I’m still a lightning maxi personally, at least until there’s a new L2 that makes offchain self custody even easier. ecash is not a self custody solution so it’s not that interesting to me.
If people want to push it as a custodial lightning alternative then fine, it is slightly better for that use case.
I think ecash is a distraction from the mission of scaling Lightning and interoperable LSPs.
LSPs can be regulated just as easily as nostr relays — not as resilient as P2P Lightning — but for now, LSPs are the best option we have around the liquidity issues of Lightning.
Would be neat if I could switch LSPs in my nostr app like I do my list of relays.
How many lsp are there now?
Great question. I have no idea. 🤷♂️
Me either 🤷🏻♂️
Imagine if every Nostr relay had an LSP built-in. 🤔⚡️
I think Ecash is a great way to improve our privacy and imitate a coinjoin in an easy way 🎩🧡
My sister stacks #Bitcoin over the lightning network (strike).
Good thing, she doesn't even know that.
I didn't bother to explain it to her.
I just: "press here, transfer per bank, press there, smash buy button - now you have Bitcoin"
That's the future adoption 😜.
So, I listened to nostr:nprofile1qqstnem9g6aqv3tw6vqaneftcj06frns56lj9q470gdww228vysz8hqpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqzrthwden5te0dehhxtnvdakqz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmcjgxv3n's podcast episode, and continued reading. It is pretty much how I understood it. There are definitely some things I like about it, like offline payments, but in general, I see it as a violation of the ethos.
If the tech continues in the way that it's going, we end up exactly where we started with the failings of gold/fiat. Bitcoin will inevitably become too expensive to move, and therefore creates a reliance on L2 solutions like Mints. I've seen mention of LSP's, but once Bitcoin takes the reserve currency seat, then nation states become your LSP and mint. It's in the nation state's interesting to make opening channels too expensive for your average pleb which force them into a custodial scenario with the state as the head. All with the promise that your token is "redeemable".
We've been there before and to a very real extent, that's exactly what we have now, albeit much less efficient, with the central banking model. But efficiency isn't what we were after, it was sovereign currency.
Philosophically, I see this as an enormous step backwards. We're repeating at highspeed the failings of gold and how we got to fiat. Perhaps we can control the expansion of currencies by programmitcally guaranteeing their redemption into the reserve asset. That will work until we decide we need more... Which is what happened to the dollar.
The only way to avoid those pitfalls, in my mind, is to ensure that the technology stays native to the sovereign asset. For now, lightning is it.
You make a good point, but I still think we have too often conflated the problem of *systemic* fractional reserve with the simple design of trusted custodians. It is higher risk, but it isn’t a systemic risk and there is nothing wrong with individual trusted relationships. The problem is having a third party inserted systemically that cannot be escaped from, thus the entire monetary integrity is irrevocably connected to it.
But simply allowing people to build trusted relationships and to simply have the option of a custodian for a feature, a better UX, or some service is not a fundamental or philosophical problem. Sound money is exactly what lets us build these trusted relationships again and hold people to real standards.
TL;DR - a return to a free banking system is desirable and a million times better than our current system and solves the greatest problem we have. Custodians won’t be going away any time soon, but the option of noncustodial technology will keep custodians honest. It would be amazing if we had this level of privacy and ease of use non-custodially, but we don’t have that yet. Until that is built, this is a huge leap forward, imo.
Oh, I get it. And I'm not conflating the two. It's just a personally held belief that the beauty in the system is that we don't need custodians.
Once we introduce the need for custodians and fractional reserve shitcoinery, there's no putting that genie back in the bottle. It's a similar problem to socialism. Socialism always goes bad and the new school always says, "oh, those guys got it wrong but this time, we're smarter and we know which mistakes not to make."
It's just the way systems evolve, especially when introducing the foundation for it. Once we begin down that road and game-theory it out, we end up with something that looks just like the system we're leaving.
The other possibility could be a globally federated mint to allow interoperability between nation states. That might actually be desirable down the road and Ecash is technically bearer asset. Again, the most interesting thing about it is the offline payments, for me anyway.
I still don't understand that mechanism of how it guarantees redeemability into #bitcoin and how we maintain accountability.
But that it's still in the nation-state's interest to not have that interoperability and to maintain a captive audience... It's how we got to where we are now.
I could be way wrong, and I know I'm beating a dead horse. Just feels like the wrong step. Thanks for humoring me.
