Maybe I misinterpreted your OP, I thought you were saying black rock would be denied.

I dont use primal and will reserve my opinions, but I'm very glad to see you guys responding to the criticisms in what at least appears the best way possible. I wish you nothing but success, contingent on the validity of the improvements you have made, and in spite of me preferring to continue without algorithmic enhancement. A good algorithm could boost engagement for new users, so I hope this will be a benefit to us all.

What's your base case for the sec denying black rock?

I've been discussing the topic with a few of the drive chain supporters and read up on it. I'm not sure if it requires much complexity aside from a new transaction type and the risk associated with it. The most coherent benefit I see is that it would provide a monero side chain validated on bitcoin, or other features we don't want to pollute block space with, maybe we get a near term solution to covenants that doesn't put the main chain at risk and let's us test the space out with real bitcoin value rather than litecoin or a testnet. I'm still trying to come to a conclusion on this, could you elaborate on your concerns?

The risk is in loaning n money to 10 people (10n) without interest and one of them not paying you back, you only receive 9n back. You would have been better off not loaning it at all under every circumstance. Compare this to loaning 10 people n money and charging x interest, if one bails on you then you receive 9nx back, and lenders set x to ensure 9nx is higher than 10n.

I think I can see your guys point on not making loans for consumer spending or even a home loan, because they don't generate a cash flow, I'm not sure I'd call it evil but something does seem up with it. Loans for equity do make more sense.

I think the distinction is if the thing you are invested in creates an equity or cash flow. A business loan that results in a cash flow is OK. A credit card loan to buy bread is not. There's probably some margins that would need to be analysed like a car loan, which increases a persons ability to generate money, whereas a home loan is probably more clearly usery.

So a home loan is a no go, because the money is consumed and it doesn't generate a cash flow. A business loan where you expect to receive equity/cash flow is OK. I listened to saifadeans take and was having trouble understanding his point, but this makes a bit of sense.

Interesting that you call it an investment and not something else like a donation. I guess when you build your families home that's an investment in your families future that pays its dividends in psychic profit, same with building a community, so I guess it checks out. How do you distinguish this from investing in a business that has a cash flow, is it just in how it pays out? 🤔

Every person discounts the future, some more, some less, but everyone does it. If you want to borrow my money for a year, there is an opportunity cost for me to loan it to you, I could use that elsewhere, and loaning it to you for a year means I need to wait that time to get my money back and use it. Further, without interest, how am I supposed to cover the risk of loaning to you? If you lose my money then its simply gone, if I make loans to 10 people with interest and one fails I could still be OK. If your argument is that loans should only be made between friends and family members then OK, I am just skeptical that society will progress very quickly.

It certainly seems like its better than an atomic swap on bitcoin to monero, because in those you need someone on the other side and you have an anonymity set of few people. Falling asleep trying to get through guys take, I did find a few things wrong with his analysis already though, I'll have to try again tomorrow. I can understand the idea of wanting a way to test new features in a way that has real economic impact without risking the network, I still think that's what litecoin is for, but maybe there's a point between *this is highly experimental* and *we are ready to merge this with core*, maybe a *this has covenants enabled and people are using it for some advanced custody stuff that most people aren't ready for* or something, and litecoin just doesn't fit the bill.

I am probably most concerned about those other projects, I suspect there may be a tail risk to bitcoin being ossified before a few major updates, because people would rather use a side chain instead.

I imagine you could create a sodechain with 10MB blocks and it would run just fine, the fees would be nonexistent, the transactions per second would be huge, it would still be pegged 1-1 with bitcoin, it would take years before bandwidth or storage would be an issue. Everything sounds great, I'd even argue that such a thing is necessary whether its us increasing the L1 block size or a side chain. However, that is still not a solution to scaling bitcoin to 8 billion people, even if you put lightning on top. There are other upgrades that bitcoin is still going to need to scale that hard, we need people willing to go into the depths of mathematics and cryptography and dig out things like cross input signature aggregation, stuff that condenses data stored on chain to its tiniest possible size; then we can see the maximum benefits from things like side chains or block size increases.

So then, "its not because we want shitcoins on bitcoin", " its not because its fixes scalability", you could use it for testing improvements, but improvements should be carefully designed that we know they work before deployment, we shouldn't be throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. We have litecoin and testnet for those purposes.

What is the argument for drive chains? Its a serious question, I remember in Paul's episode he said its great because it kills shitcoins, but now that'd not the argument, arguments evolve that's fine. But what is the argument today, what do we actually stand to gain? A monero side chain certainly sounds cool, no knocking that, I guess some people really like smart contracts too, is that what you guys are after?

I'm also just not convinced by who an argument manages to trigger, that spells "we need to talk about this" to me.

I believe you. I haven't heard much discussion around it.

To put it in perspective, I spent more time considering a $50 buy for a used computer than I've spent hearing about drive chain, that's a problem. I had hoped to listen to guys take, I think I understand it from a technical perspective, I'm not against the idea, but I have reservations and I'd like to see it discussed some more.

I have no love for influencers. If its 5 years in the future that's great, I'm only concerned because I feel like I heard drive chains on a podcast like once and now out of nowhere its like this has to be done now. I hear these arguements about new bips and its "we've been working on this for x years and its great so were just going to go nuclear", like CTV, bro I've never even heard of this before! Paul explained drive chains once on wbd, and he did a terrible job (not an attack on him, I just had no idea what he was talking about); it was quiet for like 6 months, and now its OK MASF PRESS THE RED BUTTON! Dude, if I had put my phone down during this vacation I'd still have no clue what a drive chain is. All I'm saying is there should be more public awareness campaigning before activating soft forks. I get from some peoples perspective this has been brewing for a long time, but for many of us it hasn't.

Interesting, it looks like these don't get much usage, maybe trying to measure them requires different tools. Eh, I guess if a MASF comes there's nothing I can do about it, I just hope you guys know what you're doing.

A miner activated soft fork can create a new transaction type without everyone else patching their nodes? Can't we just try normal merged mining for a while and not jump to a consensus change for side chains? If miners want to run side chains can't they just run a node for those, is that a bigger ask than pushing a masf? If side chains pick up adoption then drive chains will be an upgrade that saves space on chain so the upgrade will be obvious, and if they don't then we haven't lost anything.

How's it hosted? I thought of relay boards that compete, with a client that allows multiple relays to be selected, local job boards could be made or wider relays for shipped products. Events could also be posted on a board like that.

I think if the core people working on drive chains did as much marketing as Zeus then your fight would be over by now, win or lose. I read the bitcoin mailing list archives for august today, and honestly its got me scared, I really don't want bitcoin to be easier to change. I don't think I'm against drive chains, although I'm not sure if I'd be quick to support them either; it doesn't seem as important as things like cross input signature aggregation or graftroot, and I'd like to see those play out in a more fundamentally bitcoin centric bitcoin before we turn it into a bit of an octupus with drive chains. I don't know.

What I am not understanding about drive chains is why its all or nothing. Couldn't you just as well have normal merge mining today? It would be less efficient, it would require miners to have a separate node, but it would provide some validation to its use case, and the upgrade to blind merge mining seems clearer.