And although these are fun, privately, now I'm thinking, how many of these are we going to do?
Because we've done very many, and when's the last time we heard something truly new?
Basically, never. I don't know. Maybe we still do. I don't know.
I guess we had BitVM. But even that, I think people still are way behind what they could learn if they just read the drivechain.info slash literature section.
Still much more advanced than five, six, seven years later than the commentary in this space, usually.
But I don't know. Here we are. It's Friday. Happy Friday to all, if anyone.
The thing is, we haven't really had any of the critics come here. They are just not in a while.
A long time ago, we had – by a long time ago, I mean a month ago, or whatever.
Who did we have? Mr. Hoddle, we had that one time. And we had Shinobi that one time. But they didn't really say anything.
Shinobi said just a bunch of confused nonsense about how he's – in some sense, it's bad because miners feel compelled to do something,
but in another sense, the t-shirt argument, it's not bad because that requires a lot of capital.
It's complete. He has it both ways.
And we had Alex B., who constantly deletes the spaces, where he's always complaining that sidechain node is really bad because it's mandatory.
And then he explains it's so expensive that people won't be able to afford doing it.
So no one will do it. So either he thinks everyone's doing it or no one's doing it.
These are like bottom-of-the-barrel terrible thoughts.
And like I always say, I always say to these people, just write down an example on paper because there is no example.
There's absolutely none whatsoever of this effect where the overlapping benefits and costs of sidechains are very –
so I think that what I should do instead is just do the video with Peter Todd, but I just haven't gotten around to –
I went through it two spaces ago, two weeks ago, and I wanted to make like some slides or something.
I'm too lazy. Maybe I'll get some help because I have them kind of like sketched out.
But I wanted to make like some visual aids or something.
So I was thinking I'd probably do that today instead of this.
But here we are to do this space, and I don't know what people will get out of it.
But if anyone has any questions, they can certainly come up and ask.
I guess the big news this week was that Michael Saylor came out in favor of L2s and in favor of miners obtaining more revenue from things like ordinals and applications built on BTC.
Whereas before he was the digital gold, Bitcoin is a useless rock camp.
So he's learning that it won't be digital gold unless miners are making a ton of money and unless there's no competing version of Bitcoin that is almost identical but that is used in applications.
So that's something.
Eventually, everyone will come around. Of course, the only question is how much damage is done in the time it takes for everyone to wise up.
But yeah, here we are.
There is something else that maybe I could comment on, which is that some people are annoyed when I criticize the Lightning Network.
And they say, well, that's bad strategy. We should just lie. We should say things we know are false for political reasons.
And there's some truth to that, of course.
We've all got to do that to some extent.
But my point of view is really that if we start to compromise on the truth too much, then we're screwed no matter what.
I see it as a fall of Rome situation.
And so the only way that Bitcoin can be killed is if everyone starts lying about what it is.
And then eventually every CBDC will just be called Bitcoin, even though it'll be the US dollar.
But we'll just call it everything. And Venmo will be just called the Lightning Wallet.
So when we do stuff like that, we're just killing Bitcoin.
So every lie we tell about Bitcoin is just killing it more.
And so I see it as really the same project, telling the truth about...
But, you know, a lot of people say, well, if you ever criticize the Lightning Network, then you're criticizing Bitcoin.
And then you're giving fuel to Bitcoin's enemies.
And I think that's a terrible point of view. I just think it's ridiculous.
We're just proving the enemies correct if we are not self-critical.
So anyway, that's a thought.
Anyway, now we have a speaker. Hello.
Daniel Sobhani.
With lots of extra A's. So hello. Welcome.
I have a question about some of the benefits of drivechains.
I've understood it as a way to get new features.
But sometimes on podcasts, people talk about it as if it's a way to get cheaper transactions.
And I don't understand how that could work.
I don't know how a different drivechain could allow for cheaper transaction costs.
Wouldn't the transaction costs still depend on the L1 fees?
Yeah, that's a good question.
The answer is that it's a more abundant block space.
That lowers the transaction fee.
And it's true that every coin that circulates in the drivechain had to come from L1.
Excuse me. Had to come from L1.
Sorry, I have to just get myself some water.
Sorry. So each coin had to come from L1.
But one single L1 transaction ever from like hundreds of years ago,
that can support an unlimited number of drivechain transactions.
So the timeline would be something like today you would,
some very rich person like Michael Saylor puts 20,000 BTC on layer one.
He moves them from L1 to L2.
