Can we talk about how crazy it's getting where people feel the need to change what they believe

or what they say based on this tremendous polarization of the communities where you

can't even just sit down at a table with someone without there being a kind of complicated

stressful drawing of boundary lines or something like that around the conversation.

So I mean, that's something that's really disappointed me that the community has split

and each side kind of writes the other off completely and I don't really support any

of that.

So that's one thing we could talk about, but we could just talk about anything.

Let's do it.

So yeah, I think the polarization takes too much of an extreme.

I think people need to look at the bigger picture.

At the same time, it's something we see in societies and politics across the board.

People like to get polarized and I think it's good to remind each other what we're really

here for and that really we have more things in common than not.

So we certainly shouldn't be that angry at each other, I think, in many cases and this

is really damaging everyone when we attack each other and, you know.

Yeah, well, I think that people do it because there's a reason.

It does work.

Well, as you say, first of all, it's just math, like if a bunch of people have a dispute

and one side gangs up and forms a big group, then the other side has to, you know, a well-organized

large group will just crush a series of smaller groups.

So you're doomed if you don't team up because teamwork is important.

But I think also it's kind of like the, it works for people, like an easy way to make

friends and to show people that you care about them, a very cheap way is of showing that

you care about other people is to make fun of their enemies, especially when the enemies

are nowhere around, you know, nowhere to be seen.

And so it does work a little bit.

In a strange way, you're right, this is an inevitable thing.

It's well documented that whenever there's not, if there's an external threat, people

come together.

But if you go long enough without a war, eventually, like it becomes internal again.

And that it's kind of depressing to see that happen to Bitcoin because I think there were

a couple opportunities for better ideas to just solve the problems.

But unfortunately, we just missed some of those opportunities, I think, a couple years

ago.

And then once it started to get very bad, it's now on an endless, I remember writing

in 2015, about July 2015 about this.

And I said, yeah, it started bad and now it's gotten much, much worse and it will only get

worse as time goes on.

And all kinds of people would tell me like, it can't get any worse than it already is.

And then it's like not even close, it's just continued to get worse and worse and worse.

That was way before Mike Hearn quit, it was way before Roger Ver splintered off with Brian

Armstrong and before the altcoin explosion.

So yeah, so I don't know how bad it can possibly get.

But definitely, why would it, you know, it won't stop getting bad until either there's

some kind of cooperation stimulus or some kind of force or something like that.

But these are kind of lofty thing.

I mean, I guess practical advice for anyone who sees this is to just try to keep in mind

how wrong everyone is about almost everything that they say and do just as human beings

and that we're all fallible and that you can use each community as a source of ideas

and of criticisms of ideas and that you shouldn't just give up on that because that is a valuable

thing.

And you're just giving up on science if you just kind of team up like this.

Is there something about maximalism and fundamentalism and all of that?

Let's get into maximalism next.

But I think before that, I think, so polarization does happen and this is somewhat of a natural

occurrence in human societies.

But I think if the danger there in polarization is people put on blinders and get tunnel vision

and the demonization and all these type of things is not really conductive to finding

truth, I think.

And what I would urge people to do is really try to think for yourself, have an open mind

and look at everyone's different views and see for yourself what makes sense.

And that's the part that worries me.

I think we all need to really be reminded of the bigger picture and actually look at

both sides and also don't just attack the other side, try to understand the other side's

point of view better and then learn something from it.

I think that is a greater goal.

There's a second thing actually that in a converse way, one of the worst things is that

it actually prevents real criticism from taking place because all the criticism that

takes place is just, you know, very low effort or sort of low brow.

And so, it then makes it so that something like, you know, I don't think that when like

now something like, I mean, there are a lot of examples but I think one salient one would

be the lightning network was when it was invented, it was just a really great idea.

But now, in one side says that it's this horrible thing that's invading and ruining

or doing something question mark and kind of not really totally fleshed out.

But then on the other side, it's held up as this thing that is kind of completely above

criticism of any kind and you don't, you really don't want anything to be above criticism

because that is what happened to the Roman Empire and Alan Greenspan and George Lucas

when he made the Star Wars episode one prequel, you know, everyone just thought they were

afraid to tell him that these ideas were bad, you know, because he was George Lucas.

And it's kind of similar, I mean, in a way, yeah, people criticize Blockstream as though

it's this horrible place but then on the other side, it's kind of like they can't do anything

wrong at all, you know, and it's like that is not a recipe for success, the criticisms

are good.

