01:04:26,099
already mining Rootstock.

489
01:04:26,299 --> 01:04:31,858
So I'm not advocating at all for using this channel to soft fork anything into Bitcoin.

490
01:04:32,459 --> 01:04:35,099
I want to be super clear on that.

491
01:04:35,099 --> 01:04:40,618
I'm saying that we have a channel to deploy software that can help, you know, for instance,

492
01:04:40,618 --> 01:04:46,819
doing blank merge mining and obviously without interfering with Bitcoin.

493
01:04:47,739 --> 01:04:49,659
So for the benefit of the miners.

494
01:04:49,659 --> 01:04:51,978
So that's an interesting possibility.

495
01:04:56,259 --> 01:05:00,498
Yeah, so you go to the miners and you get, I mean, you have convinced more than half of the

496
01:05:00,498 --> 01:05:02,819
miners to run, to merge mine Rootstock.

497
01:05:02,819 --> 01:05:05,419
So that is...

498
01:05:06,419 --> 01:05:11,058
Well, the nice thing is that I didn't have to convince anyone.

499
01:05:11,058 --> 01:05:19,539
Like, I don't remember having spoken to any miner ever, like maybe in 2013, but not after

500
01:05:19,539 --> 01:05:25,419
that. So they basically, the ones that are mining Rootstock, they see the long term value.

501
01:05:25,419 --> 01:05:33,738
And now that it has many, many uses, they see, obviously, the immediate revenue they get.

502
01:05:33,898 --> 01:05:37,298
Right. But I don't have to convince them.

503
01:05:37,298 --> 01:05:42,298
I think that they realize by themselves they are rational after all.

504
01:05:42,298 --> 01:05:44,419
So they see the potential.

505
01:05:48,898 --> 01:05:57,539
Well, that's good. I wanted to emphasize something about like going back, like, should we

506
01:05:57,539 --> 01:05:59,738
stay on the cutting edge or should we go back?

507
01:05:59,738 --> 01:06:01,338
Because a lot of people tell me, oh, I should go back.

508
01:06:01,338 --> 01:06:06,859
I should, I should present these ideas to the community in like a different way and like be

509
01:06:06,859 --> 01:06:08,939
nicer to people and be more persuasive.

510
01:06:09,458 --> 01:06:14,379
And it's kind of like you could do that or you could build the, you know, on the cutting

511
01:06:14,379 --> 01:06:20,859
edge, you could build more, you know, do you go back and tell like you live on an island

512
01:06:20,859 --> 01:06:25,099
and you find a path through the jungle, you know, the jungle of the forest of mystery.

513
01:06:25,458 --> 01:06:31,458
And it's like you go back and tell people, but if they're not, if they don't get it, then

514
01:06:31,979 --> 01:06:37,099
you have to go, you go further out and you continue to explore and you do the, you do

515
01:06:37,099 --> 01:06:44,379
the cool, you build, you know, the whatever, the, well, you build a decentralized mining

516
01:06:44,379 --> 01:06:51,699
pool sidechain or you build immediate payout pool decentralization sidechain or you just

517
01:06:52,659 --> 01:06:55,099
Satoshi didn't ask permission to anyone to create Bitcoin.

518
01:06:55,178 --> 01:06:56,699
Yes, right.

519
01:06:56,699 --> 01:07:03,699
He, he, I always thought that Bitcoin is kind of anomaly, like something that should not

520
01:07:03,699 --> 01:07:05,539
happen, should not have happened.

521
01:07:05,819 --> 01:07:11,699
Like it's just like governments were too, too worried about anything, something else that

522
01:07:11,699 --> 01:07:13,058
they didn't see it coming.

523
01:07:13,458 --> 01:07:16,738
And so when they saw it coming, it was too late.

524
01:07:17,178 --> 01:07:24,659
And so it's just slipped, you know, slept below the surface without anyone noticing.

525
01:07:24,659 --> 01:07:26,419
And when and then it was a big thing.

526
01:07:26,699 --> 01:07:30,018
Right. So I think that this is the idea.

527
01:07:30,018 --> 01:07:35,458
Like you build stuff, make people believe in that and make people use it.

528
01:07:35,738 --> 01:07:40,939
And one day it just, it's just part of our everyday lives.

529
01:07:41,458 --> 01:07:51,819
So, so I think that, yeah, I understand that your, your project with drivechains is so

530
01:07:51,819 --> 01:07:56,939
much based on the idea that drivechains should be thought for, that it's difficult to

531
01:07:56,939 --> 01:08:01,578
think about deploying the infrastructure without having the bridge.

532
01:08:01,659 --> 01:08:06,778
Right. But maybe you find a way to create it with BitBM.

533
01:08:06,778 --> 01:08:08,338
That would be the.

534
01:08:08,338 --> 01:08:14,659
Well, yes, but I think in a way that's almost that's like I find that also weird because

535
01:08:14,659 --> 01:08:21,219
it's kind of like that is the non-consensual BIP300, but, you know, whatever.

536
01:08:21,219 --> 01:08:25,458
Like, I don't know. I think I have changed my mind back and forth on this.

537
01:08:25,458 --> 01:08:28,699
BitBM is part of the Bitcoin standard protocol.

538
01:08:29,058 --> 01:08:29,939
Yes, it's there.

539
01:08:30,099 --> 01:08:31,139
Like maybe not.

540
01:08:31,139 --> 01:08:36,979
But counting to 13,000 is also already part of the Bitcoin protocol.

541
01:08:36,979 --> 01:08:37,618
Right. Yeah.

542
01:08:37,618 --> 01:08:42,778
So. I think somebody will find a way to do it.

543
01:08:42,979 --> 01:08:47,578
Yeah. OK, so.

544
01:08:47,699 --> 01:08:52,219
Yeah. So I mean, certainly, I mean, the benefits are very large.

545
01:08:52,219 --> 01:08:59,458
I mean, we're really what what else is even happening in Bitcoin that is actually going

546
01:08:59,458 --> 01:09:05,139
well other than the stuff that the same people who hate drivechain like don't like.

547
01:09:06,139 --> 01:09:15,778
I think that technologically rollups over Bitcoin is something that we will see things

548
01:09:15,778 --> 01:09:20,138
interesting. The point is that rollups also need bridges to be really Bitcoin aligned.

549
01:09:20,138 --> 01:09:21,378
They need to work.

550
01:09:21,378 --> 01:09:23,698
Right. So the problem is still there.

551
01:09:23,698 --> 01:09:25,018
But it's interesting.

552
01:09:25,338 --> 01:09:27,619
BitBM is super interesting.

553
01:09:27,619 --> 01:09:34,099
I've been working on a project using BitBM too early, but I think this is this is

554
01:09:34,099 --> 01:09:37,299
something that will bring new new ideas.

555
01:09:38,938 --> 01:09:45,458
I hope that in the future Rusto can use also BitBM to be more secure or more decentralized,

556
01:09:45,458 --> 01:09:54,499
I would say. And but yeah, I mean, there are a lot of improvements on top of in Bitcoin

557
01:09:54,499 --> 01:09:58,138
that are just meaner things like important stuff.

558
01:09:58,138 --> 01:10:02,099
But from the point of view of the use cases, it does not change anything.

559
01:10:02,619 --> 01:10:04,979
Now we have encrypted peer-to-peer communication.

560
01:10:04,979 --> 01:10:08,059
Well, that's great. That's something that we are all been waiting for.

561
01:10:08,299 --> 01:10:10,938
But it doesn't really change the use case.

562
01:10:10,938 --> 01:10:13,258
It doesn't really affect the end user.

563
01:10:13,499 --> 01:10:18,979
And the end user that needs the ones DeFi will still go to the DeFi blockchains.

564
01:10:19,219 --> 01:10:27,099
There's no no no expansion in the use case of Bitcoin, which is something that the

565
01:10:27,099 --> 01:10:28,099
BitBM can do.

566
01:10:28,539 --> 01:10:36,499
So so I think there is the the the the hot stuff is there.

567
01:10:36,698 --> 01:10:52,138
Right. Paul, I know you love having like eight eight hours podcast, but but I'm more

568
01:10:52,138 --> 01:10:56,018
like I have like one hour podcast for me.

569
01:10:57,018 --> 01:11:09,698
I understand. So if we have another topic to discuss, if not, then I think it's good

570
01:11:09,698 --> 01:11:13,539
for people to to rest a little bit and myself included.

571
01:11:16,219 --> 01:11:22,018
Yeah. No, I mean, I don't know.

572
01:11:22,258 --> 01:11:25,378
Well, you can you can you can stay stay.

573
01:11:25,419 --> 01:11:28,378
There is very interesting people in this in this.

574
01:11:29,179 --> 01:11:32,659
Yes, of course. We'll call them up if they want to press.

575
01:11:32,698 --> 01:11:38,299
You have Vlad that is that is here with Vlad's great.

576
01:11:38,299 --> 01:11:44,099
We love Vlad. He is the greatest hair, best hair on Bitcoin.

577
01:11:46,419 --> 01:11:48,179
So we have Austin here.

578
01:11:48,179 --> 01:11:49,258
Hello. Yes, thank you.

579
01:11:49,979 --> 01:11:51,698
Hello. Yes, big fan.

580
01:11:51,698 --> 01:11:53,739
I have a question for Mr. Sergio.

581
01:11:55,659 --> 01:12:00,419
So if like, let's just say by whatever means or path forward that drivechain is

582
01:12:00,419 --> 01:12:05,499
activated, what would do you think?

583
01:12:05,499 --> 01:12:09,299
Obviously, you're not in control of it completely, but what would happen in the

584
01:12:09,299 --> 01:12:11,578
Rootstock ecosystem?

585
01:12:11,578 --> 01:12:18,258
And do you see Rootstock transitioning to a drivechain?

586
01:12:18,539 --> 01:12:26,258
OK, the Rootstock blockchain was designed to transition to something like a drive

587
01:12:26,258 --> 01:12:34,619
chain, like I was discussing yesterday, I think, in Twitter, why we had merge mining

588
01:12:34,619 --> 01:12:41,938
and for consensus and a federated pay and not simply having a federation like

589
01:12:41,938 --> 01:12:43,219
Liquid that does both.

590
01:12:43,739 --> 01:12:48,938
And I explained that one of the main arguments is that we didn't want to give too

591
01:12:48,938 --> 01:12:54,138
much power to a group that will be benefiting directly from transaction fees and will

592
01:12:54,138 --> 01:12:59,499
have enormous incentive to keep being the benefit of those fees.

593
01:12:59,499 --> 01:13:02,378
Right. So we split this problem in two.

594
01:13:02,739 --> 01:13:09,859
We created this federated pay and we gave the Bitcoin miners the consensus of a

595
01:13:09,859 --> 01:13:16,659
protocol. And this now is like a two chamber kind of control on the network.

596
01:13:16,659 --> 01:13:21,778
I would say that these two groups do not overlap much.

597
01:13:21,778 --> 01:13:29,578
So basically what that allows us, because the pegnatories, the functionaries that run

598
01:13:29,578 --> 01:13:35,338
the HSM devices, they do not get paid much for their role.

599
01:13:35,338 --> 01:13:37,979
They just do it because they contribute to the network.

600
01:13:37,979 --> 01:13:44,859
But it's not that they are being rich because of that, so that we can very easily,

601
01:13:44,979 --> 01:13:48,138
if the community agrees, replace that with something else.

602
01:13:48,499 --> 01:13:56,619
And we wouldn't be having a long term, infinite debate about something like who's

603
01:13:56,619 --> 01:14:00,619
going to lose more money or who's going to win more money.

604
01:14:00,619 --> 01:14:07,099
Like everyone is prepared for the moment that we will need to replace the POPEG with

605
01:14:07,099 --> 01:14:12,938
something better. My personal opinion is that we should not fully replace the POPEG.

