Some time ago, one particular incident made me finally exit the Ethereum ecosystem (and everything else like Solana, etc.) for good.
The first time I heard about Bitcoin was probably around 2014/15 and I found the idea interesting, however, back then it sounded like mostly speculation to me. Over time and as new projects came up I grew into the "blockchain IS the evolution" mindset and saw Bitcoin as simply the project with the first mover advantage. Same as Facebook was not the first social network, I thought that Bitcoin will probably eventually be flipped by some other project "doing things better".
Over time though, I bounced back and became a complete Bitcoin maximalist and changed my mindset to "Bitcoin is the innovation, not blockchain". I won't go into the details of this journey as I believe most people here went through similar experiences and I don't think I need to convince anyone here why Bitcoin is the innovation to change the world and everything else is not.
However, I still had some stakes in this or that defi protocol here and there and one day I decided to finally clean that all up and started looking for all the places where I did some transactions. What I was shocked about, how many of these supposedly trustless and immutable protocols reneged on their promises like paying you back x amount whenever you want, etc. Many protocols changed their rules during the years I was not paying attention and some would not let me withdraw the full amount anymore due to some bullshit reason. Basically theft as I see it.
Now, I would consider myself a technically literate person. I even wrote some smart contracts myself back in the days but of course, I did not check the source code (if it was even available) for all the protocols I interacted with, what variables are unilaterally upgradeable, etc. I mainly relied on social proof (i.e. someone of the many users will have looked at it in detail). As we know, social proof can backfire badly. Just think of the log4j library everyone from banks to NASA was using. And even if you have the skill to audit a contract, you rarely have the time and you could also miss something. So basically, I call this whole open smart contract trust model bullshit because the reality is that you can hide everything in these contracts and no one is checking.
Now, I am currently working on some Taproot related things and it got me thinking. Since you can hide any script you want in the Merkle Tree attached to an address it is getting more cumbersome to verify addresses. For a P2WPKH address, the address a wallet generates can be wrong but at least I know the spending conditions that I can expect given the address. If a wallet gives me a Taproot address on the other hand side, I need to be much more wary of what can hide behind it and I need to check much more in detail if only the key spend path is possible for example.
So, in summary, I am not advocating for ossification but I think we need to keep Bitcoin simple. More functionality allows for more scams to infest the system and if people get rugged by malicious addresses (i.e. addresses could look fine, you even can spend from them but one day, boom, money is gone because some script path was activated) the sentiment will swing against Bitcoin. I want to see a Bitcoin address and know what I can expect. Bitcoin is money, leave the rest to shitcoins I say.
52 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 27 May
More functionality allows for more scams to infest the system and if people get rugged by malicious addresses (i.e. addresses could look fine, you even can spend from them but one day, boom, money is gone because some script path was activated)
I think you instinct is correct and this is exactly one of the reasons I argue against most proposals: Covenants, et al will just turn into shitcoin factories in ways that we can't see right now
Further, these will also exacerbate scaling issues.
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+1.
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these supposedly trustless and immutable protocols reneged on their promises like paying you back x amount whenever you want, etc. Many protocols changed their rules during the years I was not paying attention and some would not let me withdraw the full amount anymore
That's kinda funny. Sorry, I don't want to be mean to you and am sorry for you. But it is kinda funny to me that they talked themselves so deep into it and developed this yes-sayer culture until the fundamentals don't even hold anymore.
even if you have the skill to audit a contract, you rarely have the time and you could also miss something. So basically, I call this whole open smart contract trust model bullshit because the reality is that you can hide everything in these contracts and no one is checking.
They just build a jenga tower of software that nobody wants or can maintain. There isn't even a second wallet that people use. And a lot of project build for nobody. There is a mini-documentary by Folding Ideas about the metaverse stuff and even during the pinacle of their hype the actual metaverse was used by a few dozen people worldwide. A dead mall as he called it. It's hilarious.
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They just build a jenga tower of software that nobody wants or can maintain.
That's 🥇 😆
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Great write up. Thanks for sharing.
I am in your camp. We have to be very careful about upgrades to the base layer.
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