If we want ecash to have any hope of working out, we need anonymous mints, but anonymous mints are likely to get stolen. Instead, we need anonymous mints that are operated by one of N well-known and trusted parties. Mint operator(s) should take N public keys known to be from N well-known and trusted persons in the bitcoin space, then create ring sig(s) across those N to reveal that they are one of those N parties, but not which one.
Given many long-timers at one point or another had public donation addresses or some other key that is known to be theirs, this should actually be relatively doable, just don’t put too much money in the mint :)
I mean certainly any sufficiently-large mint is never gonna last, the question is how to make small-ish mints that lots of people can put $20 in last. Fully public small mints probably still get smacked down, but maybe this gives you a sweet spot between private-enough ownership but still trusted-enough ownership?
To be clear, the ring sig I suggest here isn’t about the custody of funds, but as a way to announce who is operating the mint without actually revealing specifically who is operating the mint. This could allow mints a new position in the privacy-transparency tradeoff. I don’t believe this has been implemented anywhere, all mints are either privately operated (and may steal your funds) or transparently operated (and the government may steal your funds in a seizure).
What assumption that I made is unrealistic, or even not-highly-likely? I mean centralized parties are already declining to offer services for non custodial use (see Phoenix).
I don’t buy for a second you’ll be able to do that in the long term if we don’t fix these issues. Sure the massive problems we have now aren’t materially trickling down to breaking the system yet, but are we building a Bitcoin for today or a Bitcoin for a decade or two from now?
Then I’m definitely done caring about bitcoin. I mean sure some people just want the 21M cap and they’ll be happy, but those of us who wanted to be able to send value to others without being censorable….
I don’t buy for a second you’ll be able to do that in the long term if we don’t fix these issues. Sure the massive problems we have now aren’t materially trickling down to breaking the system yet, but are we building a Bitcoin for today or a Bitcoin for a decade or two from now?
Then I’m definitely done caring about bitcoin. I mean sure some people just want the 21M cap and they’ll be happy, but those of us who wanted to be able to send value to others without being censorable….
If lightning doesn’t have noncustodial mobile, people will just use custodial mobile. I’m all for pleb routing nodes, in fact the only way to get noncustodial mobile at all may be if they exist, but we’ve seen time and time and time again that the vast majority of people will always only install an app.
The shitty thing is lightning labs could have easily built this as a separate dollar-specific network that is KYC’d, but they didn’t. Still wouldn’t have been great for lightning but wouldn’t have been as bad. In fact it would have been less work for them to do this! nostr:note10lknnp2u2cktvgyye9qgmvyzelwqjph3l556w9av236g4g3crjxs6nnf3t
Bitcoin hasn’t felt like it’s been in this much of an existential crisis since the block size wars. And this time there’s no mobilization in the community in its defense.
That, plus crackdown on privacy services and lightning operators worrying about regulatory coverage. The big things we had coming to improve Bitcoin‘s cash properties are all kinda stalling out.
I dunno, which is the hard thing. We need (a) decentralized coinjoin in many wallets, but the protocol for that has to exist, (b) PayJoin/silent addresses/etc in many wallets, (c) LSPs for mobile lightning nodes (or many a compelling path to pleb LSPs?), (d) Sv2 adoption from miners and pools, (e) probably more?
All those things feel like uphill battles.
I mean you can pay nodes for forwarding your onion messages if you want 🤷♂️. The whole point of onion messages is that they don’t cost a node ~anything to handle so there’s no reason why a node should want to charge for it. Also, with BOLT12, nodes will eventually prefer to route HTLCs through nodes that forwarded onion messages for the same payment, so you do get some non-zero expected value.
The issues raised by lipa in their post (that LDK is a complicated API and a lot to work with, that RGS had some stability issues, and that LDK’s pathfinding was sub-optimal) are things that were true a year ago, but are also things that have been largely addressed by LDK itself since -
The introduction of ldk-node has made it incredibly easy to get from zero to a full lightning node on a phone in minutes, RGS has seen a lot of debugging and improvements, and LDK’s pathfinding is now by far the most advanced in lightning (but, like with all lightning nodes, you need to be well connected or have sent a lot of payments to have data to use for pathfinding). nostr:note1zsmqhmny6q3zvrlqyfj7r2uu6wgrge8473d0vj95hmh98k98vj7qzga33w
It’s not that I’m a fan of the nuclear option, but rather that I have no *other* ideas if things like Sv2/p2pool don’t get adoption. We’ve been at this for a decade and it’s been a massive problem for a decade.
Let’s be clear, if no one steps up and decides to run LSPs because everyone is worried about regulatory concerns, every bitcoin L2 system is toast - every one that has a reasonable security model relies on some kind of centralized or federated party that has similar concerns, even if they can’t seize funds.