606
01:14:12,938 --> 01:14:18,979
We should, for a long time, let's say a year, we should have both systems in place,

607
01:14:19,179 --> 01:14:26,818
like working in tandem, like you need both approvals or both acknowledge of withdrawal

608
01:14:27,138 --> 01:14:34,539
and then like dynamically moving away from the POPEG and moving more towards the

609
01:14:34,539 --> 01:14:41,898
hash rates. So that's my view, because I don't think that very sharp changes, like

610
01:14:41,898 --> 01:14:48,258
very imminent, how would you say, very sudden changes on the something that is as

611
01:14:48,258 --> 01:14:50,578
critical as the POPEG would be a good idea.

612
01:14:50,619 --> 01:14:56,018
Like there is a lot of money, like four thousand bitcoins in the POPEG and so that

613
01:14:56,018 --> 01:15:00,299
are community money and we should not play with that.

614
01:15:01,299 --> 01:15:08,219
So, so I think that, yes, the answer is probably the BlueStock community will be super

615
01:15:08,578 --> 01:15:11,419
interested in being a drivechain.

616
01:15:11,859 --> 01:15:17,338
But on the other side, they will prefer to either wait for some other project to do it

617
01:15:17,338 --> 01:15:23,619
first or to do it in a gradual way where they can have both both security models, even if

618
01:15:23,619 --> 01:15:27,219
that implies a little bit more of censorship, right?

619
01:15:27,219 --> 01:15:32,018
Because now you have two potential groups that can kind of censor the withdrawal

620
01:15:32,018 --> 01:15:38,739
transactions. But I think it's a price that you should pay to move from one one model to

621
01:15:38,739 --> 01:15:39,059
the other.

622
01:15:46,619 --> 01:15:51,539
Very good. I had some more questions, but I see that there's more people up here, so it's

623
01:15:51,539 --> 01:15:52,539
probably better to let them talk.

624
01:15:53,338 --> 01:15:58,539
Yes, we got Cordy, we've got The Crypto Show.

625
01:15:59,338 --> 01:15:59,859
Hello.

626
01:16:01,219 --> 01:16:02,018
Oh, hey, guys.

627
01:16:03,299 --> 01:16:07,059
Well, I want to use blockchain, drivechain for identity, right?

628
01:16:08,138 --> 01:16:13,338
What potential do you see where identity solutions and drivechain mixed with BlueStock?

629
01:16:15,818 --> 01:16:18,578
I think that the digital identity thing will be big.

630
01:16:18,578 --> 01:16:20,099
I don't know what form it will take.

631
01:16:20,099 --> 01:16:23,059
But Namecoin was on the right track.

632
01:16:24,099 --> 01:16:29,378
It is better to have to give people an identity, a human readable identity that they own,

633
01:16:30,419 --> 01:16:33,619
like a domain, except the domain would do everything.

634
01:16:33,619 --> 01:16:35,219
It'd be like everyone has a home page.

635
01:16:35,258 --> 01:16:38,499
Everyone has a it's like everyone's PGP key.

636
01:16:38,499 --> 01:16:39,938
It's everyone's stealth address.

637
01:16:39,938 --> 01:16:44,898
You can send and receive messages or files or video, video chat with people because you

638
01:16:45,099 --> 01:16:46,099
have their key.

639
01:16:46,099 --> 01:16:51,378
And then being being human readable is I think that's very important.

640
01:16:51,378 --> 01:16:57,619
A lot of people have tried to just to sort of cut that corner, like the Microsoft did

641
01:16:57,619 --> 01:17:00,258
people, decentralized identity people.

642
01:17:00,258 --> 01:17:01,778
But I think that is a mistake.

643
01:17:01,778 --> 01:17:06,979
You really need to be able to say like, this is like, you know, whatever it is, Ron Paul

644
01:17:06,979 --> 01:17:10,338
2020 or something, it needs it needs to be human readable.

645
01:17:10,338 --> 01:17:14,979
And just think about, like, you know, the anxiety over Bitcoin.com and Bitcoin.org being

646
01:17:14,979 --> 01:17:17,138
owned by people with different interests.

647
01:17:17,138 --> 01:17:18,499
Like it matters a lot.

648
01:17:18,499 --> 01:17:20,898
And once you have the domain, then you have everything.

649
01:17:20,898 --> 01:17:23,619
It could be the same once you have the name.

650
01:17:23,619 --> 01:17:26,179
It's your name on Facebook.

651
01:17:26,179 --> 01:17:27,219
It's your name on Instagram.

652
01:17:27,219 --> 01:17:28,898
It's your name on Twitter.

653
01:17:28,898 --> 01:17:31,938
It's your name on whatever, an Oster.

654
01:17:31,938 --> 01:17:34,419
And so this restores competition.

655
01:17:35,299 --> 01:17:37,859
It means that all these people are now competing for the same domain.

656
01:17:38,818 --> 01:17:41,139
It means that all these people are now competing for you.

657
01:17:41,139 --> 01:17:42,739
TikTok is competing for you.

658
01:17:42,739 --> 01:17:43,938
It flips the whole script.

659
01:17:44,578 --> 01:17:45,538
It fixes spam.

660
01:17:45,538 --> 01:17:46,418
It fixes email.

661
01:17:46,418 --> 01:17:49,058
Since you can now email, you can now send a message to the person.

662
01:17:49,698 --> 01:17:50,739
So I think it's huge.

663
01:17:50,739 --> 01:17:51,779
I think it's just enormous.

664
01:17:51,779 --> 01:17:53,698
I wrote a post about it called BitNames.

665
01:17:53,698 --> 01:17:57,058
If you search truthcoin.info BitNames, you can read.

666
01:17:57,058 --> 01:17:59,619
I published a bunch of thoughts in detail on what to do.

667
01:18:00,338 --> 01:18:01,938
Yes, definitely check that.

668
01:18:03,458 --> 01:18:09,139
I also think that if Web3 is really materialized someday,

669
01:18:10,338 --> 01:18:13,619
Web3 is based on kind of decentralized storage

670
01:18:13,619 --> 01:18:16,818
where the web pages are somewhere you don't know,

671
01:18:16,818 --> 01:18:23,139
but you can access them by some kind of an ID

672
01:18:23,139 --> 01:18:25,219
that brings you the page.

673
01:18:25,219 --> 01:18:27,219
And you cannot do that with a hash

674
01:18:27,298 --> 01:18:29,219
because, of course, nobody would understand

675
01:18:29,219 --> 01:18:33,379
or could be able to distinguish a hash from another hash.

676
01:18:33,379 --> 01:18:38,739
But if you have an ID that identifies the site,

677
01:18:38,739 --> 01:18:39,859
let's say Uniswap,

678
01:18:40,658 --> 01:18:47,538
and then you just immediately get the full web page experience

679
01:18:47,538 --> 01:18:50,499
from decentralized networks that is fully secure

680
01:18:50,499 --> 01:18:53,379
because that name maps to a hash

681
01:18:53,379 --> 01:18:58,418
with maps to a thousand pages that are loaded.

682
01:18:58,418 --> 01:19:01,698
And then you basically get the experience of Web3.

683
01:19:02,499 --> 01:19:03,779
So that's also important.

684
01:19:04,578 --> 01:19:07,379
In the case of Rootstock, we have the RNS system,

685
01:19:07,379 --> 01:19:10,019
which is basically kind of a naming system

686
01:19:10,019 --> 01:19:12,739
where you can store your PGB private keys.

687
01:19:12,739 --> 01:19:16,899
You can store your Bitcoin addresses if you wish.

688
01:19:16,899 --> 01:19:19,538
And obviously I would suggest using

689
01:19:20,499 --> 01:19:24,658
some kind of a steal address system on top of that.

690
01:19:25,298 --> 01:19:29,379
But we already have that system on top of Rootstock.

691
01:19:30,899 --> 01:19:35,379
Yes, and that's one of my favorite projects in crypto, RNS.

692
01:19:35,379 --> 01:19:37,859
I loved it so much that I went out

693
01:19:37,859 --> 01:19:39,458
and created something else on Rootstock,

694
01:19:39,458 --> 01:19:42,338
which is similar to RNS for my team.

695
01:19:42,338 --> 01:19:45,458
Because I believe it's the most important tool in blockchain,

696
01:19:45,458 --> 01:19:48,019
the ability to connect your Rootstock identity

697
01:19:48,019 --> 01:19:50,739
to Bitcoin or the other interoperable chains.

698
01:19:52,019 --> 01:19:56,099
Yeah, there's not only this off-chain connection of addresses,

699
01:19:56,099 --> 01:19:58,658
but I was waiting more projects,

700
01:19:58,658 --> 01:20:01,219
more ideas related to the on-chain connection

701
01:20:01,219 --> 01:20:04,019
between Rootstock and Bitcoin.

702
01:20:04,019 --> 01:20:06,099
Like from Rootstock, you have a Bitcoin oracle

703
01:20:06,099 --> 01:20:07,779
where you can query any block

704
01:20:08,338 --> 01:20:11,058
and you can prove that certain transactions happen.

705
01:20:11,058 --> 01:20:15,058
You can see, you can prove that there is certain payment.

706
01:20:15,619 --> 01:20:20,499
So there are many use cases that could be helped

707
01:20:20,499 --> 01:20:26,499
by having that Bitcoin oracle in consensus inside the sidechain.

708
01:20:26,499 --> 01:20:31,058
And I would love to see more ideas regarding that.

709
01:20:31,281 --> 01:20:59,281
Yes, and Paul, there's one thing I'm very bullish on is gaming. I would love to connect identity to gaming and definitely use Drivechain for that. But we're also limited to a lot of ideas when it comes to just websites. We always think about websites and identity, but I don't believe these domains are going to be used for website hosting. I think that's not what we, it's like, how do you think outside the box besides just hosting websites for these domains, right? Just a username.

710
01:20:59,281 --> 01:21:27,281
The name is more than the domain, but it would be like, you know, if you log into Call of Duty or whatever, it's like you don't need to have like an email and a password. You just, it just pings the name. It pings your name on the blockchain. And then the same as everyone, every airplane, every flight, every whatever. And it's just you. And then if you want to make it, you make a second identity, you have a whole second everything. You have a second Instagram, it helps you screw it up. So like Satoshi, he would automatically have like an Instagram.

711
01:21:27,281 --> 01:21:45,281
And he's got his regular ID, and then he's got his second ID or his third ID. And so we'd all have our alt accounts, you know, our anon accounts. And then we'd be Trinity, you'd be Neo, and then you'd be Mr. Anderson, you know.

712
01:21:46,281 --> 01:21:57,281
That's the ultimate use case for Bitcoin. It's this identity that you can use across multiple apps, like signing with Google, signing with Facebook, you sign in with your name. That's leveraging Bitcoin security. And that's it.

713
01:21:58,281 --> 01:22:13,281
People have already done it. I mean, Namecoin is very old. And then there was like Web3 login. I've seen it on the internet. I have once or twice. So it's out there. Okay, now let's we should go to someone else. I think maybe Crypto Show.

714
01:22:14,281 --> 01:22:22,281
Hey, Paul. It's Danny. I'm looking forward to seeing you in Acapulco. I hope to have your presentation.

715
01:22:24,281 --> 01:22:25,281
Yeah, I'm excited.

716
01:22:25,281 --> 01:22:43,281
Yeah, I think I've asked you a couple of times in messaging. I was wanting to have like a sidechain or drivechain for DragonX, which is a Z2Z privacy coin just to be able to add whatever features and have this merge-mined. Like, can we do this?

717
01:22:44,281 --> 01:22:47,281
Well, I don't know exactly what you mean.

718
01:22:48,281 --> 01:22:49,281
But I don't know.

719
01:22:49,281 --> 01:22:55,281
Can we, you know, fork BIP300 and BIP301 into our chain?

