[Western music] All right, there is a Mexican standoff happening.
Some would say it's always been happening. [clears throat] Some would say it is congenital with Bitcoin itself. But that intro got me fired up. That got- Int- Intro got me absolutely jacked.
In that intro, Clint Eastwood is the node runner with.1 Bitcoin in his hardware wallet that is connected to his home node. You know, the bad guys are ossifiers. You know? What a, what a fun thing.
But it's, it's again, it's like a buddy movie, like where the two buddies, they hate each other, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, they cannot admit that they actually do deeply love each other.
Uh, no homo, but they actually really, really, like, need each other and, uh, they're on the run from the big bad state with whom we are all ultimately in conflict.
Um- So I'm regarded, 'cause I had no idea that was actually a clip from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Oh, it's not. I just made it up 'cause I'm a huge- Oh... like, Western buddy movie fan. Yeah.
That makes more sense. Anyway- Yeah, no problem... speaking of buddy movies, uh, shout out to our sponsors, Botanix. Thank you for supporting. Bitcoin Season 2 is brought to you by Botanix.
Botanix Labs is pioneering a new direction for DeFi with the first EVM L2 running on Bitcoin that's built to be forward secure, decentralized, and share gas fees generated by the network with users.
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Exactly, and also the beginning of this, if you're listening to this, I probably cut it off for brevity, the beginning of this podcast was basically the full Good, Bad, and The Ugly signature, like, symphonic scene.
Uh, s- like, the sound of it with, uh, you know, Clint Eastwood gunning down all the bad guys, riding the lightning, and that's funny because, like, it feels like we're that s- that classic other Mexican standoff scene in The Office between Dwight, Andy, and Michael, um, where, like- [laughs]...
we have kind of three major stakeholders here [laughs] who all, like, they all want to come to consensus or, or not. I don't know. This is- So- This... Yeah, go for it. Are, are, are we...
No, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but, like, are we saying the three major stakeholders here, roughly speaking, are the developers, miners, and users? Like that's kind of the- Yeah, I would say, yeah.
Users, economic, yeah, whatever. So. Now, that being said, there are clearly, like, there are more substrata of user, u- of stakeholders within Bitcoin consensus. If you wanna learn more about all of the different
stakeholders and their roles and their weight in a lot of these discussions for upgrades, highly recommend you go check out Steve Lee, Ren Crypto Fish's, and Lyn Alden's paper that they released on this.
Steve and Ren opened up next with the paper. It was p- it was my favorite talk, just because I think it set the stage so beautifully for a lot of the stuff that we talked aboutOver the conference.
Yeah, and so Colin and I are doing this Bitcoin Season Two Writers Room on the heels of Op Next, which was a rousing success we recommend.
By the time you listen to it, pretty much all of the videos and presentations will be uploaded to our website, blockspace.media.
But in the spirit of, like, trying to have conversations about Bitcoin scaling, uh, forks, covenant proposals, and the big boogeyman, which is activation, um, we've seen more people chime in.
Like, the conversation did not end at Op Next. In fact, that- No... seemed to kind of reopen just kind... I would say... Well, I don't want to give... I, I will give us a little bit of credit.
It has, like, forced open the conversation to, to like people... get people out there, and at, at the center of this is this morning, the day we're recording this on Thursday,
um, James O'Brien put out a tweet called the... Exactly what it's called. The Great... The con- the consensus conundrum. Consensus conundrum. Bitcoin faces a one-of-a-kind leadership problem, and- Yeah... yeah.
Yeah, and I said I think Colin and I are gonna... We're gonna use this as a... We're gonna talk through this, and we're probably even gonna select some replies that are in it.
Um, for those of you degens who are listening to this and you're like, "What are they talking about," um, this is in the Op Cat discussion.
So if you're this profile picture-wearing cat person, um, or if you're a hardcore Great Consensus Cleanup person, I hope we can at least draw you in.
But for the cat people, like, this is how the actual software happens, is we have to argue about it for God knows how long until we figure out what to actually do, and then someone does it.
That's kind of like- And who is we in that conversation, Charlie? I, I don't know, man. Literally everyone- That's the whole problem... but no one knows, you know? No one knows. I'll, I'll probably start this out by, um,
I, uh, will share my screen, and I have a tweet from mine which I think summed up a good comment from Reardon during his presentation where he said, "I notice we have this recursive definition of consensus.
A software doesn't have consensus because it doesn't have consensus. Why doesn't it have consensus? Because it doesn't have consensus." [laughs] It is this ring around the rosy of, uh, there is, um,
this attitude often that, um, well, if we just had consensus, we would, um, go and, uh, do a softwa- we'd figure out how to software.
At the same time, there is a large camp which says, "Oh, you should not go and try to form consensus. That needs to magically appear." And so that is kind of- Pop out of the
mop, out of the, out of the, the, you know- The, it's that-... the background of discussion across- Exa-... all these different media online and- The same place that female dwarves come from.
They spring out of the ground, as Gimli says. [laughs] Like, so, so we're here, and then we have yesterday, um, this exchange between Jeremy, who spoke at our conference, and Luke.
So Jeremy says, "The Great Consensus Cleanup," for those of you don't know, that is the Great Consensus Cleanup is just a bunch of, like, housekeeping things that everyone agrees we need to do them to just basically smooth around some rough edges- Custodial updates, like, and by custodial, I mean, like, literally janitorial, like Charlie was saying Yeah...
that are not sexy at all, that are really only fully or appreciated or understood by a lot of the tech savvier developers. I think this is a really good, uh, important point to bring up, and we'll return to this. Yeah.
