1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,360 Welcome back to The Mining Pod. 2 00:00:01,360 --> 00:00:05,680 On today's show, we're joined by Paul Sztorc and Austin Alexander of LayerTwo Labs, a new 3 00:00:05,680 --> 00:00:11,120 Bitcoin company that raised $3 million to bring sidechains to Bitcoin through an implementation 4 00:00:11,120 --> 00:00:15,640 of BIP300/301, often referred to as Drivechain. 5 00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:19,960 This is a fairly technical conversation we did not do a whole lot of edits to. 6 00:00:19,960 --> 00:00:25,680 We talk a lot about Drivechains themselves, how Bitcoin miners can earn more fees through 7 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:30,800 Drivechains, the history of sidechain implementations, and how this whole thing works with the Lightning 8 00:00:30,800 --> 00:00:31,800 Network. 9 00:00:31,800 --> 00:00:35,000 The future of digital asset mining calls for top technical talent. 10 00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:37,800 Enhance your ASIC education with Foundry's hands-on courses. 11 00:00:37,800 --> 00:00:42,080 Led by veteran industry instructors, Foundry's three-day mining intensive and five-day mining 12 00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:47,080 technician academy programs cover a range of topics, from identifying issues and troubleshooting 13 00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:51,160 common hardware failures to coursework covering Bitcoin's global impact. 14 00:00:51,160 --> 00:00:56,240 And to enthusiasts and professionals alike, visit www.foundryacademy.com to learn more 15 00:00:56,240 --> 00:00:58,360 and sign up for the course that's right for you. 16 00:01:10,960 --> 00:01:13,120 Paul, welcome to The Mining Pod. 17 00:01:13,120 --> 00:01:19,360 Big news for you both, announced a $3 million seed round for LayerTwo Labs to bring hopefully 18 00:01:19,520 --> 00:01:24,520 an end to the altcoin shenanigans in other worlds by implementing Drivechains for the 19 00:01:24,520 --> 00:01:25,520 masses. 20 00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:26,520 But welcome to the show. 21 00:01:26,520 --> 00:01:27,520 Thank you both for joining. 22 00:01:27,520 --> 00:01:28,520 Hey, thanks for having us. 23 00:01:28,520 --> 00:01:29,520 Cool. 24 00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:31,520 So we'll start off with a little intro. 25 00:01:31,520 --> 00:01:35,520 I don't think a lot of this audience, and we even said this before we started, you guys 26 00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:39,520 don't know a lot of miners, or maybe you do know a few here or there who are mining at 27 00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:40,520 home. 28 00:01:40,520 --> 00:01:44,120 But our audience is probably not familiar with you, so I'd love to get an intro from 29 00:01:44,120 --> 00:01:45,120 both of you. 30 00:01:45,280 --> 00:01:49,480 So Paul, I'll hand it off to you first for an intro, and then to Austin, then we'll talk 31 00:01:49,480 --> 00:01:50,480 about LayerTwo Labs. 32 00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:51,480 Okay. 33 00:01:51,480 --> 00:01:58,720 I got into Bitcoin a long time ago, like 2012, 2013. 34 00:01:58,720 --> 00:02:01,880 And I started blogging about... 35 00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:05,960 People were discussing all kinds of topics and I wrote once a famous essay called, Nothing 36 00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:09,160 is Cheaper Than Proof of Work. 37 00:02:09,160 --> 00:02:11,880 So I started this blog, Truthcoin.info in 2014. 38 00:02:11,880 --> 00:02:16,680 And I did that both to talk about Bitcoin concepts and also to promote this peer-to-peer 39 00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:19,720 Oracle software that I had written. 40 00:02:19,720 --> 00:02:22,160 That was called Truthcoin, actually. 41 00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:25,800 And that was supposed to be for Bitcoin prediction markets, which is a whole different thing 42 00:02:25,800 --> 00:02:26,800 that we can discuss. 43 00:02:26,800 --> 00:02:29,360 But that was how I got in. 44 00:02:29,360 --> 00:02:34,920 And then I was actually hired into the industry to work on that, which I did. 45 00:02:34,920 --> 00:02:39,480 And while I was doing that, I presented at Scaling Bitcoin, I got into sidechains. 46 00:02:39,480 --> 00:02:45,040 And eventually I authored these two BIPs, 300 and 301, which are about sidechains and 47 00:02:45,040 --> 00:02:47,080 merge mining. 48 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:49,440 And now that has led us here, basically. 49 00:02:49,440 --> 00:02:50,440 To this podcast. 50 00:02:50,440 --> 00:02:51,440 Awesome. 51 00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:54,320 Hand it off to you, though, for an intro before we jump into LayerTwo Labs. 52 00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:55,320 Thank you. 53 00:02:55,320 --> 00:03:06,120 Yes, I first became aware of Bitcoin in 2011 and was just a hobbyist on the periphery of 54 00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:07,120 my interests. 55 00:03:07,280 --> 00:03:17,520 And then in 2013, there was a Bitcoin conference in New York. 56 00:03:17,520 --> 00:03:26,600 And I went to that and I started getting really, I would say, obsessed at that point. 57 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:36,160 And so at the time I had been working, we were doing election consulting. 58 00:03:36,200 --> 00:03:42,200 And I basically told my boss that I wasn't going to do anything but Bitcoin anymore. 59 00:03:42,200 --> 00:03:45,120 And it was the only thing that mattered, the only thing that was important. 60 00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:47,720 And so at first, obviously, he didn't take that very well. 61 00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:54,160 But after a few weeks, I think he came around and I convinced him, saw the light. 62 00:03:54,160 --> 00:04:00,440 And we, towards the end of that year, opened the Bitcoin Center in New York. 63 00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:05,200 And we had plans in place to open an exchange and such. 64 00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:11,400 But the regulatory situation in New York kind of got a little dicey. 65 00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:18,760 And sometime the following year, I joined Kraken. 66 00:04:18,760 --> 00:04:25,480 And I was working at Kraken in various roles for the last eight years until a short time 67 00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:31,320 ago when Paul and I kind of formalized this new business. 68 00:04:31,320 --> 00:04:33,520 And now we're here. 69 00:04:33,560 --> 00:04:37,680 So Hivechain enables a new tech stack to be built on top of Bitcoin that allows for more 70 00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:40,800 inclusivity of different projects. 71 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:46,520 So in essence, I'd be able to build my Ethereum product on top of Bitcoin, perhaps, or something 72 00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:47,520 of that nature? 