Nostr Web Client

1) I've done little research on Monero relative to Bitcoin but I'm very impressed.

A community with a single focus and some balls is a dangerous community.

2) Re Bcash, I don't think the big-block path is the correct one.

I have to write an article on this but TL;DR.

In an adversarial, low-consent world, bigger blocks are a poisoned chalice: they make DoS cheaper, validation costlier, and capture easier. If the goal is sovereign MoE, the correct path is a tight, ossified L1 (hard anti-junk policy, cheap home validation) and sovereign L2s that cram orders of magnitude more users per byte without adding custodians. Anything else is speed-theater that hands your opponents a bigger, easier hose to pinch.

The vast majority of L2s are a complete custodial scam and not sovereign Bitcoin.

But I am of the opinion that the design has to be fixed, not the base layer.

Sovereign L2 scaling principle: More users per UTXO, more settlement per byte, without introducing intermediaries who can be regulated into compliance. L1 remains scarce, ossified, cheap to validate.

And of course if you treat privacy as an "expert mode", you guarantee surveillance wins by default. You have to make privacy invisible and automatic.

3) Re Knots, obviously I think Knots is much better than Core which is completely captured and has been attacking Bitcoin's sovereign/monetary use for a very long time.

However, I don't have blind faith in any of these motherfuckers. They have enough cheerleaders as is. I'd rather not trust and verify.

shortwavesurfer2009 1mo ago 💬 1

The Monero block size can expand in two separate ways.

1. The miner can choose to take a penalty on the block reward in order to expand the block.

2. A cap is reached so that miners cannot expand a block past a certain point without the average size of the past something like 50,000 blocks being moved upwards.

This allows Monero to take surges in demand during holidays or high transaction periods, but not actually expand the median block size over a longer period of time.

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Discussion

Control-Plane Capital 1mo ago 💬 2

I had not researched this.

For a sovereign medium of exchange in an adversarial world, I'd still prefer Bitcoin's architecture - tight, ossified, cheap-to-validate L1 + truly sovereign (non-custodial, batch-heavy) L2s.

Monero's elastic block policy is elegant for burst handling, but it hands adversaries a bloat lever and raises validation costs over time, which erodes home-node density and increases capture surface.

This of course ignores:

- Bitcoin's recent L1 drift - rising default policy that tolerates junk payloads; heavier relay requirements; sync time creeping up year on year.

- Current L2s being mostly "convenience custodians".

Elasticity is a bloat vector in a world where the opponent's budget ≈ unlimited.

If you copy Monero's elasticity, you must add hard ceilings and anti-subsidy heuristics that make adversarial expansion uneconomic — which drifts you back toward... a de-facto small L1.

So it's pros/cons.

Pros for Monero:

- Handles short-term demand surges without massive fee spikes.

- Privacy defaults are strong; observability/censorship is harder at the transaction level.

Cons:

- The Penalty mechanism can be gamed by a rich adversary to expand supply of blockspace and bloat the chain.

- As chain weight grows, residential nodes drop. Privacy without verifiers still invites macro-level capture (ISPs, clouds, peering).

Ideally, I'd put the scale knob on L2, not L1 and scale by:

- More users per UTXO (channel factories, pooled channels, Ark-like constructions with constrained trust, etc).

- More settlement per byte (aggressive batching/aggregation, proof compression, periodic settlement).

- No custodial intermediaries that can be deputized.