My latest invention is Lotto Miner, a webapp where you can attempt to mine a bitcoin block in your browser and put the block reward directly in a bitcoin address of your choice. You can also mine on regtest, where you are more likely to succeed. Try it here:

Lotto Miner

Video demo: The difficulty setting is low at first, but you can increase it til it matches that of the real bitcoin network. Raising the difficulty will take increasingly more work and, probably, more time. The source code is:

GitHub

GitHub - supertestnet/lotto_miner: Playground for solo-mining bitcoin on regtest and mainnet

Playground for solo-mining bitcoin on regtest and mainnet - supertestnet/lotto_miner

I made this to help folks learn how bitcoin's difficulty assessment algorithm works and gain an appreciation for how much work goes into mining bitcoin blocks. Also, I'm not aware of any open source tools for creating custom bitcoin block templates on regtest, and this is a starting point for such a tool. The codebase is pretty small and since it produces valid regtest blocks, devs should be able to customize it to suit their regtest needs. Try it out and have fun!

Lotto Miner

My two latest inventions are Node Faker, which simulates bitcoin-cli and bitcoind in the browser (via javascript), and Wild Explorer, which is a block explorer that talks to Node Faker to get its blockchain data For more info, see their respective githubs: Node Faker:

GitHub

GitHub - supertestnet/node_faker: Emulate bitcoind and bitcoin-cli in the browser

Emulate bitcoind and bitcoin-cli in the browser. Contribute to supertestnet/node_faker development by creating an account on GitHub.

Wild Explorer:

GitHub

GitHub - supertestnet/wild_explorer: A bitcoin block explorer built on top of my node_faker project

A bitcoin block explorer built on top of my node_faker project - supertestnet/wild_explorer

The consensus rules have always been about morality One charge that's frequently levied at knotzis is that any attempt to reject spam at the consensus level is based on "moral" objections to spam transactions instead of "technical" objections. One problem with this argument is that *many* consensus rules are based on moral objections to potential transactions: - no doublespending? It's there to prevent "fraud" - the 21 million cap? It's there to block "inflation" - proof of work? It's there to ensure "honesty" Those are the words Satoshi used to motivate the "rules and incentives...enforced [via bitcoin's] consensus mechanism" (the bitcoin whitepaper), and I think they resonate with many of us. So yeah, "spam is illegitimate" is a moral claim. And if we enforce it, it will be one of several moral claims enforced at the consensus level. Because that's what bitcoin is for: to create a monetary system that is fundamentally *more moral* (in certain ways) than the alternatives. Spam limits, if they become consensus, are just more moral bricks in the wall.

Despite a significant drawdown in hashrate this week, Ocean got really lucky in terms of finding actual blocks. Today, specifically, they mined 7 blocks, giving them a *measured* hashrate of about 52 exahash -- even though their real hashrate is hovering around 15 exahash.

You cannot have a permissionless protocol without censorship A protocol is defined by the data not permitted No censorship, no protocol

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: View quoted note → 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.

Telegraph

A forthcoming problem with bitvm

Introduction In the past few months, several bitvm companies announced preparations for launching on mainnet, and I began to research their plans. ...

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.

> 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:

Threads

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

Spam Tester

Broke: Bitcoin doesn't use encryption Woke: Bitcoin is the *only* top 10 cryptocurrency that uses encryption source:

BIP 324: Version 2 P2P Encrypted Transport Protocol

Read BIPs like a pro.