Stuff like this doesn't always get a bunch of weight behind it because people either don't understand it or it doesn't do anything cool for Bitcoin.
But you start talking about covenants and smart contracts and other things, and then everybody loses their minds. [laughs] The entire, you know- Let's adopt some soft forks... sphere. [laughs] Yeah.
I mean, you know, and then normal users and, and regarded people like me think that'd be pretty cool to have on Bitcoin.
So there's this kind of schism between what is important for users and what developers think is important.
Yeah, and for those of you who don't know, the, the last software we had, Jeremy Rubin, uh, did kind of drive forwards, that's a loaded term here, um, which was Taproot in '21, uh, when Jeremy was a...
Was he a lead maintainer of Core? Um- Um, I don't think he... I don't know, but he was- Oh, okay... definitely heavily involved.
Very active at the f- at the forefront of a lot of the, the developers on Bitcoin Core, and he's talking about the Great Consensus Cleanup, which is janitorial stuff that we eventually need to do to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core, and that it, like everyone agrees this needs, this needs to happen, and nobody, as he says, can agree on how to actually do it.
And Luke Dash Jr chimes in of course, "BIP 8," which is one of the two BIPs which at least outlay a path forwards for how to activate a software, "BIP 8," quote, "had consensus for Taproot until you decided to scuttle it, leaving nothing but confusion."
And then Jeremy replies with a tweet from Luke from a year ago- [laughs]... to the week where he says, replies in r- where he's in reply to on this topic, "Taproot activated with BIP 8, not 9,"
implying that, [laughs] like, this is, this is... It is not literal direct contradiction that Luke has s- here, but, like, it is [laughs] very, it reads very contradictory.
I, I just don't even understand where he's coming from with this, and just a quick clarifying point. BIP 9
came before BIP 8, funnily enough, and BIP 9 outlays a method for activating a soft fork where it's essentially a minor activated soft fork.
You get a certain amount of hash rate to signal support for something, and then it locks in. After a certain amount of time ala- elapses, it ends up activating.
BIP 8 is similar to BIP 9, but it has a, i- it, two, two main differences is, one, it uses the activation threshold for hash rate.
It, i- or, uh, to measure it, it uses block height rather than, like, a timestamp-Which is better, I think, for Bitcoin's internal clock.
The other thing is it does not reach the threshold necessary to activate an upgrade, it gives a flag day for activation through a user-activated soft fork where nodes will update independently of what miners are doing.
So it's kind of this, like, um, it- it's kind of this, uh, you know, brokering of an agreement with miners saying, "Here, you signal for this thing, and if you signal for it, great, we're all in agreement.
But if you don't, by the way, we have this activation method where we can do it without you regardless."
Um- Yeah, it's- it's almost like you- you come to a handshake deal, and everybody's like, "Yeah, we want this deal to work," but then you also sign an agreement where if one of the parties who needs to act first typically doesn't
show up with their side of the deal, the other party will just go walk into the house and take it. Yeah.
Because we already agreed, but, like, um- Basically saying, "We're all in agreement here, and if you don't agree with us, fuck you, we're doing it anyway," which- Yeah.
And sometimes it can be kind of a semantics argument. Sometimes- Yeah... I wonder if it's just semantics all the way down because I feel like- Most things are. Yeah.
Feels like we've been arguing in circles in the same way that we have The Office, Dwight, Mar- uh, Michael, and Andy in a circle with guns drawn, pointing at each other.
So this leads us to, I think, the- the meat of our, uh, uh, conversation, which is, um, this post from James O'Brien on Twitter as jamesob.
If you are listening to this, we'll try to read select parts, but if you're watching, I would just pull up that Twitter thread. It's the one that's got all the likes and all the comments today.
And just to go through it, we recommend reading the whole thing. James O'Brien, as far as I'm aware, Colin, has not...
He's always had spicy takes, and he can be a little bit of a troll if he doesn't like something, but, like, he's an important voice in the conversation of soft forks. Yeah. And he put the... And he...
It's a very long thread where he had, um, I think he had Rhindell and Justine, Mrs. Hoddle, review this- Which is his wife, by the way... but it's generated a lot of discussion. Sorry? Yeah. That's his wife. Oh.
See, I didn't- Yeah. See, I... Yeah. So- Bitcoin lore here. Don't wanna like- Yeah. They're pretty open about it. Okay. And also, just a quick point of clarity for you, I think it's James O'Byrne or Byrne.
I don't know how to pronounce- Byrne... his last name. I think it's James O'Byrne. But he's a Bitcoin Cor- He has been a Bitcoin Core contributor. I believe he also...
Didn't he, um, he- he- he- I think he might have helped Jeremy with CTV or at least contributed, uh, ideas to it. Yeah. And I also wanna say that he... Uh, didn't he help with opt vault or author opt vault? Oh, man.
I mean- Man, we really didn't come prepared- We didn't come, we didn't come prepared... with show notes today. We didn't come prepared. I think so, yeah. It looks like he is, um...
Yeah, he- he proposed opt vault, which is kind of another covenants, uh, you know, related proposal.
But anyway, he had some really good points in this Twitter essay, and I think this kinda strikes to the core of a lot of the problems that we're having currently, and the TLDR is that for the first time in a long time, Bitcoin Core is not driving consensus forward for a major protocol change that would require a soft fork.
There is currently a vacuum that no one's really filled. We kind of talked about this at Op Next.
