Nostr Web Client

I strongly disagree with that. Gold fails because you can't take immediate, frictionless, settlement across any border. It fails because it's extremely difficult to audit efficiently and remotely. It fails because it requires a trusted agent to manage the ledger between it and the paper that rides on top of it (the paper that makes the units divisible and transportable). You obviously know all of this. Why do you think it becomes centralized and controlled by central bankers because of coffee transactions (which I can conduct in a noncustodial way right now)? I'm confused.

fiatjaf 2y ago

I don't know, I think you're missing my point, which is: who will be able to do these Bitcoin transactions when hyperbitcoinization happens? You seem to be happy if some big corporations can use Bitcoin and pay the high fees it will require, while the common man will have to resort to custodial Lightning wallets or something like that. Is that it?

I think the more you enable people to hold and use coins directly on a decentralized system (you can argue Drivechain has a different trust model than Bitcoin, but you can't argue it isn't decentralized and censorship-resistant) the easier the system is to capture.

If there are only 10 giant companies using Bitcoin or decentralized sidechains directly in the world that is capturable by the State in a minute, but if there are 100 million direct users that becomes quite impossible. I don't know what is your threshold in this line and what you think Bitcoin without any changes will be capable of achieving.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Melvin Carvalho 2y ago

Two way pegs are useful. Peg in is easy as it can be recorded. Peg out requires trust. So who do you trust? Trust a custodian? Trust a federation? Trust the miners?

Each has trade offs. Miners have already gone rogue once, so I'd rather not give them a chance to steal. Custodians are an obvious pont of failure. Federations are problematic. I think miners tendancy to steal depends on the size of the pot. The game theory is complex.

Id rather try some of these things over nostr, with different models taking different market share and delivering the same utility the end user. For example build trusted federations of nostr users and/or relays using something like Tendermint or any number of consensus algos. Even something like etleneum over nostr.

Smart contract use cases can be tested out on nostr this way to see the utility and demand.