Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Why are dapps such as Distributed Exchanges typically on Ethereum rather than Bitcoin? After all, it's certainly possible to build DApps such as Distributed exchanges, naming systems, or alternative tokens on top of Bitcoin.
[00:00:13] There are of course, several reasons for this, such one Ethereum's more flexible native scripting language making it easier to build dapps 2 Ethereum's faster block time making dapps more user friendly or 3 Bitcoin choosing a more conservative block size constraint than Ethereum, resulting in potentially higher fees on Bitcoin. All of the above did have an impact, however, their impact is often overstated. In our view, the most significant factor is culture.
[00:00:42] Some bitcoiners and bitcoin developers simply did not want this type of activity on the bitcoin blockchain, and they successfully discouraged it.
[00:00:52] The best in Bitcoin made Audible I am Guy Swan and this is Bitcoin Audible.
[00:01:15] What is up guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible I am Guy Swan, the guy who has read more about Bitcoin than anybody else you know.
[00:01:24] Sorry. In today's episode, if you can hear nail guns going off, you can probably hear it right now.
[00:01:31] And I try, I'm trying to edit and record around it, but they are adding on the extension and progress is being made. So I will absolutely not tell them to stop. But because of that you might hear a little bit of background noise and I won't be able to.
[00:01:48] I will really not be able to do anything about it and actually still get work done work done today. But we have a good episode, we have really great read. So my stance, I mean I've made very clear how I think about the idea of filters and opera turn and all of this stuff.
[00:02:08] And I do feel like actually just mentioned this, we had a show this morning with John Carvalho, which we briefly talked about that just because it's such a relevant topic. And I actually think he had some really great points and he didn't. He actually didn't say one way or the other on the issue.
[00:02:25] He said basically arguing about it is actually worse than the damage done by going either path.
[00:02:32] But he, he didn't have a bad point. He had an interesting point that was worth considering. But one of the things that I thought was really interesting is recently somebody dug up a comment by Peter Weller from way back in 2013, 2014 on this issue talking about how like adding in OP return and and or expanding the amount of data that can go in operturn is this is basically an undesirable use of the chain and that we're talking about just sticking arbitrary data in people literally putting in NFTs and JPEGs, which sort of at the time wasn't the core of the issue. But it was obviously a very prevalent way to think about it. Like it was, it was recognized that this was a use case.
[00:03:22] And one of the things I thought that he summed it up so well without any drama or any like, emotional or philosophical thing on either side. Just a very simple.
[00:03:35] This is just how it's likely to be seen and what the consequences are. And it showed a shocking amount of recognition to the social and economic outcomes, the kind of incentives outcome rather than the pure technical sense as to what is quote unquote, technically accurate. Which I think is a huge part of the unbelievable divide here, is that people, there's. There's literally a side that thinks the technical argument is the only thing that matters and even mentioning or suggesting anything else is, is just irrelevant. And, and I think, I personally think that's an entirely incorrect view is there's a lot around Bitcoin that is not purely technical, though there could be an argument to be made that eventually all of the other consensus is going to break down anyway because it doesn't scale. And at the end we're only left with the technical. But I don't think that's quite so simple either because we essentially, the system relies on a, an incentive structure, right. Is that miners are not incentivized to destroy their own protocol, the, the protocol that is paying them. But I don't want to get too much into the weeds of an argument or putting it on one side or the other.
[00:04:46] My point is that if I feel unsure or there's a really aggressive and vicious debate going on about and the question is whether or not it's existential or it doesn't matter.
[00:04:58] I've always found that that means there's more to dig, there's more to read, that learning every single thing you can and openly addressing and listening to both or any side or any take on it is the only way to actually get anywhere. And this article from Bitmex Research from a few years ago is actually kind of. It definitely hints toward one direction. It definitely hints toward the current, like data is okay and we should just be able to deal with it properly, et cetera. Like, I think that's the way they try to kind of be quote, unquote, unbiased. Right. It feels like that's the way they're going. But what's funny to me and what I find interesting about this is that this could be entirely taken either either way in the sense that this could be this is evidence of just how filters work and why the social layer matters and why the economic incentives of investing and building these tools matter. And and I'm not sure that was the intended purpose of the article, but I think it's worth actually digging into both of this, the implications of both different directions of this article in particular. And this is about what happened in 2014 and the quote unquote OP return wars, which not necessarily as oper turn wars that like there were a lot of like arbitrary data in oper turn periods where there were arguments about it. But they are certainly right that this was a relevant moment in the history of which direction bitcoin took. So that's well enough lead in and we'll get into the article in just a second. A Shout out to Leden Ledn IO for Bitcoin Backed Loans this is how you can get fiat out of your bitcoin without selling it. I think the best use case for this is if you have a solid investment, if you have something that you know you're going to make a certain return. Well you also know that return will never beat bitcoin, but you can beat an interest rate for a loan. But with something like Leden, you get to keep owning the bitcoin. Check them out, do your research on this. You know, make sure you read the fine print and you know the risk that you're you're getting into here. But this is a really valuable service for people who want to use their bitcoin without selling it. Also check out Synonym and Pubkey P U B K Y app. They have built a set of protocol tools to separate the hosting and the source of truth and information from the servers themselves to basically break down all of the silos and walled gardens of the web. If you are a developer and you haven't seriously looked at these tools, you got to link in details around down in the Show Notes Git Chroma is all about light, health, getting your circadian rhythm right.
