Nostr Web Client

Thanks for posting, this is the kind of discussion we need to see more of.

Bitcoin has a social contract to its user base. 10s of millions of people view it as a form of money that is better than what they have today. That could grow to 100s of millions. Nobody expected this when bitcoin was created, but that is a sign of incredible success. Protecting those users that have put their trust in bitcoin is obviously something we should do.

There's not really a huge apetite in bitcoin for smart contracts. I have a layer 2 smart contract system MVP working, and there's not a lot of interest in the topic. There is a huge amount of (mind-blowing) potential in using the current (U)TXO system which is completely unexplored. I'm deprioritizing any public roll out of smart contracts over bitcoin taproot and nostr, due to lack of interest. I will use them personally though. I know that this works, and it has been relatively unexplored. This area will get better over time.

Moral responsibilities are tricky things. Everything is evil from someone's perspective, or something's perspective. UTXOs are already powerful, and under utilized. How would you envision making them more powerful when the surface of what they can do has only been scratched?

Be aware that in any project, there are always two groups. One that wants change and one that wants the status quo. Bitcoin is unusual in the fact that stability of the protocol makes it more valuable. Conserving that protocol to date has been done very well, and hard fought, we had to fight 3 civil wars to get where we are today, and the market has responded positively to that.

The biggest threat to bitcoin is not a 51% attack, it's a chain split due to a fork or civil war. We have yet to have a successful 51% attack, and that's not to say it cant happen, but we have had chain splits. Chain splits are potentially fatal to bitcoin, so any protocol changes need to take that into account. It is also easy for bitcoin's enemies to agitate on this front, as we have seen recently and turn or frustrate well meening engineers to be frustrated enough to attack the system.

We do need better ways of discussing the protocol without it becoming dramatic. I still didnt get from your post how you think UTXOs could be made more powerful. Conversations like this are a good start!

techfeudalist 1y ago 💬 2

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It seems we’re fighting the blocksize wars all over again. It’s like every few years someone thinks bitcoin’s fees are too high and we need to compromise bitcoin’s decentralization to “fix” the problem.

Rusty is making the same arguments the bcashers did. Hopefully the community rejects it a second time.

Changes to the core protocol are always risky. We need to ask ourselves:

1) Can the issue be solved in any other way, other than a change to the core protocol? Have we waited long enough for other solutions to emerge?

2) If we must change the core protocol, what is the most limited change we can make that actually solves the problem?

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Discussion

Melvin Carvalho 1y ago

There is a lot to unpack there. I'll just tackle one point out of many. The so-called "blocksize" war was unfortunately named. It was much more a governance war than a war about size. In fact, every side proposed an increase in block space. The bigger question was whether folks like Roger Ver, Brian Armstrong, Erik Voorhees, Mike Belshe and their VCs would run bitcoin, or whether the core devs and community would. Not only did the underdogs win that war, but the market responded positively to it. The problem with the debate was that a governance change was part of the proposal.

BOL 1y ago 💬 2

Nodes run the network... I appreciated bitcoin mechanics recent video where he laments that it is getting more to difficult to run a node (from the recent spam and utxo bloat)

techfeudalist 1y ago

Yes, the blocksize was deliberately kept “small” to allow the greatest number of nodes to download and verify the full chain. The goal was increased decentralization.

Since the original 1 MB block size, it had been increased to ~4 MB. This is definitely making it more difficult to run a node.

BOL 1y ago

Yep, I remember the 300kb blocksize proposal from long ago (in bitcoin terms)... It's a correct framing/rebuttal to most other change proposals?! Especially those other change proposals that are not patiently attempting to gain a broad consensus before implementation

Elephant in the root 1y ago 💬 1

How is whichever change Rusty advocates for compromising decentralization? Bigger blocks surely did. But you can't claim he's like a bcasher if you can't specify how he's proposing harmful ideas.

techfeudalist 1y ago

Adding powerful scripting increases the risk that the bitcoin network will be used for non-standard transactions that worsen centralizing MEV. We can see ETH already struggling with the problem. Why do we want to bring that disaster to bitcoin?

It’s not on me to prove that GSR is dangerous. It’s on Rusty to prove it’s safe.

Rusty says he has no idea how the new codes will be used. He also said, in his podcast with Livera👇, that he even believes they could be abused, he just doesn’t know how.

Obviously this proposal is not safe. It’s pure negligence to not consider the 2nd order effects to the overall bitcoin network.

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