Subnostr

Sorry for the essay lol. I'll try to keep it short as possible.

Good video to skim thru about scaling L1 and putting things in perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RJ5HDmuucY

There are a couple realistic scenarios for L1 scaling. And two of them will work (and imo the most likely scenarios):

1) Slow adoption:

If Monero adoption rate is equal to or lower than consumer tech advances (Moore's law) and protocol scalability improvement (Monero tx size has been reduced a total of ~80% since creation)

2) Niche market:

If Monero remains a small niche crypto that only a fraction of the world ever uses. (Monero can increase betwen roughly 10x-100x more users and be still be ok with current state of the protocol)

If adoption rate massively and suddenly increased, both Monero and Bitcoin would both be shit out of luck in terms of full node decentralization anyway (even with lightning). Admittedly, Monero would fall first, but it is still in the same ballpark.

I think Bitcoin's inability to upgrade is both a strength and weakness. It is not private by default (and weak privacy via obfuscation even when you opt in), it is not fungible in the real world, and is not a good p2p digital cash (high tx fees that will increase over time). Monero picks up the slack on those things. They are both complementary to each other and masters of their own realm.

Bitcoin: SoV, transparent, immutable, scarce

Monero: MoE, private, adaptable, fungible

Different tools for different jobs

100satsaday 2y ago

I will need to take a look at the video thanks. Everything comes with pros and cons there is no prefect thing in the universe.

Gold is bad at verifiability and diversifiability thus gold backed federal reserve system was born which was in effect a layer 2 system but with central corruption. Bitcoin doesn’t have onchain privacy but is that a problem if a decentralized L2 can deal with it? I guess I just weight decentralization and stability more than anything else. I see other people may weight privacy more. So let’s agree to disagree.🤙

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Saberhagen The Nameless 2y ago

Yes, agree everything comes with pros and cons. But some trade offs don't make sense for Bitcoin's original goal of removing trusted third parties.

Moving to L2 for privacy comes with it's own unique sacrifices different to Bitcoin or Monero. Think of current solutions: Lightning trades away p2p/final settlement. Liquid trades away permissionlessness. Ecash trades away self-custody.

None are complete replacements for L1 privacy that doesn't sacrifice self custody, permissionlessness, p2p, or final settlement like Monero.

What aspects of decentralization do you prefer?

Decentralization of software?

Bitcoin is at least theoretically better because it doesn't hardfork. But in reality Bitcoin Core and Blockstream have a lot of centralized influence. And in reality 98% of nodes are running Bitcoin Core's software.

https://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/files/charts/software.html

Decentralization of nodes?

Bitcoin and Monero are similar in count.

https://bitnodes.io/

https://monero.fail/map

Decentralization of mining?

Monero CPU mining is more ubiquitous because it is more easily accesible to anyone (everyone owns CPUs) or at least potentially more decentralized than ASICs.

I dont' think we really disagree on anything (or disagree on little), but thanks for responses 👌

100satsaday 2y ago

I never liked Liquid it doesn’t make sense to me. Not sure why p2p settlement is important? Gold backed reserves clearly took away settlement from day to day users, and it worked, if gold standard can revive with corruption portion removed then it is ideal to me. BTW I think all L2 took away settlement from base layer that is how scaling is possible to improve in magnitudes. In another extreme, BCH bros clearly don’t care about settlements at all they somehow love 0 conf lol.

By decentralizations I mean distribution of power and influence. No doubt bitcoin core and some companies have big influence but what I believe is changes reinforce central power or in other words central power is required to implement changes. Bigger the changes bigger the central finger heads. Just look at ETH they can update whatever they want because they have ETH foundation and Vitalik and all their changes reinforce their power.

As more players get in an existing player should be facing more resistance to implement changes thus central power degrades. This is why I think a mature blockchain shall have fewer and fewer hardforks. There are a lot BIPs being proposed but the trend is they are getting harder to implement. This is exactly what I want to see.

I think most people in cryptos are still thinking let’s make better bitcoin. While I think the better question should be what else can we do with it? Gold has been existing on earth since billions of years ago, human discovered the use cases (currency, conductor) without asking God to add or alter any character of the substance. Functions can be discovered, Ordinals is a perfect example, even though I don’t like it, it opens doors to a lot possibilities.

Saberhagen The Nameless 2y ago

Yea same, Liquid never made sense to me either if you have something like Monero available to use. Liquid only hides amounts, but you can see the transaction graph (who is sending and receiving), anon set is vanishingly small, IP origin not hidden by default, and it is a permissioned network. Price fluctuation is negligible, or can even be slightly to your benefit if you are using Monero short term. And far less people accept or use Liquid than even Monero.

