Tell me why a Confidential Transaction UASF is a stupid idea?
Why is fungibility always an afterthought?
We could kill inscritpions, improve fungibility and make bitcoin more useful as p2p cash.
Instead everyone is worrying about scripting for their dynamic multigenerational gold stack while waiting for ETF approvals.
*kill ordinal theory, not inscriptions
The ability to audit is a core feature of Bitcoin. Tinkering with that is very dangerous. Run whatever you want, but I’m not running it. Bitcoin the protocol is very close to ossified.
You don't audit shit, you trust bitcoin core to do it, trust the people who wrote that code, cryptography and math behind it.
Human time is scarce and it's only natural you delegate trust in a reasonable matter.
CT ensure auditability the same way that regular txs do: with code and math that you run on your computer.
I’ll pass, thanks. I could potentially be convinced by a specific proposal with details of how this would work in practice, but just saying “you trust it anyway, don’t worry” isn’t a convincing argument.
I can run one command on my commuter and get a sum of all the UTXOs. I find that to be valuable, and I’m not interested in changing the code. Good luck with your fork though.
>I can run one command on my commuter and get a sum of all the UTXOs.
So same as any other chain with CT, including Liquid, monero, litecoin, etc.
You basically came here just to say "I don't understand it and I don't want it anyway". Fine, dude whatever, just don't understand why you bothered commenting at all the if you are not adding anything constructive.
Because you’re talking about changing Bitcoin. While I don’t feel strongly about proposed features, I do feel strongly that it’s unwise to change the protocol to fit a personal vision or agenda. Especially in a way which wouldn’t be backwards compatible with older clients.
If you could make confidential transactions as a soft fork where old clients are still compatible, what’s the point in complaining that they don’t exist? Just go fork it.
It's a soft fork. Old clients don't even need to bother with it, same as segwit or taproot.
That’s excellent. Why haven’t more people like yourself forked it?
You’re right. Maybe I’m a bit of a fork fundamentalist. I prefer people run new software on their own, and let others join later if they find it valuable. If you really don’t need others to update to accommodate your change, you should just make it.
I still feel like I’m missing a piece of how this functions in practice though. It feels strange that someone like Adam Back would implement confidential transactions on a L2 like liquid instead of as a soft fork if it really was better suited for the base layer.
I’m open to arguments which explain it logically - you just lost me a bit at the “you’re trusting anyway” argument. I personally think it’s better to assume someone is intelligent and capable of verifying code for themselves than just assume it’s futile and that they should trust the word of others.
The "you're trusting it anyway" was in response to your claim that CT are non-auditable. They are, you just need to understand the code and math behind them, same as with regular transactions.
Sorry I missed your last paragraph.
It can be done with a SF. "Just fork it" is a lame response because you know very well that you need social lobbying first for that to happen which is just what I'm doing.
Same as all the other folks are doing with ctv, op_vault, apo, op_cat, etc.
Also virtually zero Bitcoiners take advantage of it's transparent simple math to audit. They rely on their nodes to do it for them and pay no mind like any other crypto. Vulnerable to the same category of implementation risks when it comes down to the real world.
No has looked thru nearly ~1 billion transactions to make sure all inputs equal all outputs. Neither do they do they check every ten minutes.
Overwhelmingly likely that if anything is caught it will be way after the fact and there is no good solution for an already exploited supply inflation bug.
1) Hardfork out the fake bitcoin screwing over all those who gave away real stuff or services.
2) Keep the fake bitcoin and 21 million meme dies.
Seems like either one would be devastating. Am I wrong?
You are wrong, people do verify this, and they do it every 10 minutes. Even still though, option 1 would be the path forward without any debate. 21 Million is not debatable. We could recover from a few hours, days, weeks, or even months of reversed transactions. We could not recover from the 21 Million hard cap breaking.
We’d probably catch this bug fast, in which case we’d restart the chain at the last valid block before any inflation. It would be messy, but I don’t see any large minority wanting to do something different.
So, what is the difference from a Monero user who also relies on a node to do this for them?
Monero users *can't* personally verify other transactions themselves. Bitcoiners can, but *don't* (infeasible to do every ten minutes + ~1 billion txs that already exist). ***In practice, both rely on their nodes to verify for them. They're both vulnerable to being unaware of implementation bugs in software.***
I would really like your answer to this as I've never had a good response from anyone.