720
01:22:57,281 --> 01:23:01,281
Well, that depends on how similar it is to Bitcoin Core.

721
01:23:02,281 --> 01:23:07,281
It's a Zcash fork. So I mean, it comes from Bitcoin.

722
01:23:08,281 --> 01:23:33,281
Yeah, I think that's like Bitcoin 12 or something. But that, I don't know, that may be easy. Maybe. I mean, I'm not sure. But in principle, you certainly can. You can certainly just like, go through the writing of the BIP and re-implement, which is some work. But yeah, maybe. I'm not sure.

723
01:23:33,281 --> 01:23:53,281
Yeah, I mean, it would be nice to be able to do anything, send NFTs or whatever, whatever you want to do that is not as private as the main transaction. And especially if it's merge mine, you know, just whoever the miners are, send out these sidechain coins so that people can do whatever they want with them.

724
01:23:57,281 --> 01:23:58,281
Yeah, absolutely.

725
01:23:59,281 --> 01:24:05,281
Well, I just want to say goodbye because it was a pleasure.

726
01:24:06,281 --> 01:24:07,281
Excellent. Hey, thanks for stopping by.

727
01:24:08,281 --> 01:24:11,281
Yeah, it was a pleasure. See you soon. Bye bye. And thanks, everyone.

728
01:24:12,281 --> 01:24:13,281
Great. See you.

729
01:24:13,281 --> 01:24:14,281
Awesome.

730
01:24:14,281 --> 01:24:15,281
Thanks, Sergio. See you later.

731
01:24:16,281 --> 01:24:29,281
All right. OK, man. Well, I'll let the next person speak or whatever. I'm looking forward to seeing you in February. If anybody else is coming and want to save money, use the coupon code CryptoTent.

732
01:24:30,281 --> 01:24:51,281
Cool. Yeah, yeah. In Acapulco I've been a few different times. It's a lot of fun. And it's great to get to Mexico in February. Yeah, that's great. Depending on what part of the US you're in. If you're in Miami, I guess it's not that big of a difference. Anyway, we have a bald C909.

733
01:24:52,281 --> 01:25:07,281
Hi. I was wondering what do you think how it would impact your life if you would decide, for example, to do an own drivechain fork just to make your product more visible?

734
01:25:07,281 --> 01:25:24,281
Because I think it's already showed a lot of times. It's said that there are very high qualified developers like you normally should be paid in just a different kind of league for their work because it's really the top league of developers.

735
01:25:24,281 --> 01:25:42,281
And I'm just wondering myself why it's not accepted in the community to fork something if people are educated that it's a fork where people are developing a code and they can experience and just make an experience on something what has been developed.

736
01:25:43,281 --> 01:26:04,281
Well, I think it's actually a very good suggestion and it makes a lot of sense. But I think the explanation is that there was a time when everyone assumed that sidechains would take over. And so the fork, there was no need to fork because we'll have sidechains and then we'll just have everything as a sidechain.

737
01:26:05,281 --> 01:26:21,281
And then at a certain point we had an inflection point and we flipped from sidechains are inevitable. We flipped away from that and we flipped instead into something like Bitcoin is already perfect and everything else is a shitcoin.

738
01:26:21,281 --> 01:26:46,281
So we just kind of flipped like on the same day. And that is also why it's difficult to. But yeah, I think that is a good idea because I think that. Well, one reason why is that it might be good as a fork is it might be a good insurance policy on if BTC has lots of problems culturally and those might actually.

739
01:26:47,281 --> 01:27:00,281
It's unlikely, but that's by far the Achilles heel of the project and that might be good to have competition and a little bit of excitement. So, yeah, I don't know.

740
01:27:00,281 --> 01:27:19,281
So, yeah, I don't know. And it's hard to complain. And that's another thing is, you know, Bitcoin has done very well over the years, you know, since in the eight years, since 2015, since the drivechain post came out and then all the time that I've been around Bitcoin, it has done, you know, it has been the greatest performing asset in the history of capitalism.

741
01:27:19,281 --> 01:27:44,281
It has like changed the world, even in its infant state that it's currently trapped in. So could things be 10,000 times better? I think so, yes. So I think it's a good, definitely a good suggestion. I think it should not be so stigmatized. But of course, you see that it is. It would be like leaving. So you're betraying the community and leaving.

742
01:27:44,281 --> 01:27:55,281
So you have also some kind of a feeling that other developers are looking down to you because you're considering this as an option. Can you understand them if they do so?

743
01:28:04,626 --> 01:28:14,826
They, it's kind of like this, this is an inherently a political technology because it is based on network effects and about who else is in it.

744
01:28:14,826 --> 01:28:19,226
So it is, this is a community-based thing.

745
01:28:19,226 --> 01:28:32,126
So, it's kind of like, you know, you're teleported back in time and you live in whatever, ancient Germany or whatever.

746
01:28:32,281 --> 01:28:50,281
And you try to, you know, you try to explain to the, you explain, you teach everyone about fire and you teach them about, you know, clean drinking water. And then you try to teach them about some things like a democracy or the rule of law. And they're just kind of like, they're just not ready for it yet.

747
01:28:51,281 --> 01:29:07,281
And it's like, you know, I mean, to some extent, you just wait. To another extent, you keep trying. But it's kind of like, it is limited by the beliefs that most people have and the way that those beliefs are formed, like the media that people get.

748
01:29:07,281 --> 01:29:29,281
We have, you know, the big, the biggest, one of the biggest media outlets would be like what Bitcoin did, where the whole premise of the show is that Peter McCormick is like, not technical, and he sort of pretends to be much dumber than he really is. And so that is, and you know, like one of the big people, Michael Saylor is very big, but he's sort of very new.

749
01:29:29,281 --> 01:29:48,281
So, so this is like the reality of the thing and it will competing. But yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a perfectly normal idea to think about. It's, it would have to be like very, you want to prepare everything.

750
01:29:49,281 --> 01:30:02,281
And you don't want to, you don't want to have like any, you want it to be like a completed plan before you were to announce such a thing. But I don't think that people should.

751
01:30:03,281 --> 01:30:08,281
It's a huge step, I can imagine. I mean, would you be scared of it?

752
01:30:08,281 --> 01:30:24,281
Like Ocean, like, for example, well, I wouldn't really say that, but I think like Ocean is like, you know, you launch and then you only have one launch and then you're hitting champagne against a miner and the champagne doesn't break. And then you've only found two blocks. Have they found a third block? Has anyone checked?

753
01:30:25,281 --> 01:30:47,281
If eventually we'll have to like recompute the hash rate, because it's only been two blocks in like 20 days or something. So, so we'll go to Ocean XYZ dashboard and see, see if we've got that third block yet. He's counting all the, all the old blocks from his, from his ancient pool from that, that stopped in like 2017.

754
01:30:48,281 --> 01:31:00,281
He's counting all those as blocks, but you have to scroll down and you see how many blocks found after 2017. Someone can check. But, but yeah, the launches, you get a lot of attention.

755
01:31:01,281 --> 01:31:02,281
Yeah. And you deserve this attention.

756
01:31:03,281 --> 01:31:05,281
Right. And you don't normally get it back.

757
01:31:06,281 --> 01:31:07,281
Yeah.

758
01:31:08,281 --> 01:31:09,281
Right.

759
01:31:10,281 --> 01:31:11,281
Yeah. I hope you make the right decision.

760
01:31:13,281 --> 01:31:14,281
Me too.

761
01:31:18,281 --> 01:31:21,281
Okay, Vlad, Moonsettler, you guys want to come up? No?

762
01:31:26,281 --> 01:31:30,281
We can hang out and, or we can end the space.

763
01:31:30,281 --> 01:31:46,281
My app is glitchy as always. I just don't understand what is with this app. I just, it always freezes. And then I can, I can still see and hear everyone, but I just, this app is not great for me. I don't know why.

764
01:31:49,281 --> 01:31:55,281
Hi, I just wanted to congratulate you for the conversation. It was very informative for me.

765
01:31:56,281 --> 01:32:05,281
I was, so just for the record, this is sort of a shameless plug, but I'm going to launch the 15th season of Bitcoin Takeover podcast, which has Sergio on it.

766
01:32:06,281 --> 01:32:14,281
And he did mention that bit, I don't know what he calls it, but that bit sidechain that he wants to launch permissionlessly.

767
01:32:15,281 --> 01:32:21,281
And it's super interesting that he wants to do all of this stuff and not have to go through the BIP process.

768
01:32:22,281 --> 01:32:32,281
And it's also admirable, Paul, that you're still wrestling with this. I didn't have time to listen to your debate with Peter Todd from yesterday on the Stefan Levera podcast.

769
01:32:33,281 --> 01:32:45,281
But I honestly don't expect much from it because I know, I've watched Peter Todd debating you at Tabcom, and then there was another one that was on YouTube, which I watched.

770
01:32:46,281 --> 01:32:57,281
So I don't expect that one to suddenly be better. And congratulations for pursuing this because honestly, I keep asking people, so what do you think about BIP300?

771
01:32:58,281 --> 01:33:06,281
And they say, oh, it's terrible because it changes the mining incentives. And I tell them after this, so can you explain how?

772
01:33:07,281 --> 01:33:15,281
And their response is usually, yeah, I didn't have enough time to look into it, so I'm not going to extend this conversation.

773
01:33:16,281 --> 01:33:22,281
So it's a bit unfortunate. I think we have this fixed idea of what Bitcoin is and how it should work.

774
01:33:23,281 --> 01:33:27,281
And we are stuck in a mental state where we can't really think beyond that.

775
01:33:28,281 --> 01:33:41,281
I'm happy that stuff like rollups and BitVM have become possible, and it proves that we have moved past a paradigm where Bitcoin is only one thing and can only do this type of transactions.

776
01:33:42,281 --> 01:33:48,281
I think in the next couple of years, we're going to see a lot of cool stuff coming specifically to Bitcoin.

777
01:33:49,281 --> 01:33:55,281
But we also need to scale this, so we're going to need to have a serious conversation about what we want Bitcoin to be.

778
01:33:56,281 --> 01:34:10,281
I think Sergio had a very presidential moment on this space where he spoke about how the small users, the poor people basically, are the ones that elevated Bitcoin and gave it legitimacy in the financial world.

779
01:34:11,281 --> 01:34:23,281
And now we have big institutions. We have the Michael Saylors and the BlackRocks who are very happy with what it is, but never wanted to improve further because they figured out, okay, I can store my value with this.

780
01:34:24,281 --> 01:34:26,281
And I don't need it for anything else.

781
01:34:27,281 --> 01:34:42,281
I don't know. Congratulations for this, because I hope that everyone who has been listening has had some significant takeaways that at least if they're not convinced or sold on the idea, at least they have some new food for thought.

782
01:34:43,281 --> 01:34:47,281
And maybe that they're also going to try the Cygnet version of BIP300.

783
01:34:48,281 --> 01:35:00,281
Yeah, hey, thanks. Yeah, I think the Cygnet version will be good because so far we have only done the reg test, which puts everyone in their own universe, which is not a great test.

784
01:35:01,281 --> 01:35:09,281
Whereas the Cygnet, there will be like, you can send coins to someone else, send coins to your friends, and it'll be much more realistic.

785
01:35:09,281 --> 01:35:19,281
And it should be better user experience, since we'll just have the server just find the blocks. It'll be a very good test.

786
01:35:20,281 --> 01:35:36,281
And of course, it won't really be a test of a blockchain thing because it won't be an altcoin, but it's the next step.

787
01:35:37,281 --> 01:35:51,281
So I'm excited about that. And good luck with season. Is it too late for me to record a thing? I keep forgetting. I have to do it. I have to find a good, you know, it's like, it's like, there's no good background. I had to find like a good spot to do like a clever.

788
01:35:52,281 --> 01:36:00,281
If you do it before next week, it's not too late. But so far I have everything that I need. But it would be cool to have you too.

