Conservatism, in the literal rather than political sense, has always been at the core of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Satoshi himself was very careful and thorough in his original design efforts, and subsequent developers have tried to be very careful and thorough in their development processes after Satoshi left.
Many technologies were originally developed for Bitcoin and eventually tested on other networks, especially due to their vigilance. Confidential Transactions, one of the core pieces of Monero’s underlying technology? Created by Gregory Maxwell for Bitcoin. It was not implemented due to the large inefficiency in terms of data size and the fact that it fundamentally changes the cryptographic assumptions.
All cryptography used in Bitcoin is based on the discrete logarithm assumption that it is impossible to factor two prime numbers of sufficient size. If this assumption is violated, everyone’s private key could be decrypted from the public key. Secret transactions and their mechanisms make it possible for someone to not only crack someone else’s keys, but also secretly inflate the money supply. Also, the transaction amount is hidden from the public view so no one can know about it.
Similarly, the SNARK scheme used by Zcash to provide zero-knowledge proofs for Bitcoin was originally a proposal for Bitcoin. zero coin. This was also never implemented in Bitcoin itself due to conservatism and prudence. The entire encryption scheme relied on initialization by a trusted third party, and users had to trust them to remove the private key material used to initialize the system to remain secure. . This was considered an unacceptable trade-off for Bitcoin.
Even Taproot, which has been around for about three years now, is a proposition built from two separate concepts that ultimately date back to 2012. Signed by MAST and Schnorr. MAST is the idea of taking multiple possible spending scripts and converting them into a Merkle tree so that only the paths used are revealed on the chain. It took nine years for these two ideas to go from idea to actual implementation.
Conservatism has always been central to the way this protocol and network was developed.
recent proposals
I myself have been very skeptical of any proposals that have surfaced in the last few years since Taproot’s activation, and have preferred to be very conservative in what I choose to support. For example, I have been advocating enabling BIP 119 CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY for years. Very conservative and simple,.That is, because of its behavior do not have To enable.
Mechanically, CTV can’t really enable anything that isn’t already possible using pre-signed transactions. The only difference between CTV and CTV is that one is enforced by agreement and the other is enforced by trusting the person who pre-signed those transactions.
My main focus when considering the proposed changes is: everytime Identifying unintended or harmful consequences.my Criticism of drive chains is a perfect example. Drivechain is pitched as a scaling solution that has no negative externalities to the rest of the network. I’ve argued for years, basically alone at first, that that claim isn’t actually true. I explained why I claim that’s not true and how it would negatively impact your network if it were enabled.
Most of my concerns with other recent code proposals basically boil down to one thing. It’s about enabling drive chain variations. Drivechain or similar systems allow anyone to become a block producer that advances the state of the system. In practice, this means that miners effectively have a monopoly on involvement in the process should they choose to carry it out. If such a system were to actually be adopted and enable features that give miners scope to extract valuable front-running transactions, similar to other systems such as Ethereum, it would make it less economical for miners to exercise monopoly. This will be a great incentive.
This is a centralization pressure on mining, and once such a system is enabled, there is no way to limit the functionality that other layers or blockchains enable, so they are limited to functionality that does not cause those problems. There is no way to limit it. Building such a system requires the ability to restrict where coins can go in the future, or covenants, and the ability to ensure that data is carried over from transaction to transaction.
This allows you to create open UTXOs that anyone (read: miners) can commit to facilitating withdrawals, allowing them to complete or “cancelling” them if they are invalid. This, combined with the ability to have a second layer of state, i.e. user fund balances, that can be changed and updated by anyone according to the rules of the system, enables a Drivechain-like system. If you have a closed privileged set of people who can process withdrawals, like a federation, or a closed privileged set of people who can update the state of the system, like a federation, then a system like Drivechain doesn’t exist. His MEV risks and centralization pressures, which I am concerned about, are not explained. For this to happen, both pegs and state updates must be open systems that anyone can participate in, and are effectively subject to miner monopoly by consensus.
For more than five years, this has been the standard for determining whether a proposal is too liberal in what it allows. This is not to say that there is a hard line that should never be crossed, but a reasonable plan for how to deal with and mitigate the potential concentration forces that could arise if real centralization pressures arise. If you don’t have one, it’s a line you shouldn’t cross. .
slow and steady faith
He has been the voice of conservatives for six months, criticizing proposals from a point of view so skeptical and paranoid that rational skepticism and prudence are essentially dead. There is no longer any rational analysis to the call for vigilance and a slower pace, except for small groups and clusters of people drowned out in a sea of noise.
