Melvin Carvalho's avatar
Melvin Carvalho _@melvincarvalho.com 1 year ago
Thanks for posting, this is the kind of discussion we need to see more of. Bitcoin has a social contract to its user base. 10s of millions of people view it as a form of money that is better than what they have today. That could grow to 100s of millions. Nobody expected this when bitcoin was created, but that is a sign of incredible success. Protecting those users that have put their trust in bitcoin is obviously something we should do. There's not really a huge apetite in bitcoin for smart contracts. I have a layer 2 smart contract system MVP working, and there's not a lot of interest in the topic. There is a huge amount of (mind-blowing) potential in using the current (U)TXO system which is completely unexplored. I'm deprioritizing any public roll out of smart contracts over bitcoin taproot and nostr, due to lack of interest. I will use them personally though. I know that this works, and it has been relatively unexplored. This area will get better over time. Moral responsibilities are tricky things. Everything is evil from someone's perspective, or something's perspective. UTXOs are already powerful, and under utilized. How would you envision making them more powerful when the surface of what they can do has only been scratched? Be aware that in any project, there are always two groups. One that wants change and one that wants the status quo. Bitcoin is unusual in the fact that stability of the protocol makes it more valuable. Conserving that protocol to date has been done very well, and hard fought, we had to fight 3 civil wars to get where we are today, and the market has responded positively to that. The biggest threat to bitcoin is not a 51% attack, it's a chain split due to a fork or civil war. We have yet to have a successful 51% attack, and that's not to say it cant happen, but we have had chain splits. Chain splits are potentially fatal to bitcoin, so any protocol changes need to take that into account. It is also easy for bitcoin's enemies to agitate on this front, as we have seen recently and turn or frustrate well meening engineers to be frustrated enough to attack the system. We do need better ways of discussing the protocol without it becoming dramatic. I still didnt get from your post how you think UTXOs could be made more powerful. Conversations like this are a good start!
↑ Parent

Replies (3)

₿omboriver's avatar
₿omboriver bomboriver@iris.to 1 year ago
very interesting conversation here... lets continue
Melvin Carvalho's avatar Melvin Carvalho
Thanks for posting, this is the kind of discussion we need to see more of. Bitcoin has a social contract to its user base. 10s of millions of people view it as a form of money that is better than what they have today. That could grow to 100s of millions. Nobody expected this when bitcoin was created, but that is a sign of incredible success. Protecting those users that have put their trust in bitcoin is obviously something we should do. There's not really a huge apetite in bitcoin for smart contracts. I have a layer 2 smart contract system MVP working, and there's not a lot of interest in the topic. There is a huge amount of (mind-blowing) potential in using the current (U)TXO system which is completely unexplored. I'm deprioritizing any public roll out of smart contracts over bitcoin taproot and nostr, due to lack of interest. I will use them personally though. I know that this works, and it has been relatively unexplored. This area will get better over time. Moral responsibilities are tricky things. Everything is evil from someone's perspective, or something's perspective. UTXOs are already powerful, and under utilized. How would you envision making them more powerful when the surface of what they can do has only been scratched? Be aware that in any project, there are always two groups. One that wants change and one that wants the status quo. Bitcoin is unusual in the fact that stability of the protocol makes it more valuable. Conserving that protocol to date has been done very well, and hard fought, we had to fight 3 civil wars to get where we are today, and the market has responded positively to that. The biggest threat to bitcoin is not a 51% attack, it's a chain split due to a fork or civil war. We have yet to have a successful 51% attack, and that's not to say it cant happen, but we have had chain splits. Chain splits are potentially fatal to bitcoin, so any protocol changes need to take that into account. It is also easy for bitcoin's enemies to agitate on this front, as we have seen recently and turn or frustrate well meening engineers to be frustrated enough to attack the system. We do need better ways of discussing the protocol without it becoming dramatic. I still didnt get from your post how you think UTXOs could be made more powerful. Conversations like this are a good start!
View quoted note →
1 replies ↓
Default avatar
npub1nz3c...yxqu 1 year ago
💯 It seems we’re fighting the blocksize wars all over again. It’s like every few years someone thinks bitcoin’s fees are too high and we need to compromise bitcoin’s decentralization to “fix” the problem. Rusty is making the same arguments the bcashers did. Hopefully the community rejects it a second time. Changes to the core protocol are always risky. We need to ask ourselves: 1) Can the issue be solved in any other way, other than a change to the core protocol? Have we waited long enough for other solutions to emerge? 2) If we must change the core protocol, what is the most limited change we can make that actually solves the problem?
2 replies ↓
Elephant in the root's avatar
Elephant in the root 1 year ago
How is whichever change Rusty advocates for compromising decentralization? Bigger blocks surely did. But you can't claim he's like a bcasher if you can't specify how he's proposing harmful ideas.
1 replies ↓
↑