789
01:36:01,281 --> 01:36:11,281
I'll do something wacky. I'll get like a big sign. I'll go. I'm not sure. I think it's something. So that'd be great.

790
01:36:11,281 --> 01:36:40,281
And yeah, I think that the debate with Peter is, it's, I try to take it, I try, I sort of assume that you have read Peter's post, which is again, I don't really like apologize for because I think you can either go back and talk to the people who don't know or you can go at the cutting edge.

791
01:36:41,281 --> 01:36:57,281
And so that's, it might be good or maybe people will just be confused by that. But I think it's Peter really just like is really not interested in, you know, he's not interested in putting it.

792
01:36:57,281 --> 01:37:05,281
I think, you know, it was an interesting conversation, but I just find him to be sort of very lazy. He just doesn't really look into these things he's saying.

793
01:37:06,281 --> 01:37:22,281
Yeah, I have come to the conclusion that Bitcoiners have their own incentive, regardless of their degree of intellectual honesty or technical understanding. And you have to pretty much follow that. And what is Peter Todd invested in or what does he really believe in?

794
01:37:22,281 --> 01:37:43,281
You can see that he has been researching sidechains for, I think, longer than a decade. So maybe that he's a bit jealous on the fact that you have a competing proposal. But right now what he's pushing and it's basically his baby, it's RGB, which is a layer on top of the lightning network.

795
01:37:44,281 --> 01:38:02,281
He likes lightning and he wants stuff to be built on top of lightning. Even though I think this year there has been a mass disillusionment with lightning network because it did not deliver on the marketing material because too much was promised in regards to it.

796
01:38:03,281 --> 01:38:17,281
When in fact it was just supposed to be a cheap way to make multiple transactions with only a couple of on-chain transactions. I think that was one of the first ways in which it was promoted. No further expectations.

797
01:38:18,281 --> 01:38:33,281
So you open a channel with someone, you can make a hundred payments at very low fees and then you close the channel. Essentially you made a hundred and two transactions but paid two on-chain transactions. That's a pretty good deal for yourself.

798
01:38:34,281 --> 01:38:56,281
But it was promoted in ways that created unrealistic expectations and people realized how it works in a high-fee environment and they started looking into ARK, they started looking into roll-ups. But somehow Peter still believes that lightning is the answer and we're going to have layers built on top of lightning and he likes those.

799
01:38:57,281 --> 01:39:10,281
I think he also has the majority of Bitcoin community backing him in this regard. But I just don't see it working unless lightning becomes super centralized and custodial.

800
01:39:11,281 --> 01:39:26,281
And then it begs the question, what's the point anymore? And some people are going to say, yeah, but we have these eCash mints like Cashu, like Fedimint or whatever that give you privacy, even if it's custodial. But you can still get rugged.

801
01:39:27,281 --> 01:39:47,281
Yeah, the thing is, the custodial thing, this is like what people used to say about why we can't increase the block size because then we'll end up competing with Visa. Visa will always have better user experience, it'll always be faster, it has a customer service phone number you can call.

802
01:39:48,281 --> 01:39:58,281
And it's the same thing with lightning where it's like if people are not actually using lightning, they're actually using the technology and instead they use custodial.

803
01:39:59,281 --> 01:40:10,281
If that happens, then again, we will be caught competing with Venmo or with whatever, WeChat Pay, and we won't be able to succeed against.

804
01:40:11,281 --> 01:40:28,281
There'll be no way that you go a couple of years down that road and then there'll be a law or there'll be something, there'll be some kind of anti-competitive, clever business tactic employed by Venmo to whatever.

805
01:40:28,281 --> 01:40:33,281
And so you have to compete on what Bitcoin is.

806
01:40:34,557 --> 01:40:39,037
Core features are, which is the self-sovereignty.

807
01:40:39,037 --> 01:40:44,877
If you lose that, then it's no different than being a large blocker who doesn't run a node.

808
01:40:45,917 --> 01:40:50,317
It's much worse, in fact, because even the large blockers had like SPV mode they could fall back on.

809
01:40:50,317 --> 01:40:58,397
But if we aren't using the self-sovereignty property, then we will lose on everything else,

810
01:40:58,397 --> 01:41:04,557
speed, cost, because of course Venmo does everything quote free.

811
01:41:04,557 --> 01:41:09,837
I mean, there's an effective fee under the hood, but the user doesn't see a fee.

812
01:41:10,717 --> 01:41:15,677
So when regular people compare Bitcoin to Venmo, they just think, what?

813
01:41:19,037 --> 01:41:20,397
It makes it a lot worse.

814
01:41:21,276 --> 01:41:28,317
So we need to give people things that they can't get via the custodial route.

815
01:41:30,317 --> 01:41:31,197
But yeah, I think you're right.

816
01:41:31,197 --> 01:41:32,717
Yeah, Peter, he loves the RGB.

817
01:41:33,596 --> 01:41:40,317
He tried to get this thing, the client-side validation to work, but he doesn't quite realize

818
01:41:40,317 --> 01:41:42,477
that sidechains are client-side validation.

819
01:41:42,477 --> 01:41:46,957
And it's very telling that he doesn't, the only thing he brings up is the miners,

820
01:41:47,036 --> 01:41:54,317
because that's the main difference between RGB and drivechain, is that RGB has the flaw

821
01:41:54,317 --> 01:41:55,676
that it does not pay the miners.

822
01:41:56,877 --> 01:42:01,676
So Peter's trying to turn that flaw into like some kind of thing where it doesn't affect

823
01:42:04,477 --> 01:42:11,356
miners, whereas to say it doesn't affect them by neglecting them and starving them of

824
01:42:11,676 --> 01:42:13,676
the revenue that's rightfully theirs.

825
01:42:16,877 --> 01:42:23,917
Yeah, I guess essentially the difference between you and Peter, if we disregard all the intricacies,

826
01:42:23,917 --> 01:42:29,756
it's that you tend to believe that miners are benevolent and they follow their incentives,

827
01:42:30,317 --> 01:42:35,837
while Peter is concerned that miners are evil inherently, and they want to hurt the network.

828
01:42:35,837 --> 01:42:41,277
And he's concerned about mining centralization, and he's concerned about the fact that miners

829
01:42:41,756 --> 01:42:47,517
are evil inherently, and he's concerned about centralization, he posts about foundry becoming

830
01:42:47,517 --> 01:42:56,957
too big, and what he doesn't see, I guess, is that there's this renaissance of home mining,

831
01:42:56,957 --> 01:43:02,957
and you have companies like CryptoCloaks that sell ASIC miners that basically function as

832
01:43:02,957 --> 01:43:09,677
space heaters that pay you a little bit if you do pool mining, and it becomes sort of

833
01:43:10,397 --> 01:43:17,196
$150-$200, you spin them up in your room, and then you have heating over the winter,

834
01:43:17,757 --> 01:43:23,117
and you also mine Bitcoin. And this is going to create, I guess, even more use cases with people

835
01:43:23,117 --> 01:43:28,877
figuring out, okay, during the summer, I can make this heat water or something, or boil water,

836
01:43:28,877 --> 01:43:33,996
I don't know, it depends on how powerful it can be. So they're going to keep mining,

837
01:43:34,957 --> 01:43:44,716
and perform this otherwise mundane task of providing basic utilities for their homes

838
01:43:44,716 --> 01:43:49,356
with something that pays back to a certain degree. It's not going to make them rich,

839
01:43:49,356 --> 01:43:56,076
but at the same time, it's more financially, how should I put it, it makes more sense from

840
01:43:56,076 --> 01:44:02,556
a financial point of view than using something which makes you no money. And maybe that we're

841
01:44:02,556 --> 01:44:07,276
going to build industries around this, and mining is going to become something very basic

842
01:44:07,996 --> 01:44:14,796
in every household. I don't know, I feel like we're in a 2017-2018 moment, when people were

843
01:44:14,796 --> 01:44:19,996
running nodes under Raspberry Pis, and they were super excited that they can do this.

844
01:44:19,996 --> 01:44:25,916
And now it's starting with mining, and I don't know where this is going. The only drawback is

845
01:44:25,916 --> 01:44:33,196
that we have to rely on devices created by Bitmain mostly, and what's miner, but that's a

846
01:44:33,196 --> 01:44:39,276
smaller manufacturer. So we don't have too many chip makers, but maybe this is going to create

847
01:44:39,276 --> 01:44:45,196
a market for this. And mining is going to become more common, which means that we're going to

848
01:44:45,196 --> 01:44:52,716
decentralize it more. And who knows where this is going. But my point is that we shouldn't be

849
01:44:52,716 --> 01:45:00,477
too pessimistic in regards to innovation, only because we see a bleak status quo with a few big

850
01:45:00,477 --> 01:45:08,956
players. Yeah, and one of the miners never did anything wrong, but I think there's a bigger

851
01:45:08,956 --> 01:45:17,996
issue. There's like two nefarious aspects to Peter's philosophy versus mine, which is that

852
01:45:18,477 --> 01:45:24,236
he's, of course, appointing himself as the judge, jury, and executioner on what is mining

853
01:45:24,236 --> 01:45:31,276
centralization. I've asked him for years, and I asked him in writing, and in a reply to his

854
01:45:32,317 --> 01:45:38,877
post, and on the Stephan Levera podcast, I asked him to define this topic and how it is measured,

855
01:45:38,877 --> 01:45:45,436
but he refuses to do so, and he gives eight, in fact, mutually contradicting definitions.

856
01:45:45,436 --> 01:45:49,516
So he is the one who's in charge. So what he really means is that he is the king,

857
01:45:50,317 --> 01:45:55,116
and everyone has to do whatever he says, and he's going to check on something and see if it affects

858
01:45:56,797 --> 01:46:01,516
mining centralization or not. And of course, my idea is a perfect example, because it doesn't

859
01:46:01,516 --> 01:46:06,317
even have the effect that he says that it does, in which the idea that miners must run nodes,

860
01:46:06,317 --> 01:46:11,757
like the guy plugging in the space heater needs to run sidechain nodes, to have the similar level of

861
01:46:11,757 --> 01:46:16,956
profitability is completely 100% false. It would be identical whether they do or not.

862
01:46:18,236 --> 01:46:24,077
But the point is, he is the one who decides. So he is appointing himself basically the ruler.

863
01:46:25,197 --> 01:46:32,556
But there's a second nefarious difference, I think, which is that Peter's way of dealing

864
01:46:32,637 --> 01:46:42,797
with the miners is to try to handcuff them or beat them into submission or whip them into

865
01:46:43,516 --> 01:46:50,396
obedience, whereas I have a completely different point of view. I say, well, we'll redesign it so

866
01:46:50,396 --> 01:46:56,877
that everyone can get – we'll reimagine the equilibrium outcome so that everyone can get

867
01:46:56,877 --> 01:47:01,996
what they want and everyone is happy getting what they want. The miners want there to be

868
01:47:01,996 --> 01:47:06,797
a large block sidechain and a small block mainchain, and they want there to be a Zcash

869
01:47:06,797 --> 01:47:15,116
sidechain. So my point of view is that the best way to deal with people is to help them get what

870
01:47:15,116 --> 01:47:24,637
they want, whereas Peter's view is that we have to resist temptation and stop them from getting

871
01:47:24,637 --> 01:47:30,637
what they want, which I think probably never works, in addition to being very ugly.

872
01:47:32,637 --> 01:47:40,317
Yeah, but maybe this is a newbie question, but can't mining pools basically do the settings

873
01:47:40,317 --> 01:47:46,956
and run the nodes for drivechains so that people, they just connect to that mining pool and that's

874
01:47:46,956 --> 01:47:51,436
it, they don't have to think about it? Yeah, absolutely. You know that the space

875
01:47:51,436 --> 01:47:56,556
mining people are not going to run even Bitcoin Core if it, you know, just to do the space here,

876
01:47:56,556 --> 01:48:02,317
they're just going to plug it in and turn it on. So, but yes, you're 100% correct, of course.