And he pays an $8 transaction fee.
This is all today.
And then never again does anyone deposit L1 to L2.
So there's no more coins moving back and forth.
But on L2, those 20,000 coins can be split, can change,
can move to a different person, person A, B, C.
You can break off one millionth of a coin and send it to Jeff,
who sends it to Eric, and they send it all around in a big loop.
And they can just keep doing that forever.
And when they're over there, they have the L2 block space,
and they pay the L2 fee.
So those L2 transactions pay the smaller fee.
And, yes, it's true that each one of them required an L1 transaction,
but they all require the same one.
I have one transaction from a long time ago that Michael Saylor,
or whoever it is, Roger Ver, whatever, that they made.
Does that make sense?
It does make sense.
And that's a good explanation.
I have a follow-up question, but if there's other people,
I don't want to take up too much space.
Well, so far you seem to be the only one with the speaker title.
Okay.
Who wants to go for it?
The next question is transactions can't happen between drivechains.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Whether or not they are happening between drivechains is, like,
a question that is only, like, a human could answer or someone that.
Oh, okay.
So a private transaction can happen, but there's no, like,
at a protocol level you can't send coins from one drivechain.
If you have, let's say, a main chain L1,
and then you have sidechain number 5 and sidechain number 8, 5 and 8,
right, when you run a node of sidechain number 5,
it only sees what's happening on sidechain number 5.
So you could do an HTLC on 5,
and you could do the same HTLC with the same hash,
same hashing function and the same preimage and same magic R,
same magic H, whatever, on 5 and 8, and then there could be a swap.
But the only way anyone will know is if they run both nodes
and then have some kind of conclusion based off of that information.
So you either need a human being who's running both,
or some kind of software, like, you know,
we use software all the time that uses multiple subcomponents,
like lots of things use JavaScript runtime environment
or, like, Microsoft C++ redistributable or something.
You know what I mean?
Like if you download a game and it has, like, DirectX, that kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
We use all the time, we use software that is made up of other software.
And so you could have a piece of software that uses 5 and 8.
Oh, okay.
But that would be, like, its own thing.
And you see what I mean?
Like, this is really the type of conclusion that only a human being would draw.
Yes.
There would be nothing inherent about the transaction
from the point of view of the sidechain number 5 node.
The sidechain number 5 node, it just sees it as a transaction.
It doesn't really know that it is.
It doesn't have an understanding that sidechain 6 exists.
Right.
So in that sense, the answer to your question is no,
but there's a completely different sense in which the answer could be yes,
because nothing stops you from building something where it's written
so that it either happens on all the sidechains
or it does not happen on any of them.
And in that sense, it is, from the human point of view,
it is on all of them at once.
Because it's either on all of them or it doesn't happen.
That's good.
Thanks for explaining that.
I'm good.
Cool.
Okay.
Thanks for your question.
Okay.
Great.
Two questions down.
100 to go.
7,000 to go.
So those are some pretty good ones.
We'll see if we get any more questions.
No one has a question just yet.
Don't be shy.
Come on up.
Or comment.
Hello.
We have someone regular.
Yes.
Hello.
Hey there, Paul.
We met a few years ago at Baltic Honey Badger.
I really appreciate the work you're doing.
I do have a question, though.
A lot of the activity on layer one, like looking at Bitcoin today,
is related to ordinals and inscriptions.
I mean, have you given any thought as to whether that's something that
drivechains would want to support or could support?
Just wanted to get your comment on that.
Right.
The ordinals thing, the story of the ordinals, there's a lot to unpack.
I feel like it's when they make Bitcoin into like a HBO series,
I think there'll probably be like a whole season on that or whatever.
But ordinals is about more than just what I call BitAssets.
A BitAssets idea is very old.
This goes back to like counterparty colored coins.
Many Rosenfeld invented color coins.
I think it was like January 20.
Twenty twelve or something like ancient history.
Random fact, I think he just got called into the Israeli Army Reserve or
something.
So that's.
Weird fact.
Anyway, and then, you know, how Finney talked about collectible trading
cards.
So this is like a very, very, very old idea.
And people people love this idea.
And I don't really get it personally,
but I'm like a very much a live and let live kind of person.
The customer is always right.
So we do plan to support it and we plan to support the issuing of.
And I have.
We have already created and released and you can already download it right
now if you want a BitAssets sidechain where you can make your own assets
and the assets are UTXO.
It's not like a theory and base.