You have the right to be fat and lazy and demand to be spoon fed everything. However, the moment the spoon approaches his mouth, it is knocked away. “You’re trying to feed me!” Before this current convention debate, the real controversy over the proposal was the block size wars. At that time, people made an effort to work on relevant issues in practice and to learn and explore in an open way. Yes, there were lunatics, dogmatic lunatics, and people who wouldn’t engage in honest debate.
At that time, there were not many people like that. Even the majority of big blockers will do the numbers instead of just letting out a dogmatic screech when challenged. They discuss where the sensible line lies in terms of block size, and what externalities and costs this imposes on users. On our side, the winning side, a lot of people came out for exactly this kind of discussion and logical argument.
I supported the first block size increase proposal, Bitcoin XT. Thanks to logical consideration and discussion, I changed my mind.I considered What actually goes wrong?And we looked at how bad those results were. I spent time trying to better understand the parts I didn’t understand at the time. That’s not what’s happening anymore.
People knee-jerk and throw in “unknown unknowns” as arguments against proposed changes. This is not a valid response to anything, nor is it an intellectually honest response. There are unknown unknowns in everything. There are unknowns in doing nothing, there are unknowns in making just one conservative change, and there are unknowns in doing everything at once. That’s the essence of logical categories of things, and we don’t know what we don’t know.
This is a nonsensical, unengaged discussion that gets dragged out endlessly and is never satisfied. This is not a genuine attempt to participate in a conversation, but rather a denial of service attack on the conversation.
There are some known unknowns, aspects and consequences of change that we know about but are unsure of how it will unfold. This is a reasonable consideration when discussing changes. Some aspects or possibilities for which the outcome is uncertain can be identified and these can be discussed. I believe this is not only a reasonable inquiry, but an absolutely important and necessary inquiry in discussing changes to Bitcoin.
Just to the “unknown unknown”! It is not a rational response to respond to every suggestion, every discussion of advantages, every analysis of disadvantages in order to present a balanced view of things. That’s not good intentions. Due to the inherent nature of unknown unknowns, it is impossible to deal with this. in either direction. Whether Bitcoin changes or remains the same, the unknown and unknown risks are equally present and inherent in its very nature.
There is an astonishing lack of self-awareness in this regard on an intellectual level, and an emotionally driven backlash about acting with that lack of self-awareness in public discourse. There is a rush of people showing this.
denial of service attack
It’s bad enough to lack inquisitiveness in private when faced with new information, but it’s even worse to bring that lack of inquisitiveness out in public, especially when it comes to Bitcoin proposals. This constant chanting of “unknown unknowns” and “default is no change” and all the other ossifying mantras beyond that is clearly not dialogue. That’s a denial of service.
Interfering with other discussions and conversations that seek to elucidate or expand everyone’s understanding of trade-offs and capabilities by simply participating in setting bars that are impossible to meet, and doing so consistently over and over again. cannot be said to be involved in good faith. It’s not trying to assess whether a change is safe, it’s not trying to assess the likelihood of unintended consequences or the level of risk. It’s just trying to impulsively stop all change for the sake of change.
That’s not reasonable. Frankly, that’s insane.
It’s like vetoing everything, and vetoes are certainly important in consensus systems. However, interrupting the conversation is not a veto; it is the actions of actual transacting economic agents that decide which software to run or not to run. This dialogue-based denial of service is not a noble or righteous movement to save Bitcoin, but rather to engage these economic actors in making informed decisions about whether or not to veto something. It is an active attack on their ability to gain deeper understanding.
It is malice and malice.
Personally, I think it’s driven by fear. Fear that, given the ability to inform themselves, the economic majority would make different choices than the individuals who thus participate in the conversation. I see no charitable explanation other than sheer stupidity.
The environment in which these conversations take place is no longer honest. It’s not because people are actually proposing changes, it’s because the people in over their heads are constantly running denial of service attacks on the conversation itself. People who refuse to actually admit what they don’t know.That is Are known unknown If you’re honest with yourself. What I don’t understand, what I can’t quite understand. However, some people are so worried about the unknown unknown that they refuse to fill in the gaps between their known unknowns.
They refuse to actually learn more about something they don’t understand well. It’s one thing if it’s a quiet individual choice, but it’s another thing if such people actively intervene in the broader conversation, misleading or discouraging others from doing it for them. If you choose to try to do that, that’s something else entirely.
It’s kind of ironic that this is going on in parallel with ordinal numbers and people saying we need to “filter spam.” Maybe you should. Not on the blockchain. Impossible unless the incentives in the system are fundamentally broken.but in that conversation surrounding blockchain.
This is no longer a good faith dialogue, it’s not because JPEG people are making memes about cats, the “other side” is essentially a denial of service attack attacking everyone else, and it’s not because we like cats. Because it prevents us from even having a conversation about whether (or a dog) at all.