877
01:48:03,197 --> 01:48:07,197
But it's not, that's the thing is that Peter is wrong about some very, very simple things,

878
01:48:07,197 --> 01:48:11,116
and that is why it's so difficult to refute. If it was complex, it would at least be like

879
01:48:11,116 --> 01:48:16,317
an interesting dance, but instead I have to try to convince him that he's actually against proof

880
01:48:16,317 --> 01:48:22,077
of work because he's against miner costs going up, so he's against any upward difficulty adjustment,

881
01:48:22,077 --> 01:48:26,157
but he doesn't realize that he is. And as for his thing about whether or not you can defer to

882
01:48:26,157 --> 01:48:30,637
someone else's node, I mean, he has it both ways. He says, on one hand, people defer to,

883
01:48:30,637 --> 01:48:37,516
it's a fixed cost and it's split among many clients, and this encourages people to be,

884
01:48:38,396 --> 01:48:42,797
to submit to the pool who's the only one paying the cost. And then on the other hand, he says

885
01:48:42,797 --> 01:48:50,556
everyone must run the, everyone must pay the cost because he doesn't accept that the pool person

886
01:48:50,556 --> 01:48:54,797
could just defer to someone else's node the exact same way the clients defer. But of course, the

887
01:48:55,357 --> 01:49:01,597
deferring is always possible, and it's also always rational. So we have two, if you want to get into

888
01:49:01,597 --> 01:49:05,836
the deep philosophy of it, or at least as deep as I think, this is the center of the onion.

889
01:49:07,516 --> 01:49:12,876
As protocol designers, we have to care about making Bitcoin Core as cheap to run as possible.

890
01:49:12,876 --> 01:49:16,876
That is the job. And then, and when, if you've made a sidechain, you want that to be as cheap

891
01:49:16,876 --> 01:49:24,557
as possible. So we can never lose sight of that. But if you are a miner, you have to cut every

892
01:49:25,117 --> 01:49:28,477
you have to be as efficient as possible. So you have to cut every cost that can be cut.

893
01:49:29,597 --> 01:49:34,237
And in that case, you have to just run a rational calculation of, is there something else

894
01:49:34,237 --> 01:49:39,756
other than running the node that gives me an equal or a comparable level of secure,

895
01:49:39,756 --> 01:49:49,677
like maybe that 99.9% security, but maybe 99.7% isn't a comparable amount of confidence that I'm

896
01:49:49,677 --> 01:49:55,756
looking at the real blockchain, but just has, you know, minus, you know, that costs like one

897
01:49:55,756 --> 01:50:02,157
three thousandth, you know, the hassle of actually running the node. And so then this is where, you

898
01:50:02,157 --> 01:50:05,357
know, and then Peter just starts, he doesn't realize this, but he starts to reject like

899
01:50:05,357 --> 01:50:10,237
specialization of labor efficiency or whatever, because he's tied to this idea that as the

900
01:50:10,237 --> 01:50:16,477
Bitcoin Core developer, we must make Bitcoin Core, like that's our product, you know what I mean?

901
01:50:16,477 --> 01:50:24,557
Like we're the baker, we're baking bread, you know, and bread is the Bitcoin Core node,

902
01:50:24,557 --> 01:50:32,797
and we want it to be cheap and tasty. But we don't, as a consumer, you don't need to eat

903
01:50:32,797 --> 01:50:37,836
bread like every day, you know, like we don't, they maybe only want a little bit or they want

904
01:50:37,836 --> 01:50:42,716
to get their, they want to buy a sandwich maybe, you know. So people don't always need,

905
01:50:43,597 --> 01:50:49,037
that the miners, not every, if you actually took the set of human beings who count as miners,

906
01:50:49,037 --> 01:50:53,997
who could be, I'd say it's a million people, it's just not the case that every one of those people

907
01:50:53,997 --> 01:50:59,516
need to run a node. Some of them will be the space heater people, and they can defer,

908
01:50:59,516 --> 01:51:03,677
and because there's other reasons to believe that they're looking at the right blockchain,

909
01:51:03,677 --> 01:51:08,636
you know what I mean? Like the mining pools, they have like a stable reputation and brand

910
01:51:08,636 --> 01:51:13,516
that's fragile that they don't want to lose. So if they do lose it, then there's negative

911
01:51:13,516 --> 01:51:17,516
consequences for them. So when you connect to the pool, you just think, well, probably the pool

912
01:51:17,516 --> 01:51:24,316
will figure it out. And you're probably right. I mean, you know that that will work almost all

913
01:51:24,316 --> 01:51:29,836
of the time, not necessarily 100% of the time. But you know, running a full node doesn't work

914
01:51:29,836 --> 01:51:33,677
100% of the time either, because sometimes you think you're running a full node, but then you

915
01:51:33,677 --> 01:51:38,076
realize you have it misconfigured, or there's a bug in the node, or there's some kind of Bitcoin

916
01:51:38,076 --> 01:51:43,276
core emergency. This has happened twice where people have to, anyone who's mining in 2015,

917
01:51:43,276 --> 01:51:49,997
this happened, you have to like quickly upgrade or switch the node. So what you think running,

918
01:51:49,997 --> 01:51:54,956
it's not that running the node magically achieves some kind of like categorically different phase

919
01:51:54,956 --> 01:52:00,396
change, you're just climbing this percentage of how confident you are that you are looking at the

920
01:52:00,396 --> 01:52:05,917
real blockchain. So the running a full node is, is it would make you very confident, but it

921
01:52:06,876 --> 01:52:11,276
is not, there's nothing special about that. Like if you think about it like this, what if,

922
01:52:11,276 --> 01:52:19,196
if you imagine you run it, you have a big warehouse full of miners, and you have a dashboard,

923
01:52:19,196 --> 01:52:22,636
and then every now and then one of them fails, like they have a bunch of green lights, and one

924
01:52:22,636 --> 01:52:28,636
of them turns red, you know, you have to walk down the aisle and pull the red one off and unplug it

925
01:52:28,636 --> 01:52:35,357
and like replace it or something. You have a feedback loop, you have a process for replacing

926
01:52:35,516 --> 01:52:45,836
the broken, you know, S19 or whatever. So this is a case where you're, I mean, it's like you,

927
01:52:45,836 --> 01:52:50,237
you have imperfect knowledge of whether or not all the components are working perfectly. So

928
01:52:51,117 --> 01:52:55,117
let's say one of the, instead of an ASIC, one of these components is just

929
01:52:55,836 --> 01:53:01,836
your CPU that is running the Bitcoin full node. Well, I mean, it's not necessarily going to be

930
01:53:01,836 --> 01:53:05,276
running perfectly all the time, like it might crash or something, or maybe you have a power

931
01:53:05,276 --> 01:53:09,756
outage, you have to turn it back on, or some kind of database corruption happens or something.

932
01:53:09,756 --> 01:53:13,037
You have to like reset it, you know, like they all require a little bit of maintenance.

933
01:53:13,997 --> 01:53:17,437
It would be kind of cool if you could have something that worked perfectly,

934
01:53:17,437 --> 01:53:24,396
but then you never had to restart or that you never got confused. And so then imagine we replaced,

935
01:53:25,516 --> 01:53:31,276
we had just replaced the S19 with a CPU that's running a node. Imagine if we replaced that CPU

936
01:53:31,276 --> 01:53:41,437
with a connection to the node on, you know, at a mining pool, like maybe Foundry runs the one

937
01:53:41,437 --> 01:53:47,677
Bitcoin node for everyone. Well, this is a kind of a similar thing, really, where the physical

938
01:53:47,677 --> 01:53:55,117
location of the computation has changed, but it's still a component like any other where you are,

939
01:53:55,756 --> 01:54:03,917
you rely on Foundry's node and you're somewhat vulnerable to some extent, not to a very large

940
01:54:03,917 --> 01:54:08,956
extent, but you are vulnerable to, you don't know what if maybe Foundry is not even paying you.

941
01:54:10,636 --> 01:54:14,076
They could say that, they could tell you that they're paying you and then not really be doing

942
01:54:14,076 --> 01:54:17,997
that, or they could tell you that all kinds of things are happening on the Bitcoin blockchain

943
01:54:17,997 --> 01:54:21,276
when they really aren't. They could tell you that there's been reorgs or something.

944
01:54:22,237 --> 01:54:25,597
This is a highly implausible case that you rely on them for the only full node,

945
01:54:25,597 --> 01:54:28,316
and you don't do any kind of SPV, you don't have any other full node ever.

946
01:54:28,956 --> 01:54:33,437
But even in this extreme case, it's not fundamentally any different than anything

947
01:54:33,437 --> 01:54:37,677
else the miner would do, where it's like, this is one of the components, you would have some

948
01:54:37,677 --> 01:54:43,516
way of checking in, you know, like the light turning from red to green when the ASIC fails.

949
01:54:44,157 --> 01:54:48,396
You have some way of checking in with Foundry to see, like, eventually you'll be paying for

950
01:54:48,396 --> 01:54:53,756
electricity with this money. So eventually, do you understand what I'm trying to say is,

951
01:54:53,756 --> 01:55:00,237
eventually the Foundry has been stealing from you, you have not been getting paid Bitcoin,

952
01:55:00,237 --> 01:55:07,357
they've been keeping it, you think you're paying the power company and your bank stops paying them

953
01:55:09,117 --> 01:55:12,557
because you aren't actually getting the Bitcoin, and eventually the power will shut off.

954
01:55:12,557 --> 01:55:15,516
And so my point is, eventually you have some kind of thing where you would,

955
01:55:16,477 --> 01:55:20,076
a feedback loop that would cause you to realize that the component had failed.

956
01:55:20,876 --> 01:55:26,557
So even running the full node is not fundamentally any different than any other kind of thing that

957
01:55:26,557 --> 01:55:34,237
the miner would do. And that's why nothing that Peter Todd says has any relevance to even the

958
01:55:34,237 --> 01:55:40,876
debate at all. I think it's all just, as you say, it's all just him, like, preferring that RGB will

959
01:55:41,037 --> 01:55:47,516
work. And the really unfortunate thing is that I think Bitcoin has suffered enormously because

960
01:55:48,636 --> 01:55:55,597
just in 2015, for whatever reason, people just kind of decided to go with this different set

961
01:55:55,597 --> 01:56:04,396
of ideas. Ironically, if Blockstream probably had never been created, or if certain people had

962
01:56:05,597 --> 01:56:09,836
just left the community or, like, been hit by a bus or something, we might be in a completely

963
01:56:09,836 --> 01:56:17,196
different place. Anyway, I hope that, so the answer to your question is yes, they can just,

964
01:56:17,196 --> 01:56:21,037
they just plug in the thing and they're just deferring, they're deferring to a component

965
01:56:21,037 --> 01:56:25,997
that's far away. But you see, that's no different than them relying on the people running the power

966
01:56:25,997 --> 01:56:30,076
generators at the power company, really, you know, or the people who made them their food.