I don't know why you assume this would be caught fast. It wouldn't even necessarily be detectable by nodes. There was already a supply inflation bug in 2018 that would've gone unnoticed by nodes. That was only avoided because of a single anon reporting it before it was exploited.
Ok, but option 1 means a hard fork (your desire for ossification can never truly happen if this is always on the table) and you just potentially fucked over millions of innocent Bitcoin users (especially if Bitcoin grows in adoption) who gave away real goods and services. You've now Thanos'd their payments. That would surely be catastrophic for confidence in Bitcoin. Hence no good solution.
The 2018 bug would not have gone unnoticed, in large part because Bitcoin is an open and transparent ledger. The 2018 bug was also never exploited because you’d need to control enough hash power to mine a block to attempt it, and miners understood that it would be detected so quickly that instead of maybe getting +50 BTC from double spending they would’ve actually gotten -12.5 BTC from losing the block reward.
I’d love if someone sent me documents on how to verify the monero supply for myself, but I’ve yet to come across them. While you’re right that we have nodes to validate instead of doing it all by hand, the transparency and simplicity offered by inputs and outputs is desirable. If I really wanted to, I could export the whole UTXO set to an excel sheet and check it separately there. I can also see in my node the aggregate inputs and outputs in each block, and would be able to detect 99% of problems quickly just due to that.
The desire to ossify only applies to proposed protocol changes. A hard fork to fix a critical vulnerability is not a protocol change. And yes, potentially millions of transactions would become unconfirmed depending on how fast this bug was caught. But if you think that’s comparable to allowing inflation, you still don’t understand Bitcoin. Merchants could simply request payment be resent, and many people would do that. Fixing inflation is something which would benefit billions of people perpetually. A hard fork would be a great solution to any inflation bugs, because 21M is not something to compromise on.
For the first paragraph, I'll take your word for it for now, but I'll read more into this later. Thanks.
Fair enough for the second paragraph. But like I've already acknowledged, you can't verify the Monero supply the way you're asking. My whole point is Bitcoin users can do this, but in practice *don't* do this. Almost no one exports the whole blockchain to excel to verify for themselves. Certainly no one does this every ten minutes. They just run a node and call it a day.
Not so sure that just because something is a critical vulnerability change would mean it isn't a hard fork especially if we're talking about rollbacks. Sounds like it would be a similar situation to the Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic split.
Sure maybe some customers would be honest and resend payment to merchants, but this is largely impractical to rely on and wishful thinking. Something tells me those millions of users who didn't do anything wrong and are now missing Bitcoin after a rollback would feel very differently.
Would you willingly sacrifice all your Bitcoin at the altar of 21 million? I don't think many would.
I think most would. Almost all Bitcoiners I know would dump any fork where the supply exceeds 21 Million. I certainly would.
I mean if that meant a significant part of your stack, or even the entire thing, went poof
because you received fake bitcoin and the chain was rolled back*
Yes. Although I’m not quite sure what situation I’d have to be in for this to happen in this manner. All my UTXOs are thousands of blocks deep, and I don’t think I’d do business with someone completely random for a transaction worth any significant amount of money.
Ok. Just a hypothetical question to see your response. Similar to those who say the world is over populated, but are the last to volunteer themselves off the planet (not saying this is you)
Even honest people that you trust for business could unknowingly receive and give you fake bitcoin in the event of a supply bug exploit depending on the type and how long it goes unnoticed. Imagine newer users onboarding their fiat savings around the same time period, or even older users making a massive trade, only to have received fake Bitcoin.
Here is a link to information about the 2018 bug, which shows how important the ability to audit the UTXO set is. It also talks about why it was never exploited, since it would’ve been so obvious and quickly caught.
https://hackernoon.com/bitcoin-core-bug-cve-2018-17144-an-analysis-f80d9d373362
You're the first person who has ever actually given me a rebuttal to this specific bug, so thanks. I'll read this over.
I'm curious why Adam Back went to build CT on Liquid, rather than testnet.
He's not some official figurehead, he just did it, and his motivations/explanations might prove helpful.
Has he, or why not, tried to merge CT with core?
Wallstreet pushed back