You want, not only do you want to not attack people but you actually want, it's no good

to have a bunch of supporters who are just mindlessly attacking the other side either

because they are preventing you from obtaining the knowledge that you need in order to continue

the process of improvement, so criticism is also good.

Criticism and optimism are good.

You want a lot of those two ingredients, those are very good ingredients.

I think you mentioned scientific thinking and it's not science if you don't allow yourself

to be disproved in some way.

And I think this is what we're seeing is also it's a lot of what I would associate with

cult-like behavior in that people group together, you know, the self-righteousness, the demonization

of the other side, you know, I mean, this in many ways is very damaging and we can all

afford to have a much more open mind.

I think the reason we're talking, we're kind of spending a lot of time on this and I don't

know, we have like no schedule and nothing is planned, this is all just whatever.

But I think, you know, this is a very deep mistake, you know, if there's some bug in

code or something, it can be fixed and so any number of people could fix it but this

is something that is very, it shuts off the pathway to correction for both communities

and it just stays off like maybe forever in the worst case scenario because something

else would happen that would be better, a better idea than Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash and

I don't know what form that could take but, you know, it's definitely not impossible,

you know, it's definitely a possibility that something, you know, something using a totally

different strategy like Ripple could make inroads with something.

And I don't really believe that that is likely to happen but the point is if an idea stays

static for long enough, eventually some improvements will be made and if they can't make any progress

in either of the two communities then eventually, you know, it's only a matter of, you know,

you cannot sustain a static piece of technology for a very long time.

Let's talk about that.

You're famously known as a Bitcoin maximalist and, you know, my counterpoint to that is

I really, I think the most free, you know, we can be in such system as having a plurality

of choice and I think that different people are going to make different choices based

on their own ideology and I think that's really a positive thing that allows us to have a

free market of currencies and in many ways that's something we should aspire to, to,

you know, have confidence in the systems we believe in and, you know, believe that they

can compete.

I think that's incredibly important.

Yes, so I think I did write on my blog which is Truthcoin.info, I wrote an essay called

Bitcoin post-maximalism which is kind of an update, sort of like where I kind of say like

where did it, because it's still mostly believe it but I sort of am saying like it's a very

nuanced point so that's why you should probably read the whole thing but I kind of say like

is this point really faltering but the interesting thing about my version of Bitcoin maximalism

is that it was always paired to sidechains like very explicitly the whole time, you know,

since the idea was proposed in really in like December 2013 or something and kind of got

at steam and I didn't really kind of understand a lot of it until, but like the October 2014

paper from the Blockstream guys that kind of put it, made sure that it would be on the

map of people's thinking at least in 2014.

So my version was always paired with sidechains and, yes, I'm like a very Hayekian person,

I'm like super Frederick Hayek and like student of Karl Popper and all that kind of free experimentation

type thing.

So I completely endorse all of that.

I just assumed that we'd have this, you could make Bitcoin kind of universal and you could

let it just transform into other things and it would still be the same 21 million Bitcoins

but they could take any number of tradeoffs and it's surprising to me that that view has

ended up having a very hard time.

Many people subscribe to it in private or they come up to me like one-on-one or if I'm

just talking to them in a loud restaurant, they kind of endorse it and then they'll

have some kind of caveat like, but we should do it slowly and carefully or something like

that.

It doesn't really click for people.

The way it clicks for me is that this should just be number one priority.

We should have done this as soon as possible.

I don't know why everyone isn't just working on this, especially when scaling debate got

big.

You could have just said, well, grand compromise while the fees are still low, we'll make the

second thing and you can just jump ship if you want, whenever you want and then the problem

would have been solved.

And so, I don't see why it's not priority number one.

There's a lot of people kind of admit that it's, but there are various people have different

hangups like the fact that sidechains have a slightly different, slightly different like

way of working in that normal transactions are examined one by one by this script interpreter

but sidechain transaction has a sort of different thing where it's multiple blocks over a very

long time in a big sequence that is kind of used to check this.

So, it's just, I think also that various people were involved with them at a certain time

or something.

So, people have all these different, there's like a very long list of like six or seven

hangups that people have with sidechains.

But yeah, that totally tempers the Bitcoin maximalism for me.

I, in fact, I found myself fighting, I think kind of the same thing that you're talking

about where I kind of fight the idea, I almost want to coin a new phrase for it which I was

thinking like monochainism or something.

I was kind of trying to find what's a good phrase for this because I'm strongly against

that and I find that to be not only ridiculous but I just, it seems like how could it possibly

be the case that like everyone doesn't need to agree about everything and that is very

unreasonable and it's like people, no, nothing has ever worked that way, you know, like it's

like, okay, the people in, I don't know about the Eurozone is the best possible example

but theoretically, the people in the EU would, they would agree on all Europe related things.