967
01:56:33,196 --> 01:56:37,756
Yeah, that got pretty dark pretty quickly with the whole random

968
01:56:37,756 --> 01:56:43,836
by a bus situation. I don't want to discuss that. But basically, what I want to say right now

969
01:56:44,557 --> 01:56:52,237
is that people have figured out, I've interviewed SuperTestNet on my podcast, and I think by next

970
01:56:52,237 --> 01:56:57,997
week, I'm going to publish like 10 episodes for binge listening. And SuperTestNet basically said

971
01:56:57,997 --> 01:57:06,477
that he can now do drivechains without the need for a software, just using BitVM. But he also

972
01:57:06,477 --> 01:57:12,076
mentioned that there are some trade-offs involved, because BIP300 grants you some protections from

973
01:57:12,076 --> 01:57:19,516
getting rugged by the miners, whereas BitVM has some limitations in that regard. So maybe that

974
01:57:19,516 --> 01:57:26,477
it's necessary for the market to follow this path, to do this permissionlessly with BitVM,

975
01:57:26,477 --> 01:57:32,477
and prove that the miners are acting in good faith. Or else maybe it's necessary for the miners to

976
01:57:32,477 --> 01:57:38,236
rug you, and then they're going to say, oh, so if we had BIP300 activated, this wouldn't have

977
01:57:38,236 --> 01:57:44,797
happened. I don't know. But it seems like these market movements and the fact that we have

978
01:57:44,797 --> 01:57:52,876
developers working on ideas and concepts without asking for permission is a net benefit. And the

979
01:57:52,876 --> 01:57:59,996
longer we prolong soft forks, the more workarounds get discovered. And then people figure out, okay,

980
01:57:59,996 --> 01:58:05,677
so maybe that this could have worked better if we did the soft fork, just like they do right now

981
01:58:05,677 --> 01:58:11,837
with ARK, when they say, oh, it doesn't really work, it needs covenants. So it seems like they're

982
01:58:11,837 --> 01:58:18,797
doing it on Liquid first, but Liquid has like five transactions per block, which is super

983
01:58:18,797 --> 01:58:27,837
suboptimal for something which was released almost six years ago. Well, I see that it's almost like

984
01:58:28,077 --> 01:58:32,636
we need to get back to doing the soft forks, because the soft forks are harmless, and they're

985
01:58:32,636 --> 01:58:40,157
very powerful upgrade. And again, if people don't get what they want from the soft fork,

986
01:58:41,116 --> 01:58:47,197
they will either get it from an altcoin, or they will get it from these hacky workarounds.

987
01:58:47,756 --> 01:58:53,356
And I actually don't think it's a good idea for people to be inventing such hacky workarounds that

988
01:58:53,356 --> 01:58:59,197
people are like, BitVM, what is the ratio of people who understand BitVM versus who are

989
01:58:59,197 --> 01:59:03,677
bullshitting about it? It's like we've blown way past even the lightning network ratio, which was

990
01:59:03,677 --> 01:59:16,717
very, very high in 2015, and didn't really improve that much. So we don't, the soft fork, this is all

991
01:59:16,717 --> 01:59:23,197
just because the scaling trauma or whatever, it's kind of like the whole thing is irrational

992
01:59:23,197 --> 01:59:32,077
and unreasonable. And we should really burn that down also. It's kind of my thought, like,

993
01:59:32,077 --> 01:59:37,677
it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing that the Bitcoin community is so dysfunctional that an

994
01:59:37,677 --> 01:59:42,476
opt-in soft fork to reassign op-nop, which is something we've done many times before, and that

995
01:59:42,476 --> 01:59:52,797
Satoshi intended, literally intended to be happening, that is a very bad sign that we have

996
01:59:52,797 --> 01:59:56,317
to do the workaround. And then what if these workarounds get too good? Then we'll be like

997
01:59:56,317 --> 01:59:59,837
working around, people will start to come up with workarounds for everything. We'll work around the

998
01:59:59,837 --> 02:00:09,516
21 million coin limit or something. Like, why are we doing this? And I think that it's just like,

999
02:00:09,516 --> 02:00:18,317
are we really going to let the most mediocre people win or something? I don't know. But I

1000
02:00:18,317 --> 02:00:26,236
think that's a very good suggestion. I think that that may happen. I don't know. That's indeed the

1001
02:00:26,236 --> 02:00:31,516
idea. But I think it's almost bad. Like, you see what I mean? What I'm trying to say is we're

1002
02:00:31,516 --> 02:00:36,717
getting too good at, it's like we have a child who's misbehaving and we just, we're spoiling

1003
02:00:36,717 --> 02:00:38,157
them. We give every time they...

1004
02:00:38,468 --> 02:00:43,348
they throw a tantrum, we just give them what they want. And we say, okay, we won't do a soft fork.

1005
02:00:43,988 --> 02:00:48,228
Instead, we'll do unbelievably crazy workaround that's extremely confusing.

1006
02:00:49,268 --> 02:01:00,468
And it has, we're like zeroing out logic gates. And so it's not, it's the people who want to do

1007
02:01:00,468 --> 02:01:08,068
more soft forks are the good guys and everyone else is, you know, the bad guys. And we're letting

1008
02:01:08,068 --> 02:01:12,387
the bad guys win. It's not good. We're doing the wrong thing.

1009
02:01:15,267 --> 02:01:21,028
Well, I can understand the point that you should only do a soft fork if it's beneficial for a large

1010
02:01:21,028 --> 02:01:27,107
percentage of the users. And I can also understand that some guys thought that Taproot was going to

1011
02:01:27,107 --> 02:01:34,468
magically bring on-chain privacy and smaller fees and blah, blah, blah. And there was a lot of hype

1012
02:01:34,468 --> 02:01:41,747
around it, but it turned out that nobody really uses it except for the people inscribing originals.

1013
02:01:43,667 --> 02:01:48,067
And it proves also that the people who were shilling it had no idea what it was, you know.

1014
02:01:48,628 --> 02:01:53,508
You know perfectly well that that's the case. And for SegWit, people didn't know it was a block size

1015
02:01:53,508 --> 02:02:00,788
increase. And then you have 1.18. 1.18 is non-controversial and yet it doesn't go anywhere

1016
02:02:00,788 --> 02:02:05,908
because no one wants to touch activation. And then Jeremy pushed 1.19 and then he got the push

1017
02:02:05,908 --> 02:02:11,427
back and then he had to quit Bitcoin and it's only recently returned and now everyone loves 1.19.

1018
02:02:12,468 --> 02:02:17,427
So the idea, the beliefs about these things are unrelated to the content.

1019
02:02:18,067 --> 02:02:27,667
It's all, this is, you know, this is like kind of immoral and it has nothing to do with

1020
02:02:27,667 --> 02:02:32,228
what the actual technology does. You know what I mean? It'd be one thing if there were,

1021
02:02:32,788 --> 02:02:38,948
aha, good thing we turned down that bit, but turned out to be evil. But that has never happened.

1022
02:02:39,828 --> 02:02:43,107
Not that it couldn't happen, I'm just saying that people's beliefs have nothing to do with

1023
02:02:43,107 --> 02:02:47,507
the content of the idea. You know, in what other scenario would we do something like that?

1024
02:02:48,548 --> 02:02:57,107
Where it's like people are sending you fresh food or something. It's like Uber Eats and you're just

1025
02:02:57,988 --> 02:03:03,188
thinking like if it comes, the same exact sandwich comes from a different person or something.

1026
02:03:05,188 --> 02:03:19,188
This is evil. And so the, I think this stuff about like not doing it with the soft fork is not,

1027
02:03:19,747 --> 02:03:25,107
it's not good for us to pour effort into this direction. This is only making things worse,

1028
02:03:25,188 --> 02:03:32,468
actually. And look at how little people understood of Taproot, you know.

1029
02:03:33,428 --> 02:03:39,268
And look at how little they understand of, so this, I think that,

1030
02:03:42,387 --> 02:03:44,387
well, I guess what I'm trying to say is,

1031
02:03:44,947 --> 02:03:53,747
I'm not sure, I don't know how to phrase it, but the, we don't have like a rational process.

1032
02:03:56,147 --> 02:03:59,908
And if we don't, you know, like if we don't have any, if we don't, if there's never,

1033
02:03:59,908 --> 02:04:05,348
the BIPs are never moved through, then I don't see how anyone can complain that there's like

1034
02:04:05,348 --> 02:04:10,068
whatever Monero exists or something else that is a BIP 119 chain. Can you imagine if someone made

1035
02:04:11,027 --> 02:04:16,307
like a BIP VM, if someone made like a BIP VM altcoin, would that like kill the BIP VM idea

1036
02:04:16,307 --> 02:04:19,988
in Bitcoin? What would, I wonder what would, I wonder how that would be interpreted. That would

1037
02:04:19,988 --> 02:04:30,068
be kind of a funny thing. But I don't know. But you do have a BIP VM altcoin, which is the one

1038
02:04:30,068 --> 02:04:36,468
that came up with the virtual machine in the first place. That's true. I mean, I don't know

1039
02:04:36,468 --> 02:04:44,548
in the first place. That's true. That's a good point. Yeah, that is a good point.

1040
02:04:46,628 --> 02:04:50,628
But you did say something interesting there with the sandwich metaphor.

1041
02:04:51,188 --> 02:04:57,027
So are you saying that if Greg Maxwell and Peter DiWilly and Andrew Polstra,

1042
02:04:57,027 --> 02:05:05,508
and all the blockstream scientists proposed covenants, BIP 119, we would have activated it

1043
02:05:05,508 --> 02:05:14,547
by now? Well, Taproot was activated, even though no one knew what it was,

1044
02:05:15,108 --> 02:05:25,508
but it was proposed by Greg Maxwell. And I mean, the better question would be if they

1045
02:05:25,508 --> 02:05:33,747
had proposed something that was a terrible idea, would we have activated that? Like instead of 119,

1046
02:05:34,547 --> 02:05:38,547
I think the answer is sort of yes. And it sort of already is Taproot, where it's like the goal,

1047
02:05:38,547 --> 02:05:42,228
what are the goals of Taproot? Like to make it look, if there's a cooperative close,

1048
02:05:42,228 --> 02:05:46,468
it will look like a regular Bitcoin transaction. Like what else does it do other than that?

1049
02:05:47,427 --> 02:05:54,867
Tapscript. But it doesn't really matter, Tapscript. Not to me. So what else does it do?

1050
02:05:54,867 --> 02:05:55,668
Did I forget anything?

1051
02:05:55,827 --> 02:05:59,827
Multisigs, but I guess that's similar to channels.

1052
02:06:03,267 --> 02:06:13,267
multisig, yeah. Improvement to multisig. multisig really sucks, kind of. It's gone from suck to

1053
02:06:13,827 --> 02:06:21,668
still sucks, but that's true. So like those are the benefits of Taproot, and yet everyone is saying

1054
02:06:21,668 --> 02:06:30,228
Taproot is so great. Still, Taproot took a long time, 46 months between when it was proposed to

1055
02:06:30,228 --> 02:06:42,147
when it finally activated. It's very slow. It's a good question. I think that what happened was

1056
02:06:43,987 --> 02:06:51,587
activation was, there was no controversy behind it at all. Pre-Taproot, there was no controversy

1057
02:06:52,147 --> 02:06:56,468
SegWit. There was just, no one would have ever thought of this, of it being controversial. You

1058
02:06:56,468 --> 02:06:59,587
know what I mean? Like the previous soft forks were like, you know, paid to script hash,

1059
02:07:00,468 --> 02:07:04,228
but in that one was weirdly controversial. It was sort of botched, but it wasn't like,

1060
02:07:05,108 --> 02:07:09,587
you could just do it again, or you could just do something else. That was very similar.

1061
02:07:10,788 --> 02:07:13,827
So it was kind of good enough at the time. Plenty of people started to use

1062
02:07:14,788 --> 02:07:23,587
the script hash idea after that came out. So then like putting the block height in the coinbase,

1063
02:07:25,267 --> 02:07:29,987
no one would really complain about that. Check log time verify, no one would really complain.

