Replies (100)
Lyn Alden
Bitcoin fees are currently only a dollar, but niche programmers are suggesting to change the fundamental nature of bitcoin and increase its attack surface to make it more scalable… for people who don’t necessarily know or understand the trade offs of that scaling.
Scaling is an important discussion, but everything is a trade off. I like many of the scaling discussions, but rushing them is another matter.
It costs me $100 to buy a 1oz gold coin by mail, or to send signed documents internationally in a few days. Verification is expensive.
The idea that global monetary verification should be super cheap inherently comes with security trade offs.
All ideas should be evaluated carefully and come to major consensus. Otherwise change proposers risk a fork war.
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LFG LYN
Lyn Alden
Bitcoin fees are currently only a dollar, but niche programmers are suggesting to change the fundamental nature of bitcoin and increase its attack surface to make it more scalable… for people who don’t necessarily know or understand the trade offs of that scaling.
Scaling is an important discussion, but everything is a trade off. I like many of the scaling discussions, but rushing them is another matter.
It costs me $100 to buy a 1oz gold coin by mail, or to send signed documents internationally in a few days. Verification is expensive.
The idea that global monetary verification should be super cheap inherently comes with security trade offs.
All ideas should be evaluated carefully and come to major consensus. Otherwise change proposers risk a fork war.
View quoted note →
🧡
Privacy is a more important issue
Too many noobs weren't around in 2017. We've been there and done that.
Covenants help both scaling and privacy.
Verifyability is king for the base settlement layer of money. If this weren't true Bitcoin would've been displaced by something else.
How does is help privacy?
UTXO sharing with Bitcoin covenants like CheckTemplateVerify (CTV) can improve on-chain privacy in a few key ways:
1. Shared ownership of UTXOs: With CTV, multiple parties can jointly own a UTXO in a way where all their signatures are required to spend it. This makes it harder to trace ownership and spending to a single entity.
2. Obscured transaction graphs: When a UTXO is spent that had shared ownership via a covenant, it breaks deterministic links in the transaction graph. Outside observers can't easily connect the inputs and outputs, improving privacy.
3. Decoy inputs and outputs: CTV allows the creation of transactions with many decoy inputs and outputs not actually involved in the transfer of funds. This makes it much harder to determine the true sender, recipient, and amounts.
4. Concealing address reuse: Normally, reusing a Bitcoin address harms privacy by making it easier to link transactions. But with CTV, UTXOs can be spent back to the same covenant-controlled address without revealing that it's a reused address.
5. Privacy-enhancing protocols: CTV enables the trustless execution of privacy-focused smart contract protocols on Bitcoin like CoinSwaps, payment channels, atomic swaps, and certain forms of CoinJoins. These can leverage the UTXO-sharing capabilities of CTV.
So in summary, CTV allows a form of obfuscated, multi-party UTXO ownership that makes it very difficult to trace the flow of funds, link addresses, or determine true senders and recipients - providing a significant boost to on-chain privacy when used correctly in Bitcoin transactions and contracts. The privacy benefits compound as CTV adoption increases.
Always with the sound advice…
What's the down side?
Bitcoin's scalability has more to do with how our world evolves. As Bitcoin has a limited supply, its value tends to go up or remain stable, reducing the need for frequent transactions as the currency retains its value better than fiat.
At the same time, advancements like AI, 3D printing, and self-driving cars are making things cheaper and more efficient. This "technological deflation" means we might need to transact less often because things cost less to make and do. This naturally reduces the demand for transactions on the Bitcoin network.
So, even without major changes to Bitcoin's code, the network could scale just fine as societal needs shift. Rushing to change the fundamental aspects of Bitcoin could introduce risks without real benefits. It’s crucial to think carefully about any changes, making sure they're truly needed and widely supported to avoid splitting the community.
"Niche programmers" sounds a bit ad hominem.
Not sure what you mean by changing the fundamental nature of Bitcoin; adding opcodes uses a foundational principle of the protocol to extend its functionality.
Normal users can't be expected to understand the intricacies of protocol development; if that was a requirement then the protocol would have ossified long ago.
