Oddbean new post about | logout
▲ ▼
BitcoinStu | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Bitcoin should have been feature complete before segwit in my opinion.  I don't care about vaults, I don't care about multi-party lightning.  I care about hard money that can't be debased or stolen, that's it.

My "absolutist" position is simply that bitcoin is working perfectly fine and all your new opcodes are an attack on the network and completely unnecessary for bitcoin's success.

If it aint broken, don't fix it.
▲ ▼
Rusty Russell | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 Right, so no lightning at all for you then?

At least that's consistent. No zaps for you then!
▲ ▼
BitcoinStu | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 You will notice I do not provide a lightning address in my profile to be "zapped" to.   However I would not avoid lightning since it already exists.  But Bitcoin would be better without segwit and it's witness discount and would also be better without taproot and it's complete opening of the witness section.
▲ ▼
Rusty Russell | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 No segwit, no lightning. 

You really don't understand Bitcoin, so I'm going to balance your opinion appropriately.
▲ ▼
BitcoinStu | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +2 
 When did you get the idea that I give a shit about lightning?  Of course lightning is impossible without segregating the witness data, that was the point of the softfork.  But the result was abuse of the witness section, particularly after taproot opened those floodgates.

I do not care about lightning.  If you can scale bitcoin without adding more opcodes going forward, good for you.  You probably can't which is why you, in your vanity, would attempt to attack bitcoin by adding new opcodes which will inevitably compromise the network's security.
▲ ▼
BitcoinStu | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 The good news is that more and more people understand this position, especially with Saylor's recent podcasts where he says the same thing.  Over time it becomes more and more difficult to initiate any kind of soft fork attack on bitcoin, which is excellent news.

You can have 1 new opcode every 100 years, starting 100 years from now.  Plan accordingly.
▲ ▼
techfeudalist | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 I say we should allow protocol upgrades every 10 years. That should give us sufficient time to research and debate. In the meantime we just fix bugs and improve performance and privacy.
▲ ▼
j | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 The Poon Tradja paper does not use anything as ugly as segwit. They have a solution to maleability based on an op code irc
▲ ▼
techfeudalist | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +2 
 The mistake was just increasing the block size to 4MB and giving it a discount. That wasn’t necessary for Lightning was it?
▲ ▼
jimbocoin | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 Adding the extension blocks was not needed for Lightning, no. It was a concession to the parties who wanted bigger blocks. Ultimately it wasn’t enough, and they forked off anyway.

In retrospect, we probably should not have added that extra space, but it’s impossible to say with certainty how history would have unfolded if we hadn’t.

We could soft-fork in a reduction that cuts that back out, or makes it smaller. Or we could fork in a reduction to the main block size. It takes a hard fork to go from 1MB to 2MB, but only a soft fork to limit it to 500kb or less.
▲ ▼
BitcoinStu | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 This irresistable desire some people have to mess with the thing just blows my mind.  My only explanation is that the kind of people who want to mess with a perfectly functional network just don't have any bitcoin in their stack and are therefore more interested in "iNnoVat1on" than they are protecting the hardest money ever created.

Bitcoin, in it's current form, solves the problem of the hard money.  Messing with it in an attempt to make it do other shit, like parlor tricks, is nothing but risk and adds no significant value.

Innovation in Bitcoin is nothing more than an attack on a perfectly functional network.

If it aint broken, don't fix it.  Simple wisdom but so few people actually understand it.
▲ ▼
techfeudalist | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag +1 
 That’s probably true. I’ll bet Rusty and his family have a small percentage of net worth in bitcoin. 

It makes sense that the greater the percentage, the more conservative you likely are. 

People should probably not be core devs if they don’t have meaningful skin in the game. Hard to prove this though.
▲ ▼
BitcoinStu | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 yes.  At least we've got Saylor going public on the subject now.  Good to have such an articulate and vocal supporter.

"Why doesn't Saylor support core devs"?   Cause fuck core, they can't even fix their filters.  Those guys do nothing but fuck the network up with their soft fork attacks.

Core is the biggest threat to Bitcoin by far.   If Bitcoin fails it's going to be because they soft-forked some bullshit in there that allowed it to be captured.
▲ ▼
techfeudalist | 5 months ago (raw) | root | parent | reply | flag 
 There must be a few core devs who are pushing back on the crazy stuff behind the scenes. Otherwise we could have seen forks for covenants or other stuff already. 🤷‍♂️