Oddbean new post about login | logout Hey nostr:nprofile1qqswrlemlh2wgqc4jkds3d8ueqj9a2j3gcm7r48v9tskdd6rxsd7rtcpzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqjxamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wwfhh2mnywfhkx6mzd96xxmmfdejhyuewvdhk6jg4k33! I see that you've decided to join Taproot Wizards to build out CatVM which relies on OP_CAT. The majority of supporters behind OP_CAT are Ordinals users, people that want to push it "for the memes" and "for the lawls", and a few people that I consider bad actors in #Bitcoin. I believe that OP_CAT will allow more Shitcoining on top of Bitcoin. Am I wrong? You are incredibly talented and smart. Far more so than I could ever be. I have a deep amount of respect for you. Hell, when you were talking about building a multi-sig Lightning node for corporations while we were poolside in Madeira blew my mind. Anyways, can you help me understand why you feel that OP_CAT is needed and why am I wrong about it? I asked nostr:nprofile1qqsw3znfr6vdnxrujezjrhlkqqjlvpcqx79ys7gcph9mkjjsy7zsgygpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz8thwden5te0dehhxarj9ekh2arfdeuhwctvd3jhgtnrdakj7qgkwaehxw309ajkgetw9ehx7um5wghxcctwvshspg7dju about OP_CAT at the Bitcoin Freedom Festival and his short answer was that Satoshi removed it for a reason. I stopped doing research on it at that point. Thank you brother and congratulations on the new job. 🤙🏻🫂💜
Love you Derek this is a great note 💜
Always be learning and asking questions 🥹 I could be wrong. Ben is fucking intelligent. Maybe he sees more benefits than harm here.
You're discounting the power of... money. And as such asking the wrong question. The question goes from intellectualism and principles to how much your soul is worth. I think your answer is there. It doesn't matter how smart someone is if they're bought.
Sure, but I wouldn't think Ben is "bought". He is just doing what thinks is best.
Best for his wallet or best for the good of all? How can you be so sure? Mind you, I'm not saying looking after yourself is inherently bad. Just that the assumption that someone would prioritize principles over their bag is not a guarantee regardless of how much you value that person. Everyone has a price.
I'd bet on incentives structure as the primary motivation behind Ben's public statements about OP_CAT, shitcoinery and other spam in #Bitcoin.
There is a great episode on nostr:nprofile1qqsw3znfr6vdnxrujezjrhlkqqjlvpcqx79ys7gcph9mkjjsy7zsgygpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz8thwden5te0dehhxarj9ekh2arfdeuhwctvd3jhgtnrdakj7qgkwaehxw309ajkgetw9ehx7um5wghxcctwvshspg7dju's podcast about this topic. Well worth the listen. https://fountain.fm/episode/yqj4ouCyEv6n24nIO7ej
People are already shitcoining on Bitcoin and it will never stop. OP_CAT allows you to build covenants and perhaps ways for the shitcoiners to have fun while not hurting every other Bitcoin users. On top of that, Bitcoin users interested in self-custody and payments alone would benefit from having covenants available. Win win
I’m with Alex on this.
So it makes Shitcoining easier like I said? How does this protect me? I already self custody and make payments without an issue.
It does not make shitcoining any easier. It allows any Bitcoin users to set spending restrictions on their bitcoins. If you have an issue with how other people might use their bitcoins that's a you problem not a Bitcoin problem. Any feature that makes Bitcoin better by default makes the life of anyone who use it better. Would we want to remove multisig because it makes shitcoining on Bitcoin easier? Meanwhile you can use those new spending conditions to create a vault with reactive security for your savings, or your ecash mint. Or build more capital efficient ARKs to further improve liquidity for Lightning Service Providers.
i don't have an issue with how people are using bitcoin. ive specifically said numerous times "what kind of asshole would i be if i told someone how to use bitcoin". if you want to scam yourself and do dumb things, that's on you, not me. what is on me is trying to understand what Ben's thoughts were on the matter, because i respect him and am very curious about the decision. im trying to learn here. im never, ever going to use an ordinal or inscription or rune or whatever the next scam is, but i want to learn about them and the use cases for OP_CAT, hence the reason for me asking. the one thing that know that stands out is how overly hard people are pushing for this and laughing the entire time while doing it. that isn't a good look and most likely will never make me support it, unless i hear from people i respect that change my mind. the use cases you mentioned about spending conditions for mints or ARK or LSP improvements are worth learning more about. plus, im not sure how more ordinals or inscriptions or runes helps the people in developing nations. if they are a byproduct of people in developing nations having easier chances at using bitcoin, then it may end up being a net positive. we shall see.