Remarkably common ignorant statement.
WE NEED LAYER 1 IMPROVEMENTS IN ORDER TO MAKE LAYER 2 DEVELOPMENT MORE FEASIBLE.
I would love to see modelling on fees and the impacts on scaling. It's easy to say we need to change or that we don't, but no one is building financial models to support their ideas. I think at about $10 lightning breaks down. cashu, fedmint and liquid provide better scaling at higher fees but come with significant compromises. For this to be viable I think everyone needs to be able to open a couple of lightning channels to a number of mints. This allows minimal custodial risk and allows decentralisation. If fees reach $100 per transaction, this is prohibitive, even for high value channels. Fees on the network would be high, driving centralisation.
With the current tech, we have about 10x growth potential with current technology. Now is the time to think through how we can maintain a permissionless network, so when it comes time we have a good consensus.
I'm sceptical of paid influencers, because the incentives of bankers who pay them, Microstrategy, Swan, Coinbase etc are for a centralised custody model where they can extract fees. The higher on chain fees, the higher the fees they can extract. This is a terrible outcome for Bitcoin because this money is not going to miners to secure the network, but to bankers to capture it.
Bitcoin fees are a "dollar". Lol fees in fiat.
Lyn, do you not think miner centralisation is a more important issue that needs to be discussed now?
Have current L2 solutions reached their ceiling?
How have current BIPs addressed adding to Bitcoins decentralization and security?
Are these changes needed to address real user demand, or is this just restless devs itching to fix theoretical future problems?
Feel free to make whatever intricate changes you want, just keep in mind us normal users decide whether to run the code or not.
It's very hard to get this point across. And I feel like I fail most of the time.
What's the point of having "money for everyone" if only a third of the people on Earth can afford to use it in its decentralized form.
Just like the current banking system, only the rich will have real access.
we improved every part of a car, compared to the first versions of cars. lights, tyres, motors - everything.
we win nothing when we scale through trusted third parties where we can not even verify they have the funds they show in a custodial wallet. Let alone privacy.
No one knows for sure, We could have the time to go slow or that time has already passed and it's too late. We could have enough rope for many crisses of privacy, security or adoption, or we could have only one shot to get this right.
Only one proposal allows many people to be wrong and the right get rewarded, like the marketplace, without damaging the network as a whole. Bip300 Drivechains.
totally agree. the way this is going right now, only custodial LN wallets work well, self hosted LN is still a pain in the ass.
Also the LN fees are nowhere near the promised single digit sats when you run your own node, i pay around 0.5% of the transaction value most of the time.
Not really. Miners can run code no "user" would even know about unless they looked/cared.
then Bitcoin is just another asset, integrated into the banking system.
Lightning promised much and ended up as Paypal on Bitcoin, everybody is using custodial wallets.
and pay with custodial wallets :)
Bitcoin isn't just another bank-tied asset. It's independent, run by its users, not banks. They can not just create bitcoin out of thin air and loan it out. #bitcoin makes banks obsolete
at the beginning it thought so too. but that is just not true.
How about we just make the blocks bigger and tell anyone who wants to centralise and fuck with it to fuck off and we will kill them if they try
This is really important and perhaps not getting enough attention. The go-go devs and upgraders risk killing this project as the attack surface expands exponentially with each upgrade. Many may disagree, but nobody saw monkey jpegs coming out of taproot. The inherent tradeoffs don't seem to be fully appreciated. Decentralisation can't NEVER have the same max throughput as centralisation, it is impossible. Security is the tradeoff. We have to focus like a lazer on Sound Money. This is first , second and nth of what bitcoin must be. It will never be a point of sale commodity payment rail because then it won't be sound money. I am hearing people complaining that bitcoin is not everything they want it to be, it will never be everything, we have to pick what it is and stick to it. Stick to sound money , that is the killer app that hasn't existed for 3000 years and that is what is missing today and chiefly why the world is in such a mess.