73 00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:48,520 Yes. 74 00:04:48,520 --> 00:04:53,760 And we already have a clone of the latest version of Ethereum that we made as the BIP300 75 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:54,760 Hivechain. 76 00:04:54,760 --> 00:04:58,960 So anyone can test this out on our testnet software, and you can run it and you can actually 77 00:04:58,960 --> 00:05:04,560 connect it to, you can connect it to like Ethereum.org, like they have like little tools 78 00:05:04,560 --> 00:05:05,560 and stuff. 79 00:05:05,560 --> 00:05:09,400 And it will not notice that, it won't even notice that it's, it's not connecting to the 80 00:05:09,400 --> 00:05:10,400 real Ethereum. 81 00:05:10,400 --> 00:05:13,960 No, it's only connected to our sidechain version. 82 00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:20,520 So we have an exact carbon copy of, we have Zcash and we have Ethereum, and because that's 83 00:05:20,520 --> 00:05:24,760 because those are things that people might actually want to use. 84 00:05:24,760 --> 00:05:28,800 So this is true that it's unfortunate in the sidechain, if you're in the sidechain business, 85 00:05:29,640 --> 00:05:32,040 you have to like, people think you're like an alt coiner or something, which is the opposite 86 00:05:32,040 --> 00:05:33,040 of the truth. 87 00:05:33,040 --> 00:05:39,040 But so 99% of the projects are terrible, but there's like 1% are, maybe half a percent 88 00:05:39,040 --> 00:05:42,400 are fringe and half a percent are maybe good. 89 00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:49,880 You know, like whatever happened to Namecoin, huge lost missed opportunity, prediction markets, 90 00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:50,880 I think is big. 91 00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:55,480 I think, you know, so we have lots of ideas that could be really big and we have some 92 00:05:55,480 --> 00:06:02,720 that are fringe and the idea that we could have a Zcash level privacy, you know, it just, 93 00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:06,320 I don't know, like if you're familiar with how Bitcoin is used today, there's lots of 94 00:06:06,320 --> 00:06:07,320 privacy issues. 95 00:06:07,320 --> 00:06:10,680 It's a lot of hard work to maintain privacy. 96 00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:16,000 There's lots of phishing when, when Bitcoin is used in commerce, people don't like, they 97 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:20,280 have to give a new address every time, whereas in Zcash, the addresses are reusable. 98 00:06:21,080 --> 00:06:26,720 So the idea that it has no merit and that no one would find such a thing to be interesting, 99 00:06:26,720 --> 00:06:33,000 I just think cannot possibly be the case, but you know, who knows, but that's the thing 100 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:36,880 is we're going to build this option for people and if people don't like it, then they can 101 00:06:36,880 --> 00:06:40,680 walk away unharmed. 102 00:06:40,680 --> 00:06:47,520 And if, as I suspect, I mean, just look at the huge growth of the, all these, like all 103 00:06:47,520 --> 00:06:49,640 these Ethereum products. 104 00:06:49,640 --> 00:06:52,240 I think a lot of them are not, are not genuine. 105 00:06:52,240 --> 00:06:55,280 Of course, I think a lot of them are just people trying to pump Ethereum and they have 106 00:06:55,280 --> 00:06:59,760 a project and they, they fund each other and then they degenerate what looks like activity. 107 00:06:59,760 --> 00:07:04,560 But again, that's, that's a big bet to bet you're betting on a hundred percent of the 108 00:07:04,560 --> 00:07:08,400 alternatives being having no value. 109 00:07:08,400 --> 00:07:10,600 And I think that is an unwise risk. 110 00:07:10,600 --> 00:07:11,600 Okay. 111 00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:16,880 So let me just get a question on how Drivechain helps mining through and then explain 112 00:07:16,880 --> 00:07:18,620 merge mining as well. 113 00:07:19,620 --> 00:07:20,620 Yes. 114 00:07:20,620 --> 00:07:23,500 So merge mining is a very old idea that was invented by Satoshi. 115 00:07:23,500 --> 00:07:28,180 It was sort of like co-invented by him, but he, it's this idea that you do the same number 116 00:07:28,180 --> 00:07:34,140 of hashes, do the exact same amount of effort, but you can collect the block reward, the 117 00:07:34,140 --> 00:07:39,980 fees and the new coins potentially from many different chains. 118 00:07:39,980 --> 00:07:44,900 And the counterintuitive thing about this is the, you can't really stop it from happening 119 00:07:44,900 --> 00:07:45,900 actually. 120 00:07:46,180 --> 00:07:51,100 So like Namecoin was designed in 2010 to do this. 121 00:07:51,100 --> 00:07:55,420 And there's nothing that the Bitcoin network actually can't really censor it out. 122 00:07:55,420 --> 00:08:03,220 But traditional merge mining had a disadvantage that the miners had to run the Namecoin, the 123 00:08:03,220 --> 00:08:05,220 second piece of software as well. 124 00:08:05,220 --> 00:08:10,220 So you had to run basically the altcoin node and the altcoin node could be a buggy, it 125 00:08:10,220 --> 00:08:13,620 could be a buggy piece of software and it could crash. 126 00:08:13,620 --> 00:08:15,080 Maybe it wouldn't be as good. 127 00:08:15,260 --> 00:08:22,920 And also you got paid in Namecoin and Blind Merged Mining is this BIP301. 128 00:08:22,920 --> 00:08:26,640 You should read the BIP if you want to know exactly how it works, but what it does is 129 00:08:26,640 --> 00:08:31,340 it changes that around so that miners don't even have to do anything. 130 00:08:31,340 --> 00:08:35,800 They just collect all the transactions that pay the highest fee. 131 00:08:35,800 --> 00:08:39,120 And one of those is one that nets the fees over. 132 00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:45,720 So they get paid with layer one BTC coins and they do not have to run, this is the blind 133 00:08:45,720 --> 00:08:49,840 part, they do not have to run any new node software. 134 00:08:49,840 --> 00:08:55,280 So miners basically have to do absolutely no extra work at all and they just get paid 135 00:08:55,280 --> 00:09:00,960 all the transaction, the sum of all the transaction fees of all these other chains, which could 136 00:09:00,960 --> 00:09:05,560 potentially be, I mean, this is not going to happen tomorrow, but there's no limit to 137 00:09:05,560 --> 00:09:07,040 how high that can go. 138 00:09:07,040 --> 00:09:11,960 That could be, that could increase mining revenues, you know, wow, like a thousand times 139 00:09:11,960 --> 00:09:13,440 or 10, even 10,000. 140 00:09:13,440 --> 00:09:20,200 When you factor in the increased usage from fees and also like increased price because 141 00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:24,240 the coin can now do anything, that could go directly to Ethereum. 142 00:09:24,240 --> 00:09:33,480 Ethereum fees are, I think today, literally about 10X or near enough to 10X Bitcoin fees. 143 00:09:33,480 --> 00:09:41,160 So let's just say even a fraction of Ethereum fees, like let's say we were in a post drive 144 00:09:41,160 --> 00:09:50,520 chains world and there was a chain or a number of chains that were usurping part of the usage 145 00:09:50,520 --> 00:09:56,880 of the Ethereum, even a small part, let's say a 10th, it would double the fee revenue 146 00:09:56,880 --> 00:10:04,160 for miners today with a 10th of the Ethereum usage on a Bitcoin or a number of Bitcoin 147 00:10:04,160 --> 00:10:05,760 sidechains. 