I mean it seems like you choose to focus on the noise. It’s fair to be curious about what the actual benefits are but a technical proposal should not be evaluated on the basis of people who support it. Otherwise it would be trivial to jam Bitcoin progress forever on.
"X will allow more shitcoining" is an emotional kneejerk reaction, not a logical argument against X.
nostr:note1e9ckeju6t5scyef4ssxt7plwqhwh3d803fmj46nc537sq2nz5umqwaxwga
I'm on team nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tcqyp60l3gucvq4pnmekm9nzmf6zh8nx24jngu0aj0tfp9tz4gad5v9vczalyt , have you listened to his interview with McCormack? https://fountain.fm/episode/74OSUUbvxqUqBp4VGrDi
I have not listened to this episode but will.
After listening to this I felt pretty ambivalent toward OP_CAT. Seems like it is a pretty conservative step forward and anything less is just nothing at all. But I'm no core dev. /shrug https://open.spotify.com/episode/745hp9L2L7So9i9B3neDHB?si=PbayJxz-QyyEWt51qopQkw
Shitcoining on bitcoin has existed for over a decade and isn't going away. OP_CAT doesn't uniquely enable anything more, its just a scripting proposal that enables covenants and lots of other stuff. Current bitcoin is moving towards custodians as scaling solutions which is the opposite of what we should be doing. Covenants are a good option for trying to scale this and OP_CAT is probably the most general covenant we could get. OP_CAT was removed from bitcoin because there was no limits on it, that could have caused DoS vulnerabilites. Bringing it back with a limit (or with GSR) would be great imo. I don't think bitcoin would be dead if satoshi instead added a limit to OP_CAT instead of disabling it.
Go build this crap on bitcoin cash with Roger ver and everyone else who thinks they know better than satoshi
What? Satoshi made a great thing and maybe could have continued making great contributions, but i wouldn't assume that only he knows what's best for Bitcoin going forward. It's an open and decentralized protocol. Whats best is whatever increases adoptions with the least impact to bitcoins strongest properties including decentralization and fixed supply
What happened to “You don’t change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you” Just a couple short years ago Ben thought Munity was a good idea, now it’s a dumpster fire. We don’t want that to happen to Bitcoin. Bitcoin at its base layer works and is completely fine. Go fuck around and find out on a layer 2 solution and if that’s not enough GFY and go build on a fork of Bitcoin.
Im not advocating for changing bitcoin, just pointing out that satoshi left, bitcoin has changed and the people using and developing it now are who matter. Re: op_cat. I think the great script restoration makes sense and a lot of smart people are interested in op_cat. It's definitely beyond me, but if enough devs think its a good idea then lets see what happens. However, i dont think everything that can be done with bitcoin as it is today has been explored and that should happen before it's changed
I appreciate the insight. Thanks, Ben. 💜🫂🤙🏻
Isn’t OP_CAT a necessary capability to enable recursive covenants which would then enable permanent on-chain KYC?
Recursive covenants dont automatically enable onchain kyc. You can do onchain kyc today with 2/2 multisig.
What pieces would be missing to implement on-chain KYC if recursive covenants are enabled? Regarding the possibility to do it with multisig, my understanding is that it would be easier for regulators to have it implemented/enforced through recursive covenants.
The easiest way to do it is to just use custodial systems, which is the way everyone is going today.
It’s not about shitcoins. How do you know why OP_CAT was removed? As an engineer, do you think it’s a good idea to enable powerful technology IN THE BASE CHAIN that has few known limits so essentially nobody knows how it could be abused? Satoshi’s design philosophy was clearly to limit functionality to keep the system simple and safe. He made the system robust by deliberately removing codes that might increase the attack surface of the network. It’s not appropriate to apply start up thinking - move fast and break things - to the core system protecting the world’s money and our hope for the future. If you’re wrong, and it somehow disrupts the underlying incentives that underpin everything … how easy is it to undo it? We can’t, can we? How I see it: + Devs are humans. Even the smartest among us are not omniscient and make mistakes (eg witness discount). + All code has bugs. Even if the code is technically bug free, it can still change the complex incentives that make the network work. + We don’t have a scaling problem yet. When we do have one in the future, we should allow the pain of it to motivate innovation on upper layers so that we can avoid any unnecessary changes to the base protocol. + We should only allow changes to the base protocol that safely fix an existential problem that we know cannot be fixed in any other way. + The Bitcoin network is for many, many future generations. We need to think long term and not rush out changes to the core protocol. A decade or two to consider options is a blink of an eye in the life of the network.