The poster child of "everything to everyone coin" and unbrideled , go-go dev/upgrade is ETH. And ETH is an unholy spaghetti mess. It is almost impossible to run a node, they had to change to POS, nobody seems to even know how many ETH are out there. Is this what we want bitcoin to become because we cannot focus on what bitcoin should be : sound money and only sound money ?
Oh my. Big blockers are back. You know about the block size war, right?
All changes in #BTC core is an attack on #Bitcoin.
Think about it, which human creation would work if the number of users increase like x100 tomorrow morning?! (Roads? Hospitals? The corner store?)
The L2 must be fully exploited before we consider any change.
L2s can't be explored well because L1 doesn't have the necessary functionality to make development of permissionless L2s simple. 🤦♂️
"Not your keys, not your coins"
"Not above fees, not your UTXOs"
privacy > scale
Great things have been done on L2 so far.
it's all about consensus - majority opinion WINs ! not anyone's
The options are bitcoin is programmable money or bitcoin is an investment vehicle controlled by the CIa, saylor, and tradfi. I choose the former.
I accidentally clicked zap instead of repost on this, so forgive me the 42 sats. Regardless. Lyn is a Spook and part of the tradfi-control ossify brigade who want to destroy bitcoin.
View quoted note →From what I understand, smooth L2 (as in 1 tx to start, stop, revert vs several tx) can happen with one opcode. Optional.
Without it, bitcoin l2 is very limited.
My nodes will likely run new opcode,.assume futures are in favor.
How will you know what you decide to run if you can't understand it first hand ? You'll potentially get targeted by psyops and it's probably why there is so many non-technical people that have an opinion on the matter at the moment.
Being slow and thoughtful is a superpower when it comes to that level of engineering.
People who are saying "lets not rush things" and "those are just niche programmers" are asleep at the wheel. We need an L1 change to develop L2 any further and we've been discussing CTV for at least a year now (or LNHance which includes two more BIPs) and I anticipate the educational push for it to last maybe 5 years.
We aren't rushing things. If it seems like we're rushing things, its because you're reacting to educational campaigns to bring awareness to node runners and misinterpreting that educational content as a "rush"
Oh so you have discovered a way to create #bitcoin out of thin air? You know how to get more than 21 million? Please share your secrets. My node would love to hear how you plan on tricking it to accept your newly invented #bitcoin?
Most people will run Bitcoin Core's rule set because it's the most reputable implementation by far.
Not really. Lightning Network is arguably the only permissionless L2. Everything else is a glorified multisig.
bcash coming in hot
There are so many over-leveraged non-tech people in fear of bitcoin failing to reach their adoption target.
I understand that when it comes to sovereign money you want to have the most control on it but we should keep in mind that bitcoin is still an experiment and I think:
1) Most people don't understand what is being discussed and the consequences implied.
2) They create mostly noise and euphoria to the debate.
3) Those people might be over-leveraged compared to the risk that still exists on the bitcoin experiment and are overreacting by pushing for solutions to a problem that might not be a problem in the first place.
Being slow, thoughtful and patient is a superpower when it comes to that level of engineering. ✌️
how do you prove the satoshis in a custodial lightning wallet are fully backed by actual bitcoin? every wallet provider can run a fractional reserve if they want.
What does lightning have to do with #bitcoin? We are talking scalability without lightning. I was saying #bitcoin can scale with the code it has today. That means without lightning. It can scale because demand for transactions will go down because of the deflationary nature of technology improving
sure, 7 tps will be enough forever. As 640kb of ram was in the 80s
In the future that will be too many. What do you buy when you can 3D print everything you need? You can even print your own 3D printer. You might say well you have to buy the filaments. Or I can just buy one machine that makes the filaments from natural resources around me. Then I can just keep printing more of those. And that goes on and on and is only one example of how fast the demand to transact will go down. Especially now with the rapidly accelerating advancements in AI
sure.
These are not mutually exclusive. Covenants deliver UTXO scaling, which improves privacy.
L1 does not support the creation of the hundreds of millions of channels necessary for decentralized lightning usage. Covenants provide shared UTXOs, which helps scale and provide privacy.
Sound money for whom?
Jpegs have nothing to do with taproot.