148 00:10:05,760 --> 00:10:09,040 And they're doing no additional work at all. 149 00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:13,160 The history of sidechains is definitely something that I've seen in the Drivechain chat, spoken 150 00:10:13,160 --> 00:10:18,560 about a lot, Blockstream's name gets tossed around a little bit, but the history of sidechains 151 00:10:18,560 --> 00:10:22,600 is something I think we should talk about a little bit before we dive more into the 152 00:10:22,600 --> 00:10:26,520 benefits of Drivechain and how it works on the mining side. 153 00:10:26,520 --> 00:10:27,920 So Austin, I'll throw it over to you. 154 00:10:27,920 --> 00:10:31,840 What's the history of sidechains and Bitcoin and how they've been interpreted and how we've 155 00:10:31,840 --> 00:10:35,600 ended up with Drivechain in the seed round? 156 00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:43,920 So when you first, first, I think I had heard of it was in 2014, early 2014. 157 00:10:43,920 --> 00:10:50,480 And it was, I think, just prior to the big announcement of the blockchain having had 158 00:10:50,480 --> 00:10:56,680 raised that largest funding round in the industry at the time. 159 00:10:56,680 --> 00:10:59,960 And at the time, it was quite something. 160 00:10:59,960 --> 00:11:02,520 It was really impressive. 161 00:11:02,520 --> 00:11:09,480 It was almost jaw dropping to hear that they had raised $21 million was unheard of. 162 00:11:09,480 --> 00:11:13,360 And then Gavin Andreessen made that tweet, he was like, if this amazing company offers 163 00:11:13,360 --> 00:11:15,320 you a job, take it or whatever. 164 00:11:15,320 --> 00:11:16,320 So the hype was huge. 165 00:11:16,320 --> 00:11:18,160 It was huge hype. 166 00:11:18,160 --> 00:11:19,160 It was huge hype. 167 00:11:19,160 --> 00:11:24,080 And part of the hype surrounding it was that I think there was the beginning of kind of 168 00:11:24,080 --> 00:11:34,640 a nervousness or a stress around all coins in that, you know, obviously, if an all coin 169 00:11:34,640 --> 00:11:45,280 comes and supplants Bitcoin, then all of the work and all of the investments are for naught. 170 00:11:45,400 --> 00:11:52,280 And so I think, you know, now we've seen that tension grow into what we have today, where, 171 00:11:52,280 --> 00:11:59,000 you know, it's quite obvious these factions and, you know, there's down the line there, 172 00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:07,040 they turn into nearly cults just mention any all coin, you know, the trading symbol and 173 00:12:07,040 --> 00:12:12,780 Twitter and you'll see the cult come right into your mentions really quickly. 174 00:12:12,780 --> 00:12:14,760 But that wasn't that didn't exist back then. 175 00:12:15,240 --> 00:12:20,320 And it was still a very much us versus them, us as in, you know, everyone was Bitcoiners. 176 00:12:20,320 --> 00:12:26,800 Even if you were using Peercoin or Feathercoin or, you know, speculating on even the most 177 00:12:26,800 --> 00:12:35,720 obscure coins, in fact, even Ripple back then, I think that first and foremost, they were 178 00:12:35,720 --> 00:12:39,320 Bitcoiners and it was all thought of as kind of one thing. 179 00:12:39,320 --> 00:12:41,360 It was us versus the banks. 180 00:12:41,360 --> 00:12:45,880 It was be your own bank or was us versus the central banks or, you know, us versus the 181 00:12:45,880 --> 00:12:57,080 world. And, you know, I really don't know how exactly that fizzled out where Blockstream 182 00:12:57,080 --> 00:13:05,680 pivoted. And they've definitely done a lot of it's done a lot for Bitcoin and they have 183 00:13:05,680 --> 00:13:07,720 some great products. 184 00:13:07,720 --> 00:13:14,720 And I think the company's been very successful and has become quite valuable. 185 00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:24,900 But. Abandoning sidechains, I think was very detrimental for Bitcoin because it's like 186 00:13:24,900 --> 00:13:35,440 Paul said. sidechains on Bitcoin are a coalition building mechanism and it kind of 187 00:13:36,440 --> 00:13:38,960 it's something that unifies all the tribes. 188 00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:42,880 And so it can it can really be powerful. 189 00:13:43,280 --> 00:13:52,920 And, you know, not only does it does it unify it also something I think that's really 190 00:13:53,080 --> 00:13:59,800 important aspect is if you had a post sidechain world, liquidity would be aggregated. 191 00:14:00,800 --> 00:14:10,160 The fee markets would be aggregated and you wouldn't see this kind of a disbursement of 192 00:14:10,160 --> 00:14:13,360 liquidity across all these these random coins. 193 00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:16,840 I think it would be the Bitcoin markets themselves would be a lot more liquid. 194 00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:22,840 And when you've asked me about the history of sidechains, so that was the the beginning 195 00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:29,360 of it. And, you know, I think that obviously the block size war was a was a big turning 196 00:14:29,360 --> 00:14:33,280 point in the politics and the culture of Bitcoin. 197 00:14:35,400 --> 00:14:41,160 It would have been a really important thing for sidechains to have had existed prior to 198 00:14:41,160 --> 00:14:47,400 the block size war for because of that coalition building aspect of sidechains. 199 00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:51,240 And we could have maybe avoided all of that drama. 200 00:14:51,240 --> 00:14:55,440 And in fact, all the big blockers, they could have created their own sidechain or 201 00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:59,880 multiple sidechains and continue to hold Bitcoin. 202 00:15:00,240 --> 00:15:03,280 And all of that value would have accrued to Bitcoin. 203 00:15:03,280 --> 00:15:07,720 All of the value and all of the tension and stress that was went off and all these all 204 00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:10,480 coins would have stayed in with Bitcoin. 205 00:15:10,480 --> 00:15:18,320 And maybe Paul can interject with maybe those middle years of the sidechain history. 206 00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:23,360 Well, yeah, I mean, I'd be happy to tell everyone exactly what I experienced firsthand, 207 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:25,200 which is that I got into Bitcoin. 208 00:15:25,240 --> 00:15:26,640 I was like Bitcoin is super cool. 209 00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:29,320 I happen to be into prediction markets separately. 210 00:15:29,880 --> 00:15:34,320 And prediction markets are also they're actually subject to failure in sort of a similar 211 00:15:34,320 --> 00:15:35,720 way. So I designed this thing. 212 00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:38,760 I didn't I wanted it to be prediction markets on the block chain. 213 00:15:38,760 --> 00:15:41,920 So you might today it might be called smart contract or whatever. 