So the assets can be in their own.
multisig output or lightning channel output or something.
We actually plan to completely rewrite that in rust.
Anyway.
So even though we already have a good version.
It's in a situation where I feel ashamed of it and we can have a better
version soon.
You know, there'll always be a better version.
But that's the concept of just people issuing their own assets.
And.
A good person to talk to about this is Bruce Fenton,
because he is directly involved in the securities business for a long time.
And he's a registered.
I don't know, probably a.
It's probably a broker and a dealer.
I don't know exactly what, but he's passed all the different series.
You know, those exams series seven, series 60, whatever.
So he has been in the securities business for a long time.
And he says that you never actually own a share of anything.
Like if you buy apple.
There's like a holding company that officially owns it and you never
actually own it.
You never really know.
How many shares there are. You have to like.
Look it up.
You have to like pay a fee and look it up on like the Delaware website.
And so there's these other people databases that do it and.
They're inconsistent.
Those things are called corporate actions where they like change the stock
ticker symbol. And it's like.
So it's apparently it's, it's not run very well.
So even in the case of apple, where it's a centralized company.
The just tracking like how many shares there are is.
Who owns them is could be improved in his opinion.
And that's so this is kind of a rambling answer,
but I'm trying to say is that the idea of just issuing tokens or just
issuing art collectibles, that's a very old idea.
People want to push the envelope further.
And make like stocks and bonds.
You're like, there's things that you would own that aren't Bitcoin.
Stable coins is a perfect example of your stable coins where people want
to own something that's that specifically is not Bitcoin for whatever
reason, you know, God bless them.
So you have to respect investor sovereignty.
Anyway, this is a very rambling answer.
I should really ask you to be more specifically on exactly what you plan
to what you want to know.
See,
because the ordinals movement is also just about doing things on Bitcoin
without permission.
And in that sense,
the ordinal idea is already on every UTXO chain.
Like it can't be stopped, but it's also very limited in what it can do.
You can't really assume the tyranny of Bitcoin Core.
So you can leave and go to a different piece of software.
Yeah.
Oh, sorry, Paul.
I thought you were asking for clarification.
Yes.
Like, I think the reason that people value ordinals, right.
Is because, I mean, you know, there's always, I guess,
the technicalities of it, right.
But like the belief is there that, you know,
those digital collectibles will be on the Bitcoin blockchain,
like essentially like forever.
Right.
No, I think that actually gives them a lot of value.
So my specific question would be like, you know, would it be,
I'd like to hear your thoughts on that also.
Right.
But I guess my just coming to my question, you know,
will do you think it will be possible to bridge those assets or ownership of
those assets onto a drivechain and then like transact,
like trade them on the sidechain?
The answer is yes.
And I think that that is what will happen and should happen.
In fact,
probably the BitAsset sidechain should at some point create some kind of
indexer that can index every known ordinal.
And then at some point the BitAssets sidechain before it officially
launches should have some kind of like,
like it should
like import the ordinal set because we don't want anyone to feel left behind.
But the ordinal thing, you know,
it's very difficult to understand NFTs and crypto art because it's all fraught
with the idea of people pumping their bags and they don't need the reason to
be true.
They can be lying, but they can also be self deceived.
Right.
So if they say, well, why is my,
why is my JPEG of a bored ape selling for enough money to save 50,000 African
lives?
It's like a vitamin a donation.
Like people have to come up with some kind of story for that in their head as
to why, why is this pumping?
And this lead, you know, this is just a, you know,
this is leads to deception and self deception.
So the trope,
the line that people have learned to say is ordinals are
going to be there on while one, so there'll be around forever.
Now there's a tiny bit of truth to this.
It's also overlaps with what I think is a more important reason,
which is that the ordinals,
they have like the,
there's like an attention economy where ordinals can cause the L1 fee rate
to go up and they can actually affect like,
what do people see when they go on Clark Moody dashboard?
And what do people see when they go on men pull that space?
And it actually causes literally causes lightning channels to close.
So the ordinals phenomenon writ large,
it actually has like a force, like a magnetism.
It actually has a physics, you know, it affects,
it screws up lightning and it pushes people into custodial lightning.
And it also screws up L1 transaction.
So it's, it's like a big commercial for
maybe what you might call large block is a more different L2s because it's,
it mangles not only the lightning network, but also L1.
So in this sense, it's part of a much bigger movement, whether or not
the relative reputation of the lightning network and L1, those things,
they, they will alter the trajectory of hundreds of millions of dollars of VC funding.