Some people in like, you know, people around the North Sea would agree on like fishing

related things for that area and then people would agree on anything that affects their

country and then the people in, you know, here in Amsterdam would only have to agree

on things that affect the city and so, no one has ever agreed on everything kind of

globally with like a few exceptions on like, you know, property rights or something.

So that is kind of, you know, I'm against the monochainism and I think it's, but I'm

for there just being one system that manages the 21 million bitcoins because I think to

that extent, everyone does share a common interest but yeah, I don't, this is, everyone

has kind of gone crazy and the real rubric hidden beneath all of this is that you can't

tell like who has secretly invested in what and to what extent that is just totally coloring

their opinions which is, that is not a, that's an uphill battle to figure any of that out.

I think, you know, the vision you were describing and having these sidechains on Bitcoin and

that creating that freedom of competition and experimentation, I think in many ways

that's manifested itself across the cryptocurrency market as a whole.

At the same time, you know, I would have loved to have seen your ideas being implemented

in Bitcoin, you know, years ago and maybe that we haven't seen that happen is, you know,

I think that might point towards a failure of, you know, the governance of Bitcoin which

is exactly why, you know, we need multiple choices, you know, I wouldn't want, yeah and,

you know, and I wouldn't want to live in a world where we only have one choice because

that does not speak to me of freedom, that almost sounds totalitarian to me actually.

Yeah, there's a little bit more, I think it is equal parts irony and also a kind of inevitability

to it that if we just had this one thing then other things would not matter as much and

you'd be able to escape the one piece of software and just use a different piece of software

and if the piece of software that you fled to was terrible then that would just be on

you and this would be a totally, you know, internalized, privatized thing.

But I think there is a kind of inevitability to it as well which is that, well, yeah, I

think the timing, you're right, the timing matters but I think there's a kind of, not

necessarily in a bad way but a lot of the people who have been managing the Bitcoin

software are like, well, you know, do we really want to just throw it to, you know,

because we feel responsible for this, whatever this thing, you know, they say like whatever

it is, like we feel responsible for this giant multi-million, multi-billion dollar project

and we want it to do well and so we don't really want to just, there's actual, I've

actually gotten correspondence and even I think as a lot of some of it is even public

where people have said, well, you know, any sidechain that we add should go through like

the BIP process and should, you shouldn't just be able to just kind of unilaterally

add one or something like that.

And what's weird is that I even agree with that in some sense but I don't think it should

go through the BIP process, I think it should just go through a very slow, deniable process

because I don't, I think it is possible to, this is a kind of a very advanced thing but

I think it is possible for sidechains to sort of interfere with each other so you can

like start up a nation and then quickly declare war on all the countries and then just kind

of like steal everyone's Bitcoin and then shut it down or something.

But I had a different thing for that which is just to make it kind of slow which I think

is an easier response for that.

But yeah, I think there's, I feel there's kind of inevitability to it as well that people

just thought and people just, you know, it's very hard because there are so many factors

at play that it's hard to say to what extent which ones are big or which ones caused other

ones or something but, you know, I mean it sounds like I think we agree on this and so,

you know, I'm just trying to, you know, get a version together that is useful and, you

know, I plan on having a testnet very soon and I have, you know, I have actually a Bitcoin

core version and then I have a different version that just loads the Bitcoin cash UTXOs.

So even though it's, it doesn't really use any Bitcoin cash code but it is effectively

a Bitcoin cash version and I'd like to, you know, I hope that people kind of play around

with it because I think the idea is very, very easy to misunderstand and I think there's

just something about it that it's just kind of new.

I think, you know, this is, it's kind of an arrogant thing to say but I think in the same

way that Bitcoin was misunderstood very frequently, I mean all the people in, big people in crypto

really shot down, cryptography shot down Bitcoin because they couldn't figure out like how

many bits of security it had or something like that and even then a lot of people who

are into Austrian economics or something, they thought it didn't follow regression theorem

or some of these other things.

So it's kind of like, I don't know, I hate to just, you know, because any new idea could

be a terrible idea or a good idea and I think just it's easy to misunderstand things.

But I think that this idea, when you see the testnet, it will make it a little easier to

understand and also I think there's just so much vaporware in the space that if anyone

releases anything, people will just be like a little more, disproportionately more excited

about it.

So I'm excited for that.

