Today I wrote a small essay on use cases for coinpools. It is attached.

Note that if you want to *try* a coinpool, I wrote a publicly-available implementation for testnet. I recommend watching my video demo before trying it.

Essay: nostr:nevent1qqsvem375pvdfxqn28yvvjwswctkzlfhwpzcdsn7evt2n00fazmxuuspr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgszrqlfgavys8g0zf8mmy79dn92ghn723wwawx49py0nqjn7jtmjagrqsqqqqqpuexnrm

Video explainer and demo: https://youtu.be/o-e9IrDrvuo?si=RR8x3XGLeyB6Wt9w

Implementation: https://github.com/supertestnet/hedgehog_factory

Use case 1: cheaper internal payments. When coinpool user A pays coinpool user B, that transaction does not pay mining fees, because nothing happens on the blockchain. The two users (and, in my implementation, the server) simply update their withdrawal transactions so that, when either of them wants to withdraw later, user A can withdraw less and user B can withdraw more.

Use case 2: privacy. As mentioned above, internal coinpool payments don't show up on the blockchain, so if they are not published to the world. That is good for privacy. Moreover, when user A pays someone who is *not* in the pool, that transaction appears to come from *the whole pool* rather than from user A specifically -- which is good for privacy. However, my implementation does have a significant privacy tradeoff: the server knows everything in both cases, including who *really* sent the payment, and that is bad for user privacy.

Use case 3: cheaper LN onboarding. To onboard 10 people to lightning without a coinpool, you need to create 10 outputs on the blockchain, one for each channel. Each user has to pay the full cost of the bytes consumed on the blockchain by their output (which is typically about 40 bytes), and when fees are high, it sucks. But *with* a coinpool, only *one* output is created on the blockchain, not 10. So the cost is divided among 10 users: instead of consuming 40 bytes, each user effectively consumes 4 bytes and only had to pay the cost of doing *that.* This also means coinpools have a strange property: if 40 people join the pool, they each pay *even less* -- only 1 byte was effectively consumed by each user. If 100 people join, they each pay for consuming 0.4 bytes of blockchain space. So the more people who join the pool, the lower the cost for each new entrant. (Note that this is also a big reason why Ark is really cool, as it shares this property too; in fact, I consider Ark an example of a coinpool, though the CEOs of the two big Ark companies disagree with me on this.)

those cost money and I am poor

I am working at a library in Iowa where they appear to block traffic to mempool.space. Very annoying. My current project is a web wallet gets utxo data from mempool.space, so I have to run it in a tor browser to make it work.

If you have CLN, you can install the plug in Autoclean, which is a command line tool. Then you can use your command line to configure it to wipe your tx history periodically.

If you have any other ln wallet, the easiest way to do this involves a single L1 tx: first, open a channel in a new ln wallet. Second, send all your money from wallet A to wallet B. Third, delete wallet A. That deletes your tx history in wallet A.

Causation implies correlation

You'll have to do better than accusations, friend

You can see in the video where chainalysis looks up the ip address for the above-highlighted transaction. It is at timestamp 35:37---35:55 and they clearly show it belongs to a vpn

If I was dishonest about this, my dishonesty would show up quite clearly in the video. Just point to a part where I say X and the reality is not X.

That was the transaction *afterwards*

The one I highlighted, he *did* use a VPN and *still* got traced

What should he have done differently?

His monero got traced, that's a failure

The trace was due to no fault of the target's

It was monero's fault he got traced

They didn't create that environment, they were hired to trace a Columbian drug dealer's monero as part of a criminal investigation. It was a real world case.

Chainalysis traced this monero transaction: e4f525b214ef7310b53dd2e81be42801c7ee1a7c259ac0a093d813b493a788a8

The sender was: 98c88d7d6cee177fdd675763a51c451f36a3de026607fa5d7d1ed1eded0f5a1d

The recipient was: 2e9598dc6d1af0907297b395e71ff4cc7f38818893ccc90f7ff40fbec6820699

They also identify the change-recipient: 838bdcee6c15000a259f9f58172794a1a1bd132750f29aee1ed33bd7de94c85b

Then they follow the change to this tx: a5202cb022921d624d0e9a40a9d7e0cdc4d9cfeb0be11501414fe5a9c0cdd2a8

They got the sender's ip address from the fact that (1) when spending the change output created by the above tx (a520…d2a8), the target forgot to use a VPN (2) his wallet broadcasted the resulting transaction via a chainalysis spy node.