And to say nothing of other types of which developers pay attention to which projects.
So that by itself is enough to explain, you know, I think,
but I think a lot of what people say about ordinals is a story.
I think they have to provide actual utility for the end user.
So I, when we have Alex Kravitz, sometimes he shows up in this space and he tells him,
he paints a completely different picture that I think is much better,
where he paints a picture of like, yeah, you'll get a digital ID on L1.
You have L1 would be like a Dropbox that cannot delete your files.
So you can host files there. You can put WikiLeaks stuff on there.
You can put books there. You can put a will there that's encrypted.
So you can decrypt it. So it's like a completely different file system.
And that would actually add some utility. That would give utility to the end user.
Right. So the, uh, it's not because it's, I don't know.
I mean, you know, like, is that, is this what really what people believe or is it a fake belief?
You tell me like, okay.
Because who actually thinks that any data on the internet is really in danger of being deleted.
There are certain things like, like, um, you can get shadow banned and you can get
banned from the internet. You can get censored from the internet, but I just,
just a photograph, an innocent photograph is not going to be deleted.
And I don't think anyone really thinks that like Litecoin, even though that's useless.
I don't really think that anyone thinks that that's just going to be gone in like 20 or 30
years. Like it'll be somewhere worst case scenario, maybe not worst case scenario,
but I just don't believe that this is true. You know, do you understand what I'm saying?
Like, I don't actually believe that it's, it's true. It sorts them out and gives them to,
it makes it puts them in a privileged set, but that doesn't necessarily give them the value.
People kind of, people kind of already are using it, exploring what you just said.
People are putting like documents of historical significance up there as well as, you know,
monkey JPEGs. I think someone put the Bitcoin white paper up there.
King James Bible up there, Cypherpunk manifesto up there. And yeah, indeed it, it, it makes it
like very difficult to, to censor that information or, or for that matter, modify it, you know,
in 50 years or a hundred years. Right. So anyway, let's change the topic. That's an upload ordinal.
No, but I like that. That's good. Of course the ordinal's phenomenon overall is really about
should we do the wrong thing just because something isn't shaped like a conventional,
conventional Bitcoin transacts. Sort of like a kind of, it's funny because every ordinal's
transaction is a valid Bitcoin transaction and it does pay a higher fee. It crowds everything out.
So it pays the higher fee. So it's basically some kind of form of, you know, discrimination.
It's like, should we discriminate for irrelevant reasons against people who want to use Bitcoin?
So it's actually kind of like a battle of good and evil in a way.
And the person who pays the most for the block space is the rightful owner.
And so I agree with you Paul. I think a lot of what we're seeing, like you mentioned,
you know, the fee market, you know, lighting channels being squeezed out, all this activity
in a way it's indistinguishable from mass adoption. So in a way it's sort of like a stress
test for all these systems. Yeah. In a way, by in a way you mean just in the way, because
it is adoption. Ordinal's is adoption. And of course, I think what you are getting at is that
it begs the question, well, if this had happened, if this had happened due to mass adoption,
would we still complain and try to censor it? And then the answer was no. And then
the whole thing seems stupid because it could be revealed.
It's all ad hominem, you know, it could just be revealed later that,
oh, wait a minute. Actually, all that ordinal stuff wasn't real. And they really were all
the actual Bitcoin transactions the whole time. And then everyone would have to change their
mind. And then it could be and have been revealed that the revelation
was fake. And actually they were just ordinals. And now and now you're changing your mind
about something based on a reason other than the content of that information.
So it's like, it's absurd. Honestly, the whole thing is absurd. But yeah, I don't actually
participate in any kind of ordinals stuff, but I think the ordinals people are definitely,
they're onto something. They want to use Bitcoin and they want to take Bitcoin seriously.
And that's a good thing. And so I gave you a long rambly answer, but
to just continue to ramble slightly for a short time, I hope. A pro-BitAsset sidechain
to bring all this, you know, this idea of people issuing their own assets to BTC on L2. And I'm
just pro people using Bitcoin for things without permission and without changing the L1 code. And
in fact, older versions of BIP300, you would have needed a soft fork to add each
sidechain. But then we changed it so that BIP300 already does the drop-add. And in fact,
it has this 50% hashrate threshold for withdrawals and for activation, activating itself,
and had this 80% super majority to claim the slot. But lately I have actually been thinking
that we should probably just lower, they should all just be 50. And we should give up on the
concept of super majority and it just be pure proof of work, 50% proof of work experience.
