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For many years I thought the next great Bitcoin Schism would be around privacy.

Now it's looking like it might be around enhancing permissionless innovation in general.

Except it’s not permissionless. Changes to Bitcoin require permission from the developers, the miners and, ultimately, the users.

Drivechains are a novel concept, however they are a solution looking for a problem where there is no demand.

Coupled with the lack of trustless peg-out and opportunity for abuse, what you’re left with is a threat vector in which the risk outweighs the benefit.

What is Layer 2 Labs path to profitability to provide return on the $3m to its investors?

Personally, it’s a nack from me. I wouldn’t care if Satoshi himself wrote the BIP proposal.

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Discussion

Jameson Lopp 2y ago

Changing the protocol is not permissionless, I'm referring to enabling folks to experiment with 2WP sidechains.

Claiming there's no demand is dubious. We can objectively observe that there's a LOT of demand for folks to use BTC in DeFi. And as a result, folks have sent a TON of BTC to trusted third parties to "wrap" it.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Caleb 2y ago

No comment one way or the other on sidechains, but demand does not always mean we should.

Anchorite 2y ago

Keep your dangerous experiments entirely segregated from the main chain. You shouldn't need changes to the main chain for this.

People's lives are not your playground. 👎👎👎

j 2y ago

You don't get it bruh

₿lack Swan 2y ago

What am I missing?

j 2y ago

First, it's a real problem with plenty of demand. I want zkp privacy for my bitcoin. I want to stop losing people like Jeremy Rubin and Joseph Poon because forks are too hard (we could already have a ctv drivechain). And more things besides that. So to say there's no demand is wrong.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

You don’t need drivechains for privacy.

j 2y ago

You need drivechains for zero knowledge privacy

j 2y ago

Second, the only way to have a trustless pegout would be for nodes to verify the sidechain rules. This would kill decentralization. Trusting the miners with the peg out is a simple solution that has good tradeoffs (svp wallet users (the majority of Bitcoin users) already trust the miners). So to say that the lack of a trustless pegout is a problem is also wrong.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

A layer 1 node doesn’t need to validate Lightning transactions.

The same can be achieved for other layer 2 networks offering privacy / throughput / data storage etc.

j 2y ago

Yes, that'drivechains. Layer one nodes don't need to validate the pegout

₿lack Swan 2y ago

Huh? You’re contradicting yourself.

Lightning has trustless peg in / out without relying on miner cooperation.

j 2y ago

I never said drivechains was trustless. Just that you can peg out without mainchain nodes validating.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

And therein lies the problem. I’m not opposed to drivechains conceptually, but I believe it needs to be implemented trustlessly or it’s just an epic rug waiting to happen.

You could argue that the risks are known, so the amount of value locked in a drivechain reflects both the utility and the inherent risk of theft, and you might be right.

Personally though, I can’t support something I see as fundamentally flawed.

j 2y ago

Yes that's right. The risk is the tradeoff made to allow drivechains to scale better than lightning.

You are wrong to think there is a flaw. Every second layer has tradeoffs. You sound like bsv people that say lightning is "fundementally flawed" because it requires wallets to be hot, or peers to be online to receive, or inbound liquidity.

The fact is all layer twos will have tradeoffs.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

But they don’t allow Bitcoin to be stolen on the base layer, or further empower the miners.

Do we need a layer 2 for privacy, or do we need to improve privacy at the base layer? Certainly. But, based on my interactions with others, that is the only use case the majority of users support.

Without knowing all of the second and third order affects, I still believe the benefits don’t justify the risks.

Agree to disagree 🙏🏻

j 2y ago

Seems the goal posts just keep shifting 🤔

Anyway, yes agree to disagree.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

So you are against Liquid and blockstream then? They are not trustless and can also be rugpulled.

Drivechain only affects people who parricipate in it, like liquid.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

>lack of trustless peg out

What do you mean by this, specifically. What part of bip300 requires a trusted peg out ?

₿lack Swan 2y ago

The part that requires miner consensus to authorise the withdrawals

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

That's not how bip300 works.

Miner votes are confs, not permissions.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

What happens if they do not ack the withdrawal bundle or if they simply spend the coins?

Consider a scenario where there is $30b USD locked up in a drivechain.

Anyone could broadcast a Tx spending the coins to miner wallets, then RBF it to add an additional bounty, and all miners would need to do is allow the Tx to be mined in order to receive their share of the pot.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Nothing happens if they do nothing.

If instead the withdraw gets 26 declines, the withdraw is cancelled and can just start up again. Nothing is lost.

Who could broadcast it . You say could, but thay could implies much.

Why don't miners broadcast a tx from your wakket right now and do all that stuff yoy describe to it ?

Same reasons. withdraws are sidechain side initiated, notnminer initiated.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Does liquid solve a problen for someone ?

If liquid solves a problem for even one person, then DC has found what itncan solve and does not need to go looking very far.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

I think its fairly obvious from Liquid’s transaction volume that it has failed from an adoption perspective.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

That's your Opinion.

Bullbitcoin likes them, and they have an important and useful product for their users.

I happen to think miniature scale replicas are a silly hobby. I think second life is a waste of time. The consumers of those disagree.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

Bitcoin doesn’t need to cater for for other peoples use case. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

that's exactly what a soft fork is for

What is segwit and taproot if not a new use case ?

It's like saying u.s dollars cannot be used to buy miniatures via credit card because i don't think there is a sufficient market for them.

Also, the bip300 soft fork is not catering to anyone who does not want to participate in sidechains. It does nothing to you excecpt increase your security.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Also, since some of your objections and understanding of the topic are falling through, i recommend you consider the FAQ and years of research on the topic, based on your name.

Drivechain is insurance against a black swan event that is negative for bitcoin.

₿lack Swan 2y ago

There are no black swans that drivechains provide a solution for 😂

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Almost all of them actually. Something like an alien civilization giving us each infitite power and matter creation, maybe not. The difficulty would probably just increase though.

Your lack of understanding about bip300 is not evidence against drivechains.