Does Predyx Markets have an option for someone who thinks defaults on mortgages for corporate offices will increase dramatically over the next two years? Something like the credit default swaps in The Big Short, but for corporate mortgages this time instead of home mortgages

I was watching this video about the subject on nostr, and it sounded like you need millions of dollars to buy these credit default swaps:

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq3n0ywvjmahxdt4vxkuulsmxk37gczyd73nj20wnc9svg05gg7y3qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq36amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wvf5hgcm0d9hx2u3wwdhkx6tpdshsqgpam0t2fy3jlnmez2uszqej68tgsdw76q03pmrhw8uzktx72um85q774s4g

Maybe something like predyx could make it more accessible. The market could also be attractive to folks who think the "collapse is imminent" crowd is too early. E.g. maybe the mortgage defaults will be prevented due to bailouts, or maybe new laws will be passed that require extensions on the repayment deadlines. Some people might take both sides of this trade.

My latest essay is about bitvm. I outline how two bitvm firms plan to use a very expensive mitigation of the "data availability problem" in their sidechains, and I propose an improvement based on one of the lightning network's best cost-saving features.

https://telegra.ph/A-forthcoming-problem-with-bitvm-11-21

I would go with Ocean personally, but I would switch if they seem about to start enforcing a UASF

Oh yeah, I didn't notice that *all* hashrate went down this week

So one might think it could just be that

But I don't think so, as it's not just that their hashrate fell -- they are also mining fewer blocks than their peers

I guess it could just be a combination of "lots of miners are switching off AND they are having bad luck" but I think my alternative hypothesis is worth putting out there

Maybe

TLDR: Ocean lost hashrate

A couple of weeks ago, Ocean pool's hashrate was on the rise, and they briefly touched 20 exahash -- almost 2% of the total. But since then, they've been on a decline, even getting as low as 10 exahash this week.

Why are miners dumping Ocean? I can't say for sure, but if I had to guess, I would guess it is because some of Ocean's major personnel (Luke Dashjr, Bitcoin Mechanic) are seen as champions of a controversial UASF called BIP-RDTS.

(Weirdly, I am also seen as a champion of this proposal, even though I have publicly stated my opposition to it several times.) Miners may be worried that Ocean will start enforcing this soft fork and they could end up on a bitcoin fork with a minority of hashrate.

But it's sad because Ocean is the only pool on bitcoin that currently lets miners mine their own block templates, other than some "solo pool" options. There are two other pools -- Braiins and Demand Pool -- which have *said* they will offer this feature at some point, but they do not seem to currently do so.

As a result, if you are a miner and want to mine your own block templates, Ocean is currently the only way to do it in a semi-normal pooled setting. But there may be a UASF stigma associated with them now, and many miners seem to be abandoning them. Hopefully Braiins Pool starts offering miner-controlled templates soon.

Mempool filters are primarily for filtering "your" mempool, not the blockchain

But they sometimes start affecting the blockchain too, if widely used

> You do not have to follow along with the false doomerism of the "it's inevitable, there's nothing you can do about it" crowd. They are wrong, and every available piece of objective data proves them wrong.

A thread about chainspam: https://supertestnet.github.io/nostr_threads/#nevent=nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqgvra9r4sjqapufyl0vnc4kv4fz70e29em4c655y37vz206f0wt4qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qgawaehxw309ahx7um5wfjkccte9e3kjunrw4kjuumsv93k2tcqyzyxeq9n7qpn5kaazg5x4z8gnyejrmljje5k8dch4xjyj86dq2nxk5jq8eh

> Hello Super Testnet, hypothetical question and train of thought

Thanks! Happy to reply

> The max blocksize is 4 Mb, right?

Yes

> The spammers are spamming and loading up jpegs, right?

Correct

> They are stored forever and this kinda sucks

I agree

> But it is within the 4Mb limit

Yup

> So technical consensus and developers and node runners should have been expecting to receive and store 4 MB blocks

Naturally

> Are these always monetary transactions if somebody uploads a picture of a dickbutt? I don’t know, probably not

Sounds about right. Some of the data contained in some transactions is probably do not monetary data. Sometimes it is a picture.

