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Brizkit
78627eee4ba5cf966e40a0d191f1f1b1ce5525b03463487c4289da43b3ee8fae
Ramblings from the based-ment brizkit@strike.me
Replying to Avatar Gigi

Never going back

I can’t ever go too long without playing a map strategy game haha. Newest crush is Beyond All Reason

Replying to Avatar SuiGenerisJohn

nostr:npub1cj8znuztfqkvq89pl8hceph0svvvqk0qay6nydgk9uyq7fhpfsgsqwrz4u nostr:npub14uhkst639zvc2trx2nlsvk4yqkjp690zk89keytnzgmq2az0qmnq58ez89. I loved your rip gentlemen. As a new father myself, it was nice to hear you two reflect on the first stages of new fatherhood. Dads need other dads to talk to more than we even know!

Father of 5 here, oldest us 20. AMA

Best nostr-zap compatible lighting wallet?

Replying to Avatar Marty Bent

For the last few months many people in bitcoin, myself included, have been focused on bitcoin's role as a macroeconomic asset. Bitcoin as a strategic reserve for the US government. Bitcoin as a strategic treasury asset for corporations. Bitcoin as a geopolitical hedge in a world that is trending toward a multi-polar power dynamic. This is where the focus has been. And for good reason. These trends will ultimately have a material effect on the price of bitcoin if they pick up steam.

However, with all of the focus on bitcoin as a strategic asset I think a couple of technical developments and trends have been overlooked. Particularly in the realm of second layer privacy. I'll touch on two of them in this letter; BOLT 12 invoices and the progression of ecash.

Yesterday afternoon the Strike (a company Ten31 is very proud to be backing) team released a blog post that detailed their journey to implementing BOLT 12 offers in their product stack. For those who are unaware of BOLT 12 and why it is important, in short, it is an upgrade to the lightning network that would make receiving bitcoin on the lightning network more private while also significantly improving the user experience. The current standard for invoicing people via the lightning network is BOLT 11, which forces users to create a unique invoice every time they want to receive bitcoin and comes with privacy tradeoffs for the party receiving bitcoin.

BOLT 12 brings with it route blinding which allows a receiver to publish a lightning offer to the network without revealing their node's public key. It also brings with it onion messaging, which allows users of the lightning network to communicate without a dependence on HTTP, which can be censored by a motivated state actor. On top of this, it enables users to create a static invoice that can be paid multiple times by multiple people. Think of a band putting their Venmo or Cash App QR code next to their tip jar on the stage. They'll be able to add a private lightning invoice their audience can pay to now.

https://strike.me/blog/bolt12-offers/

As it stands right now, Strike has only enabled BOLT 12 offers and there is work to do at the protocol layer of lightning and the different implementations of that protocol to get the full benefits of BOLT 12, but this is material progress that gets us closer to a significantly better user experience on the lightning network. If you read Strike's blog post you'll come to appreciate the collaboration between the teams working on these implementations and the companies implementing the protocol that is necessary to get these features live. Shout out to everyone who worked on this. Everyone who uses the lightning network will be better off when BOLT 12 is fully implemented.

Moving on. Earlier today the founder of the BTCPay Server open source project, Nicolas Dorier, published a blog post outlining his thoughts on how ecash has the potential to solve problems that many have tried to solve by launching their own blockchains in the past. The problem with trying to "blockchain the world" is that blockchains are very inefficient and only really work for one application; enabling a peer-to-peer digital cash system with no trusted third parties (i.e., bitcoin). However, the ultimate goals of the thousands of blockchain projects that spun up in bitcoin's wake are desirable. Cheap, private and instant transactions. The ability to trivially spin up private money tokens suited for very particular use cases. Overall great UX that makes it easy for people to realize the benefits of "blockchain technology".

The problem that has existed to date is that you don't need a blockchain for all of these things. In fact, having a blockchain for these things proves to be detrimental to their ultimate goals. Instead, what people really need is a protocol that gives you the granular control, privacy, instantaneous transactions and UX that anchors to bitcoin. This is exactly what Chaumian Mints bring to the bitcoin stack.

This is something that we've been screaming about for more than seven years in this rag. Now with ecash protocols like Cashu and Fedimint maturing, gaining traction and bringing products to market that highlight the power and flexibility of ecash systems, people are beginning to see the promise. It is only a matter of time before more and more people begin to realize this potential.

Another benefit of ecash protocols is the fact that they are siloed from each other. Ecash mints are permissionless; any one person or group of people can spin them up, offer their preferred services and maintain (or fail to maintain) their mints. The failure of one mint is not a systemic risk to other mints. This is very different from token projects that are spun up on blockchains. The last ten years have proven that individual token projects can prove to be systemic problems for individual blockchains (i.e., The DAO token on Ethereum). Being able to silo mints is the only way to ensure that the utility of ecash overall is actually scalable and robust.

