We've been discussing them for years. Covenants are probably coming and I'm generally pro CTV, but there's not a burning need for it right now.
Discussion
The burning need is to start building consensus on a UASF. This will take time. It is not prudent to wait until thereâs a âburning needâ to get the ball rolling. Thatâs a recipe for a rushed rollout.
Plus, Iâm looking to reduce the likelihood of more big custodial collapses like Mt. Gox and FTX. If we wait, the next one could be Coinbase, or some as-yet-unknown custodian thatâs even bigger.
Getting the UASF ball rolling now is capacity planning for the âsuddenlyâ rush thatâs around the corner.
I remember your man on livera a long time ago and the height of his argument pro-CTV was to benefit coinbase ... Made me a pretty hard no myself ... CTV does nothing to prevent all the digital identity prisons being erected, no? That is a way bigger issue IMO... in terms of maintaining the p2p electronic cash vision of bitcoin
Posted from grapheneOS
Coinbase is historically bad at adopting technology thatâs good for them. Look how long it took them to batch transactions. Theyâre only just now starting to implement Lightning. Even after CTV activates, I wouldnât expect Coinbase to take advantage for years.
I would go further than "bad adopters" ... Anyway, like others said, the persuasion is poor ... Specifically, does CTV or other option allow coins to be encumbered by adversaries of bitcoin ? I.e. creating a wedge to force digital identity into bitcoin use , non-fungibility, etc
The bar for significant change is very high at this juncture (crack up of incumbent systems and "proposal" of new systems at global levels)
Your keys, your coins, both with and without covenants. Your addresses encode your spending conditionsâthe spending conditions you opted into (single sig, multisig, etc.) None of the covenant proposals alter this.
What covenants allow is construction of an address that pays out to pre-specified list of one or more other addresses. So someone who owes you coin could wrap it in an address that aggregates coins to you and others. Thatâs the point of it, in fact, to create density so that more than one beneficiary can share a UTXO.
Whether you accept this as payment is up to you.
On the question of whether an adversary could use covenants maliciously. Current multisig would be a better adversarial tool. That is, adversary sends the coin to a 2-of-3 where your address is just one, so you have to get permission from another signer to spend. You would be within your rights to refuse this as âpaymentâ since youâre not in full control of the coin. (I would refuse)
If a State wanted to enact spending controls, inserting themselves as signers in multisig is superior to trying to negotiate covenant addresses that encode spending criteria. With the multisig, they can approve or withhold approval arbitrarily over time. With a covenant, theyâd have to decide up front how the coin could be spent and work with you to create that script. An adversarial despot would much prefer the flexibility and ease-of-use of mandatory multisig.
For this reason, on the point of adversarial encumbrance, I do not see any of the proposals to be worse than the status quo.