Sound money is existential. It is a concept expounded and defined by Aristotle and that concept remains valid today. There is only one definition of sound money just as there is only one defn of Pythagoras Theorum.
What if it's enough for the user's needs.
Full 100% decentralisation for small and medium amounts is overrated.
That doesn't answer the question though. Who get's access?
What constitutes medium amounts?
Basic critical thinking skills. Get info from different sources, compare, contrast, evaluate, try my best to understand. Humans have the capacity to reason about things without needing complete knowledge about every detail. Of course it's possible I could be led astray. This is always a risk. Blindly trusting the experts is also risky. All users should have strong opinions about changes to bitcoin. When someone tells me that my opinion isn't valid because I'm not a dev, that is a huge red flag. I have strong opinions about what software is running on my node. Devs need to accept this and sell me on upgrading, not dismiss it. Otherwise I will most certainly not be upgrading.
Hard to say. It's different depending on your wealth.🤔
Did you notice that LSPs are increasingly unwilling to do business in US? Makes it all the more important to enable L2 scaling with interactive, permissionless self-custody. This is what covenants are for...
"Who gets Access" is not the same question as "what is sound money".
There is a cost to decentralised security. Its one of the iron cast tradeoffs. If you want relatively low cost then lower your security.
You still need lights, otherwise please do explain how 10B people transact on L1 when Bitcoin is worth a few billion per coin and even at 1 sat/vbyte is thousands of dollars. One solution has trade offs over another.
Plus normies don't care. As opposed to social manipulation, popularity and theft, in the future you will need capital to offer financial services. You will not be able to get capital illegitimately at scale with sound money as the foundation. If money worked today far less people will care about self custody and even today it's far less than 1%. The few that do will be wealthy. I personally wouldn't have cared until I found out how broken it all is. You overestimate the sheep.
Sound money is a means to an end, not the end in itself. The goal of cypherpunk cash is to improve the chance individuals have for preserving freedom against arbitrary aggression. Who gets access is a critical question. Dollars are sound money for those who have access to cheap credit, but the Cantillon Effect isn't exactly something we're rooting for. Thus the question of who gets access is quite important in the quest for sound money.
That's only because fiat gov still has more power. They have to protect what they have. To sacrifice the US to be able to stick around in every country other than 3 seems reasonable to me. In WoS case.
sure it will be worth several billion dollars per coin, now take your pills my dear.
yes only a dollar. use layer 2 or dollar for coffee purchases. with BTC only make 1 transaction a year. your year's budget.
not enough hash power
make a fork with proposed changes. if it works, being the change to regular network. sort of like a testnet
I knew you'd get comments. people never agree. I'm with you.
increasing the block size might actually be the centralization.
if you are concerned about $1 transaction fees, then you are using it as everyday payment rails, which isn't necessary for BTC.
use it to store savings. first have more money, then store it once, without more transactions.
it's not that only the rich will have access, it's that day to day usage isn't necessary on bitcoin. the dollar or usdc is fine for small transactions.
yes, you needs money to make BTC useful. that's it's purpose.
you don't need btc if you don't have larger amounts of money to store.
basically, let's stop marketing BTC for low value transactions. it doesn't need to be used by everyone on earth, since everyone on earth doesn't have savings.
personally, I think BTC should be for people w 10k or more.
i would agree generally but it was created as a p2p payment system, now it is becoming dominated by third parties which will control what you can do with your coins. Also fees will increase a lot over time, $1 is a very cheap opportunity.
Building an emerging technology without access to the US market doesn't seem alike a reliable recipe for success. Enabling greater scaling and privacy control on L1 to make more useful L2s so permission isn't required looks like a better option to me.
Don't need to. Others already are going to make it reality.
I'm not saying your opinion isn't valid. I was inviting people to step back and not react as if their lives were in danger.
Opinions on the topic are mostly emotional at the moment. There is no need to rush, bitcoin will not cease to work suddenly lol
Peace ✌️
A lot of people who propose changes to bitcoin script 1) disagree with each other on which changes to do and 2) have a different view than what they had a year ago.