Um, on my panel I made the point that it seems like a private company like Taproot Wizards are kind of filling the vacuum, and really being vocal about their favorite proposal for a future soft fork.
But that is not sufficient enough to achieve consensus on something like Opcat, and so we're all kind of sitting here, you know,
sitting around with our dicks in our hands wondering what's coming next, um, how do we move forward with this when the unspoken truth
is, or kind of like the inconvenient truth that is not talked about enough is that at the end of the day, every single major upgrade in Bitcoin has been pushed forward by stakeholders in Bitcoin Core. Yeah.
He talks about this. He, um, towards the top of the essay says, um,
uh, "The final say and big ideas were implicitly signed off by one guy or maybe a small oligarchy of wizened autists." [laughs] True. [laughs] "In many ways there's really nothing wrong with this.
Um, this is how most open source project operate. Oftentimes they have benevolent dictators who, quote, 'make the call in times of high dimensional ambiguity.' Everyone knows [laughs]
Guido and Linus and the based Christian SQLite guy." Mm-hmm. Those are inside jokes for some people. [laughs] Um, given that, there are three factors that create the consensus conundrum facing Bitcoin right now.
One, the old benevolent dictators or high caste oligarchy have abdicated their power, leaving a vacuum that shifts the project from conventional mode of operation to novel never tried before mode, an attempt at some kind of supposedly meritocratic leaderlessness.
As you said, Colin, like Bitcoin Core used to have kind of a person who led it, and it was Satoshi, and then it was Gavin Andresen, and then it was I don't even remember who.
But it's been, there's been like a guy- Most recently it was Wladimir van der Laan who- Yeah, van der Laan... who left I think last year or like kinda said, "I'm done-" Yeah... "being a lead maintainer."
And when we say leader of Bitcoin Core, we mean the lead maintainer of the Bitcoin Core- Of the- Get that before people-... the dominant reference client for Bitcoin, so Bitcoin- Yeah...
broader consensus, this is the client that everybody uses. There is always discussion on whether Bitcoin Core is Bitcoin or not, not for this-It's a semantics argument and the answer isn't- Semantics. Yeah. It is.
It's a- [laughs] I'm, I'm, I'm firmly in the camp that if, if your r- if your client is like 98% of all the active nodes, then like what... You know. Anyway.
I'm in the camp that if you can use LibreRelay to get stuff into Core, which is not within Core relay policy but can still... Anyway, okay, whatever. Whatever. [laughs] Okay, so- [laughs] Yeah...
okay, so like there's not a person, uh, there's not the village elder model to come down from Mount Sinai and say, "These are the words that God has given us. We shall follow these commandments."
Rather it's that person no longer exists. They, they... This is kind of intentional, but it's also unspoken, um, that there's not a person.
So- To, to- It's- To complicate your biblical metaphor, which I love, it's almost like a Tower of Babel scenario- Yeah [laughs]... where like we're no longer- We're all speaking different languages...
speaking one language. Yeah.
With one person directing us, and now everyone has their own tongue and we're all just running around shouting at each other like intelligible idiots, unintelligible idiots, and no one knows what to do next.
This is what the... This is the, the Tower of Babel that maximalism built. Anyway. Ooh, spicy take. [laughs] I- I'm gonna have to digest that one for a second I, I don't know if that'll be a... I don't know.
I'm practicing being Michael Saylor and spitting out random unverified aphorisms just to confuse people and make big impact. Bitcoin is the Tower of Babel that Bitcoin- Bitcoin was-...
that we're successful and made it to heaven [laughs] Exactly. Yeah, exactly. [laughs] It's... Okay. [laughs] We need to do a... Okay. Um, [laughs]
so Ben- We need to do a show where we each take on a different persona within the- [laughs] Yeah... Bitcoin ecosystem- Oh, man... and don't break character the entire time. [laughs] Oh, man.
Yeah, we could do like a holiday special. Okay. Cut that out. Any- anyway, continue. Yeah. Sorry. Not to get off track. No, no, no. Um, then we have, um, uh,
n- number two of James' point, the possible design space for improvements and things to care about in Bitcoin is wide open at this point due in vaults, more L2s, rollups, generational computational tooling like Kat.
Can we bundle things? Can we do CTV and vault? Um, and he says, "The problem is that all of these are valid options. They all have merit in terms of what to focus on and how to get to the end goal.
There really isn't a clear correct design pattern." So that's another thing is like while many people will argue on all of these points, they will argue very strongly against rollups,
they'll argue very strongly against generational computational tools. Um, there are material, there are camps in Bitcoin now that, that are representative of the Bitcoin user base which advocate for these.
So like they are in the discussion and, uh, and d- we have to once again figure out what Bitcoin is. Like should Bitcoin be in the hands of everybody? To what degree? To what level of trust?
And, and what we wanna do with it too. Yeah. And I think that James is pointing out something very elementary, but that is very important.
Like he's saying we're, we're stuck at this point because we're having to decide what we want to do next, and that's always been the case though since Bitcoin- Always been the case...
J- since the genesis of Bitcoin, that's always been the case. And that's not to deride what he's saying here because, again, I, it's elementary, but it's really important.
And sometimes the most important points are elementary. But this is a very, I think, lucid, kind of introspective
article that he's written saying that these are problems that we've always had, but f- now we have them kind of to a degree...
We, we, like, we've always had these problems, but there's a new problem now where there is no benevolent dictator. There is no consensus or lead maintainer at, at Bitcoin Core saying, "What about this next?" Right?