This idea is sort of coming in testnet form and then I hope that more people will try

to think about how, you know, it might solve their problems because it can definitely solve

many of mine and a lot of other people's that I know and so the more people who feel this

is helpful, I think the better chance we all have of getting our problems solved.

So let's talk about that because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about sidechains.

I don't know if you can help me understand that as well.

The way that I understand it currently is if we set up a sidechain, it does involve

a different trust model.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

But then you don't have the same guarantees per se that you would if it was on chain.

You know, I'm not actually sure if I, I think the assumption, the premises and the assumptions

and like the axioms I think are basically the same and I think the guarantees are really

the same.

It's just there's something in the middle is a little different.

So the way I have this set up is that it's very asymmetric so there's one chain that's

in charge of everything and then there are all these optional sidechains that are kind

of like more like plug-ins or something but since it's a devoutly asymmetric situation

so if you had a large block sidechain, for example, if you ran a full node of that, you'd

have to also run a full node of Bitcoin.

You'd have them together.

And so whenever you make a transaction from the side, from the original mainchain into

the sidechain, the large block in this example, the large blockchain would be aware of it

immediately because as far as it's concerned, this is just one big node that has two pieces.

So transactions go in are instant but then transactions coming out are instant and perfectly

successful and perfectly just as secure as regular transactions.

And then once you're in there, of course, there's this possibility of these atomic swaps

that are also instant and that have been kind of around for a while but haven't really taken

or you could use something like ShapeShift or something.

So it's just sidechains are very similar to altcoins in that you are using a completely

different piece of software that doesn't necessarily need to have any effect on the

base software that you're running.

So they're totally distinct, yes.

Right.

So but it's because it's so distinct, it is, like I was saying, a different trust model

in that sense and it's because you don't have a full proof-of-work network guaranteeing

the security and the incentives of that system.

You need to construct a different set of incentives and these might be better or worse but I suppose

my point is that they are different.

Yes.

So everything is basically the same except when you take money back and that is the interesting

aspect which is that if you want to take money, which you must be able to do in order for

this to kind of really not have too much, you know, just in order for this to really

be useful, they have to be as good as regular Bitcoin at least in an overwhelming sense.

So the, yes, so the, sorry, the, when the money is coming back, it is allowed to go

anywhere and that is what enables the sidechain to be ignorable.

And so you need the sidechain to be ignorable otherwise this all regresses to the same fight

it's always been over everyone agreeing on everything.

So it just regresses to the monochainism point.

And since it's allowed to be anything, it's allowed also to just be the wrong owners or

just the miners just taking it for themselves or something like that.

And so that is really the first hangup.

People have one of two hangups.

They say either it's, they think it's required, which it's not, excuse me, which it's not.

Or they say, well, then why wouldn't miners just immediately take the money and give it

to themselves?

And the answer is that it has to be, the process for coming back is very slow and laborious.

So you have to declare exactly where you're sending the money in advance.

And then you have to wait basically three to six months as miners upvote or downvote

this little thing.

So it's intended to be so difficult, it's basically like withdrawing money from Fort

Knox or something in the United States or just like something very, very, very slow.

And it will be apparent immediately to all sidechain users if it's wrong at any time

because you just, as soon as the withdrawal is declared, you just have one little hash

and you compare it to some other little hash.

And that is, then your computer will be able to warn you.

But again, it will only be able to warn you if you run the sidechain node.

So there is this kind of, this, there's a kind of an assumption built in that a few

people would care.

But even this is not a real assumption.

So anyway, let me finish my point, which is that this money is coming back and you, everyone

will know immediately because it's just one hash to another hash.

And someone might say, oh, this hash, you know, in order to figure out if the hash is

right, you need to run a full node or you could run the node in SPV mode.

There's lots of different, like, variations on this.

But the point is that the speed is so low and the, that it's just kind of...

almost impossible to believe that any, that a miner could like accidentally steal this money.

It's like, it has to be very, very intentional.

And this is a very slow thing that is very easy for humans to sort of check up on and make sure is correct.

And then if it's not correct, they can just kind of right click and UASF.

And then if the miner ever tries to follow through after the long period and actually steal the money,

then they can just say, I reject that.

And of course, but you see, there's a kind of, there's a lot of other layers to this,

which is that if we need the freedom to experiment with terrible ideas that have it so that we can't,

no one can figure out what's going on on the sidechain, at which point the miners might as well take the money.

And so that is a desirable thing.

And we also need the ability to kind of clean out sidechains that are kind of not worth it.

So it's kind of like you, you have the freedom to visit like a bad webpage on the internet.

