Replying to Avatar Lyn Alden

Muneeb from Stacks says that Bitcoin ecosystem development is lacking.

https://twitter.com/muneeb/status/1631672600085577729

Obviously this contrasts with the fact that, during the recent episode of Bitcoin Review with NVK and others, they had to go long for the episode and also had to cut out a lot of content due to too much bitcoin ecosystem development happening to cover it all. And with my work at ego death capital, we have no shortage of new bitcoin development to invest in; it's merely a matter of prioritization.

I met Muneeb at Princeton back in November when Princeton launched their new center for decentralized tech and power, which does have some serious bitcoiners in the mix amid the altcoin noise. And I might meet these folks again in upcoming Princeton events, since I'm based near them in NJ and want to keep a bitcoiner perspective there. They have some good people involved.

If you had questions or discussion points for Muneeb, what would you ask or bring up (kindly)?

My impression is that the Stacks ecosystem is too focused on financialization platforms, similar to the altcoin ecosystems. It's all about financial leveraging, NFTs, etc. In other words, rails on which fiat currency operates. Whereas there is massive development in bitcoin being better money at the root layer, which doesn't necessarily vibe with their ecosystem. Throwing shade at that, or ignoring that, seems disingenuous.

For me, the best development is about wallets, infrastructure, and protocols that make bitcoin easier to use as global root layer money from a payments and savings perspective, and more censorship-resistant in general. Often, it's the small details that matter. This includes lightning, nostr, fedimint, certain sidechains, etc. Anything else is secondary.

I have a sincere question related to the economics of Stacks:

Proof of transfer is a neat idea for transferring Bitcoin to a sidechain that is not federated, and also not burning it. In order to mint STX, the miners must transfer bitcoin to some kind of contract in exchange for the opportunity to mint STX. This is clever, but it means that miners effectively have to sell BTC to get STX.

They try to balance this out by letting stakers (or stackers as they call it) stake STX in exchange for a share of the transferred BTC. Again, this seems fairly clever and demand-neutral for Bitcoin.

This brings me to my question: In order to actually use STX for gas, you need to not be staking, which means that in order to use Stacks as intended, the whole system must effectively be overall demand-negative for Bitcoin. How can this incentive model actually good for Bitcoin?

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