Is this a risk to bitcoin core too?

Matt, for point five. My client moved the note link to the bottom and not under point 5 where I put it. If you can’t find it, just let me know. 🙏

Thank you Matt 🙏

Here’s my thought process and why I push back on CTV / CAT, etc.

1. Bitcoin is our hope for the future. We can’t mess it up. We must be careful and be long-term thinkers. We can’t rush or take unnecessary risks. We’ve seen first hand how changes to ethereum have increased centralization. We don’t want to make those same mistakes for the sake of “innovation”. Which is why the ethereum devs made those changes too.

2. Any change to the core protocol is risky. Even the best devs are not omniscient. Code can have bugs and unintended side effects. For example, I believe the witness discount with segwit was a mistake and inadvertently encouraged blocks filled with jpeg spam which harmed node decentralization.

3. Because changes have unknown risks, we should only make them when we believe the change is both necessary and safe. When I say “necessary” I mean solving an existential problem that we believe cannot be solved in any other way. “Safe” means that we believe it to be safe and have reduced the attack surface as narrowly as we can to limit unintended side effects.

4. I believe that CTV / CAT are both unnecessary at this time and potentially dangerous.

5. I’ve explained here why I believe they are potentially dangerous

nostr:note1p90z8y2mvumnmuv3esgupt4ueqreklk8yxcf9lkvnn0gyldu88uq5xpyh6

6. Most advocates point to CTV and CAT as helping to solve bitcoin scaling and payment non-interactivity. For a variety of reasons, I believe these are nice to have but unnecessary at this time. It’s possible that we will need these features in the future but we don’t right now. There are also alternatives that devs haven’t yet explored which I believe they should do before proposing a core protocol change.

So to summarize, i do appreciate the many positive features that CTV and CAT offer. It’s just that I believe the changes are not necessary at this time and potentially dangerous.

Thanks again for the link. Happy to dive into any of these points in more detail, if you wish.

Wow, did you really just ask me to dox myself? I guess you must be new here. 😆You know, you could just ask me technical questions.

Regarding whether Liquid is an L2… It’s amusing that you would argue the point pedantically given that there is no established definition.

If you want, you can listen to Adam Back and Sampson Mow describe liquid as a layer 2 here, right around the 4:00 mark. They should know, right?

https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/liquid-bitcoin-with-adam-back-samson-mow

Anyway, back to the main topic. I’ll walk you through, step by step, why CAT / CTV create centralizing incentives for miners…

First, did you see Peter Todd’s report?

nostr:note1num4zp4qefrxtehc6gn8e7p0n43pcaawmkd0cctslvjz58lcvdqs5euxr9

In his report, Peter admits that both CAT and CTV add risks. He says:

“Unlike OP_CAT, CTV doesn’t appear to raise much risk of unintended consequences beyond encouraging out-of-band fee payments in certain cases. This isn’t ideal.”

The risk that Peter identified for CTV is “encouraging out of band fee payments”.

(If you’d like, just ask and I’ll explain WHY CTV encourages out of band fee payments.)

In case you’re unfamiliar, this is an example of private out of band payments to miners.

Eg, MARA’s Slipstream API:

https://x.com/JStefanop1/status/1760764664651133162

Next, why are out of band payments risky?

Here’s Matt Corallo explaining why these can motivate miner centralization:

https://x.com/TheBlueMatt/status/1780558009841643833

Matt argues that these payments to miners are a risk because they encourage centralization:

“More recently, out of band payments to miners have become popular again, allowing individuals to pay large pools for the inclusion of their transaction(s) using payments outside of the normal bitcoin transaction fee. This can create substantial MEVil [centralization MEV risk] […]”

So to recap, Peter admits that CAT / CTV can encourage out of band payments to miners. Matt explains that these payments can encourage miner centralization.

You said I was “grossly misinformed”, and “completely wrong”. I’ve provided you direct quotes from notable devs.

Ok, now your turn. Explain how I got it wrong and why you believe CTV or CAT “will help to decentralize mining pools”.

I’m hoping you’ll be able to respond with a reasonable rebuttal 🙏 so I might learn if I missed something. But I suspect you’re just mindlessly parroting what you heard. I hope you prove me wrong.