214 00:15:42,360 --> 00:15:44,840 And I wanted to have this peer to peer Oracle thing. 215 00:15:45,120 --> 00:15:48,480 So I started designing this and I was like, there's no way you can bolt this onto 216 00:15:48,480 --> 00:15:50,280 Bitcoin. It's just like an opcode or something. 217 00:15:50,280 --> 00:15:52,640 You need all this custom stuff to be happening. 218 00:15:52,640 --> 00:15:53,760 And it's very convoluted. 219 00:15:54,640 --> 00:15:55,960 So I designed my own block. 220 00:15:56,000 --> 00:15:57,640 I designed what was basically an altcoin. 221 00:15:58,600 --> 00:16:00,840 And I called that project Truthcoin. 222 00:16:01,480 --> 00:16:05,080 But I was a big Bitcoiner at heart, so I never even like I never considered launching an 223 00:16:05,080 --> 00:16:07,560 altcoin. I was just doing it for the tech, of course. 224 00:16:07,840 --> 00:16:11,120 And and then Blockstream came out with this idea, the sidechain. 225 00:16:11,120 --> 00:16:12,200 And I was like, oh, perfect. 226 00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:14,200 And I wrote to them about it. 227 00:16:14,200 --> 00:16:18,760 They wrote back. We were talking about a partnership on the idea. 228 00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:22,680 We were talking about all this, like how the right way to do sidechains, what to do, 229 00:16:22,680 --> 00:16:27,000 et cetera. They came out with this paper in October 2014. 230 00:16:27,880 --> 00:16:31,920 The paper had an idea called the skip list in Appendix B. 231 00:16:33,120 --> 00:16:36,200 That as far as I am aware, it was never built by anyone. 232 00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:42,240 And they had in Appendix A, they said, if you just send it to a multisig wallet 233 00:16:42,520 --> 00:16:47,880 controlled by us and we can we can like simulate the sidechain and then we'll give 234 00:16:47,880 --> 00:16:50,720 you your money back. We promise. 235 00:16:50,880 --> 00:16:53,440 And we'll have lots of other people be in the multisig. 236 00:16:53,680 --> 00:16:57,960 So this is a very, very naive idea that did not involve any technology and did not 237 00:16:57,960 --> 00:17:01,600 involve anything new. It was not a way to simulate the altcoin. 238 00:17:01,600 --> 00:17:05,760 But they were like they were being realistic from an engineering point of view. 239 00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:08,840 And they were saying this, we know that's a lot of work to build that other thing. 240 00:17:09,480 --> 00:17:13,560 It's like kind of like how they have the astronauts practice in like a centrifuge or 241 00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:16,320 something before they build the actual rocket. 242 00:17:16,360 --> 00:17:20,720 So they had this thing and it was explicitly mentioned several times. 243 00:17:22,160 --> 00:17:24,080 And I have the video and all the bookmarks there. 244 00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:28,960 It's explicitly many people made it very clear that this was kind of like a test type 245 00:17:28,960 --> 00:17:32,520 of a thing. That was 2014. 246 00:17:33,520 --> 00:17:40,520 I got I got I was I was looking at maybe working with Blockstream more formally to 247 00:17:40,520 --> 00:17:42,040 work on this prediction markets thing. 248 00:17:42,360 --> 00:17:45,880 Instead, I met I met Blockstream in November 2014. 249 00:17:45,880 --> 00:17:50,880 I met Roger in December the next month, and he just paid me immediately to quit my job 250 00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:52,640 and start working on it. And which I did. 251 00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:56,240 And that became what was on BitcoinHiveMine.com now the software that is. 252 00:17:57,320 --> 00:18:02,040 Sort of, you know, software is never completed per se, but so I was working on all 253 00:18:02,040 --> 00:18:07,160 that. And then the block size war started to happen. 254 00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:12,480 Scaling Bitcoin one was that was in September 2015. 255 00:18:12,800 --> 00:18:17,000 And then I was like reading more carefully because I was finishing the project, the 256 00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:19,400 sidechain project. So I was finishing the software. 257 00:18:20,680 --> 00:18:23,560 For the prediction market, this prediction market, this fringe kind of prediction 258 00:18:23,560 --> 00:18:28,160 markets idea, there's a weird idea and I don't expect I never expected anyone to like 259 00:18:28,160 --> 00:18:30,920 get a huge buy. I was like, this is just my weird pet idea. 260 00:18:31,560 --> 00:18:33,600 But I was like, how do I turn it on as a sidechain? 261 00:18:34,280 --> 00:18:40,200 And I thought that the Appendix B thing was actually a little bit overcomplicated. 262 00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:44,160 And it also had some detrimental features that you could erase if you made the 263 00:18:44,160 --> 00:18:46,840 sidechain asymmetric and this other stuff. 264 00:18:47,040 --> 00:18:49,440 So then I wrote this Drivechain thing in 2015. 265 00:18:49,760 --> 00:18:55,120 And then I kind of I did sort of presented at scaling to in like they're like have 266 00:18:55,120 --> 00:18:56,840 these these informal things. 267 00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:59,800 I don't get too into the weeds on that, but I kind of presented this idea. 268 00:19:00,440 --> 00:19:05,880 And there was this kind of folk idea that within Blockstream, like there was just it 269 00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:11,280 was this thing that people believed and spoke about, which was that you could not use 270 00:19:11,280 --> 00:19:12,640 sidechains for scaling. 271 00:19:13,040 --> 00:19:15,680 And this idea had just entered the culture somehow. 272 00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:18,800 And I was checking and double checking it because I was like, huh. 273 00:19:18,800 --> 00:19:25,200 And the thing that I designed, you know, the layer one nodes don't have to look at 274 00:19:25,200 --> 00:19:27,840 anything the sidechain is doing at all, because otherwise how would it work? 275 00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:30,320 And so I was like checking and rechecking this. 276 00:19:30,320 --> 00:19:34,840 And I was like, you know, there actually is no there is no reason why they cannot be 277 00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:37,760 used for scaling at all. 278 00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:41,640 And so I made this long, these huge presentations in 2016. 279 00:19:42,560 --> 00:19:46,840 In June and September, about all of that, and then I presented at scaling three in 280 00:19:46,840 --> 00:19:47,840 October 2016. 281 00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:53,360 And then in January 2017, this is where things started to go awry because I was doing 282 00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:54,960 all these theoretical presentations. 283 00:19:54,960 --> 00:20:00,760 And then I went to Construct, which is the San Francisco conference, and their Blockstream 284 00:20:00,760 --> 00:20:03,480 presented on this strong federations thing. 