Because otherwise I think, you know, if you don't do 50, it's always a veto, one minus 50%,
80% you have. And what's the point of that? Isn't it really the veto that is the only thing
that matters? So I don't know. It's kind of a rambly thought. But yeah, the Ordinals thing
shouldn't be on L1, should be on L2. It would never have come to L1 if people were getting
what they wanted in general. You know, like it's only because Ethereum is gaining on BTC.
It's only because Lightning is not working out. That's why there's the anxiety around Ordinals.
No one would care. It would have been like Bitcoin, it would have been like it was in 2014
with a, you know, counterparty or something. Where people would think, okay, that's kind of cool,
but Bitcoin is having an all-time high for an un-counterparty reason. And so
so anyway, rambling answer there. But
that's what you get, folks. If you hit the speaker button and then you come up
and you ask a question, you get a rambling answer.
Just like that famous Allman Brothers song.
Anyway, so anyway, come on up and ask a question or have a comment.
Or do whatever it is that you like.
Or don't, because it's a really nice day where I happen to be right now.
So we will end the space if there's nothing cool happening in it.
But I saw some cool people pop their heads in. We saw some good people pop their heads
in to listen. I don't know if how many of them are still here. Some are still here.
Everyone can listen, of course, on the recording, layer2labs.com.
The recordings are there. You can find them.
Yes, don't see anyone yet so far.
But see, this is kind of my point, though. I do think that many of the questions have been
asked already. There's very few that are new. And it would be better probably for us to just
work on the software and release it. We always have new versions coming out, but I'm always
ashamed of them because they're not as good as the next version. I'm not sure when I will
reach a point when I just think it's good enough to announce again.
So we are changing around the front-end a lot. And I think my new thing is
front-end more important than back-end.
Because if the front-end isn't there, then no one experiences it.
But the front-end is, of course, very tricky. Then you have to do things for
different operating systems, and it's just a lot of time consuming.
Let's see here.
Well, you know, hang out. Let's see, was there any other great news?
Isn't a lot of BitConf happening now? I was invited to that. They've been trying to get
me to come year after year. I'm just too tired of traveling. I said, I'm not traveling anymore.
But then they roped me into this Dallas, Texas thing next week. I decided to go.
Even though I said I'm not going anywhere. Ah, I am going.
Anyway, it doesn't seem like we have very many people interested in talking this time.
I do have a lot to do personally.
Quick, come up if you have something to say.
Nope, still nothing.
Well, we don't seem to have very many people here today.
Which is fine. We have a decent, what is this, 20-something?
Which is not bad, but it seems like no one has anything they want to say.
I do, it would be nice if we could just release some new software,
then I think that would be cool. We'll have like a little announcement.
We'll be able to show it off, make like a little video.
Then we'll have a little bit more to talk about maybe.
Yeah.
But if no one has anything to say, then we will have to respect everyone's time.
Finding the space. After all, we can't have a space if it's not about anything.
But yes, just to remind, first of all, it's definitely not a good idea to do technical
discussion on Twitter. That's obvious.
And so, certainly I have blocked my fair share of people who are just completely bad faith,
people who are just wasting time.
You have to use Twitter the right way, which certainly includes blocking people.
But if there are any critiques or any new criticisms or things people want to say,
they should come to this space and talk, but they really never do.
We had Mr. Hoddle that one time, and then he listed off this list of like eight things,
and then I went through the list, and then each time he said,
went through the list, and then each time he said, oh yeah, you're right about that.
I was wrong. But then his phone died, and then he said he would come back.
But he hasn't been back yet, so.
And then Alex B has spaces, and then he constantly deletes them
after I answer his questions. So there you go.
I mean, we sort of do this to try and see if anyone has any kind of complaint or something.
But I don't think there are any.
Anyway, no one, I've been rambling like this for a while, and no one has come
up to claim the speaker icon, so it does seem like no one wants to say anything today.
So maybe this one will be a short one.
Okay, we're going to go going once, going twice.
Going once, going twice.
Quick, come up and say something, or the space will end.
Okay, cool. So I guess we will just leave it there then, everyone.
So hey, thanks for another space, short one. Invite people to the next one.
Although the next one, I think I'll be flying back from that Dallas thing, so
I don't think I'll be able to make it next week at 1 p.m., but we'll do that some other time.
Okay, cool. Well, hey, fun space. See everyone later.
Bye-bye.