To me, this is indicative of a design space and risk/reward analysis that is not fully mapped out yet. As discussion and development continue, people rapidly change their view on what the best way to proceed is.
People often point to recent events to support their view. So for example, the fee spikes associated with Ordinals/BRC-20, and then more recently Runes, are currently used as reasons to accelerate base layer change proposals. That's a way to drum up emotional support and create a sense of urgency. But for example, if you took a snapshot of which script changes were most popular a year ago vs today, you'd have a different set for the most part. That sense of emotional urgency tries to lock in whatever the current thing is, even if a year from now the current thing is different based on ongoing development and discussion.
I don't mean niche programmers as an ad hominem. I mean developers of proposed scaling methods that are likely niche or at least not demonstrated yet to have broad demand, and want to change the base layer quickly with widespread agreement that a change is safe. And not everyone has to understand a change, but to get miners and node operators on board, it does take a pretty broad conviction.
when I saw the fee Spike around the halving , I assumed that if I waited it out they would drop again and they have
I'm a big fan of the way that Lyn does not rush to judgement
None of the people pushing for changes, that I’ve seen, have adequately explained why systems like Liquid, Lightning, or even something like Stacks are incapable of scaling usage and permitting more smart contracts.
big blockers use this as a reason to point the project in their direction. we already have bcash for big blockers. we can use bcash if we need a payment system. also, payment systems aren't really needed. regular cash works fine for most payments. what we need is a value storage mechanism. that's what doesn't exist at the moment, besides the current Bitcoin. what third parties are taking over?
true, I was confusing!
what I mean is: we don't need BTC as a payment system yet. value storage is much more important. my goal is to make 1 BTC transaction a year: my yearly budget. for example: take out 10k of Bitcoin on Jan 1, use it for the year's spending. either on lightning or in cash. high btc fee problem solved. also, high btc fees are good! it means we're giving incentive for miners to compete/increase hash rate.
I don't think others will compete against Bitcoin successfully, due to bitcoins network effect. but if I'm wrong, it'll still take years, as a tug of war. plenty of time to switch to the better coin. 15 years in, and no need to change yet. if there's a better coin, it'll probably be a 5 year window of time to switch to that other coin.
I don't think the US govt could have 30% of the hash power. it would take years of acquiring all newly created Asics to put into mining to compete.
the US can have the majority of hashpower, but not the govt. that'll take years to get all the new chips.
current miners can leave the country if needed. not as important where the miners are centralized as much as who the miners are. right now they aren't govt miners.
mining pools on the other hand, are centralized and needs to be addressed. probably by changing the subsidy algorithm to give all miners equal rewards. not just the winner. therefore eliminating pools.
ALSO YOU SAID BTC ISNT VALUABLE IF IT CANT BE USED AS MONEY ... being used as money is almost not even important, to me. value STORAGE is the "killer app" of Bitcoin. and it's doing that already.
no country really has a money spending problem, they have value storage problems.
hopefully my long message went through, because it's not showing on my end
The state is not afraid of one more asset like gold, they can integrate it in the financial system they control. Especially not one without any privacy. The state is afraid of us not using their money anymore.
ETFs are third parties. Custodial wallets are third parties. Mints are third parties too. Most people who use lightning use it with custodial wallets, which makes it easy to control that as well. Self hosted lightning is a pain in the ass, still.
There is a reason why they want to outlaw Monero and let Bitcoin be / integrate it in their system and just KYC the shit out of it.
You sound like you may be American...
You also can't expect every member of a battle to be on the front lines. The 3 countries are US, China and North Korea. Think about that. Like it or not America is the land of the fiat and the home of the FED
Oh I don't blame acinq for pulling out of the US, but it's a symptom of the design of the open source software the network currently runs on. Upgrade the software, change the network and improve the incentives for better outcomes.
Huh? I am talking about building on bitcoin, not against it. You high?
You keep saying "not for daily transactions". I never said anything about daily transactions, we have layer 2 for that.
My point is that if someone wants to save in BTC they shouldn't have to pay a weeks wages to have the security of layer 1.
I mean if it's cheaper to run a node than to do a transaction once a month something seems off.