So you don't want, it's, there's a kind of a shades of gray aspect to it where you want,

you don't want there to be like some website on the internet that just disables the internet itself.

So you don't want to visit a website that will shut off your internet connection as you reach a contradiction there.

But you also don't want anyone like kind of curating the list of possible websites for you to visit,

because you don't necessarily even know yourself which you do want to visit.

So the security model is different, but I think if you assume that miners are selfish

and that they want the price, they want to earn the most money in mining reward,

the sidechain gives the miners transaction fees.

And also by giving new abilities to the Bitcoin coin,

they make their own, the 12.5 that they currently earn every 10 minutes.

They make that have a higher purchasing power and it's more valuable token for them.

And they, that is what drives their incentives more than anything, because they, that hits them completely.

They have to pay out in, to buy electricity, they have to spend fiat.

And so they're buying like Bitcoin call options basically in effect,

and they really want Bitcoin's price to go up and not to go down.

See, that's the other thing is if miners allow, you know, sidechain theft,

or the sidechain ecosystem doesn't work out, then the price of Bitcoin may go down in that world.

So it's, there's a lot of, it's sort of like, it is a little bit different, but it's just kind of like,

again, I do think it's similar to original Bitcoin where it's like, oh, okay, well, maybe some,

why would the miners mine on the longest chain if they can make more money by just mining on a chain by themselves,

or they would get together with their friends and double spend or something.

And, you know, and I'm not asking anyone to really believe in it either.

I think people should try it out and watch other people try it out and just see if it works.

It may not work, but I think, you know, I don't think people really appreciate what it would take for a theft to take place.

It would take 51% of the hash rate, and it would take, for 51%, it would take the whole six months,

because it's, if you have 100%, it would take three months.

But it would take a long time, and it would be obvious to everyone.

And it'd be plenty of time to, like, decide, you know, what to do about it, if anything.

And this cannot be spammed.

Like, you can only do this once per sidechain.

But this would depend on a specific security model of that sidechain.

Well, yeah, I have what I have in mind, but anyone could change it to do anything else.

I kind of hope that everyone would do a similar thing,

so that the sidechains are maximally kind of intercomparable with each other,

so that an attack on one sidechain would be construed as an attack on all of them,

which I think would make it a bigger disincentive to...

That would limit experimentation.

No, only in the, because the gate coming back, I don't intend anyone to really even use.

In fact, the people who use it may all be miners themselves,

because you have, in one direction, it's super simple and infinitely secure,

just as secure as any other transaction.

So in the one direction, there are no problems whatsoever.

And then you have the atomic swaps, and you even have Lightning Network,

which is identical across all sidechains and altcoins.

So you have these atomic swaps that you can easily,

you could have someone move 100,000 Bitcoin over,

and then buy and sell them with other people in exchange for on-chain Bitcoin,

and with the normal security assumptions of that just the node is working,

and that the network is on, then you still get everything.

And then if people want to sell, they can sell for like 99 cents on the dollar

to like these kind of investment banker types who will collect all the money

and then slowly walk it over during these slow withdrawals.

So I don't anticipate anyone even really using the withdrawal part.

It's just to establish the peg's existence beyond any of the, you know, the...

And people will potentially stay in the sidechain in the same shape.

Yeah, I think, well, it could go in a couple of ways.

If people stay in the sidechain or leave, I would imagine some people,

if people want to leave, my point is there should be a liquid market

for these atomic swaps for them to leave,

because anyone can make a tiny investment return.

Yes, but some people may, there may be specialists who go over to a sidechain,

and then they offer services or they create some kind of payment channel-like thing.

And so you can use the service of the sidechain just by kind of going through it,

even if none of your Bitcoin are over there.

And so those people, if there's not enough Bitcoin on some sidechain,

people might deposit some and then do that and charge a higher fee

and get some kind of return that way.

So one of the problems that I see with sidechains and also state channels

is that it does add complexity to the user experience,

is that this is adding steps, you know, to this.

And I think this also depends on your view on scaling,

but I mean, I think that we can scale on chain or at least keep up with demand.

So in that sense, I think that Bitcoin needs to compete with systems

that can, you know, fulfill a lot of these functions simply on chain,

which is a better user experience and can also be very cheap.

You know, and in that sense, I don't see, I mean, don't get me wrong,

I see a lot of use cases where sidechains and state channels are actually great,

really very useful for specific use cases,

but this definitely does not cover all use cases.

And I think user experience here is very important.

And one of the advantages of cryptocurrency

is that a blockchain represents a type of neutral platform

that, you know, everyone around the world can do business with.