And I think this has really turned a lot of people off with regard to both how CTV and Opcat have been marketed.
People got pissed off at Jeremy for going to miners and for really advocating for OpCTV and they said, "You shouldn't be doing that. Uh, you have too, you're too emotionally attached to this thing."
And on the flip side, you've had a lot of people pissed off at Udi and Eric and the Taproot Wizards folks for pushing forward what they think is the most important thing to activate. But at the same time,
their ac- their advocacy has also won them over a lot of really impressive developers to go work at Taproot Wizards. Y- yeah.
Um, it's, uh, as Steve Vombur puts it, t- [laughs] imagine I'm sweating and I'm screaming on stage and it's the '90s, "Developers, developers, developers, developers." [laughs] Who's hiring all the developers?
Even the developers who are working on very conventionally, like hardcore laser-eyed products are going to the Taproot Wizards. Look at Ben Carman who co-founder of Mutiny Wallet, like- Yep...
that was, that was one of the... I feel, I feel like Luke Skywalker saying like, "You were one of the good ones," or I don't know who said that, but you know what I mean, like- Right... um, like, uh, he's going over.
And you see that the money and the energy and the excitement... Yeah.
This is a really important point because one of the things that James talks about in the thread is how draining and demoralizing working on Core can be- Yeah...
'cause there is so much dysfunction, there is so much stonewalling of ideas.
There are so many competing ideas in this marketplace that you cannot hold onto one, and it must be super refreshing for some of these developers to look at a well-capitalized business like Taproot Wizards that has a lot of energy, that seems to be fun to work for, and it's kind of revitalizing-Their work ethic to put in the hours that they need to, to advance this protocol.
I mean, it is rigorous, it is demanding, there are very few people who can do it, and like at the end of the day, the, the discord of something like the open source nature of Bitcoin with all these competing interests, and all these competing voices, and all these really opinionated, really smart people, it's probably really hard to deal with, and it just, you know, kind of rips you in, in multiple places at once.
And then you have this goofy company that has like a coloring book for its roadmap, Taproot Wizards, and it's, it's fun, and there's a unified vision of what you're trying to build. That has to be attractive.
I'm not a developer myself, but I could just see that as being an attractive selling point- Yeah... for why you would wanna end up going there, and also you're gonna get paid. Like a lot- Y-...
of these Bitcoin core contributors are not getting paid. The majority of them do not have grants, and they are not bankrolled by a private company. Yeah. Um, you get to work on a shared vision. That's exciting.
Where you immedi- that and that with- the stuff that you're gonna work on is probably going to have users if you are able to s- get a soft fork over the line. Like, this is another thing, like developers don't...
Like if a developer dies in the forest, does anybody notice? Or developer launches an app in a, in the woods, uh, does it happen or not?
Like this is also the case, like you- they- there's higher confidence of getting paid, um, being able to do something innovative, uh, and, uh, having users use your product. So who cares if it is very JPEG heavy?
Like this is the, the case that a lot of people I think are looking at. And it's not to say that there aren't other groups which fund developers, like there's Chaincode, and there's Brink, but these are- Right...
these are more, they, they pretend themselves as more neutral, and to various degrees they may be, but there's... it's like not exciting.
Um- Also not the salary that you get from a grant like that is not as competitive probably as like a, as a software company, right? You know. Yeah. And, and I'll, I mean, I'll be... I can say it like,
some of these companies can be kind of bureaucratic, and they are not necessarily neutral.
They're just more narrow in scope, and then deflect anything outside of a narrow scope of vision for what you can look on Bit- work on Bitcoin on. And that's actually pissed a lot of, frustrated a lot of people.
So- Yeah. For sure... like this is a reality. And I mean, you mentioned, you, uh, Colin, you get into this next section of James's, um, uh, post, which is
doing the work, doing all this stuff in a situ- a poisonous situation is really time-consuming and mind-melting.
He says, "I was paid well to do this full-time for years, and the process left me disgusted with the dysfunction, having little desire to continue contribution. I think this is a common feeling."
And then he says what we were just talking about, "A related myth is that businesses will do something analogous to aid the process, that businesses will build on perspe- prospective forks.
Most Bitcoin companies actually have a ton on their backlog fighting for survival, and really don't have anyone to dedicate to full-time R&D.
Um, the ones who do have R&D are much more like shitcoin factories- [laughs]...
and don't care about specific Bitcoin upgrades," which is funny because like the argument is that, that the Wizards are the most shitcoin factory adjacent. Yes. But and that is, that is true.
They will say, "We are in the business of producing assets which are not just Bitcoin." Yep. But they're- Yeah... but like, um, the thing is, is like this is very, very true, it is we...
the Bitcoin ecosystem have, have learned not to build a company betting that a soft fork will happen, so therefore everyone, probably wisely, capital allocators included, do not spend any resources towards, um, w- uh, uh, working on R&D towards any changes to Bitcoin.
So then it is rare, in fact, possibly even unique entirely to the Wizards, and maybe like Paul over there at Layer 2 Labs with, with Drive Chain, like
these are the only like funded companies that come to my mind- Yeah... which like are building towards something which cannot be implemented yet. Yeah, I think so.
I think that they're definitely the outliers in a general trend kinda to his point. I think what James is saying there is kind of a half-truth, right? You said it,
the, the Taproot folks are kind of like the shitcoiners of the Bitcoin circle, um, who are actually working on Bitcoin because some people think that, you know, JPEGs and stuff are shitcoins.
