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100 sats \ 22 replies \ @timechain 17 Jan 2023 \ on: Drivechain (BIP300-301) Bitcoin advanced sidechain discussion bitcoin
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."
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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Are you talking about this: https://github.com/bitcoin-teleport/teleport-transactions ?
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Yes
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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.
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regardless of your opinion on altcoins, bitcoin by its very nature of being an open source project will always enable these possibilities, as the code can be forked an repurposed in any way anyone sees fit. the difference is this would have been carried out in a way which strengthened bitcoin adoption rather than weakening it.
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My instinct says it would not strengthen adoption at all. Shitcoins are a result of a failure to understand the "why" behind Bitcoin
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My comment should not be interpreted to be an endorsement of shitcoins in any way. The functionality about Drivechain that I find most valuable are things that give BTC more utility and value, like new self-custody contracts, better privacy, p2p finance, etc. I am only saying that it is already possible to create shitcoins on bitcoin with the many colored coins protocols like Omni, Counterparty, OpenAssets, Taro, etc, so it's unfair and inconsistent to support bitcoin but oppose a new protocol like Drivechain just because it is also possible to create shitcoins using it.
edit: sorry, just noticed you were replying to someone else
I'm against LND because taro was built on it. "Get your shitcoins off my lightning node"
And its not the mere possibility, it seems to be the main feature of BIP 300. To fund Bitcoin mining with shitcoins.
I think part of this misunderstanding is "really useful features" that do not exist in shitcoins but claim to exist. "Web 3" was the latest example that got shot down with the development of nostr. Here, less text
Web 3 => nostr
Smart contracts => if a block chain needs an oracle why does an oracle need a block chain?
Privacy => teleports
DAOs => multi-sig with irc (you can even call each multisig participat an Oracle if you must)
Bitcoiners just build things differently. Stick around and you'll see how.
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I've been around for over a decade and have been following bitcoin developments closely throughout this time. Many improvements are possible with drivechains that aren't possible on bitcoin today. For example teleport and other coinjoin/coinswap based protocols are far less private and more expensive on a relative basis than Zerocash-style protocols, smart wallets provide much more flexibility in programming the spending conditions for a wallet which makes self-custody easier and more secure, I could go on and on.
That said, it doesn't really matter what you or I think about the value of these other use cases. What matters is that out there in the market there are things people want to be able to do with their coins that currently they can't do on bitcoin or existing L2 protocols, so they turn to altcoins instead. You and I might dismiss or dislike those use cases but that is irrelevant. Choosing to turn away customers, simply because we are obstinate in our opinion of their desires, when we could instead work to solve their problems is a losing strategy and artificially limits bitcoin's potential. Drivechains can bring that business back to bitcoin and help bitcoin get closer to achieving its greatest potential as p2p electronic cash.
This is not to mention future use-cases that we can't even imagine right now, that bitcoin does not support, and we will wish it did once the need arises. Drivechains can "future-proof" to some degree and give bitcoin developers the flexibility to address these future problems without needing to make any other changes to bitcoin L1.
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What is this about customers and business? Bitcoin is not a business. After all this time you've been thinking of Bitcoin as a product that you're selling people on? p2p cash is not just cash for cash's sake. It is money and money is a social construct. Bitcoin is also a social construct, not a business or a product that is being sold to customers.
I don't know if you know this, but you can very much run drivechains right now. Its considered a brittle fork (that's my name for it) whereas a merge would be a softfork. The difference is that if your brittle fork client loses consensus at any point, it is no longer considered Bitcoin, but if a brittle fork client becomes a soft fork through shear adoption, it becomes Bitcoin
So if this is really such an in-demand feature that people would like to make into the social construct we call Bitcoin, then LET THEM RUN FULL NODES
That being said, it sounds like you don't understand why Bitcoin doesn't use zerocash. We want blockchain auditability. We had a buffer overflow once upon a time and seeing that transaction create Bitcoin out of thin air was important to the participants who all decided to pick up mining an older state of the chain which was not above the 21 million limit, with a new client that had the patch as well as a hard coded cap rather than the implied cap of the miner subsidy.
Now, smart wallets is a thing I've never heard of before. That is its own topic though.
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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