Without any L2 systems everyone using bitcoin will simply use custodial platforms because that’s the only way to get reasonable fees and payment latency.
And don’t go yelling at ACINQ for deciding not to operate Phoenix in the US, the software required to run an LSP is open source, with only relatively minimal liquidity allocation logic required to get started. We need new entrants, and that means new companies who think the risk is manageable (I’m confident it is, but I can’t fault anyone for not wanting to take that risk).
If you see someone suggesting ACINQ should just keep running, the correct response is “well why aren’t you running an LSP”.
You don’t need much! You can easily hire enough engineering know how to get some basic software up and running, the cost is raising money to fund liquidity for the LSP.
Noncustodial wallets want a reliable UX which generally relies on the LSP being stable and reputable, which sadly means not Tor and generally requires them to be large for profit companies.
Simply running software is a bit different from being an LSP that a mobile wallet will integrate by default and trust to be online and reliable for their users.
I don’t think I claimed it was “easy” so much as very doable technically and the issues people face are more regulatory concern than technical.
I know y’all have had to invest a lot of technical work to get the LSP up and stable but I think the open source LSP market is about to improve very substantially very quickly.
Yes, with mining incredibly centralized anything secured by hashpower is a joke and miners can always require unblinding of anything “blinded” before they mine it.
If you think an LSP is “obviously not an MSB” you’ve never spoken to a lawyer with any sense at all. It may not be an MSB, and I hope it’s not an MSB, and I think it’s probably not an MSB, but speaking with any certainty about this is absolutely impossible. The law and regulations about this are not even remotely clear and do not consider any kind of system like bitcoin, let alone lightning.
Don’t talk shit about others avoiding substantial personal legal risk.
Hell, it’s not even 100% clear *miners* are not an MSB, but even regulators don’t want them to be. The letter of the law is just not even remotely set up to handle this kind of stuff.
I mean did you read it? Their arguments are….pretty compelling? We should get the law changed but if they’re saying it’s not mentioned in the text if the law then…
It’s weeks like this that you have to wonder whether Bitcoin has a real shot at all.
* We thought mining was centralized but it was worse than we thought, and the ideas we have to improve it don’t seem to be making progress. Will Bitcoin be censorship resistant in a decade or will censorship be the norm with one or two pools deciding what enters the chain.
* With ACINQ pulling out of the US they’re signaling they don’t think it’s worth the risk. With few LSP alternatives in the US today will noncustodial lightning make it in the world’s biggest market?
It’s important to keep building but it’s also important to keep an eye on the biggest problems - best to work on the biggest problems in Bitcoin to maximize the chance it’s still a useful system with properties we’d be proud of in another decade.
For the non-custodial lightning case you kinda need a fixed counterparty, so your options are move or vote. For other use cases of bitcoin this does not apply (but also vote anyway, it doesn’t hurt).
lol this is just the Wikipedia fallacy in reverse - “Wikipedia is wrong”, complained the person who doesn’t bother to edit it…”Bitcoin is anti fragile”, exclaimed the person who didn’t lift a finger to pressure miners to change behavior while others did that work.
Bitcoin only survives if you fight for it, miners have no incentive to care, we have to create the incentive, not just me, you too!
yet bitcoin mining has been basically completely centralized for a decade and bitcoiners don’t lift a finger in defense? The only way the “oscillation” happens is if there’s some pressure for mining to decentralize in response and that has to come from somewhere.
40% on one pool and 70% across two where miners don’t have any real third option if they want reasonable stable payouts I’d definitely call “completely” :).
Still my broader point stands I think, I don’t buy the “oscillation” argument unless something actually pushes back, which I just don’t see happening? I’m sitting here screaming and everyone’s just shrugging…
Just saw a “flashbots on bitcoin” pitch deck. I’ve never seen such a blatant and dangerous attack on bitcoin.
Make no mistake if this succeeds, and MEVil becomes a big thing on bitcoin, Bitcoin is doomed.
No, this would be a terrible idea. People are going to put data on the chain anyway, the witness discount encourages them to put the data in a place that is much cheaper for the bitcoin network.
Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but the court ruling that forced the SEC to accept bitcoin ETFs is going to apply equally to ETH. Expect an ETH ETF soon.
Didn’t you get mad at me for telling people to care about regulators and voting and now you’re talking about how people should vote for trump? Seems like we’ve been making the same point :)
Fair enough. I guess I just hope we can get to a place where folks like Mutiny don’t have to ever consider leaving the US. And that means playing the game, both political lobbying (usually not money, to be clear, mostly just outreach, but also direct ad buys, etc) and using the courts to push back on overreach. I’m sadly not sure what other approach exists given the state will use force to get their way.
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