Um, I personally don't have that view.
I may not really care about them that much, but it's, you know, it's kind of a weird argument and, and, and self-defeating 'cause at the end of the day, um, you're not gonna stop these things from getting on chain.
But the other thing is too, they clearly do, to your point, care about what upgrade gets added next.
You know, Taproot Wizards doesn't necessarily need Opcat to be a functioning business, but it would make them v- it would make their business much easier and it would make their roadmap actually, uh, you know, more, I would say, exciting or, um, you know, potentially lucrative if it were active, which raises another point entirely, you know, and same thing with Paul at Layer 2 Labs with Bit300, which like shout out to like the lone man in the wilderness.
Like I just don't think they were [laughs] ever gonna get- The lone angry man yelling at- The lone angry man-... the wilderness [laughs]...
we're just not gonna get that, and I think that he realized that that's not gonna happen, at least through the conventional means, so that's why he
had this talk about a core untouched activated soft fork at, at- A developer scorned is something, something, something Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And, um, I, I recommend y'all listen to that talk 'cause it's a very interesting idea- Yeah... but probably a lot of criticisms to it. It engendered a lot of conversation.
But anyway, uh, just final point here-On the one hand, it's not necessarily good to have Bitcoin Core be the driving factor of an upgrade.
On the other hand, do we really want private companies leading this discussion if their champion soft fork makes their business viable or gives them a head start on other people or makes them money?
I don't really think that's ideal either. It, it, it's almost this like, um, lesser... It's not a lesser of two evils, but there's this kind of like, like pick your poison or like- Yeah...
it's, it's a kind of a, it's like a idealism versus pragmatism, right?
Where it's like ideally both of these have equal weight, and it's a tug of war, and like the most meritocratic wins, but that's just not the world we live in.
And so maybe the, the point is that in different points in Bitcoin's development and different points in time, you're gonna have one model win out over the other.
Now I think the important point here is that for the current soft forks being proposed like CTV, um, OP_CAT, uh, the Greg consensus cleanup is kind of its own thing, but with, with those two for, uh, you know, improving Bitcoin computationally,
they're pretty vanilla. These are... OP_CAT's already been in Bitcoin, you know, we know that it's not going to break it. OP_CTV, there aren't really any good arguments against it, as Peter Todd said during our panel.
The best argument against it when it was proposed is that it doesn't really necessarily do anything that people want. Now we have a lot of potential use cases that could leverage it.
So for these soft forks, companies currying or companies advocating for one over the other is not really dangerous, but in the future you could see it being something that could turn people off or be potentially detrimental.
Yeah. It's interesting. We do have, um, now I would say several companies, uh, I'm gonna just pick Alex with Arc Labs who was on this podcast recently.
Arc's implementing, um, an Arc on Bitcoin, which works today, but it could be dramatically improved with a soft fork, specifically CTV.
It would also be improved with Cat, but it's interesting because like now you have more of these, I would say, UTXO extension type systems, uh, lightning companies included,
where, uh, they're raising money and they've got... they're hiring good devs, and there's energy behind it, and they are trying to onboard...
They're, they're positioned to onboard users well, and they would be benefited by a soft fork. Yeah. Um, Peter Todd does make a good point with his comment on, uh, you know, years ago there wasn't as much of a,
of a reason to do CTV and now there is. Again, sometimes this feels a bit like a semantics issue, but- Yeah... but like, but, um, yeah, I mean, it is kind of a pick your poison.
Also like why are we even talking about any of this stuff? Because the, because the Wizards raised several million dollars and then like literally jump-started a, you know, this dead discussion.
I'm not saying it wasn't totally dead, but like it was, uh, it was not moving forward. It was dormant. It was dormant. Very, very... Yeah. It was in hibernation. And so, um, they still carry like the, the rod.
They're usually the first money through the door for these dev conferences. Look, they're sponsoring, they sponsored Up Next, they sponsored TabConf, they sponsored BTC++.
These are the North American developer-focused conferences, and they want to put their name and say, "We wanna do these things," and then they also, you know, they don't suck all of the, all the air out of the room in these.
I, I'm just gonna be very frank and say I think, um, like they've been sending their dev sides of the team, less of the incendiary Udi and Eric people to these conferences, and it's like...
And they've managed to navigate that pretty well. But like
still this is a fraught discussion, and it's draining, and who in their right mind if you weren't some kind of masochist wants to engage with, uh, the business of trying to
champion a soft fork, you know? So- Right... um, there is, uh... I'll also move on to the other section where this actually mirrors a bit what Rusty Russell talked about in the panel.
So James says, "The current mechanism for changing Bitcoin hinges on what core developers will merge. This of course isn't official policy, but it's the unintended reality.
Um, less savvy actors like miners and exchanges and maybe even users have to pick some indicator to pay attention to that tells them what changes are safe and what, what are coming.
They don't wanna size these up for, they don't wanna size these up for themselves. Um, core developers will bristle at this characterization. They'll say, 'We're just janitors. We just merge what has consensus.'
And they're not being disingenuous in saying that, but they're also not acknowledging that historically this is how consensus changes have operated."
And Rusty says kind of the inverse of this in our, in his panel on Up Next where he said, um, "Developers, um, may not push forward changes, but they definitely have and can veto them de facto." Yeah.
They have the power to veto, um, and it's not like, oh, I think people hear that, and they think, uh, it's some sort of concrete process, but it's literally just them being in the IRC chat or in the dev mailing list and being like, "This is dumb.