And if we start to set up these interconnections and interrelationships,

then we could face a lot of the same problems that we have in current legacy systems.

Currently legacy systems, technologically, they could work very well,

but the reason they don't is mainly due to politics

and, you know, organizations not wanting to work together,

not wanting to trust each other.

And now that we have a blockchain, this neutral platform

that allows everyone very easily to transact and to communicate

and not to require trust.

But once we start stacking layers on top of that,

we could start seeing problems of these systems connecting to each other again

while also worsening the user experience.

Lightning actually being a great example of that,

where, you know, you need to load into a hub,

and then these hubs might not want to connect with each other

for different political reasons,

in many ways re-applicating the problems that we have in current financial systems.

But of course, this does depend on your view on scaling.

I'm personally, I think we can scale on chain

and therefore it'd be hard to compete with that.

But obviously, if I'm wrong about that,

then sidechains and state channels are obviously the way to go.

Well, I think, yeah, you said a lot of things there.

But I think one is that the large block sidechain,

if you just run large block sidechain,

and then you, as I explained earlier,

you'd have to run the tiny block mainchain in this setup.

But, yeah, once you have that,

then it's really no different from having just a large blockchain in general.

You just have everyone using, you know,

Roger Ver is giving away money on that chain,

and then he gives people that mobile app.

And then it's basically the same user experience.

So I think the sidechain user experience is the same

if you're not moving around as,

and it would be on one large blockchain,

large block blockchain, so it would be the same.

But in terms of a UI perspective, I don't quite see that working

because to have a wallet, let's say,

and you have bitcoins in that wallet,

and that bitcoin exists in a sidechain,

it would be very confusing to users to label that as bitcoin

because you cannot transact directly to another bitcoin address,

which, again, which is the kind of complexity that I'm talking about

that creates those problems.

Yes, I think you're right about that,

but you could send directly to another address within this thing.

So you'd call it, you could call the sidechain, like,

a gigachain or something, and it would have a giant,

it would have gigabyte blocks or something.

And then, but everyone would just, you know,

Roger Ver would just tell everyone to, in this hypothetical,

you know, I'm sort of speaking for fun here,

but he would just tell everyone to use that app

or the family of apps that uses that system.

And then it would be the same.

I mean, it's no different, I think, from the situation it is with altcoins today,

where it's like, within the altcoin,

there may be many apps or one or two

that interface with the user,

and moving among different altcoins is difficult.

But, you know, it used to be impossible,

and now it's much easier than it was before.

Like, I'm kind of shocked, honestly.

I mean, Shapeshift is very easy to use.

A lot of the payment processors now integrate with many different coins.

You know, you can have one where it's like,

oh, we take Bitcoin, like Coin Monero, Bitcoin Cash, et cetera.

So I don't think it would be that different.

I do agree that the user experience is important, though.

But, yeah, I think these things are hard to say.

I mean, you say, like, it depends on your belief

if Bitcoin can scale on-chain.

But, again, like, the Hayekian view that I like

is that you set in very much the Nassim Taleb view,

which is that you try to set up the world

so that it doesn't depend on whether or not you know something,

because knowing things is just too difficult.

And so you just say, well, you know, the sidechains,

like, we try it.

You have the sidechain, the large block sidechain.

You turn it on, and then, oh, like, oh, that didn't work.

But then you figure out why it didn't work.

Oh, maybe it's easy to fix, or maybe it just does work, you know?

Maybe there are no problems at all.

Or maybe, I presented it at Scaling 3,

I was like, maybe the fact that you just have both of them,

it's like a Mont and Bailey defense

where people would build this kind of tower or castle, like on a hill,

and then they would have, like, a kind of other thing

where they would mostly hang out, like in a field.

And that's where they really wanted to be.

No one wanted to be in the tower.

This is, like, in whatever, the 500 AD era.

And you would want to hang out in the large block place

where the fees are cheap.

But then if someone tries to attack all of the nodes,

then you just retreat to the tower and shoot with giant longbows

at these people, you know, until they leave you alone.

And then they leave, and then you go back out.

And so, this is kind of like a strategic synergy between the two.

I'm not sure if that's a desirable situation to be in

if we have better alternatives.

Well, I don't know. What do you mean by that?

Oh, I mean, in your analogy of having to retreat to the tower

and shoot down the people in the field,

I mean, all of that could be avoided.

It's a small block chain.

Right, you know, I understand. Yes, I understand.

But then, you know, like, if, like, you know...