Having obtained the target’s ip address, Chainalysis sent it to police in Columbia, who arrested the target, allegedly a drug dealer. You can view the trace from 34:55---36:51 of this video: https://v.nostr.build/D4Nzp22vRF35IRnz.mp4

It is very easy for monero people to hear me say lightning has better privacy than monero and infer I must think it is untraceable. But that does not follow. Lightning is traceable too, it's just harder to do

I have not seen it yet, thank you for the link. I will try to remember to give it a look later.

BTW I do not claim lightning is untraceable; only that if both systems are used well, lightning is harder to trace than monero.

nice!

tell me more about your fork

why did you make it?

"Super, what do you think of ?"

BTW I include the word "deliberately" because, in an important way, Knots has a bunch of "accidental" contributors. Basically everyone who contributes to Bitcoin Core also contributes to Knots, knowingly or not, because Knots is mostly just Core with some patches.

If your only objection is that the example I gave for Leo wasn't actually code, I hope the attached post strengthens the case. Let me know if any of the others shouldn't count. nostr:nevent1qy28wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hsqg9wzn440g997td6nfp03gd668etluqj43w23ajf4ny8s0ukynujtsk34ajg

for each one, I linked to their githubs so that you can review their contributions.

Here are some examples of each person's contributions:

- leo_haf got this code merged: https://github.com/bitcoinknots/guix.sigs/pull/32

- bigshiny90 got this code merged: https://github.com/bitcoinknots/guix.sigs/pull/37

- ataraxia got this code merged: https://github.com/bitcoinknots/guix.sigs/pull/38

- pithosian created this pull request, which has not yet been merged: https://github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin/pull/135

- Chris Guida reviewed the above-mentioned pull request

- Floppy Disk Guy reviewed it too

- dr0ther created this docker container for Knots: https://github.com/dr0ther/bitcoin-knots-docker

- Kurtis worked on the font and imagery used in Knots: https://github.com/KurtisStirling/Bitcoin-Knots-Brand/commits?author=KurtisStirling

- kwsantiago created this pull request, which has not yet been merged: https://github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin/pull/154

I am grateful that Knots exists for several reasons. One is as a useful social signal: many of the people frustrated by the predominant attitude toward spam in bitcoin opt to signal that frustration by switching to Knots; some make it their first node. I think that is a good thing, and strengthens bitcoin both socially and in terms of network health. I also think the default mempool policy in Knots is wiser than the one in Core.

That said, I do not personally use Knots. I often use Core to test my software and ensure it can work on mainnet.

Update: I found 10! nostr:nevent1qy28wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hsqg8sqwre876myrhquxq53x9g4jtqtm6a8jeekw338m5fcsg4hde9nc2sprae

At least 10 devs deliberately contribute to Knots:

1 x.com/LukeDashjr, https://github.com/luke-jr

2 x.com/leo_haf, https://github.com/retropex

3 x.com/bigshiny90, https://github.com/bigshiny90

4 x.com/009Ataraxi71445, https://github.com/ataraxia009

5 https://github.com/pithosian

6 x.com/cguida6, https://github.com/chrisguida

7 x.com/1440000bytes, https://github.com/1440000bytes

8 x.com/dr0ther, https://github.com/dr0ther

9 x.com/Kurtis_NZ, https://github.com/KurtisStirling

10 https://github.com/kwsantiago

Any others?

This ataraxia? https://x.com/009Ataraxi71445

Does he have a github or other link where I cam view his contributions?

The myth is busted

nostr:nevent1qqsf2v2esljdpprxz66y3s2apzj8he8ehngv9dkehrn6qe3u5kqz52gpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgszrqlfgavys8g0zf8mmy79dn92ghn723wwawx49py0nqjn7jtmjagrqsqqqqqp90w0as

I have identified 3 c++ devs who intentionally work on Knots:

1. Luke Dashjr (x.com/LukeDashjr, github.com/luke-jr)

2. Retropex (x.com/leo_haf, github.com/retropex)

3. Bigshiny90 (x.com/bigshiny90, github.com/bigshiny90)

Anyone else? I hope at least 15 people do so.

It looks to me like there are at least two contributors to Knots: Luke and Retroplex. I am hoping to find at least 13 more. nostr:nevent1qqsdx7np8y4hnc5nne9du23v4y25edky4gr6xvznadsq06zyhqd966spr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgszrqlfgavys8g0zf8mmy79dn92ghn723wwawx49py0nqjn7jtmjagrqsqqqqqpghe4vy