285 00:20:03,600 --> 00:20:08,800 And that meant that they had spent all the intervening years doubling down on the 286 00:20:10,040 --> 00:20:14,960 practice, temporary idea, and that for some reason they had given up on actually 287 00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:17,160 building the new technology idea. 288 00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:21,240 So then I was very dismayed and I thought, I don't know what's going on. 289 00:20:21,240 --> 00:20:28,240 Like maybe they found some kind of problem or maybe they are giving up or maybe they 290 00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:29,360 just want to do the easier thing. 291 00:20:29,360 --> 00:20:33,600 And I don't know. I still to this day have no, you know, I don't know exactly what's 292 00:20:33,600 --> 00:20:37,360 going on with that. To be completely, 100 percent honest with you, I don't know why. 293 00:20:37,520 --> 00:20:42,360 But I did look into it and I think they have just a mistaken view on merge mining. 294 00:20:42,360 --> 00:20:45,440 They have there's something where they believe something that's the opposite of the 295 00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:49,200 truth. And I wrote about that last October. 296 00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:55,400 And just to interject and clarify here, what we're discussing is the Liquid Federated 297 00:20:55,400 --> 00:21:00,920 Network, which operates more or less as like a very convoluted multi-sig in order to 298 00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:04,960 you peg in your Bitcoin, you hand it over to Blockstream's federation, and then you 299 00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:09,160 have Liquid Bitcoin, which can interact on the Liquid Blockchain Network, interact with 300 00:21:09,160 --> 00:21:14,640 its dApps. But it doesn't have the trust assumptions or the parameters that a lot of 301 00:21:14,640 --> 00:21:16,840 people wanted for Sidechain to actually have. 302 00:21:16,840 --> 00:21:20,560 And I think you've even said at some point that's not really a sidechain, just a 303 00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:21,160 multi-sig. 304 00:21:21,800 --> 00:21:26,640 Well, it lacks the I would think the distinguishing feature would be like you have 305 00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:28,560 something like Monero or whatever. 306 00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:35,040 And so the question is, how do you how do you, quote, use Liquid to have like a bit 307 00:21:35,040 --> 00:21:41,480 Monero, like a simulated Monero, like you're using these ring signatures and bullet 308 00:21:41,480 --> 00:21:45,120 proofs of Monero, but you're spending Bitcoin. 309 00:21:45,360 --> 00:21:49,680 And the answer is with Liquid, you have to like find a new you have to find your own 310 00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:54,800 federation. But you see, that's the entire content of the idea is the federation. 311 00:21:55,480 --> 00:21:57,080 So you have to do all the work yourself. 312 00:21:57,080 --> 00:21:58,360 It's not really doing anything. 313 00:21:58,400 --> 00:22:02,720 The idea is not doing anything for you, whereas instead it should be like a process 314 00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:12,320 where. You just say, I want I click this button and I now here it is, so I don't. 315 00:22:12,320 --> 00:22:19,600 And. It's it's kind of a little bit of a circular reasoning, it says that the but, 316 00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:22,720 you know, they have they have a strategy behind that, what they try to do is they try 317 00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:26,280 to say, listen, on Liquid, what we're going to do is we're going to make everything so 318 00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:31,080 private and we're going to geographically distribute the signers and it will be 319 00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:34,080 private. And this will these people, they'll just be like blind. 320 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:39,480 Signers of just this, they'll just be blindly executing the software, but that doesn't 321 00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:44,760 change the fact that whoever has the multi-sig keys can just leave with the money. 322 00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:47,040 And that is the that is what it is. 323 00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:50,640 So around that time, I'm condensing history around around a little bit. 324 00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:55,480 We had blockchain building Liquid, which was probably like the most notable sidechain 325 00:22:55,480 --> 00:22:57,000 design for Bitcoin. 326 00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:01,600 There's a few other things out there like rootstock stacks, et cetera. 327 00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:06,880 But the main focus shifted to Lightning around that time and has continued to build up 328 00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:11,680 where Lightning is the de facto layer two of choice for most Bitcoiners. 329 00:23:12,080 --> 00:23:17,280 And Drivechain implicitly would be a competitor to Lightning or an alternative 330 00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:19,560 Lightning or make Lightning obsolete. 331 00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:21,760 Curious to get your take on it. 332 00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:27,880 Not asking necessarily for any hot takes on Lightning, but just some context for how 333 00:23:28,120 --> 00:23:31,040 Drivechains and Lightning fit together in the Bitcoin stack. 334 00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:35,000 There are ways in which it would compete and there are ways in which it would cooperate. 335 00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:44,440 I think the Lightning network has a distinctive advantage in the fact that the payment is 336 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:51,040 instant. Whereas this has a relative disadvantage because with merged mining, the best 337 00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:56,200 you can do is one block every 10 minutes, you can do weird other things where you can 338 00:23:56,440 --> 00:24:03,480 change the you can try to speed up the block time using these weird hacks, which is 339 00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:05,960 possible, but not really as meaningful. 340 00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:09,880 So in a sense, the confirmations are slower on the sidechain. 341 00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:15,320 So that's one way in which Lightning is superior as a competitor. 342 00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:21,560 One way in which they might collaborate is that Lightning cannot onboard without the use 343 00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:25,000 of bytes on whichever blockchain you onboard to. 344 00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:31,080 So the layer one block size is not large enough to onboard the entire planet's Lightning, to 345 00:24:31,080 --> 00:24:35,320 say the least. But you could have people on board, the coins could go to the sidechain 346 00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:37,600 first and then onboard to Lightning there. 