An aspirational goal for Civ Kit
Observation
A large or majority portion of people I interact with engage in illicit trade of some form. For some, this is buying drugs, for others its streaming/torrenting pirated movies, still others are interested in or have purchased 3d printed gun parts. I know multiple people who sold drugs on the silk road for bitcoin, still holding that bitcoin today despite not having a particular ideological conviction to it. Many of the younger crowd are buying/reselling the "flipper zero", and are already familiar with crypto.
Analysis
This activity is not going anywhere, and is a more organic market than I think can be provided by a pure maxi crowd. These goods and services are always in demand, and while you may lament their prevalence, the state has no business in regulating them. Just like bitcoin is most needed by dissidents, so too is a censorship resistant marketplace. If your plan is to sell a hand carved chair, then more power to you, but Craigslist works for that already.
An aspirational goal
Civ Kit should support the same goods and services as the silk road, with all the lightning integrations, federated relays, and tech goodness that we have to offer. Users should be able to shop around using a movie name or magnet link, with relays offering competitive freemium models, where ads for 3d printed guns and drugs can be inserted into a movie stream.
Bitcoin Dev News
Bitcoin Core Maintainer Communication Issues
April 18, 2023
lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-April/021565.html
*Views expressed are not my own*
Michael Folkson has issued a criticism of the Bitcoin Core Dev team. There is a lack of communication regarding the decision making process maintainers are undergoing around merging updates to Bitcoin Core, where allegedly much of the discussion is being conducted in private IRC channels.
-A request to add Vasil Dimov as a maintainer was left publicly unacknowledged by maintainers fanquake and Gloria for an extended period of time.
-A request to merge CTV caused unnecessary drama around a contentious soft-fork; Core had signaled a general support of CTV conceptually, but failed to make it clear that the consensus change was not yet ready to be merged.
Folkson goes on to explain that launching new code on testnet alone isn't sufficient to prepare consensus changes, and recommends greater transparency from bitcoin core maintainers.
Grey
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Bitcoin-Dev News
Civ Kit
April 18, 2023
lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-April/021556.html
*Views expressed are not my own*
Antoine Riard, Nicholas Gregory, and Ray Youssef have released a whitepaper and plans for Civ Kit, a peer-to-peer market system built on Nostr and Lightning.
Market boards will be comprised of Nostr relays with Lightning integrations, and will operate in competition. Initially, this will provide new on-ramps and off-ramps for bitcoin trading, but can be expanded to offer a variety of goods and services, including bitcoin derivative contracts. Contracts can be arbitrated through moderators and "know your peer" oracles. Participants can be scored using a "web-of-stakes" to establish reputations for fair play.
Grey
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Hello Nostr,
I am Grey, and today I am launching a project to cover developments and discussions regarding the bitcoin-dev mailing list, these posts will be titled "Bitcoin-Dev News". I will begin this project by providing (hopefully) unbiased coverage of what participants have to say and the arguements they posit. In the future editorialization may be added, this distinction will be made clear to readers; I am certainly not without my own opinions, but I fear we face growing polarization and drama in the bitcoin sphere, so I would like to begin by helping everyone understand the nuance of each others opinions in a fair and non-egotistical way.
Additional projects are pending, branching into educational topics to increase the level of knowledge (LOK) of our community as a whole is high on my list, as well as covering other areas like the cypherpunks mailing list. Finding a jumping-off point can be difficult, and I figure this might be a nice niche to get me into the groove of things.
I welcome criticism and suggestions, this is for you, the community, not for me. I have a day job, I have aliases for engaging in less critical activities. If you ever feel like I have misrepresented your views, or that I am offering a less than charitable interpretation then I would love to make amends and retractions.
Feel free to DM me or send me an email at professorgrey@protonmail.com.
Regards,
Grey