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I don't enjoy audiobooks, but the format is the last thing I care about.

What I do like is the coherent worlds. Something where I can find "gravity points" and where I understand incentives of actors.

And where I can hope for more content because it's interesting for other authors to put theirs digures and tails.

In short anthologies are my cup of tea.

jimbocoin 🃏 1y ago

This is helpful, thank you!

The world I'm building features a multiplanetary civilization with colonies on the moon and Mars. Because of Bitcoin's 10-minute block time, mining is only possible on the Earth/moon. Earth has become the centralized hub of finance through which other worlds must transact.

Colonies in the asteroid belt specialize in producing high-end computing hardware (including mining equipment) but can't themselves mine because they're too far out. The main conflict of the novel is the threat of asteroid colonists to execute a contentious fork with a significantly longer block time. This would decentralize mining throughout the inner solar system, undermining Earth's privileged position.

Still working out the details. It's likely that the main antagonist will be the CEO of a major power generation/mining outfit on Earth (uses energy production from lunar helium-3 fusion). Protagonist(s) TBD.

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Discussion

Diacone Frost 1y ago

Sounds intersting.

May I have a question(s)? Why would they need the Earth bitcoin in the first place. how they depend on Earth? it looks more like the dependency is the other way around. That means that they exchange goods for bitcoin. why would they want to mine it. The subsidy is gone and you earn on transactions only. the trasactions are confirmed with huge gap (by light speed offset). It's likely there's going to be a sidechains taking the risks for invalid transactions (and passing it as price premium to customers).

jimbocoin 🃏 1y ago

The asteroid belt contains all of the raw materials necessary for sustaining itself and its development independently, with the possible exception of helium-3 for fusion reactions. It probably has the deuterium for that form of fusion as a fallback, but generally prefers helium-3 from the moon.

For different entities to settle transactions among themselves beyond the Earth/moon, they must rely on proof-of-work generated there. They can’t participate, only verify. This means that while the asteroid belt can and does manufacture hashing hardware, it can’t benefit from mining. Asteroid belt colonists pay fees that accrue to Earth alone.

To be able to benefit from the fees, the asteroid colonists need a chain with a longer block time. They could spin up their own shitcoin for this, but that would suffer all the known problems of spinning up shitcoins. Lengthening the block time can be accomplished with a soft fork alone.

Regarding sidechains, the problem with any sidechain is the peg and its credibility. A pegged shitcoin is still a shitcoin, and so in my novel, I plan to presume that they’re just as ineffective and undesirable as I find them today.

The overarching tension I want to explore is the Earth-centric concentration of power imposed by the 10-minute block time, and what freedom and decentralization mean in the context of a burgeoning, spacefaring civilization.

Diacone Frost 1y ago

That really sounds interesting. I can't wrap my head around the speed of light problem. If the colony is years far, how big the tick would must have been. That would render the transactions unusable in practice.

The only way would be a ledger and settlement layer as a sidechain. It could be the bitcoin on bitcoin, but still ...

Beneath The Ink 1y ago

It's not exactly what you describe but the conflict with the astroid belt people is well played out in "The Expanse".

I think there is great potential in having bitcoin as a world building tool but my honest suggestion would be to really flesh out characters and their motivations. There's always a valuable piece missing to stories with great world building but crappy characters!

There is some juice to squeeze on the philosophical impacts of civilization spanning large swaths of space/time. I mean depening on hiw large the civilization is people on different sides of the civilization literally experience time and life differently.

I would also be careful of the ex machina/ other logical pitfalls that could come out of a story like this, especially when your main audience might be bitcoiners who would quickly identifiy them.

Just my two sats. Thats a long and drawn out way of saying, Id read it!

jimbocoin 🃏 1y ago

What do you mean by ex machina/ logical pitfalls?

Beneath The Ink 1y ago

the google definition is: dues ex machina fallacy is the use of a “god-like” character or plot devixe that acts in a way that makes a problem or conflict seem insoluble, and thus forces the story into an unsatisfactory resolution.

Its a VERY common mistake in scifi or fantasy when the author has a complex world.

No one does it intentionally but it tends to happen when the author knows more about the tech and world than the reader (always happens) but fails to descirbe the plot point as common factor in the world and then some how its used to save the day.

In the case of a bitcoin story an audience of bitcoiners might read through the ex machina but an average reader would not.

jimbocoin 🃏 1y ago

Ah ok, thanks! Yes, definitely something to avoid.

Beneath The Ink 1y ago

Once Kind 3040 is live you could make your story into a serialized fiction. Post your chapters one at a time get some sats and some feedback on your work. As you post them you can tie them into one to make it easier for your audience to follow.

I'm thinking about releasing a serialized fiction I had on kindlevella on here, cus... Amazon is the devil...

jimbocoin 🃏 1y ago

Is there a NIP associated with kind 3040?

d34e832d... 1y ago

Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!

Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

#reality

Tags: reality

jimbocoin 🃏 1y ago

Right right. Yeah, not going to take the easy way out here. 😅