[00:07:45] Controlling my blue light after about 8 o' clock at night has actually made a massive difference in like my sleep and energy levels. I highly recommend it. And there's a 10% discount with code, Bitcoin audible and lastly a massive shout out to the hrf. Their Oslo Freedom Forum is such an amazing event. You can get tickets. There's a link down in the Show Notes as well as their amazing newsletter. The Financial Freedom report. Definitely subscribe. It is the news about genuine freedom, the politics, the struggle and the tools to defend it. They you will never get from mainstream media. All of this you will find right down in the description.
[00:08:21] All right, with that let's get into today's article and we will follow it with a short guys take to break down how I think about this and why I think this is a valuable piece to dig into for this particular topic and it's titled the Op Return wars of 2014 Dapps vs Bitcoin Transactions by BitMEX Research July 12, 2022 Abstract in this piece we explore why Dapps are typically built on Ethereum rather than Bitcoin, which takes us all the way back to March 2014.
[00:08:59] We examine a debate about whether and how a DAPP protocol called Counterparty should use Bitcoin's blockchain. This was sometimes called the OP Return Wars. We explain the history of opreturn usage and sidechains in Bitcoin. We conclude by arguing whether one likes it or not that it was the culture in the bitcoin development community in 2014, and the negative view of using Bitcoin transaction data for alternative use cases, which played a major role in pushing developers of these DApps onto alternative systems like Ethereum along with other factors.
[00:09:35] Overview we have often been asked the question, why are dapps such as distributed exchanges typically on Ethereum rather than Bitcoin? After all, it is certainly possible to build DApps such as Distributed Exchanges, naming systems, or alternative tokens on top of Bitcoin. There are of course, several reasons for this, such one Ethereum's more flexible native scripting language, making it easier to build dapps 2 Ethereum's faster block time making dapps more user friendly or 3 Bitcoin choosing a more conservative block size constraint than Ethereum, resulting in potentially higher fees on Bitcoin.
[00:10:13] All of the above did have an impact. However, their impact is often overstated. In our view, the most significant factor is culture.
[00:10:23] Some bitcoiners and bitcoin developers simply did not want this type of activity on the bitcoin blockchain, and they successfully discouraged it. This seems to have primarily occurred in around March 2014, and what happened in that period is the subject of this piece. At the same time, promoters of other chains such as Ethereum may have exploited and exaggerated this apparent stance from the bitcoin developers to help their new chains gain traction.
[00:10:54] The Counterparty Protocol as we mentioned in our September 2020 report, towards the start of 2014, Counterparty launched Counterparty is a protocol layer on top of Bitcoin that enables features such as new token creation and the trading of these tokens on a distributed exchange. The system works by using parts of Bitcoin transaction data and using this in the counterparty protocol as a function, such as creating a token, sending a token, or a market bid on a token on a distributed exchange.
[00:11:29] More concisely, at the start, Counterparty used the Bitcoin opcode OP Check Multisig to include counterparty related data into the Bitcoin blockchain. This opcode was supposed to be used to verify the signature for a pay to script # or P2SH multisignature transaction. An example of a counterparty transaction from July 2014 can be seen here.
[00:11:55] The transaction sends Bitcoin back to the address it came from and also has three additional outputs where the output scripts are data related to the counterparty protocol. In this case it was the creation of a new token called ticket. Using Op Check Multisig can be thought of as a hack because this was not the intended use of the opcode. Counterparty now uses Bitcoin's OPReturn opcode to store data, which is more in line with what developers intended to some extent.
[00:12:23] For example, please see this more recent counterparty transaction which uses OPreturn. In early 2014 there was considerable experimentation, developer activity, innovation and excitement around Counterparty, which had the lead over a rival platform called Mastercoin.
[00:12:41] What is Opret?
[00:12:44] Opreturn is a transaction output in Bitcoin that is provably unspendable.