If people attack, it's better than not having a tower.

But I think for a lot of people, like, and, you know, I think...

I think the design, if Bitcoin were to really succeed

in terms of the vision of Core,

like, transaction fees would have to become very high.

I think at current scale, you know, more than $100 per transaction.

And I think that creates a type of inequity

where not everyone can afford to move into the tower.

And even furthermore, not everyone can fit in the tower.

I mean, I believe for everyone to do a single transaction on Bitcoin,

it would take a century for the entire world to do one transaction.

So I don't really see that the gate is big enough to save those people.

And I think a lot of the plebs are going to be stuck in the field and shot down.

It's quite the analogy here.

I... Well, that's not really what I mean, is that that's close.

But by staying in the tower, I mean that Bitcoin itself is still alive

and everyone's money is just kind of on pause.

So the large block, I'm imagining something that, you know,

this is the disaster painted by the core people,

is that there's only like five nodes and they're all in a data center in China.

The Chinese government rolls in and says that you have to like do X, Y, Z or whatever.

And so the Chinese government rolls on in and they say,

you can't do this or you can't do that.

And then, or just you have to shut all this off.

And so my defense is that instead of the newspaper headline being

China destroys Bitcoin completely, Chinese government number one,

you know, whatever was so great.

Instead, the headline is just Chinese government makes Bitcoin much more expensive to use.

Some people find that very annoying, you know,

and then the conversation is just about how they are doing something that is directly inconvenient,

but not even really achieving a good purpose.

And so that's kind of what I mean.

I think to me that's somewhat of a false dichotomy in that, you know,

this idea that we'll only have five nodes that govern the network,

that's certainly not something I would advocate for, right?

And I don't know whether or not it's accurate or not,

but I'm just saying this is the, again, this is the Hayekian thing.

So it's like, okay, well, if that happens, do we have some plan for that?

Then okay, then there you go.

There's your plan.

So works for everyone.

Well, I think there's a middle ground that can be struck here as well,

because like something, actually I'll introduce an idea here,

something that I always found to be a lot more realistic to establish for Bitcoin is

if we just simply just established a minimum specification of like,

you know, what should be the minimum specification to run a full node?

Like realistically, like today, like you can run a Bitcoin full node for like $5 a month pretty easily.

And I think with eight megabyte block sizes, that's $10 a month or, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I think in that sense, I think, you know, being realistic,

if we say let's establish a minimum specification.

So let's say just an average computer with an average connection in the developed world.

I don't think we should expect, you know, poor people in the third world to run full nodes.

That doesn't necessarily seem to be the correct priority here.

I'm more happy to enable SPV wallets for, you know, the disenfranchised of this world.

Yeah.

Well, I think that that question is linked to the other question, which is how people feel about SPV.

And again, I kind of feel very fine with it.

So this is actually very interesting.

So first of all, I wrote a cool blog post that a lot of people liked.

It's very long in my characteristic style on Truthcoin.info, but it's called Measuring Decentralization.

And I concluded that the best, this word is very vague.

And I was like, what does this word mean?

You know, because that was another point of contention.

And I was like, this is not going to get anywhere if no one has a definition for this word.

So I said, let's define it as the cost of your option to create a new full node and then start using it.

So it's basically what you're saying.

And so that's, so we should have some, if we care about decentralization,

we should be able to define it and measure it.

And people should really care about the measurements and the definitions.

Very suspiciously, many people do not.

They say they care about decentralization, but then it's like saying you care about, I don't know,

chemistry, but you don't keep track of the elements or you don't,

you never build a microscope or from biology or something.

So that aspect is very interesting.

But then the SPV aspect is also interesting because people say, well, we never built these fraud proofs,

but I actually also did a very recent blog post about that,

which is very, very long and very complicated about how I think you might be able to do these fraud proofs

that no one has been able to disagree with yet.

But just to your point, at the bottom, I'm like, I don't know if anyone really even needs this

because seriously, like when's the last time that, you know,

there's asymmetry for those of you who don't know in SPV mode where almost all of the work,

99.99% of the miner's effort goes into this thing that you can check in like two seconds

and then validating the block is this much longer task.

And, you know, that's a very clever, I find that to be a very clever design and a very good asymmetry.

And it's like wood, if miners want to get paid, they should run the node.

What's the percentage of the node cost relative to the other capex that they've put in?

You know, wouldn't they just...

And then the other thing on top of that is that there's a dichotomy between...

Miners is a word that describes actually a couple of different people, but mainly two groups.