If you don’t respond, we’ll both know who didn’t do any research. 🫡

They’re working fast. 3 days from start to LLM integration. If they want to escalate, they can attack DMs and new users.

nostr:note1m37szazusmfvg4nf9rrqcr55t7tgapp484ehgzft7wespmc74wxsw82nmn

I found both extremely thought provoking but still really haven’t figured out what to make of it yet.

When I study historical events, I try to learn why decisions were made to better predict how people may respond to similar future events.

One thing I had never realized before but the “national socialist” party that the Nazi’s called themselves was anti-communist. I had assumed the nazi’s were socialist.

The other aspect that I never knew was the connection in hitler’s mind between Jews and communism. And it wasn’t just Hitler who harbored that belief. Churchill seemed to too!

I did a few searches and also learned that this is a “conspiracy theory”. I don’t know yet whether it is true or not, but it does seem that leaders on both sides of the battle seemed to believe it.

Did Germany in WWII believe it was fighting an anti-woke, anti-communist crusade??

I get now why people on the left compare Trump to Hitler. Nationalist, anti-woke, authoritarian.

Like I said, all very thought provoking.

I read the post on HIV. I asked about covid and saw no note about covid with references. You just said it was a “conspiracy theory” and provided no evidence in response. When I asked you said the discussion was “unsustainable”.

Was there a post about covid with references that I missed?

Which part?

Two (long but interesting) takes on historical events.

Why hitler hated communists and the Jews:

https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/the-managerial-minority-adolf-hitler

Also, Tucker had this historian on to a lot of backlash but was an interesting discussion. The question that made me think: Why did these people act the way they did?

https://youtu.be/vOTgPEGYS2o

The risk that proponents never address is that these proposals could harm the decentralization of bitcoin’s mining.

Changes to bitcoin’s core protocol must be both safe and necessary. We can’t take unnecessary risks with the world’s money and our hope for the future.

Devs should use these proposed features first on Liquid (where mining centralization is not a concern) and then only propose them for bitcoin if they are truly necessary.

nostr:note16j54dzpscvhsfqa4jyw8z0d3cwjufpvn4h3g4qc8wx4yc38cnvvqh88kms

Why we don’t need op_cat, op_ctv or anything else so that we can open many lightning channels at once.

Maybe we’ll need that someday when plebs prefer self-sovereign lightning over custodial lightning. But that day is not today. nostr:note126yvffsclhurzvam2gcwx0enn53r4vn9u29hq5j47vme9z86dylqs28qa3

Interesting how you claim to be a specialist and you refuse to provide ANY evidence to support your claim. Disappointing.

I view it the same way. The system lurches between liquidity injections and liquidity crises. We’re in an induced liquidity crisis now. They’ll inject more liquidity soon.

Yeah, I’ve done a lot of research and am a developer.

I’ve written a lot of research on the topic already. You can start here and review my threads.

nostr:note1w0l22lnspmz86a6un0w52mssv22skgltyhhwmuuqf0ph0qwmd4cqjwrvd9

I’m happy to debate anything.

Liquid is an L2 because it operates as a secondary network on top of bitcoin, inheriting its security guarantees. Both lightning and liquid operate through two-way pegs from bitcoin. Sidechains can be secondary layers too, ya know.

We don’t need the ability to open a million lightning channels right now. Maybe people will want to use self-custodial lightning in the future, but they clearly don’t right now. You can ask the Mutiny devs if you’re unclear why.

nostr:note1wr4xrsnv5ztma2ec6ktt3srzmu6ufuwhhcaeac4tc8pcggr8dd3stxgyku

What evidence do you have that it is natural and not from a lab?

https://x.com/EMM_386/status/1830672531604533651#m

Are you saying that there is no evidence that the virus was modified by humans?

The Defuse proposal?

Ecohealth Alliance?

The furin cleavage site?

Etc.

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-war-against-the-lab-leak-hypothesis/

My thoughts exactly. Both are a waste of money. Ukraine was unnecessary and was provoked to boost military spending in the 🇺🇸 while harming Russia. I’m sure a lot of secret billionaires were made from the graft. Nobody cared about the Ukrainian lives lost.

Fix the money, fix the world.

What’s happening now in the profession regarding gain of function experiments? Is there any recognition that, in all likelihood, the scientists caused covid?