1064
02:07:31,348 --> 02:07:34,388
So there was a period when they were not controversial at all, and then there was

1065
02:07:34,388 --> 02:07:37,587
the SegWit controversy, which was a completely unrelated thing. It was about

1066
02:07:38,388 --> 02:07:44,068
this two megabyte hard fork block size. It had nothing to do with SegWit really,

1067
02:07:45,108 --> 02:07:50,388
nothing to do with the SegWit activation. SegWit activation was then held up, and then

1068
02:07:50,388 --> 02:07:56,547
since then we've only had Taproot, which was kind of like the winners of SegWit,

1069
02:07:57,747 --> 02:08:06,228
the small block side winners, got their BIP and then not wanting to repeat SegWit,

1070
02:08:06,228 --> 02:08:10,147
the Taproot people just kind of rushed it through. As a result,

1071
02:08:14,307 --> 02:08:19,267
I think it was almost because the SegWit one was so contentious that the Taproot one was so

1072
02:08:22,707 --> 02:08:34,948
non-confrontational. So I'm not exactly sure what would happen in the scenario that you asked about,

1073
02:08:34,948 --> 02:08:43,668
but I do think that mining pools could fix the problem unilaterally by just declaring that they

1074
02:08:45,668 --> 02:08:52,707
expect to get soft fork proposals and they will evaluate them on their merits, on their ability

1075
02:08:52,707 --> 02:08:59,188
to increase bitcoin transaction fees and bitcoin price and bitcoin utility, and they will then,

1076
02:09:00,147 --> 02:09:11,108
in a good-natured and good-faith way, activate them as soon as is reasonable. If the mining

1077
02:09:11,108 --> 02:09:18,147
pools were to declare that, I think then that would have already fixed every problem in bitcoin,

1078
02:09:18,147 --> 02:09:21,748
because we would have lots of other stuff. We would have OP_VAULT, and we would have BIP300,

1079
02:09:22,468 --> 02:09:25,587
and none of this other stuff would matter about people arguing over

1080
02:09:25,748 --> 02:09:33,267
Bitcoin, or whatever. So nothing would matter. All the stuff would be every bitcoin developer,

1081
02:09:33,267 --> 02:09:38,707
every developer would be a bitcoin developer. Not only would we have BPM, but we'd have Ark

1082
02:09:38,707 --> 02:09:44,627
where you could turn it on and start using it and see if people care about the liquidity thing,

1083
02:09:44,627 --> 02:09:50,627
and we would see if people care about BIP300, if they care about the miners can steal risk.

1084
02:09:51,187 --> 02:09:56,067
So I think every problem in bitcoin would have been solved, would be solved if that

1085
02:09:57,668 --> 02:10:03,187
would happen. Today, they would only be the leaders of three mining pools. They would just

1086
02:10:03,187 --> 02:10:10,548
declare that they will ignore Twitter, and they will, for good and for bad, because in Taproot's

1087
02:10:10,548 --> 02:10:16,067
case, it was clearly oversold. So they have to say, we will look into, we will research

1088
02:10:16,947 --> 02:10:26,147
these ideas applied narrowly only to the criterion of, do we think this is going to help Bitcoin

1089
02:10:26,147 --> 02:10:34,627
succeed? And they will then, because if they do it like that, then Twitter will have to calculate

1090
02:10:35,348 --> 02:10:39,507
first, they'll have to first at least read the BIP, because my experience has been that no one

1091
02:10:39,507 --> 02:10:43,587
reads the BIP, and no one has any idea what it does, and people don't know about, they don't

1092
02:10:44,548 --> 02:10:52,627
know what 1.19 does, or 1.18, or they don't know what txhash does. It's all fake, so they need,

1093
02:10:52,627 --> 02:10:57,988
you need to have a rational filter at the end of the timeline for people to work back from.

1094
02:10:57,988 --> 02:11:07,108
They have to say, will this be implemented? Because they will then look silly if it doesn't.

1095
02:11:07,587 --> 02:11:12,707
So that's kind of my thought. I'm not sure that wasn't really the answer to your question about

1096
02:11:12,707 --> 02:11:17,507
if people proposed 1.19, would it be activated today? I kind of think the answer is yes. I mean,

1097
02:11:17,507 --> 02:11:23,507
I've heard, I've heard firsthand and from other people that the only reason 1.19 has not been

1098
02:11:23,507 --> 02:11:28,468
activated is because some people don't like Jeremy. And I've heard similar things, so they

1099
02:11:28,468 --> 02:11:32,627
say the only reason BIP300 is not activated is because some people don't like me personally.

1100
02:11:33,348 --> 02:11:39,187
So I don't know if that's true, but

1101
02:11:43,668 --> 02:11:48,627
that's, I'd say with Jeremy's case, I don't know why all these people would lie about this.

1102
02:11:48,627 --> 02:11:55,748
Under very bizarre conditions, people told me that type of thing. So I don't know why that,

1103
02:11:56,387 --> 02:12:04,308
why that seemed accurate to me. I mean, especially the smoking gun, the proof is that

1104
02:12:04,308 --> 02:12:09,748
everyone hated it two years ago, and now they've all decided it's great this year

1105
02:12:09,748 --> 02:12:14,788
with Ark and everything. Now it's great. It's the same, it's been the same idea the whole time. So

1106
02:12:14,788 --> 02:12:23,748
what changed? That Jeremy quit? Well, why does that make any difference? The same idea. So that's

1107
02:12:24,308 --> 02:12:32,308
my thought on that. Yeah, but when you think about it, if you have this system of high priests

1108
02:12:32,308 --> 02:12:38,627
in place and what they say and what they think is considered to be authoritative and nobody else

1109
02:12:38,627 --> 02:12:44,468
reads the BIPs, that's super dangerous. All you have to do is compromise a handful of people.

1110
02:12:44,468 --> 02:12:49,187
And by compromise, I don't even mean that they need to cooperate. All they have to do is shut up.

1111
02:12:50,147 --> 02:12:58,387
And after some malicious proposal gets through by convincing either a majority of miners to run it

1112
02:12:58,387 --> 02:13:04,627
or convincing the plebs to update, I mean, that requires some cooperation from the people who

1113
02:13:04,627 --> 02:13:11,428
maintain the code. But assuming that you compromise a handful of people, you can basically do anything,

1114
02:13:12,228 --> 02:13:19,908
granted that the community does not actually read what's happening. So essentially what I'm saying

1115
02:13:19,908 --> 02:13:28,868
is that we buy Don't Trust Verify t-shirts and mugs and we take pride in being smarter than the

1116
02:13:28,868 --> 02:13:34,788
average person. But when something gets proposed, instead of reading the source material, we defer

1117
02:13:34,788 --> 02:13:40,707
to what somebody says about it and that somebody is a high priest in a high position and he's

1118
02:13:41,187 --> 02:13:47,108
supposed to give us the definitive opinion on what we should think about it. And the way that

1119
02:13:47,108 --> 02:13:55,267
you describe it right now, it's also very personal in the sense that if you're not likable and you're

1120
02:13:55,267 --> 02:14:01,507
not the kind of person who's part of a group or something and you don't have, I guess, they're

1121
02:14:01,507 --> 02:14:07,267
going to argue that it's a reputation system and you need to have had previous contributions to

1122
02:14:07,267 --> 02:14:13,748
the project and to have been involved to a certain degree to something else to earn the trust. And if

1123
02:14:13,748 --> 02:14:18,868
you haven't earned the trust, you're considered just a noisemaker and they're going to ignore

1124
02:14:18,868 --> 02:14:25,668
your proposal without actually looking into it. I don't know what the answer is, but basically it's

1125
02:14:25,668 --> 02:14:33,428
pretty dangerous and it's not a single point of failure, but it is a multiple point of failure

1126
02:14:34,387 --> 02:14:39,027
to which you can point out. And of course, everyone can be a core developer. Of course,

1127
02:14:39,027 --> 02:14:44,868
everyone can contribute and the community can reject certain contributions. It's part of the

1128
02:14:44,868 --> 02:14:53,668
decentralization process, but it doesn't happen often enough. And there is this, maybe Durgan

1129
02:14:53,668 --> 02:14:59,668
referred to it as a Lindy effect. The longer someone is trusted and keeps a good record,

1130
02:15:00,308 --> 02:15:07,267
the more trust that he's going to be going forward. So maybe there's this kind of system,

1131
02:15:07,267 --> 02:15:14,868
but then you get someone like Luke Dashjr. who speaks, but at the same time you have to stop and

1132
02:15:14,868 --> 02:15:21,668
ask him to define every word because what it means to him is not necessarily what it means to someone

1133
02:15:21,748 --> 02:15:30,387
else or to everyone else. And you run into ironic situations where he has lost 200 Bitcoin at the

1134
02:15:30,387 --> 02:15:37,348
beginning of the year. And then he became the creator of this mempool filter basically to run

1135
02:15:37,348 --> 02:15:45,348
on your node clients. And you're blindly trusting someone to write code for you when he clearly

1136
02:15:45,348 --> 02:15:51,827
wasn't capable of securing his own Bitcoin. And then you run his code without peer review.

1137
02:15:52,707 --> 02:15:58,387
And then you trust him with a mining pool that's highly ideological and makes no

1138
02:15:59,187 --> 02:16:07,428
economic sense because essentially Bitcoin is a game of incentives. And it's mostly greed

1139
02:16:07,428 --> 02:16:11,908
that drives actors to maximize their profits to get the most out of their activity.

1140
02:16:12,707 --> 02:16:19,668
And then you run into these ideological situations where they say, no, this is approved

1141
02:16:19,668 --> 02:16:27,587
and this is not. It's super arbitrary because you also have wallets like Samurai that have their

1142
02:16:27,587 --> 02:16:34,868
transactions filtered by mining pool, which is pretty insignificant. But I guess they had the

1143
02:16:35,348 --> 02:16:43,428
perfect marketing for this. And where I'm going is that we have a system of high priests that we

1144
02:16:43,428 --> 02:16:53,187
don't question too often. And maybe that your proposal is uncomfortable for them because if

1145
02:16:53,187 --> 02:16:59,988
anyone or maybe not anyone, but any entity that has a reputation in the game and can convince

1146
02:16:59,988 --> 02:17:07,587
the miners to deploy their sidechain, can basically take on an important role and manage

1147
02:17:07,587 --> 02:17:14,228
their own software and not rely on core too much anymore, maybe you're diminishing their

1148
02:17:14,228 --> 02:17:21,908
influence. And that's a problem. Well, yes, the problem for them, but it's actually

1149
02:17:22,548 --> 02:17:27,428
in that scenario, they are sort of corrupt and they are the problem

1150
02:17:28,308 --> 02:17:32,548
with Bitcoin for which kicking them out is the solution.

1151
02:17:34,627 --> 02:17:39,587
But, you know, it's possible. It's certainly the case that right now they have like,

1152
02:17:40,707 --> 02:17:43,667
they get a lot of prestige, you know, they get a lot of respect

1153
02:17:45,348 --> 02:17:54,228
being quote Bitcoin Core developer is like seen as a good thing instead of like sort of a job or

1154
02:17:54,787 --> 02:18:03,028
like a janitorial maintenance thing. So people derive a lot of prestige from it and they can

1155
02:18:03,028 --> 02:18:09,108
even get money, of course, as you can see. They get other things too, they get invite invitations

1156
02:18:10,547 --> 02:18:13,827
around the world. So yeah, it can certainly be fun.

