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Just 5 minutes ago, I posted this in the daily discussion thread then this popped up, so I'll repost this here:
"I listened to a Twitter spaces on Drivechains yesterday. That guy Paul Sztorc is trying to push BIP 300/301. TBH, I am unqualified to know if Drivechains pose any threat to the Bitcoin network. I do know it is hard to make any changes to Bitcoin. The prospect of one last change that opens up many doors is pretty alluring.
The main thing I'd be interested in is a privacy sidechain. The Canadian Trucker incident, although it definitely could have been handled much better, shows, IMO the only thing that remains to be desired is more privacy. When CZ handed over the KYC info of Navalny"s donors to Putin, we realize that sometimes people might die due to these limitations.
The argument that it would kill all the shitcoins, however, may not actually end up working out. It implies the main reason for the existence of them is their usecase as opposed to something to gamble on. Their usecase is just an excuse to gamble on them, and they will still have that.
But, once again, I am beyond by depth trying to understand if Drivechains pose a threat to Bitcoin."
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I am also mainly interested in a privacy sidechain. I hope the zSide (zcash-like) sidechain they are working on becomes a reality.
I agree that the "drivechains kill altcoins" narrative is overrated. Though I do also think there's a real possibility that a p2p sidechain protocol like Drivechain will further marginalize them and make it overwhelmingly clear that they are gambling tools, by killing the "bitcoin can't do x but we can" justification for their existence.
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Yeah, that would be great. I saw Paul demoing a zcash sidechain at a conference. Looks great. Adam Back seemed supportive, but he's generally pretty positive with most things in the space.
On the subject of privacy, a project that should be dropping this year is Fedimint, promising a "Wallet of Satoshi-like" custodial Lightning experience with possibly reduced rugging potential due to custody of the Bitcoin being held by a federation. However, IMO, the more exciting part of the project is the privacy promised by Chaumian E-Cash. Any thoughts on this?
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I'll share what I posted on twitter a few months ago:
Fedimint has a place in the design space that could prove a worthwhile tradeoff between scalability, privacy, and security for certain users. But bitcoin users should also be able to get strong privacy with the same or very close to the same security as onchain bitcoin today.
Also worth noting that Chaumian e-cash has certain limitations that a Zcash sidechain (federated or drivechain or whatever kind of sidechain) would not have, such as:
  • Ecash mint can arbitrarily inflate the ecash supply
  • Ecash must be minted and redeemed in specific denominations
  • Depending on the implementation details, it might be possible to link ecash redemptions to specific accounts (giving the server operator a sense of the user's balance)
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Do you know how to code? We have a privacy solution in progress called "teleports" but it could use more developers
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Me? No. Started working on it a few months ago though. Progressing slowly though. Are you working with Chris Belcher on teleports?
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I wish. I don't understand enough about cryptography. My programming ability is like a junior dev with 1 year of experience (at least that's what it feels like)
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If people would have listened to Paul ages ago when he first suggested drivechains, we may not have had a shitcoin proliferation because they would all be drivechain variations built on bitcoin. unfortunately, that didn't happen and here we are 20,000 shitcoins later
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No, we would just have shitcoin side chains. Side chain tokens are not limited to Bitcoins supply cap
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I assumed many would be limitedto the supply cap. Like if you peg in a bitcoin to Liquid (L-BTC) or a bitcoin to Rootstock (R-BTC). The Zcash-like sidechain they are taking about is definitely involves a similar method.
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Who would ensure only that type of side chain is approved in the 256 possible side chains? Not node runners. Only miners would decide these sorts of things.
I also don't like a narrative wherein a scam or shitcoin or anything of a negative perception is associated as necessary for Bitcoins security or that it is part of Bitcoin itself.
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scams and shitcoins can already be built on bitcoin, it cannot be avoided. so don't let the mere possibility of such turn you away from a new protocol that can add functionality that is valuable for bitcoin holders. otherwise to be consistent you have to condemn bitcoin itself for already enabling these possibilities.
Yeah, imagine how different the world would be if even 25% of the money that went into crypto went into Bitcoin. Like... we would be in flying cars. Ok, we wouldn't have flying cars but omg so much money has been wasted in crypto. So much money.
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I say no to every change. Bitcoin is already perfect. Don't fuck it up.
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Many changes have happened in bitcoin's history. Are you suggesting we wind the clock back on bitcoin to before there were any changes? If no changes happened ever then bitcoin would have no block size limit and the bitcoin supply would be like 184.5 billion BTC because the value overflow bug would have never been fixed. Or are you suggesting that bitcoin is perfect now that all of the changes that you find acceptable have happened already but no further changes can happen?
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You seem to have confused now with the past. Did you think I said Bitcoin was always perfect? It's perfect (now).
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I'm not confused, I asked two questions for clarification. Thanks for clarifying. So before the taproot fork a little over a year ago you'd have said that bitcoin was not perfect then, and just needed that one more change to reach perfection?
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That's suspiciously convenient and seems rather arbitrary to me, but ok. I think we need one more change: validity rollups. Then I'll be content :) https://lightco.in/2023/01/03/meta-problem/