Don't get so distracted by the bitcoin macro talk that you miss out on the incredible technical developments happening on top of and adjacent to bitcoin.

---

Final thought...

Vibes are high.

I really like the idea of Fedimint. But I am not technical enough to create my own server set up. hopefully soon they will have the ability in the app to press a button or two and create your own mint. Until then I’ll have to standby and watch.

I think it’s important for people to realize that you don’t have to grow all your own food to make this reality. Everyone should specialize in an area that they have a competitive advantage in and everyone benefits each other.

Personally through a lot of trial and error I’ve found that I do best with raising bees and chickens for eggs, other people will have gardens others will have orchards others will produce milk from goats or cows and on and on just find your little niche and become an expert in that.

nostr:note13fkcrydke59wsxd7wvzpp570pw7myfgsxvfrs3nwq5arng38ruqsx6mj9c

Replying to Avatar Avi Burra

Only seems to be an issue on nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg

Don’t see this on Damus or Nostur

nostr:note1tc3wcd0tpqz0r3q6cl63dhq83yzf9j4ky0vq4v43245x3alvwcqswug7v8

I’m liking Nostur best so far

Woke up last night to hear mychickens squawking. We’ve been having eggs get eaten so I knew something must be wrong. Walk out there in my bathroom in the dark with a flashlight and luckily I see the skunk before it sees me ran back inside and got my 22 rifle, came out and shot it while my wife held the flashlight for me.

It was a great shot got it right through the head instant kill. But skunks must have some sort of death release because it definitely sprayed and while it didn’t directly hit me it’s almost as bad just from being 20 feet from it.

Total Annihilation was peak RTS

Prayer is the beginning of Faith

The ancient board game Go is a brain and emotion training tool

Replying to Avatar Logan

On Tim Walz and his repeated digs at J.D. Vance for getting an education and making some money:

I was born and raised in a small rural town near the Appalachian Mountains, 2 hrs from the nearest major city. Still work in this town today.

My father was born and raised in an even smaller town, even more rural town with a population under 2,000.

I have three degrees from three elite institutions because my folks believed in aspiring to education, that it opened doors, created opportunities, and allowed you to experience more of the world. They instilled that in me.

I am a cocktail of my upbringing and my education.

I shoot guns, and I quote Shakespeare.

I eat venison, and I think about Dostoyevsky.

I am comfortable in both Waylon Jennings and Mozart, Steve Earle and Alice Coltrane.

I can cite Luke Combs and Lou Reed, wax poetic about Top Gun and Le Mepris.

I buy food (and milk) from farmers.

I am an attorney, yes, and my J.D. is from an elite institution. I represent the blue-collar folks of my hometown.

I am neither a supremacist, nor a relativist.

I am a dad and a husband.

I am a #bitcoin er

All my life I have had one foot in the ethos and spirit of my rural hometown and the other in the rarefied echelons of the elitely educated, the financially successful, and the well-connected. It's not always comfortable.

All my life I have climbed, my folks sacrificed and pushed me to climb and to aspire. "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," to quote Tennyson (see, I told you I can do that).

And all my life I have kept my upbringing close to me, because it is a part of me. I don't shed my lived experience, nor do I forfeit its imprint, its impact, simply because I pursued the best education and got a professional job. The validity of my experience does not expire upon achievement.

So when Tim Walz repeatedly attempts to invalidate J.D. Vance’s upbringing, to cast him as some inherently callous, rich interloper, out of touch with the "heartland" simply because he pursued the best education he could and made some money, it bothers me on a deep, personal level.

In the Walz taxonomy, which is binary, but only binary for non-Democrats apparently, financial success or an Ivy-League education, automatically and irrevocably renders one out of touch with "regular" people. Further, aspirations to these things are no longer to be applauded; they're punchlines in campaign speeches.

Never mind the financial success and education of the Obamas, the Clintons, Kamala Harris, Oprah, etc. This does not invalidate their respective experiences, the journeys they each took to get there.

Only if you're J.D. Vance does success actually make you a charlatan to yourself, an interloper in your own life, an enemy to your past.

It's not right. We should be applauding folks, no matter their race or political affiliation, for aspiring, for traversing the brutal terrain of class, region and familial afflictions and making it.

You may agree or disagree with J.D. on the issues, of course. That's perfectly fine.

But dismissing him simply because he managed to go to Yale (like so many Dems, by the way, who readily purport to be regular, working class heroes), or because he majored in philosophy, or because he eventually worked in finance and made some money, is craven, disingenuous, breathtakingly lacking in self-awareness, and offensive to anyone who has actually grown up in the "heartland," myself included.

Like so many other Americans, I contain multitudes, Tim Walz, but your taxonomy apparently doesn't allow that.

Well written thanks for sharing your perspective