Here's why we shouldn't do this," and then other people, uh, agree or disagree.
I thought Rusty's point on the panel was really interesting because it flies in the face of the typical argument about activation is that who is the veto boogeyman? It's the miningIndustry, right?
Like ever since SegWit there is this like deeply entrenched fear almost like a generational trauma [laughs] type response to this idea that anything that's good for Bitcoin, the miners can just say, "No, we don't want that" when for- look, and for SegWit, of course, because SegWit invalidated ASICBoost which was giving Bitmain a leg up against all of their competition with regards to mining
like 100%, um, there's also the idea that a block size increase would give them less fee revenue also true, so like those two things sure. Um, the- I think the mining industry is, is much different now.
Uh, Peter Todd seemed to disagree with me on this during our panel. Jay- Yeah, I, I disagree. I personally disagree with Peter on this. Jay said- Yeah. Yeah.
Well, he said it's like there's no difference between then and now. Uh, Jay kind of met us in the middle.
There are things that are similar, there are things that are different, but at the end of the day the vast majority of Bitcoin miners, and James kind of points this out, they really don't kn- know how all this stuff works.
They're very technically illiterate.
Um, you know, people I think as Bitcoiners to this day, even some of the core developers like Luke, um, and maybe I shouldn't speak for Luke here, but some Bitcoiners have this, this, you know, image of a miner as like a guy in a hoodie who hasn't showered in a week and is running a bunch of S19s in his basement when in reality- And has a book, and has read every book on game theory- Yeah...
and imagine- 100%... and is constantly watching Bitcoin for their optimal decision.
Yeah, and is relaying their own transactions through their own node and signing their own blocks and building their own templates, when in reality it's like a boomer in a suit whose son-in-law told him to pour a million dollars and do like an off-grid mining site in Texas [laughs].
Like- And he's like I'm- And he spends all his time at the Texas Railroad Commission arguing with the commissioner, uh, uh, and does, and does not have a Twitter account, and may for the first time install Telegram to buy, uh, $20 million worth of overpriced S19 J Pros.
[laughs] Right. Right. That's, it's not, that's not game theory, guys. No. The biggest miners in the game currently are suits- Yeah...
and they are people with a lot of capital who can deploy machines at scale, and that doesn't mean that there obviously are a lot of other miners too who are like more aligned with Bitcoin and very technically savvy, things like that, but like a lot of the biggest miners around the world are people with a lot of money who wanna make a lot more money, and Bitcoin is their, is their vessel, or Bitcoin mining I should say is their vessel through which they are going to sail into Valhalla, right?
Like, that is how they approach it, and so they are not tuned into these discussions at all. Yeah. And so there is a benefit, there's something negative about that, but there's also a positive.
The positive is that if you come to them and say, "This benefits Bitcoin, it's gonna help with adoption, please accept it," then the mining pools are going to be like, "Okay. Yeah, sure. We'll do that."
But that's even another choke point.
You know, it's almost like talking about the miners in general is irrelevant, and I think Reardon called them template producers which I think is a funny, a, a, a fun new- Template producers and payout coordinators.
Yeah, fun new, um, fun new phrase to add to the lexicon.
But, you know, you really have to convince the mining pools of these things, and the mining pools are not gonna do things that piss off their users, and in the same way that some of them they are more technically literate, less technically literate, more institutional, less institutional.
But the mining pools are ultimately going to probably do things that are no-brainers if the rest of the community is saying that they're okay with them.
Um- I mean, I- my spicy take is like I think, uh, the miners wouldn't really know, um, anything about a software. No.
People would just like say, "We're, hey, we're soft fording, soft forking, uh, uh, we're soft forking on this day," and the miners would be like, "Okay." Yeah. And no one would have like...
You'd have like a handful of Ocean people and about a hu- 200 BitAxx runners who like have, who just, just twist themselves up into knots- Yeah... so consumed by this.
On the, on the subject of BitAxx people, like my, another one of my takes is like I think one of the best things that some of these mining pools could do is actually hire some of these like Bi- BitAxx enthusiasts because you- I- it's increasingly popular.
If you're a miner, if you made it this far in the, in the conversation, like you guys should reach out and engage some of these like hyper, hyperactive like BitAxx home miner people who study and agonize over all the details of how Bitcoin mining works and game theory and pool payouts and consensus because, like I think it's gonna better your company.
I think every like big major mining operation should have like a token like, um, hardcore Bitcoin game, mining game theorist to, uh, be on the inside to help them. Every f- for every mining company a maxi. Yeah.
I, I generally agree with that. And one more point to make on the pool front, you know, you said, um, the miners are gonna be like, "Okay," when an upgrade comes through. [laughs] I think generally that's true.
I mean, that's kinda what happened with Taproot, but there's something, there's a crucial piece missing I think from that analysis is the fact that one man was kind of responsible for being the liaison between the IRC lurking developers and technical enthusiasts and the Bitcoin mining pool.
And who was that? And that was Alejandro De La Torre, formerly of Poolin. Now he is, uh, bootstrapping Demandpool. He was like the go-between- He literally like- He was like-... gave you all the Chinese pools. Yeah.
He was like, he was to the mining industry- Formerly under or formerly Poolin, yeah. Yeah, formerly Poolin. He was to the mining industry and the mining pool specifically what JD Vance is to Trump.
He was like the, the translator. He was the, the tech whisperer who was able to tell them, "Here is what, here is what the developers and the technically, um, tuned in are saying. Here's what Taproot will do.