The hashers who are just cranking out the SHA-256,

but then there's also like these pool operators that kind of decide what to do

and then they just pass a tiny amount of information, you know,

whatever it is, like 200 kilobytes or something or not, it just, yeah.

And so it's like those are the people who need to run one node, you know,

in exchange for being the pool operator and having a brand of that to try to attract these hashers.

And it's an environment that is, you know, it's like textbook perfect competition

and anyone can just show up and there's no barriers to entry for this.

So you show up and establish a brand, you'll be raking it in and you want to defend that brand

that you don't miscalculate the block and invalidate all the miners' payments.

But then people say, oh, how will we ever know?

Like, why would the payments ever be invalidated if no one is checking?

And then you say, well, some people will check and then it becomes kind of a crazy thing.

I'd like to touch on that, Ikshin.

I think, Ikshin, you defined as hashers and pools.

I think I'm using the definition miners and pools,

but it's the same things, the semantic difference there.

But I think this is something that a lot of people forget because there's a lot of talk

about if we increase the block size, it increases mining centralization.

And that is categorically wrong.

The sense in which people mean that, that ship has sailed a very long time ago.

There was like one mempool shared by like 70% of the miners as of like early 2014 or something.

Like that ship has completely sailed.

But in a good sense, Sergio Damon Lerner was one of the earliest to point this out

and no one would really listen.

And this ties into all kinds of other crazy things.

But there was this phenomenon of block orphaning.

Everyone should, it's very instructive and fun.

If you go to blockchain.info charts, which are very fun, but you can check out the orphaned blocks.

You'll see as blocks got bigger, there was suddenly this problem of the blocks being orphaned.

And that, it's hard to very quickly explain what's going on there, but the miners don't

like orphaned blocks because they mined a valid block, but then they lose all their

money for it.

So they, because they happened to be found coincidentally at the same time as someone

else and just no one checked.

So this started to be a big problem.

But then eventually you reach a point where block size continues to increase, but then

this problem just basically just completely goes, falls off a cliff and goes away.

And then now no blocks are really orphaned almost ever.

And that is because of this phenomenon of SPV and spy mining, where all of the miners

are actually plugged into each other's pools and they will, as soon as someone finds a

new header and clicks the new miners over to it, everyone will click over to it immediately

without, before they explicitly check on it.

But they do implicitly check in the fact that they are still working on, yeah, they do implicitly

check in the fact that they assume that since these other miners have been driven to, you

know, the other pool administrator has decided that they are going to start working on this.

That is a kind of indirect evidence that you should at least work on it until you have

checked for yourself, which is like 30 or 40 seconds.

So this problem doesn't really happen anymore.

But yeah, mining centralization is another thing that it, unlike decentralization, which

I tried to define, basically no one has risen to the challenge and defined miner centralization

in an acceptable way to me, other than this very boring sense in that miners like talking

to each other or something like that.

If I'll just explain that a bit more.

I think that like the reality of Bitcoin today is that there's 20 to 40 pools.

And I don't think that's going to change because it's simply just how variance works.

Now, considering the scale of mining, these pools can afford to run full nodes, essentially.

And, you know, exactly.

And this is, yeah, exactly, exactly.

And, you know, and this is why, like as a miner, like I run some miners from home, it doesn't

matter if they are one megabyte blocks or one gigabyte blocks as a home miner, you're

actually not affected by this.

And that's exactly.

And yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so I think this has been a very false narrative, I suppose, that's been going around.

But node centralization obviously is a different issue entirely.

But I would actually just hop back, actually just tie back to what you're saying about

sidechains.

And, you know, one of the gripes maybe I have with Bitcoin now is that, you know, it's failing

to adopt, you know, good changes in the code and, you know, because just changing a one

to a two, I think would have been an acceptable compromise.

And introducing your concept of sidechains, I think, would have been a very amazing experiment

to see, you know.

And this is something that maybe shows flaws in the way that Bitcoin itself is being governed,

you know, from a GitHub, you know, currently, and the kind of governance philosophy around that.

Yeah, well, maybe, but, you know, I think, I think a different thing, okay, all right, cool.

But yeah, I think a bigger thing is just the lack of interest, because, you know, I've

been working on and tinkering with the sidechains technology and code over time.

So it's been improving.

And so then it's even still not even the testnet.

But I do find it, I find a weird apathy that I can't, can't really fully explain it.

I have a lot of theories, but I suspect if you went to something like Ethereum or Bitcoin

cash, that'd be far more welcoming to your ideas.

Well, it's been an absolute.

That's cool.

It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you here and really enjoy your work and thank you.