347 00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:42,120 And so then it would be onboarded to Lightning in a different way. 348 00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:50,240 There's all kinds of ways in which there are advantages and disadvantages. 349 00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:55,240 And the key thing is really that the end user should really be the one who decides what 350 00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:57,120 they use and why. 351 00:24:57,120 --> 00:24:59,978 I think it's a big mistake to. 352 00:24:59,978 --> 00:25:03,978 Obviously, as an engineer or scientist, you'd want to make an intelligent guess at what the user would probably want. 353 00:25:03,978 --> 00:25:10,978 But this is a case where they would be pretty different. And you would think there'd be a lot of... there would be a big appeal. 354 00:25:10,978 --> 00:25:18,978 So the one thing that I think a lot of people get wrong, which is very disappointing, because it's so important, 355 00:25:18,978 --> 00:25:23,978 which is that different people are very different and different transactions are very different. 356 00:25:23,978 --> 00:25:29,978 So like you're going to have Ross Albright, when he goes and buys his coffee, he might use something completely different. 357 00:25:29,978 --> 00:25:41,978 He might use a large block sidechain or something, but that doesn't have super strong privacy or super strong decentralization because he's buying coffee. 358 00:25:41,978 --> 00:25:46,978 And he's walking into Starbucks and his face is on the security camera or whatever. 359 00:25:46,978 --> 00:25:52,978 And then when he goes home and he does Silk Road or whatever, you may want to use something completely different. 360 00:25:52,978 --> 00:25:59,978 So people are different. Transactions are different. And that is why. 361 00:25:59,978 --> 00:26:03,978 But, yeah, there are big differences between the onboarding is the biggest difference. 362 00:26:03,978 --> 00:26:08,978 The biggest advantage sidechains have over Lightning and the speed is the biggest disadvantage. 363 00:26:08,978 --> 00:26:13,978 Awesome. I'm curious to get your take on this. And Paul, again, if you want to jump in, 364 00:26:13,978 --> 00:26:16,978 Awesome. I'm curious to get your take on this. And Paul, again, if you want to pick it up. 365 00:26:16,978 --> 00:26:23,978 What is the cultural difference here? I think with sidechains, they kind of got batted down. 366 00:26:23,978 --> 00:26:27,978 We saw Vitalik boot up Ethereum. It's taken a lot of those transactions. 367 00:26:27,978 --> 00:26:31,978 People have wanted sidechains, but the Bitcoin culture has not wanted them. 368 00:26:31,978 --> 00:26:39,978 They've chosen more or less Lightning. So Drivechain seems to be a rebellion against pushing back against the grain a little bit. 369 00:26:39,978 --> 00:26:45,978 We've even seen that in some Twitter interaction so far since you guys made the announcement on Tuesday. 370 00:26:45,978 --> 00:26:50,978 Do you guys see it in that lens? Do you see it as something that's like kind of pushing against the grain? 371 00:26:50,978 --> 00:27:01,978 And do you think that there is a chance of something like this getting implemented in Bitcoin with such a strong push and dominance on Bitcoin ossifying as it is right now? 372 00:27:01,978 --> 00:27:21,978 The culture of Bitcoin, first of all, obviously, it's not monolithic, as many of us know, and no one person or even one faction or kind of, you know, I don't know how they describe these days. 373 00:27:21,978 --> 00:27:30,978 Obviously, in the past, we had the big blockers and the small blockers. But in the current moment, it wasn't so clearly defined. 374 00:27:30,978 --> 00:27:36,978 Once you move forward from that, you look back and think, oh, that one, he was a big blocker and he was a small blocker. 375 00:27:36,978 --> 00:27:49,978 But, you know, as that was all kind of developing, it was a little bit more ambiguous. And so the factions that are around today, I don't think, you know, I think they're a little they're fluid. 376 00:27:49,978 --> 00:28:07,978 And I definitely completely disagree with any assessment that that Bitcoin culture is is against is against Drivechains. And I think that the Drivechains day is coming up. 377 00:28:07,978 --> 00:28:35,978 And it's just the more you understand it, and when you really understand the implications and the power of it, and, you know, the potential that it has to, to strengthen Bitcoin and to improve the industry, to improve the relative position of all stakeholders, businesses, miners, developers, users. 378 00:28:36,978 --> 00:28:39,978 I think you'll you'll see more and more people get on board. 379 00:28:39,978 --> 00:28:49,978 Yeah. Paul, any follow up thoughts on that based on my earlier question or awesome thoughts about like how difficult it may be? I mean, I think, you know, like, I would give up on the idea. 380 00:28:49,978 --> 00:29:10,978 Like, I searched, like, intensely to find, like, why shouldn't I do the idea? Like, that was what I was mostly doing the whole time. I was like, but but it's really just the case that that that the people who don't like the idea is really just as the case that they they don't know anything about the idea, which I don't even really blame them because so much happens in Bitcoin, right? 381 00:29:11,978 --> 00:29:25,978 Like in a given week that you there's no possible way you can look into every single thing, but people really do not the any of the critics really don't know. And even the people with an extreme amount of expertise. 382 00:29:25,978 --> 00:29:45,978 They are just mistaken about there is this the idea they're kind of fear grew in the mind of the developers that miners would get too professional and they a lot of people clung desperately to this idea that each person would have one CPU and they would all be equal strength. 383 00:29:45,978 --> 00:30:09,978 And it'd be a kind of democracy or something. And and this this, you know, and that that idea was very old and people have clung to it desperately, despite the fact that the reality that the theory was always never that was never going to work because the difficulty adjustment fires the bottom half performers every two weeks. 384 00:30:09,978 --> 00:30:21,978 So it was always going to be rapidly evolving mining situation, but also in practice, we see the ongoing specialization of miners, miners. Now they have to find cheap power. 385 00:30:21,978 --> 00:30:33,978 They have to find they have to find like tax credits. Now they have to find the best basics. They have to manage their balance sheet. They have to do all this stuff that the enormous number of a very specialized things. 386 00:30:33,978 --> 00:30:51,978 And that is what people were always afraid would happen. And they always thought that maybe merge mining would contribute to that. But now we see that that I was right when back in 2015, when I said, merge money has almost nothing to do with that. That's happening anyway. And the merge mining part is a tiny, tiny, tiny. 387 00:30:51,978 --> 00:31:12,978 Microscopic drop in the bucket compared to just the ongoing quests to have to do more hashes at a cheaper price. And so that that the idea also this this idea was linked to an idea that mining is like part of Bitcoin, whereas really my miners are actually users of Bitcoin. 