The downward slide brought by gold-backed reserves is what slowly brought us to this moment in fiat world. That is why final settlement (bearer assets) are important (and arguably a massive reason why Bitcoin was created). Imo there is little reason to have a non-final settlement/bearer asset in the digital realm. It doesn't have the same downsides as physical bearer assets like gold (heavy, slow, tedious, expensive to transport). Although, I can see the other side of the argument that at least it is transparent and auditable (unlike fiat) and you can just use it for small spending amounts. Even besides that point - Lightning has so many other problems that Monero (or even Bitcoin) doesn't:

-relies on large middlemen nodes for succesful routing and cheapest fees,

-need capacity to recieve

-can't send modestly large amounts

-both parties must be online at time of transaction to transact

-can be rugged if your node isn't active

-bad receiver privacy and hidden balances can be discovered by a passive adversary

-can be force closed onto the base chain against your will

-ability to grief honest users with zero cost

-worst of all it isn't even a real solution for scaling

https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/lightning-limitations/

I sympathize somewhat with BCHers because it is at least a better way to do it if you are going to do it. Not 100% safe, but 0 conf is much safer for them because they dont have RBF (Replace by fee) like BTC and further make it safer by implementing DSP (Double Spend Proofs). So the vast majority of the risk is within the first 3 seconds of a transaction if i remember correctly. And it automatically settles shortly after, unlike holding lightning.

Think of what would happen if Bitcoin Core implemented a change that Bitcoin users didn't want. Users who didnt like it would just refuse to adopt it and refuse to update to that version. Same thing that would happen with Monero. What Bitcoiners really want is compatibility with all versions and networks, but no market works like that and doesn't have to. Imo people don't owe compatibiltiy with others. Freedom of association. The same way businesses can offer CDs still, but don't have to if they don't want to. It's nice but not necessary. If there is demand they will. And those who want to will offer both. Transparency of code, permissionlessness, and ability to opt out is what is most important imo.

I don't like ordinals either. I think it is a glaring example of Bitcoins non-fungibility that it is still even possible and easy to do.

"You don't ask nicely that everyone else not spend your coins; You just protect them using a cryptographic key.

Similarly, you don't ask nicely everyone else not distinguish your monetary units; You just make them *technically* indistinguishable AKA fungible."

-BinaryFate

This line of reasoning makes sense to me.

Saberhagen The Nameless 2y ago

https://bitcoincashpodcast.com/faqs/Tech/what-is-0-conf#double-spend-proofs-dsps

100satsaday 2y ago

Idk if confirmation is not important why confirm transactions at all, it doesn’t make sense whether RBF or not. Not confirmed transaction is not valid in view of blockchain.

I like the argument of asking not to distinguish coins but I don’t ask others to do anything, I let them do whatever they want, if for whatever reason they are against my interests I turn to other who isn’t. I haven’t used cash for a long time, all my transactions can be seen by my bank anyway, if they laughed at my purchases what else can I do?

I often see argument from XMR community saying XMR is fungible like cash. I agree XMR may be fungible but cash certainly isn’t. Every single bill has a unique ID number, no one cares or records it so it acts “like” fungible, but if (a big if) government requests all merchants to record all cash transactions in ID then it is suddenly not that private anymore. The fact that it can be done but not done due to difficulty or lack of necessity is what holding the fort. While an open ledger like bitcoin, on the other hand, is very easy to track by anyone. The fact that if you care you have choices to break the track but if you don’t care you are good to go is what I think the opposite of what private cash currently is.

I see transparent ledger as a double-edged sword, it may be bad for individuals but certainly good for public fund users. If public ledger is the answer to less corrupted government then I am all in!

Saberhagen The Nameless 2y ago

Confirmations > DSP + noRBF > RBF > LN

Agree nothing beats confirmations, nothing is final until it's on chain, but if you are going to go the non-final settlement route DSP + noRBF is definitely safer than RBF (much smaller chance) and better than LN (automatically confirms shortly after and doesn't have all the other problems adn complexity involved with LN).

Yes, I get what you mean by cash not being perfectly fungible. I think you are right. It is just a simple and easy to understand analogy because almost everyones accepts cash as the same without discriminating based off the ID number. You also cannot know the full history of a cash bill and everyone who it passed through. The same way many Bitcoiners use the digital gold analogy even though there are differences.

Yes, even Monero is a double edged sword. The problem I see is corrupt governments won't use Bitcoin since it is transparent and accountable. Just like they could be transparent and accountable right now and don't do that. We can't force them to use it.

They will demonize Bitcoin and Monero in the eyes of the public because they can't control it. But that is ok because we can use it and they can't stop us.

100satsaday 2y ago

Onchain settlement is important that’s the reason gold standard ships gold all over the world, when someone said fuck it lets just do L2 and forget about base layer settlement then born the fiat standard. L2 always trades security (or something else) with connivence, it is unavoidable paradox. I still haven’t got to the L1 scaling video yet, your response is fast and content rich 👌