Lightning is basically the only layer we can do with current bitcoin. Soft forks are needed to do more scaling. Not scaling on chain but with new layer 2 designs
Lightning is the only layer? Umm… 1) Liquid 2) Fediment 3) Ark, and all the other R&D underway. As an engineer, do you think it’s a good idea to enable powerful technology IN THE BASE CHAIN that has few known limits so essentially nobody knows how it could be abused?
Liquid and Fedimint are not layers, they are custodial solutions. Ark has lots of problems without covenants I've never seen someone say concatenate is a powerful technology
Lightning is custodial too, isn’t it. No, really, think about it. What percentage of lightning usage is self-custodial? Weren’t you doing Mutiny? Does self-custodial lightning actually work for plebs? You want to include a technology that you don’t know the limits of. If you do, please explain the limitations. Explain why it can’t be abused. Don’t you think this is something we should know? Why do you claim to know why Satoshi removed it? What were his reasons?
I don't trust anyone that advocates for covenants. They are corrupt and pose a threat to bitcoin with their naivety.
I think it’s what separates the developers from the engineers. The engineers understand risk trade offs. The devs do their testing in production.
If we didn’t fuck up with Segwit by limiting the block size from being increased to only 1 fucking mb (which was supposed to be temporary)… which satoshi knew needed to be raised at some point in the future…
The blocksize needs to stay small. It was increased to ~4 MB and already the chain is becoming difficult to sync for small nodes. Everything has trade offs but the highest priority should be that anyone can run a node. This gives the chain the greatest potential defense against nation states.
The block size is 1mb & can be weighted 4x via Segwit… That’s not what satoshi said…
What did Satoshi say, that we need big blocks?
Yes they intentionally put the 300kb limit & expected it to be raised in the future… where server farms are only ones who kept the blockchain fully archived…
Wasn’t it 1MB? When you look at bcash or bsv, are you thinking we should fix bitcoin by bringing those big blocks here too?
No the 1mb limit was supposed to be temporary & was set in place during Segwit. Scaling on chain works. I was never a "small blocker"
No, Satoshi set the 1 MB size on 15 July 2010, many years before segwit. Link below. The big blockers had their priorities reversed. They were ok with centralizing the chain permanently to make transactions cheaper temporarily. If you are still a big blocker, perhaps you would find your ideological home with either bcash or bsv. Transactions are definitely cheap over there. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/98908/satoshi-introduced-the-1mb-block-size-limit-in-a-commit-why-did-andresen-make-a
Yes satoshi wanted to raise the blocksize early on thank you & in that exact link it clearly says it was activated during the UASF which was Segwit…
I think you should read it more closely. It says “enforced” not activated. That’s because it was already active in July 2010 when the code was checked in. The enforcement in Aug 2017 was the point of the UASF … to force the big blockers into a chain split. Did you think you “got me”? 😂 Sometimes I get stuff wrong, but I didn’t this time.
Yeah making a git commit doesn’t merge code much less push it to the network…
😂 Nice try. When you say “push” are you referring to how Satoshi used Santa to deliver updates to nodes around the world?
Who said we're getting op_cat?
We're getting op_cat
Might not bro
We are tho
Might not need it if they can do it without one https://stacker.news/items/643429/
this is a brilliant on-chain shitpost by Rijndael
You should listen to my bitcoin.review episode about it, I came around once I started to look into it again.
Will do. I saw that in my feed recently and added it to my queue. Will move it up for tomorrow.
Who cares if people shitcoin on Bitcoin. The real questions every Bitcoiner needs to ask themselves is whether the incentives still align with Bitcoin being good money, decentralized, and prime for development to encourage those 2. Ordinal enjoyers need not be part of the story. They are simply utilizing the system that was already there. Full blocks were always a given. High fees were always a given. Hell, if Ordinal people want to contribute to those properties, let them!
Covenants will actually increase decentralization. Today as Ben said we are actually trending the wrong way towards centralizing. Covenants make self custody strictly better enabling more and better self custody options(both base chain and on L2s). Most current popular scaling solutions like Cashu and Fedimints are custodial and it scares me everyone seems fine with ever more Bitcoin leaving self custody for custodial options. I think it’s important we reverse this trend. I see no other realistic option except covenants.