388 00:31:13,978 --> 00:31:34,978 So the miners need to run the Bitcoin protocol. But if you run the Bitcoin protocol, if you run a Bitcoin node, you don't need to mine. So it's just unfortunate this somehow in the culture, this idea arrived backwards. And it's I don't know, for some reason that that was all it took to make this this idea languish. 389 00:31:34,978 --> 00:32:02,978 I think, I think there's another more practical part of it is that people join, they get excited about sidechains, then they become impatient, and then they just leave and they start start their altcoin project or something. So they leave and they start, they work on Namecoin, the altcoin, or they work on Monero, the altcoin. And now they hate sidechains. Now the last thing they want is so they flip 100%. And then people join or they you know, they join, they go to Bitcoin cash or whatever. 390 00:32:02,978 --> 00:32:26,978 So now they now they flip. And similarly, who stays in Bitcoin and who, who rises up in status? You know, what's what's a better sell the idea that we're the we're God's chosen people, and all you have to do is nothing and you're going to be welcomed into the citadel and everyone else will be your personal slaves and blah, blah, blah, and you'll get all the women and etc, etc. 391 00:32:26,978 --> 00:32:52,978 I'll just for doing nothing just because you bought you bought in versus someone that says the user, we need to make sure that we win the users transaction, we need to make sure that we actually this is a useful thing that takes a lot of work. And so that's just naturally a harder sell. It's very easy for people to just say, Oh, everything's, everything's going perfectly. 392 00:32:52,978 --> 00:33:19,978 Yeah, there's definitely some antagonism against any changes to Bitcoin. I've done a few interviews this year with a few different people. You mentioned Jeremy Rubin, we did one with him beginning of the year, he definitely received some pressure for his covenants idea. The Starkware team is working on some validium proof ideas or zk role based ideas for scaling Bitcoin, more or less ignored from what I see so far, I think it has some promise or potential. 393 00:33:19,978 --> 00:33:37,978 But at the very least, like talking about it, but it seems to me and not to generalize, but crypto, Twitter, and Bitcoin, Twitter, seem to dismiss a lot of these scaling ideas, even though there seems to be a large benefit, and there's a decent argument for it. Just like you were mentioning there. 394 00:33:37,978 --> 00:34:07,778 Yes, it's well, that's just because the Twitter is biased towards people who can get likes and retweets. So that's not biased towards the truth. And that's, that's much easier to get a like, you only have whatever 280 characters. So you know, if you want to just say something simple, like whatever, like a few understand this, and then you just get the likes. I was with Adam back on at Bitcoin Amsterdam. And we were talking about this issue. I mean, we're, we're talking about 395 00:34:07,978 --> 00:34:26,978 how to make sidechains happen faster. But we're talking about like the how long does it take for something to get through. And from what I remember, he was like, he didn't flinch at all at the idea that a new soft fork would take another five years or so, like he was talking about simplicity or whatever. So. So that's like a very slow speed. 396 00:34:27,978 --> 00:34:55,978 I think it would be better if we just had, we had a sidechain idea, we had the 300, then more or less instantly, you could spin up the new sidechain. And you wouldn't need to move slowly. In fact, you could ossify Bitcoin completely, the layer one part forever, which would be great. And then you could also have the flexibility and the upper layers, which I think is what, what that's just going to be. 397 00:34:55,978 --> 00:35:24,978 I think this just has to be the future, because there's no way to get everyone to agree. Like I was saying at the very beginning, you have people who want different things. A lot of people will say like the current, the current thing to say in Bitcoin, you know, the conventional wisdom is just to say, well, people are, they, they're going to learn to love it the way it is, and whatever, they're not going to have a choice. And they're, they're going to, whatever it is, is, that's what they're going to learn to love. 398 00:35:25,978 --> 00:35:52,978 I'm not sure if that is, you know, they might be right. If so, then that's great for all of us as Bitcoiners, because it means Bitcoin is going to succeed, whether or not this company does anything. And so that's great. Good for us. But if, if, if there's any chance that something else could become more popular, that's an existential risk to Bitcoin. And so we should at least keep an eye on it. 399 00:35:53,978 --> 00:36:17,978 I think the user is going to decide what they are going to use. And a lot of people are going to use like whatever Venmo or something. So we've got to get, we have to compete for the user. That's what I think is a neglected topic. We, everyone's just saying, well, well, they'll be forced to come in. Well, maybe, I mean, okay, if that's the case, then everything will be fine for Bitcoin. 400 00:36:17,978 --> 00:36:33,978 So then if you believe that, then you don't need to worry about anything, right? Because so then why you, why you listening to a podcast? Why you, why you have to just, you know, go for a walk and just wait for everything to work out perfectly without anything changing. But I don't know if that's in the cards. 401 00:36:33,978 --> 00:37:02,978 Yeah, it's a fairly deterministic way of looking at Bitcoin. Just to wrap up here, let's talk about the BIP process, what you guys are expecting for that. In a minute or two, Austin, just want to throw it up to you. What is your guys' thoughts right now on using LayerTwo Labs to push forward with the BIPs? And are you guys worried about that whole process? I mean, the BIPs have been out there for quite a while. There's testnets. There's ways to practice with them. The software is out there and has been for quite a while. But what is your thought with LayerTwo Labs? 402 00:37:03,978 --> 00:37:32,978 Well, I'm just going to interrupt and say, I think it's education or whatever. I mean, Austin, you can, you can say, but I think we're going to try to do that education, communication, idea, coalition building, and, you know, demonstrations. We're going to release more software that does this stuff. But so yeah, but I am worried about it. Yeah, I think it's, I don't know, like, even what, but I just, again, the idea, the only reason that people don't like the idea is because they don't understand it really. 