Replying to Avatar Vlad, Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

The debate about Drivechains is mode political than it is technical.

In practice, every sane bitcoiner wants real sidechains to provide privacy, scalability, speed, more advanced scripting languages, and the opportunity for everyone around the world to own a UTXO and self-custody it in cold storage.

A Zcash sidechain would contribute towards fungibility. A big block sidechain can be used to open and close Lightning channels at the lowest price. An Ethereum sidechain can attract some projects that want to port their code to a more secure Proof of Work chain.

Lots of shitcoins would lose their purpose and get drained of use cases. The exchanges would no longer act as scaling layers to the same degree, as the users won’t have to worry about high fees for their withdrawals.

The 21 million BTC limit also remains unchanged forever, as the fees coming from sidechains would cover the security budget. No more discussions about tail emmission or inflation.

But the issue is that miners refeivr godlike powers in these sidechains and can potentially refuse to release the funds to users or else steal. According to the game theory, miners should follow the economic rationale that maintains their reputation and keeps their revenue source flowing.

But it’s hard to have guarantees when you deal with dynamic actors that follow their incentives and might think short-term.

Lots of parties don’t want miners to gain even more power/control. But the issue is not shitcoinery, that’s only the lazy deflection which doesn’t excuse anyone from not reading.
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nobody 2y ago

I haven't seen a single explanation for why I should want this. I HAVE seen corporate interests and shitcoiners pushing it which tells me a lot of what I need to know. There's a very small vocal minority of folks who are pushing this. Nearly everyone else doesn't want it. Bitcoin Core devs saying it's deeply flawed.

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@IsabelSydow Queen of Shrimps (but u can call me Dan.) 2y ago

I am so not grasping so much of this, but what little I do, it simply sounds like an unnecessary evil.

I replied with a pretty dumbed down reply to another note about the topic, but I'm still waiting to hear if I'm off the wall wrong about it.

Honestly, I had to use food, digestive system and parasites metaphors to compare it to what I believe this BIP300 shit is.

It stinks I'm not a miner... I am a node runner, and I'm simply being asked to relinquish even more control to a one side of the entire operation.

F*cking corrupt corporations can mine themselves to oblivion, they got the fiat to begin with. Buy the asics, pay the PG&Es of the world & stuff... So why do I want them to control even more?

This is simply... stinking of shitcoinery up to the high heavens.

Get the fork out with it.

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Cyber Seagull 2y ago

False.

nothing changes for you as a node runner

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Geist 2y ago

I think the pro arguments would include privacy and scripting related side chains, and a place to test upgrades in bitcoin that carry economic weight in bitcoin. I'm of the opinion we should first really find consensus on covenants, cross input signature aggregation, upgrading tapscript and stuff, and allegedly we really haven't finished exploring what tapscript gives us today so that would be a good start. I worry that drivechains would disincentivize upgrades to bitcoin itself.

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Vlad, Bitcoin Takeover Podcast 2y ago

There are even bigger corporate and governmental interests for Bitcoin to not scale so millions of users get onboarded via exchanges and never leave their custody due to high fees.

These parties would also be unhappy if Bitcoin gained more privacy/fungibility. Think about the million dollar blockchain analysis contracts that will look silly.

Controlling a majority of the miners is not that easy.

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nobody 2y ago

The thing holding back onboarding is not fees. It's confidence. The thing holding some folks from self custody is not fees. It's (perceived IMO) complexity or risk associated with self custody.

Mix in these shitcoin sidechains and I almost guarantee people associate Bitcoin even more with affinity scams, rug pulls, etc. This is a solution in search of a problem. Or worse, it's the same shitcoin arguments wearing a trenchcoat and tophat of needing to scale Bitcoin when we already have real layer 2 solutions like lightning for scaling, privacy.