> But it’s not really ‘bloating’ the blockchain, since we all were expecting ( or preparing to be ready) for 4MB blocks anyway

I disagree. I often use the analogy of a Justin Bieber fansite to discuss this. If I ran a Justin Bieber fansite, I would want certain content on my server, namely, content about Justin Bieber. If it had a forum, I would want my users to create threads and posts about Justin Bieber. Suppose one day I log into my admin dashboard and see that a bunch of posts contain little to nothing about Justin Bieber, and are basically just a transport for embedded NFT image data -- "Bored Apes," for example.

Upon investigation, suppose I find that a bunch of NFT sellers decided to host their image data on my Justin Bieber server because it offers free storage. Maybe they even only host it there temporarily -- e.g. maybe they delete it once someone purchases it. Even so, I would naturally oppose this: it's not what my server is *for.* And it would be silly for them to argue, "We're staying within your image upload limits, so it's not *really* bloating your server. Suck it up! You can't stop us anyway." They would be wrong in several ways: the images *do* bloat my server by being content I don't want to store even for a second, and I *can* fight back by applying content filters to my server. I am also perfectly within my rights to do so, as the admin of that server.

The same applies to bitcoin's mempool. You are the admin of your mempool. You get to decide what it's for. If you do not intend it for relaying jpegs, then every jpeg in your mempool is a technical problem. And you have options to fight back, including by applying filters to your mempool, which objectively reduces the amount of spam you relay. You do not have to follow along with the false doomerism of the "it's inevitable, there's nothing you can do about it" crowd. They are wrong, and every available piece of objective data proves them wrong. Mempool filters work at their primary job, which is to filter your mempool, thereby improving the performance of your node, and making it match more closely with the desires of those who use the filters.

If there was no mempool, users would post txs to each known miner, costing much bandwidth

Someone would thus *invent* a mempool for all txs to be posted to one place

And if it was decentralized, some would want spam filters in theirs

Thus filters are a technical solution

Filters help

https://supertestnet.github.io/spam_tester/

Broke: Bitcoin doesn't use encryption

Woke: Bitcoin is the *only* top 10 cryptocurrency that uses encryption

source: https://bips.dev/324

One of the best projects I made in the nwc space was my nwc tester: https://github.com/supertestnet/nwc_tester

It lets nwc devs test their apps for compatibility with various nwc specs.

I think it would be very cool to have a similar app for testing compatibility with various cashu nut specs: https://cashubtc.github.io/nuts/

State of BIP444

https://video.nostr.build/ac8e93062dffa438e1625d8261779a41c69cfffbaa11d8fcc0d220c39b7fdd59.mp4

It seems to have about 12 active developers who deliberately contribute to it

That is a lot different from having 1 such developer, but it's still not enough to be safe imo

It is also good that much of the code is the same as what's in Core, it means a lot of the review effort put into Core helps Knots too

Zeus wallet uses my zaplocker protocol to get close to this in a lightning compatible way

Matt Corallo also has a spec for this that is better than zaplocker, but it is not adopted yet

See also my hedgehog protocol -- that's not lightning though

He said self custodial

Spark is maybe-self-custodial, depends on whether the operator repeatedly deletes his keys as he promises to do

I wouldn't say it works "perfectly" Bob

The recipient has to be online

Congratulations Ocean Mining! They hit a new all time high hashrate today -- over 20 exahash -- and put it to work by mining 10 datum blocks in the past 3.5 days.

> 1. But this is making assumptions on why other people run nodes, right?

Yes. The specific assumption is: some people run a node with a mempool to help relay some other transactions on the network, but do not want to extend that help to spam transactions.

> I don't think you can honestly argue that 1MB of OP_RETURNS is worse for the performance of your node than 1MB (or more) of data in any other part of a block?

If the data was identical, and if I was excluded from using the argument about base space being more valuable than witness space (to be considered in the next paragraph), then I would not object to the statement that 1MB of OP_RETURNS do no further harm to a node's performance than the same data in another part of a block.

> Do you think spam will persistently outbid monetary transactions for block space?

I do not think so because I do not think I am a reliable predictor of the future. But if I thought I could reliably predict that nothing will change, then I would also predict that spam will often outbid monetary transactions in the future, because I think they often do so in the present.