403 00:37:32,978 --> 00:37:58,978 And the idea is very, I designed it from the ground up to have no risk to the Layer 1 base chain. But this, to this day, there's still confusion about that. So, and I, in the original 2015 post, I wrote about why it, why it could not negatively affect. And then I presented in 2016. So, but still that's confusing thing. So I think that's what we're going to try to do. I think, Austin, if you... 404 00:37:59,978 --> 00:38:14,978 Yeah, a big goal of the formation and formalization of the company and this effort is to kind of push forward this education initiative in a much stronger and more effective way. 405 00:38:14,978 --> 00:38:36,978 You know, it is, it is complicated, but from a technical aspect, I think it is a lot less complicated than many other, many other bits or kind of blockchain technology. 406 00:38:36,978 --> 00:38:58,978 You know, things like roll-ups and stuff like that are far more complex than once you actually dive in and understand the mechanism and the security of Drivechains. I think it's, I think a lot of people will be able to grok it, I think a little more quickly than some of some other, some other concepts. 407 00:38:58,978 --> 00:39:18,978 But, but, you know, from being on the periphery of it for years and even going through the process myself of, of through various stages of understanding, because when I first heard of it, I, you know, I didn't immediately understand. I definitely wasn't immediately a proponent. 408 00:39:18,978 --> 00:39:46,978 I was quite skeptical, like I am of, of everything in this entire industry. Drivechains has been one of the few things that, that I think on every time I look back on it, it, I kind of, it becomes more legitimate in my mind, in my eye, as opposed to like everything else where you look back and be like, oh, you know, things that, you know, you had open been open minded towards and close up. 409 00:39:46,978 --> 00:40:04,978 Yeah, I think it's very important that we just kind of present the, how it works and the benefits of it in a way that is digestible and, and explains all these things very simply. 410 00:40:04,978 --> 00:40:26,978 That's probably one of the main focuses of the company and kind of our first stages as far as like worrying about the bit process. I mean, I'm sure it's not going to be easy, but I think the best thing we can do is just try to build out that coalition and we'll see what happens. 411 00:40:26,978 --> 00:40:50,978 Um, you know, even if I'm still very, very bullish on Bitcoin longterm, um, with or without Drivechains, I just, you know, I think that I've come to believe that if Drivechains were in Bitcoin today, it would be a very different industry and a very different picture on a lot of fronts. 412 00:40:50,978 --> 00:41:14,978 And I think Bitcoin would be far more valuable to be perfectly frank. Um, I think it would be far more liquid and I think it would be far more valuable. And it's one of the main reasons I'm such a big proponent. And, you know, there's a lot of people out there. I'm sure that would like to see Bitcoin become much more valuable, uh, more secure and, and more liquid. 413 00:41:15,978 --> 00:41:35,978 And I think Drivechain is just sitting there on the table, ready to be deployed. And it's one of the most powerful tools that, um, Bitcoin has there and its potential arsenal. Uh, you know, it's one of the most powerful arrows in Bitcoin's quiver that has yet to be fired. 414 00:41:35,978 --> 00:42:04,978 Uh, so actually apart from being worried, I'm, I'm, I would say the opposite because I'm bullish on Bitcoin without it, but I'm ultra hyper mega bullish with it. So if we even have a small percentage chance of getting, um, these bits merged and, and Drivechains implemented, I think it's, it's, it's, it's very, it will, it will be a very, uh, 415 00:42:05,978 --> 00:42:15,978 you know, I don't want to talk in investment terms, but I think it would be, it's going to be a very beneficial thing to all stakeholders. And so, yeah, let's say I'm, I'm actually quite excited about it all. 416 00:42:15,978 --> 00:42:31,978 Oh, hopefully this podcast can be a great first step in towards educating people about Drivechain. Uh, let's get last thought. Where can people find your work? Drivechain, telegram, Twitter, is there a blog post, things like that? All first to you and then back up to Austin. 417 00:42:32,978 --> 00:42:58,978 Well, we have a, we have Drivechain that info, which is like, that's kind of like the gray matter. That is like a site with all of like the, all my technical presentations and all my thoughts and things like that. Uh, I'm not, I think we're going to have to build something that's a little more digestible to the lay person that is going to probably be a completely different, uh, thing. But drivechain.info is like, that's like what I built to try and show it to the Bitcoin technical community. 418 00:42:59,978 --> 00:43:18,978 Uh, and so there's enormous amount of stuff there, including there's a cool YouTube playlist where tons of videos and you can just click through. And if you don't like one, you can just click to the next one or whatever, do whatever you like. There's presentations, there's debates, there's me on a podcast, there's me on a panel, there's all kinds of stuff. So. 419 00:43:19,978 --> 00:43:40,978 So we've got lots of that and we have the software is there too on drive chin, that info. So we have software that you can download and you can see for yourself, it's test net software. So the Bitcoin isn't real, but, uh, that's only because it hasn't activated. So you can see what it would do if it were, if it, if it were real with your own two eyes. 420 00:43:40,978 --> 00:44:03,978 And then that's great too, because we actually put a lot of effort into the GUI and to try to make it help explain, um, what's happening. But yeah, that's, uh, that's like its own thing. And we want to work more. That's one of the other things we want to do is want to work more on making that easy to make it very easy for people to download and try the software for themselves. That's the only way anyone will really know what it's doing. 421 00:44:03,978 --> 00:44:32,978 And it's very well done. It's, um, far from vaporware. This software has been, uh, actively worked on for, for years now. And so I think, um, for people that have that level of interest, uh, I would, I would recommend to download and try it out because it does work very well and, and, and definitely drives home. Uh, I think an understanding of, of Drivechains and what it, what it could be when it's. 422 00:44:34,978 --> 00:44:58,978 There's also, there's, there's, there's some, uh, fan sites, um, Drivechain dot X, Y, Z, and, and we're working on, uh, kind of a LayerTwo Labs. Um, right now we have just a, uh, like a placeholder site with our company mission and such, but, um, we're working on a more extensive site that will explain these things in layman's terms. Uh, and that should be up shortly soon in the next few weeks. 423 00:44:59,978 --> 00:45:04,978 Awesome. You guys, awesome. Twitter account, medium, any place to follow people for people to follow you? 424 00:45:05,978 --> 00:45:13,978 Yeah, I have a Twitter account is a BTC is money. Um, I'll probably try to be a little more active there now than in the past. 425 00:45:14,978 --> 00:45:25,978 Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for joining the mining pod today. Uh, be sure also to check out the Drivechain telegram channel. It's pretty good, pretty lively conversations there every day. But again, thank you both so much for joining. 426 00:45:25,978 --> 00:45:26,978 Thank you much. Appreciate it. 427 00:45:26,978 --> 00:45:27,978 Thanks for having us.