I'm too stupid to comment on drivechains so I won't.
Discussion
yes 
The drivechain literature wants you to feel that way. It’s obscure by intent.
Agree. And most supporters want to bamboozle you to thinking you shouldn't understand it.
Moving coins and mining capability to sidechains (cough: shitcoins)... thereby opening doors to and from the L1 Core for coins isn't exactly a small software upgrade.
You're opening the attack and bug surface in a large way for unintended events like say Ordinals or worse.
I say they should hard fork and run the project as "Bitcoin DC" - let the public decide if it's so great. 😏🤫
Agreed.
For me, one of the least talked about effects is the new incentive for centralization.
With drivechain, miners vote to enable/disable side chains. And, importantly, disabling a side chain unlocks the funds. This creates a new and potentially large incentive for miners to centralize. A 51% attacker can sweep side chains.
Plus, philosophically, it violates the your-keys-your-coins basic contract of Bitcoin. Today, a 51% attacker can rewrite history, but they can’t take coins that belong to you without rewriting all the way back to when you got them. Under drivechain, a 51% attacker can take sidechain locked coin without rewriting history (just by building and mining specific blocks).
I'm sorry, but if a soft fork proposal can't make it's use case in less than five sentences, that is not my fault and it can gf itself.
Oh wait I forgot the drivechain use case is "it will make shitcoins obsolete".
No it won't. It is willfully ignorant to assert that shitcoins exist, entirely because sidechains on bitcoin don't. Firstly, sidechains already exist, and nobody fucking uses them. Secondly, shitcoin projects are not noble science experiments -- they are venal cash grabs, and as long as stupid people will exist, so will venal cast grabs.
Right. The main purpose of shitcoins is pump-and-dump. If the sidechain is successful at maintaining the peg, then moving shitcoins there makes no sense.
If the peg can’t be maintained, then funds go to miners, who are incentivized to centralize to sweep them.
You should care. It's a significant chance in the network.
Caring and having the capability of understanding are two very different things. I'd venture to guess the majority of people against it can't articulate specifically what risks it imposes, and couldn't compare and contrast it's risks against other changes, like taproot for example.
I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak in general
My take on anything like this is that as long as it doesn't add too much fee pressure to the main chain then it's harmless. Limited block space, don't fill it with garbage. A little garbage is ok.
it's not only a matter of blockspace, it is also a matter of changing miner incentives. As fair as I know and can understand at the moment (not much, tbh) I think that this might be dangerous
I don't understand drivechains enough either.
But I have a simple question to all drivechain proponents.
Tell me one use-case that we need on #bitcoin and that we can't resolve by standard L2s which would justify the protocol change.
The discussion is cirlcing around miners incentives, potentially unknown risks to the protocol, etc. But I want to know what it brings that we actually need and want on bitcoin. Because I can't think of anything...
And if that is the case, then it really is just dangerous, meaningless messing with miners' incentives and potentially unwanted consequences to the protocol.
I heard from multiple sources that it could bring sidechain with great privacy. In my opinion this can be resolved on L2 or with combination of CoinJoin and L2. I don't see need for ultra private sidechain.
But I am waiting to get educated.
Vast majority of people on lightning use custodians, with a drivechain you could hold your own keys without managing liquidity
I believe this is solved potentially also by ARK?
Ark also need a CTV softfork, why not the same concerns? 🤔
I'm not saying I'm pro BIP119. Haven't studied it deeply enough either.
But it seems to me like drivechains benefits are not as large while introducing something I'm not convinced we need.
But it is a fair point, I should compare these BIPs more.
It doesn’t seem accurate to say that drive chains are noncustodial. The assets held in drive chains are subject to a group of people (miners) acting properly.
To me, this seems like just another federation. Like Liquid. You can also hold your own keys in Liquid. Liquid may also be more decentralized than the group of miners. 🤷♂️
>decentralized liquid is more centralized than liquid
Mkay.....
what if i told you drivechain allows trying out 119 without any downside to main
You can potentially try BIPs on testnet as well 🤔 But it doesn't simulate all the potential consequences as you need all the users and their curious brain power fucking around to realize all the true consequences.
In my opinion - ability to test other BIPs on sidechains is not a sufficient use-case. As well as potential for ultra private sidechain isn't good enough use-case for me either.
But that's just me.