1157
02:18:16,868 --> 02:18:20,868
Anyway, I don't know. You mentioned that the most active developers and the ones who write

1158
02:18:20,868 --> 02:18:27,667
the most code are also not the ones that speak most vocally on issues. They're also the most

1159
02:18:27,667 --> 02:18:36,707
neutral. But doesn't that follow from the theory, though, that there are certain people who don't

1160
02:18:36,707 --> 02:18:43,587
make waves? And in fact, it's implied that to people who would make it to the top, who are

1161
02:18:43,587 --> 02:18:50,228
actually interested in working on the code, they would be if they are motivated to do the right

1162
02:18:50,228 --> 02:18:57,427
thing for Bitcoin, they would be kind of like someone who they'd be like you, you're in the,

1163
02:18:58,228 --> 02:19:03,508
you're in like Nazi Germany, and you, you want to do what's best for Germany. So you just go along

1164
02:19:03,508 --> 02:19:08,947
with the Nazi party to like the minimal extent to like, because you know that you'll be you'll be

1165
02:19:08,947 --> 02:19:17,268
kicked out if you make too many waves. So you just kind of quietly conform to someone that's exactly

1166
02:19:17,268 --> 02:19:23,907
what we see. You know, because they really care about, they don't, they don't care about Spain,

1167
02:19:23,907 --> 02:19:28,547
they compare about Germany, but they can, they care about the cause. So that's why they don't,

1168
02:19:29,348 --> 02:19:36,228
they would be like, afraid of more than one of the, you know. And so you have the real workers

1169
02:19:36,228 --> 02:19:42,307
would be the people doing a lot of code. And then you have the talkers, the talker people who

1170
02:19:42,307 --> 02:19:51,907
job is to talk. I think it's unfair to compare them to the Catholic church that makes more sense.

1171
02:19:54,067 --> 02:19:59,187
Yeah, sure. Like, you know, they care about you, they care about the community. They're a member

1172
02:19:59,187 --> 02:20:05,028
of their little town. And so they're like being the priest, so they do whatever they have to do

1173
02:20:05,827 --> 02:20:13,187
to fit in. And then the being silent is a sign of a very specific type of participation.

1174
02:20:14,947 --> 02:20:17,348
Right? It's because you participate, you do the work,

1175
02:20:18,628 --> 02:20:23,268
but you don't, you don't like actively share like a creative idea

1176
02:20:25,348 --> 02:20:31,268
on the direction. So this implies that you are being very

1177
02:20:32,228 --> 02:20:38,307
submissive or afraid or that you just, it's a specific type of participation.

1178
02:20:39,667 --> 02:20:44,628
Anyway, I don't know if maybe other people want to come up and talk about something else.

1179
02:20:45,907 --> 02:20:49,028
We still have a bunch of people here who aren't bored for some reason.

1180
02:20:49,028 --> 02:20:56,148
I have one question, if it's okay. Great. It's just a completely different question.

1181
02:20:56,228 --> 02:21:02,947
I'm just wondering, I mean, Drivechain can fork anything and it's just maybe a lack of knowledge,

1182
02:21:02,947 --> 02:21:11,667
but how would it be if you tried, for example, to fork Avalanche? I'm just wondering,

1183
02:21:11,667 --> 02:21:16,947
can a subnet architecture also be integrated somehow into Drivechain?

1184
02:21:18,947 --> 02:21:24,148
Yes. So when you say fork, do you mean that because Drivechain puts,

1185
02:21:24,148 --> 02:21:28,868
you have BIP300 on L1 and then you have the Drivechains themselves that are on L2.

1186
02:21:29,988 --> 02:21:35,988
So which are you referring to there? Do you want an Avalanche Drivechain on Bitcoin? Are you saying

1187
02:21:36,707 --> 02:21:43,028
hard fork Avalanche, add BIP300 to that? I'm just wondering what is the maximum,

1188
02:21:43,028 --> 02:21:49,028
what could be possible? Well, I mean, yeah, that's possible.

1189
02:21:49,108 --> 02:21:54,787
That would be, and BIP300 is very small, I think. Most of the work is on the L2.

1190
02:21:55,508 --> 02:22:00,067
So most of the work we do is the sidechain templates. The BIP300 part is really very

1191
02:22:00,067 --> 02:22:04,307
simple. It's just counting the 13,000. It's really not doing anything. It's not a big deal.

1192
02:22:05,667 --> 02:22:12,628
And so you could add that to, you could fork Avalanche, add that. That would be funny to like,

1193
02:22:13,587 --> 02:22:19,028
just like, you know, to make it, because the goal, I think, if I'm understanding what you're

1194
02:22:19,028 --> 02:22:23,907
kind of driving at here is that it would be funny to do something that people don't,

1195
02:22:23,907 --> 02:22:29,508
they don't really know how to criticize it and just get something out there and just get some,

1196
02:22:29,508 --> 02:22:37,028
have some new users having fun and just kind of having fun with it and not being too boxed in.

1197
02:22:37,748 --> 02:22:42,787
And that would be kind of a funny idea. I mean, that is possible. Yes. I don't actually know

1198
02:22:42,787 --> 02:22:47,907
that much about Avalanche. There's this, I remember I looking into it when,

1199
02:22:47,907 --> 02:22:54,228
and I messaged Amrita Saira about it a while ago, like years ago. And it was something like,

1200
02:22:54,228 --> 02:22:59,187
you're flipping coins and then you're partitioning the network and then you have a network. But then

1201
02:22:59,907 --> 02:23:04,388
I asked him the security, what would today be called the security budget question in reverse.

1202
02:23:04,547 --> 02:23:07,748
It was very similar to my, nothing is cheaper than proof of work where I say, listen, if you

1203
02:23:07,748 --> 02:23:13,028
have all, if you have billions of fees coming in, then isn't there a strong incentive to Sybil

1204
02:23:13,028 --> 02:23:21,988
attack the network? And he kind of like was very evasive. And then he, he was, and then he event,

1205
02:23:21,988 --> 02:23:28,228
when I kept asking him about it and he said, well, hi Dashberry, spelling. Oh, there we go.

1206
02:23:28,228 --> 02:23:33,268
Great. Yes, Julian. Hello. I might be able to shed a little light on the Avalanche

1207
02:23:34,228 --> 02:23:39,907
trust issues. I think that the nodes sign messages and rank each other based on their

1208
02:23:39,907 --> 02:23:48,707
performance. So there's some sort of web of trust going on. Well, maybe of course,

1209
02:23:48,707 --> 02:23:56,547
but if it's the nodes who watches the watchmen situation where the nodes are mostly being

1210
02:23:56,628 --> 02:23:59,907
watched by other nodes, then you still can Sybil attack.

1211
02:23:59,907 --> 02:24:05,348
And then any node, any node, you can still in the middle of it or whatever,

1212
02:24:05,348 --> 02:24:09,827
pretend to be the whole network. I think like it must, there must be something to it because

1213
02:24:09,827 --> 02:24:15,268
it's been around for a little while and some people seem to like it. So I've seen it before

1214
02:24:15,268 --> 02:24:23,508
on the fees site. So at some point it was being used as an EVM competitors. There must be something

1215
02:24:23,508 --> 02:24:30,067
to it. Yeah, there must be something to it. Maybe for the fork, you could call it Bitcoin Cash.

1216
02:24:31,108 --> 02:24:34,228
It's my little troll. Yeah. Bitcoin Cash. Yeah. I'm sure that will be

1217
02:24:34,787 --> 02:24:41,667
uncontroversial. Yeah. We'll win a lot of new friends over with that. I'm sure that's,

1218
02:24:41,667 --> 02:24:46,388
see, this is the, this is the issue with it. Well, of course, names are always very difficult,

1219
02:24:46,388 --> 02:24:50,628
but Bitcoin Cash, that was always going to be really difficult because they were just married

1220
02:24:50,628 --> 02:24:56,707
to the idea that they, they were the real Bitcoin. You know, they had bitcoin.com and

1221
02:24:56,707 --> 02:25:02,628
this is what Bitcoin was supposed to be, which is tough because Bitcoin Cash had in it a certain

1222
02:25:03,667 --> 02:25:09,827
parameter, which is a block height corresponding to August 1st, 2017, a certain date and a certain

1223
02:25:09,827 --> 02:25:17,988
number, namely the number eight and two instances of novelty. And they tried to say, this is the

1224
02:25:17,988 --> 02:25:22,148
original Bitcoin, but it was, they were really the new thing because it was eight megabytes on

1225
02:25:22,148 --> 02:25:25,827
August 1st. And if you didn't have those parameters, you were, you were done for.

1226
02:25:26,947 --> 02:25:33,268
You would never connect to that network. And, uh, you know, I had a Thanksgiving recently this year.

1227
02:25:34,868 --> 02:25:38,628
I was talking to a cousin who was a smart guy. He's a lawyer and,

1228
02:25:40,547 --> 02:25:44,547
you know, good, good students, smart guy. And, uh,

1229
02:25:45,508 --> 02:25:52,707
I, I don't know how to, it just, crypto came up and then something Bitcoin Cash somehow came up

1230
02:25:53,748 --> 02:25:58,468
and he was like, Oh, I wouldn't even think that that he's like Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. He's like,

1231
02:25:58,468 --> 02:26:03,028
I wouldn't even think that those are different things. And I think what he has to say that I

1232
02:26:03,028 --> 02:26:07,508
think that point of view is probably what most, most lay people think they probably don't. It

1233
02:26:08,468 --> 02:26:15,268
matters such a big deal to us, you know, in the industry, but people outside are just like,

1234
02:26:15,268 --> 02:26:17,988
what? And then people are like, what's the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum?

1235
02:26:17,988 --> 02:26:24,067
Like people don't know, they don't know the difference. So, uh, it's a tough name when you

1236
02:26:24,067 --> 02:26:29,748
have a name that it just seems like it's trying to trick people into not understanding that the

1237
02:26:29,748 --> 02:26:33,988
networks are different, but it's difficult. And then that of course became a convention

1238
02:26:34,868 --> 02:26:41,508
for all of these other soft forks that they were Bitcoin, gold, Bitcoin, diamond, whatever.

1239
02:26:41,508 --> 02:26:47,268
So this is a quite an, it's quite an intriguing, it's just interesting how it laid out. I mean,

1240
02:26:47,268 --> 02:26:54,628
I have also, I, to try to compare it to something I was like, okay, you have, you have Christianity

1241
02:26:54,628 --> 02:27:00,547
and then you have, or you have, you know, you have Sunni and Shiite, um, Islam, but you also

1242
02:27:01,348 --> 02:27:06,947
like in Christianity, you have like a Protestant and you have like Lutheran, Baptist. And I tried

1243
02:27:06,947 --> 02:27:10,228
to find, and I was like, oh, there is some time you have, you have Baptist and you have

1244
02:27:11,108 --> 02:27:19,427
Southern Baptist. So that's a case where it's split, but one had almost the same name,

1245
02:27:19,427 --> 02:27:23,268
but usually you don't, you know, usually you just get Lutheran or like, you know,

1246
02:27:24,787 --> 02:27:29,667
uh, Latter-day Saints or Episcopalian or something. You get like these totally different

1247
02:27:29,667 --> 02:27:34,628
words. So I think maybe that's a clue. On the other hand, maybe not. I don't know. I'm,

1248
02:27:34,628 --> 02:27:39,348
I'm really love to, you know, what is, I'm very open to what anyone, what does anyone think about

1249
02:27:39,348 --> 02:27:45,587
this whole, uh, should, should Bitcoin Cash have named, is that a dead name? I mean, I, I kind of

1250
02:27:45,587 --> 02:27:51,587
think that's very difficult because now you have to fight over the name and the ticker and then

1251
02:27:51,587 --> 02:27:58,067
someone's going to lose. It's probably the challenger to the status quo. And then it will

1252
02:27:58,067 --> 02:28:04,707
probably be stigmatizing and kind of humiliating, but maybe not. I don't know. These are just me

1253
02:28:04,707 --> 02:28:24,468
trying to figure it out. Okay, cool. Well, it doesn't seem like anyone is eager to say anything.

1254
02:28:25,028 --> 02:28:29,187
Last chance. Come on up, quick.

1255
02:28:32,388 --> 02:28:35,427
It seems like we don't have anybody. So, hey, thanks everyone for a great

1256
02:28:36,947 --> 02:28:44,547
space. See you next time. Find the recording on layer2labs.com with all the other recordings.

1257
02:28:45,748 --> 02:28:52,868
And, um, uh, thanks a lot. See everyone later.

1258
02:28:54,468 --> 02:28:55,508
Bye.