Here's how they are saying they want to activate it."And without- Just the fact, the fact that we got to this far in the discussion on activation and everything, and haven't mentioned Alejandro de la Torre, in fact, that I would say almost every- most people probably in this conversation have no idea who he is- No idea who he is...
or where, like anything that he did. This is probably the, one of the biggest missing pieces. Yeah. Um- Which is kind of like, it's kind of scary, you know?
It's like a, a, a wrecking ball that is held together with like 1,000 paperclips or something, [laughs] or like a single piece of twine.
Um- E- everybody, everybody over here is like agonizing over like what the wrecking ball should do, and then like doesn't realize that somebody has to drive the, the crane that makes it move. 100 percent, yeah. Yeah.
And I think that, you know, the question then becomes who's gonna do that liaising for the next soft fork? Because, you know,
the panel that I hosted was on activation and other scary words, and there are really two primary ways that Bitcoin, um... Or, or the, the- I would say primary in the sense of like
have been discussed the most and make the most sense. User-activated soft fork where, you know, node operators update to a fork client, and then
like they basically say, "I'm only gonna accept blocks that use this client, that use this..." Or, or that, that have, that have upgraded.
"I'm only gonna accept blocks from miners that, that, that conform to this version of Bitcoin."
Or a miner-activated soft fork where you get the miners on board, and they signal their support for it and upgrade accordingly.
Um, the latter of those, while not totally palatable to most people, is probably the least disruptive and, and is the one that like is, is, is most desirable to make sure that there isn't a chain split because you just want these people on board.
And I think that for future soft forks, like we really do need to make sure that the Bitcoin core community and that the people who are advocating for a fork and who are developing it are cl- and closely in contact with these mining pools because they're kind of like a reality that you can't ignore, right?
Um, it would've been much easier in the early days when, you know, Bitcoin was all of 1,000 people maybe, [laughs] you know, and like 10 of those were major stakeholders to upgrade.
But it's not 2012 or 2013 anymore, right? Um- Yeah... it's a much bigger, it's, it's a much bigger landscape, and you kinda have to go through the pools if you want something to go through smoothly.
That's not to say that you have to do that, but it would be make things much easier. Yeah. I think I kinda wanna try to wrap this conversation up- Yeah...
but I'll also, it also, uh, this wraps, James wraps this up really well, um, where he says, "I do not know what the solution to any of this is.
I do know that self-custody is totally nerve-wracking and basically out of the question for casual users." I would make an asterisk, casual users who aren't NFT power users.
"And I do know that Bitcoin in its current form will not scale to twice monthly volume for even 10% of the US, let alone most, most of the world."
Listen to that, that is a ballpark rough estimate for what it'd look like for a s- a percentage of the United States to use on-chain Bitcoin a c- a coup- a few times a month.
Like that is kind of the maximum like amount of transactions you can have.
So, and I, bef- I know everyone's just gonna say lightning, lightning, lightning, but like, okay, what if you just want, what if, what if, what if we want to open and close Lightning Jag, whatever.
People don't know- Lighting service providers, bro. [laughs] Centralized cas- okay, so pro centralization. Okay.
I mean, the, I didn't say that, but I, I do think that the Bitcoin's not gonna scale thing is somewhat of a red herring. It's just a matter of is it gonna scale in a way that you agree with, right?
Like for the majority of people, I still hold like even if custody were better in, even if we had better throughput and better layer twos, the vast majority of people are just not gonna custody their own Bitcoin.
Um, so- Yeah... like that's not ideal, but I do think that that's realistic. But anyway, continue with, continue with what you were gonna say. Yeah.
Um, so he says, "Most of the longstanding fully specified fork proposals active today are totally fine, and conceptually they'd be great additions to Bitcoin."
He does even make a block size reference, which I will not repeat on here. Um, uh, compact blocks, and assume UTXO and eventually EUTXO, but those are another post, post for another day.
I've gone back and forth writing a post like this because I don't have any concrete prescriptions or recommendations.
I only hope that I can, that bringing up these uncomfortable observations is some distant precursor to making progress on scaling self-custody. Um, he says he's just tired of biting his tongue. So yeah.
Can I make a point really quickly about big blocks? Go for it. I feel like big blocks in Bitcoin
are the equivalent to Trump support currently, where it's like the Overton window has shifted, and there's less social stigma, and you're seeing a lot more people talk about increasing Bitcoin's block size.
Um, I think we're kind of moving out of the fog of the SegWit and No2X thing, and people are looking at it a little more critically. I don't really have a dog in the fight. I think that there are pros and cons to both.
I think the one negative potentially about a block size increase is that you hamper miner revenue, and like it's no guarantee that we're actually going to have the adoption curve that will increase transaction fees for miners when the subsidy is totally gone, right?
Yeah. I mean, I, I am glad that we can go back to kind of politely arguing and discussing block size increases. I think it's kinda weird that you just weren't allowed to talk about it without being- Yeah...
totally cast out. Totally provoking them, yeah.
You could have like a bunch of really good opinions and that, but the thing is, is that-The, the longer we go without a software to scale on-chain self-custody and on-chain, uh, access to people, the more, the more enticing a block size increase becomes.
So in a way it becomes a bit of a, like a, maybe like a, a, what do you call? Like a game of chicken where like- Yeah... the longer you go, the more you're going to see the block size voices sound less crazy.
So maybe, yeah. And I, you know, you've made this point before. I don't know what's gonna push people over the edge for wanting to upgrade or what's gonna give them the impetus to do it.