[00:12:50] The function can be used to burn Bitcoin or store arbitrary data in the Bitcoin blockchain since the data is not part of the UTXO set. Storing data this way is said to help scale Bitcoin as nodes that engage in pruning do not need to store OP return data.
[00:13:05] In May 2013, somebody took advantage of this feature in the following transaction. The OPreturn output in this transaction contains the lyrics to the 1987 song Never Gonna Give youe Up by Rick Astley. The song related to the Rickrolling meme.
[00:13:22] Prior to 2014, transactions containing an OP return were non standard and not relayed by ordinary Bitcoin nodes.
[00:13:30] However, if a miner included those transactions, they were considered as valid. In March 2014, Bitcoin Core 0.9.0 was released with the Op Return feature included as a standard transaction type. Therefore, the transactions would be relayed by default.
[00:13:47] The release notes at the time said the this change is not an endorsement of storing data in the blockchain. The OP return change creates a provably prunable output to avoid data storage schemes, some of which were already deployed that were storing arbitrary data such as images as forever unspendable transaction outputs, bloating Bitcoin's UTXO database Storing arbitrary data in the blockchain is still a bad idea. It is less costly and far more efficient to store non currency data elsewhere. End quote Bitcoin Core 0.9.0 would only relay transactions with an op return of 40 bytes or less. If the data was larger than this, it was still a valid transaction but not relayed. The limit was originally intended to be 80 bytes. However, after much discussion, the developers settled on 40 bytes. To be clear, the OP return relay limit in a released version of Bitcoin Core never declined. In February 2015, Bitcoin Core 0.11.0 finally increased the relay limit to 80 bytes. In January 2016, in Bitcoin Core 0.12.0, the limit was increased again to 83 bytes, the limit we have today.
[00:15:05] Although this 3 byte increase was merely a change in how the counting worked to include the opcodes themselves, so it is not a real increase. This means that if one wants a transaction with an opreturn output of over 80 bytes today, one has to mine it themselves or send it directly to a miner.
[00:15:24] There is no real consensus limit on the size of opreturn. There is however, a script pub key limit of 10,000 bytes, but it may be possible to get around this.
[00:15:37] The OPreturn wars On March 20, 2014, one of Bitcoin's main contributors at the time, Jeff Garzik started posting on the counterparty thread on the bitcointalk forum. Jeff was criticizing the use of blockchain space by counterparty.
[00:15:57] To date, I've not seen a blockchain data dumping scheme that cannot be securely replaced with a simple hash. You don't need to store data in the blockchain. That is purely intellectual laziness. Timestamping hash data is just as secure while more efficient. Furthermore, a secondary chain can be provably pegged to Bitcoin.
[00:16:16] Jeff went on to say check multisig is quite literally intended for ECDSA public keys, not arbitrary data. It should be no surprise that using an operation for something other than its intended purpose has negative, perhaps unintended or unknown consequences.
[00:16:33] Counterparty transactions are not according to the Bitcoin protocol. They slipped through because it never expected that the feature would be used in that way.
[00:16:42] One may think it's odd that Jeff had this view given that in 2017 he appeared to be a large blocker, and that this view about the conservative use of block space does not appear to reconcile with the large block view.
[00:16:55] However, this apparent contradiction did not appear at all in 2014.
[00:16:59] Jeff's view at the time was shared to some extent by many of the active developers at the time, including the ones which later became large blockers. As far as we can tell, there was no simple mapping at all between one's view on the block size limit and this issue. Jeff was a highly respected developer at the time, and this post was a considerable concern for the counterparty developers and users.
[00:17:21] A counterparty developer with the pseudonym Bitcoin Tangible Trust responded to Jeff as absolutely right. You don't need to store data in the blockchain. Timestamping hash data is just as secure while more efficient a secondary chain can be provably pegged to Bitcoin. However, Counterparty is storing data in the blockchain using 256 bytes in each one of three multisig transactions as per phantom freaks, the counterparty co founder and lead developer. Note below. Additionally, all these multisig transactions are processed by the miners. End quote the developer continued by criticizing the bitcoin developers plan to limit opereturn to just 40 bytes rather than 80 quote if operturn was meant to stop or curtail the multisig behavior, unspent outputs and hereby reduce blockchain bloat, then I fear by reducing the size of operturn from 80 to 40 bytes you've inadvertently made multisig more attractive to all the meta protocols and and you've made opreturn less attractive.
[00:18:23] The lead counterparty developer and co founder who went by phantom phreak chimed the idea is that we store the data in a second blockchain and put the hashes of that timestamp data in bitcoin, which hashes would also be less than 40 bytes. The reason we did not do something like that is not a matter of intellectual laziness, but rather of implementation complexity. Counterparty is not a project in computer science. It is designed to be as simple as possible for the benefits in development speed. Even if we have to store our data in multisig outputs rather than the two small op return outputs, worse is definitely better in this space.
