Does anyone else feel like we were on our way there until 2023? WTF happened in 2023?

https://wtfhappenedinfeb2023.com/

Clearly your mind is influenced by those same scammers.

I was using the term "off-chain" in the context of Lightning before I even heard of any of the scams trying to capitalize on the term.

It's the same thing with "crypto". It used to just stand for cryptology. Now the word has been tainted by shitcoins.

In hindsight, it was probably not a good idea to call LN an L2, but semantics are hard to change at this point.

Who's to say that some other term wouldn't also have been abused by scammers.

Just checked the logs on my node and yup, same for me:

2026-02-11T00:54:22.368288+00:00 Saw new header hash=00000000000000000000626a49c9c9047fb8b49a8216daf5e448d44517d38a55 height=935976
2026-02-11T00:54:22.631972+00:00 UpdateTip: new best=00000000000000000000626a49c9c9047fb8b49a8216daf5e448d44517d38a55 height=935976 version=0x20040004 log2_work=96.077678 tx=1308167628 date='2026-02-11T00:54:32Z' progress=1.000000 cache=369.6MiB(2836800txo) warning='Miner violated version bit protocol'
2026-02-11T00:54:23.120026+00:00 Saw new header hash=000000000000000000003be80b432a84daf900e043f3a4f41bfa22921ae0ef6c height=935976

cryptographic algorithm (this could be the wrong word, but I can't find the better term to refer to it: eg. curve only applies to elliptic curve cryptography. what if I also want to reference sha-256?)

It's not the wrong word. Cryptographic algorithms are e.g.: ECDSA, Schnorr, SHA256, RIPEMD-160

I'm curious if you think we will still be happily and safely relying on secp256k1 in the year 2085?

Hard to tell what will be in 59 years, but let's speculate.

Right now the best known practicable algorithm to find private keys from exposed public keys without knowing a single bit of the private key is Pollard's Rho. This algorithm has a time complexity of $O(\sqrt{n})$. So it effectively cuts the number of bits of security in half. A 256-bit private key can be found with about $2^{128}$ iterations.

If computers ever become fast enough to be a threat, we could simply switch to an elliptic curve over a larger prime field with let's say 512 bits. Therefore Pollard's Rho would require $2^{256}$ iterations.

But the likelihood of that becoming necessary any time soon seems very low. Looking at the records of breaking the Elliptic Curve Dircrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) over time we can see a growth rate of roughly 1 bit of security in 4 years:

If we project this out to 2085 we get:
$58.675+(2085-2016)/4=75.925$ bits of security

Unless some more efficient algorithm for solving the ECDLP is found, we are probably going to be fine.

Now just for fun, I projected this very rough estimate out even further into the future. According to this growth rate, we would be able break 128 bit security in the year 2294.

When you use bitcoin, you are mostly using two cryptographic algorithms: secp256k1 and SHA-256.

secp256k1 is not a cryptographic algorithm, rather it's a specific elliptic curve over a specific prime field.

The quantum FUD is so silly. Don't fall for the marketing hype.
In 2001 the number 15 was factored with Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer.
In 2012 Shor's algorithm was applied on a quantum computer to factor 21.
And now it is the year 2026 and we still haven't gotten past 21, not to mention factoring numbers which are actually used in cryptography.
Also note the quantum circuits were compiled beforehand with the knowledge of the solution already.

And when it comes to classical computers, we have a live view of the progress on cracking private keys thanks to the Bitcoin Puzzles:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5218972.msg53649852#msg53649852
As of now, the best someone managed was finding the remaining bits of a private key with 126 bits exposed by applying Pollard's Kangaroo onto the respective public key.
And using brute force the best someone managed was finding the remaining bits of a private key with 187 bits exposed.
So absolutely nothing to worry about if you expose 0 bits of your private key.

The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

satoshi, December 10th 2010
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg28917

A subsidy of 0.5% is sent to the node that solved the block in order to discourage not sharing solutions that qualify as a block. (A miner with the aim to harm others could withhold the block, thereby preventing anybody from getting paid. He can NOT redirect the payout to himself.) The remaining 99.5% is distributed evenly to miners based on work done recently.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool#Payout_logic

You are not denying that the code is AI generated.

Just a little glitch in the matrix happened here:

https://youtu.be/kzYwZpBBx_Q?list=PLaAxhhFb7OVElRJ8Su_C2Xu2uA7WiBKKz&t=59
Well... technically not entirely correct.
A Koblitz curve in the original sense proposed by Neal Koblitz is defined over a binary extension field.

secp256k1 is sometimes informally referred to as a "Koblitz curve" because SECG redefined the term in their sec2 paper:

Parameters associated with a Koblitz curve admit especially efficient implementation. The name Koblitz curve is best-known when used to describe binary anomalous curves over F_{2m} which have a, b ∈ {0, 1} [Kob92]. Here it is generalized to refer also to curves over F_p which possess an efficiently computable endomorphism [GLV01].

Excessive use of emojis, symbols, and em-dashes

And why does an EC library worry about unrelated things like Bitcoin addresses and dozens of other coins?

Smells like a whole lot of AI.

Alright 😂

Note my usage of the word "usually".

I am not denying that Lightning is ultimately enforced on-chain. But an HTLC is usually not recorded in the chain. Only the final state of the channel once it's closed. Hence why I called it "off-chain". But I really don't care what you want to call it. This seems like a pointless discussion to me.

If you say "offchain" it means you take them out from the Bitcoin chain and put them on another chain.

It seems our definition of "offchain" differs, leading to this misunderstanding.

Matter of perspective.

Where am I wrong?

Is even so wrong to see people using the term "offchain" when they refer to a LN payment.
HTLC

In an ideal situation the HTLC never hits the chain, making the term "offchain" perfectly applicable IMO.

It says "on-chain" in the title though.

What's the purpose of this when the actual LLM isn't running on the ESP32 anyway?

The backup transaction(s) are not financial transactions, since they do not move any monetary value. They are only used to store data, that could have been stored externally.