Y- you've made the point that if transaction fees have rip in this bull run with a bunch of on-chain activity and make Bitcoin unusable for certain swaths of the population, that will certainly light a fire under people's asses.
I wanna echo something that Shinobi said on our spaces yesterday with Reardon and a bunch of the other technical folks from the conference and some other, you know, great, great speakers that we had in that space.
I- I've thought about this too, and I think it really bears saying, like we- we're...
I don't wanna like be an alarmist and say we're running out of time, but every day we spend quibbling about what we wanna do next is another day that we've lost to push forward
features and upgrades that will legitimately help Bitcoin.
And the more institutionalized and the larger this thing come- becomes, and the more stakeholders within the legacy realm of finance and government is involved in Bitcoin, the harder it's going to be to push forward these things.
Because when you, when you get like... Let's just like fast-forward like five years, six years, seven years from now.
If Bitcoin overtakes gold's market cap, which I feel like that's at least like the m- that's like- That, that's gonna ha- That, that could happen very soon. Like- That could happen very soon...
that could happen really soon And, and it's, and it's not an outlandish thing to suggest happening. Like a 10- Last bull run that might have been outlandish for some people. I don't think it is.
And if we get to that point and every single fucking bank is custodying this thing and has their fingers in it, do you think they're going to tolerate this slapdash, you know, upgrade process where a bunch of screeching autists are online trying to advocate for something?
And they're like, "Oh, hang on. Wait a second. Who gets to decide what we're doing next with it?" Fuck no. These, these- We're not gonna do that. Yeah.
We got, we got, we got- we have $400 billion of BlackRock assets- Yeah... on that. Like, like when, when, when Bitcoin is a multi-trillion dollar asset, it already is. When it, when it has- It already is...
the mark- market, when it's, when it's at a 15, 17, t- 20 trillion dollar market cap, it's going to be extremely difficult to call all of these disparate interest groups who have a lot of money at stake and tell them, "Hey, yeah, this, this $20 trillion asset, guess what?
This dude in a hoodie who gets paid $100,000 a year is gonna decide the future of the functions on this network." Also, he's been tweeting like- That's just not gonna fly...
also, he's been tweeting that you want- that he wants you guys to die for the past decade. Like you- [laughs] Like that's what, that's like what it is. So as Sh- as Shinobi says, "Quit being pussies."
Like you just put your big boy pants on and just, uh, go, uh, realize that the clock is ticking. It may have already stopped. Like, so we may be now in like extended... I mean, I maybe I'm overreacting.
We might be in whatever you call the extra time at the end of the game. I don't know sports. Uh, overtime? Overtime. They do call it extra time in the, in, in, the, in Europe, in the Europe, in the EU. Yeah.
[laughs] I do think that we, we really want to be doing some of these things sooner rather than later, especially with like...
So for things like quantum resistance, the great consensus cleanup and stuff like that, I think that will have less pushback from vested interests that don't understand any of this shit, like the BlackRocks of the world.
That's gonna do- Yeah... something that clearly is in their best interest to upgrade.
Things like covenants, which improve custody and scaling and, and directly compete with their ability to vacuum up as much of this asset as possible, like they're going to not be okay with that.
And at the end of the day, with all this quibbling about like one node, one vote, and like, well, who decides which Bitcoin is Bitcoin? Ultimately, the market decides.
Ultimately, whichever ticker ends up being purchased more ends up becoming the longest chain and becomes the canonical Bitcoin.
So like if half of all Bitcoin is custodied by like a BlackRock, like you, you think that you're gonna have any say in how to change this thing? No. Unless you wanna join the minority coin.
So like we, we need to, we need to do something sooner rather than later 'cause it's gonna be really fucking hard to do it next cycle. It's gonna be really fucking hard to do it. Yeah, dude, next cycle is gonna be...
[sighs] Don't even wanna think about it. We're gonna have to actually cut our hair, Colin. We're gonna have to put on suits and we're gonna go have to advocate at the, the world,
whatever, I don't know, the place- World Economic [laughs] World Economic Forum. That's what's gonna happen though, is we're gonna, we're gonna... They... Do the math, man.
If we're at $20 trillion, you know, that's a simple 20X from here, but- [laughs]... but like, no, like this is what it, this is what Bitcoin does.
We're at $20 trillion, we're gonna have to have like freaking diplomats from the- Yeah...
from the Republic of Texas going to, uh, you know, Qatar, and they're gonna meet with the Saudis, and they're gonna like sit down about a big creepy round table and, and the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world will be in the same room trying to subvert your plans, and like that's, that, those are the next bosses who you'll have to directly compete against in, in a, in a shadow game of diplomacy and energetic power.
Jason Lowry will just, will be the voice of Bitcoin. Jason Lowry will be sitting on a throne- [laughs]...
like getting like massaged, you know, by like, you know, some like Jeffrey Epstein a- adjacent, uh, sycophant, and, and all of the hardcore Bitcoiners are gonna be shuffling in with shaved heads and robes- Yeah...
like re- like the religious order from Game of Thrones. The chain gang of Bitcoin devs will be brought in and they'll say- [laughs] "Make Bitcoin faster. Make us hash more." [laughs] "We can't do that, sir."
And then you'll have Alex Jones in the wings, "I told you the globalists were gonna eat everything and they were gonna take over the software."
[laughs] That's, that's actually what's gonna happen, so, uh, you heard it here first. [laughs] You heard it here first. We are just, we are writing what we see on the wall.
We are not, we are not willing- [outro music] [laughs]
That was-