[00:18:59] The next day Jeff responded, it is called a free ride. Given that the overwhelming majority over 90% application for the bitcoin blockchain is currency use, using full nodes as dumb data storage terminals is simply abusing an all volunteer network resource. The network replicates transaction data, so why not come along for a free ride? Rather than engage the existing community, Master Coin and Counterparty simply flipped an on switch and started using Bitcoin peer to peer nodes as unwanted data stores. An unspent transaction output was never meant to be used as arbitrary data storage. The fact that it can be abused as such does not make it right or remotely efficient or the best solution. The UTXO or Unspent Transaction Output database is the entire network's fast access database. Every single node needs that database to be as small as possible for best processing of network transactions. Encoding arbitrary data into unspent outputs is network wide abuse, plain and simple. The entire network bears the cost Due to Jeff's high standing within the community, most people in the counterparty community seemed keen to engage and resolve the issue.
[00:20:12] For instance, Bitcoin Tangible Trust responded by saying thanks for sharing your thoughts Jeff. So will you help us start engaging with the existing Bitcoin core dev community? It's in Counterparty's interest to act as a responsible partner as we need the Bitcoin blockchain if we are to survive. Will you let us know how we can start working together on these questions?
[00:20:33] Another counterparty developer brought up another point.
[00:20:36] Is there a way for the Bitcoin protocol to prevent the way XCP is using it without breaking anything else?
[00:20:42] If there is no way for Bitcoin developers to block the counterparty related transactions, perhaps this opposition didn't matter and Counterparty could continue using Bitcoin without permission.
[00:20:53] Bitcoin developer and at the time mining pool operator Luke Dasher then entered the debate.
[00:21:00] The miners are supposed to filter out abuses.
[00:21:03] Luke Dasher then suggested these kinds of systems could be built using merge mined sidechain type constructions which may avoid the blockchain bloat.
[00:21:12] The problem isn't new layers, it's forcing things on people against their will. New layers can be done on an opt in basis without polluting the blockchain and forcing non participants to store the data.
[00:21:23] Luke was also asked why the bitcoin developers reduced the intended OPER turn relay size down to 40 bytes compared to an 80 byte limit which was originally proposed. Luke responded with the following three points.
[00:21:35] 1. Too many people were getting the impression that opreturn was a feature meant to be used. It was never intended as such, only a way to leave the windows unlocked so that we don't need to replace the glass when someone breaks in.
[00:21:50] That is to reduce the damage caused by people abusing Bitcoin 240 bytes is more than sufficient for all legitimate needs for tying data to a transaction. You get 32 bytes for a hash plus 8 bytes for some kind of unique identifier, which really isn't necessary either.
[00:22:08] And 3 the original 80 byte proposal was intended to be for 512 bit hashes, but this was determined to be unnecessary.
[00:22:17] Luke Dasher continued as hopefully as mining returns to being decentralized, we will see less toleration of abusive and spam transactions, whether the OP return variant or otherwise. Now if someone has a valid necessary use case for actually storing hashes with transactions, obviously that's a case miners should seriously consider mining.
[00:22:37] Luke's mining pool at the time also started filtering out counterparty related transactions. At this point, fear and uncertainty started to build in the counterparty community. They needed OPreturn to be 80 bytes or they would be forced to keep using the OP check multisig opcode. It did not seem likely that it would go up to 80 bytes given Luke's comments.
[00:22:57] In addition to this, some feared the developers could even reduce the limit even further, potentially booting Counterparty off the network. The bitcoin developers did not seem especially friendly to Counterparty and therefore some may have felt that it was likely to be difficult to continue to use the bitcoin protocol.
[00:23:14] On March 25, 2014, Vitalik Buterin, the main founder of Ethereum, chimed in. He argued that the debate should be more around fees and if you pay enough fees then your transaction should be legitimately included. Today, Ethereum's fee algorithm is highly complex, with different fee buckets and rates for many different blockchain uses, which essentially solves the OP return problem. One can argue that Segwit on Bitcoin also mitigates the problem to some extent.
[00:23:41] If the protocol thought that the opportune battle is such an issue, in an ideal world, the concept of abuse would not even exist. Fees would be mandatory and carefully structured to closely match the actual cost that a given transaction imposes on the network, he said. Says if you can pay the fees for what you're doing, then you should be able to do it, no questions asked.
[00:24:01] On March 27, 2014, Counterparty changed the way it made transactions to get around Luke Dasher's mining filter. However, the following day Luke commented that great news filter added to block this crap in less than five minutes and one line of code.
[00:24:19] Luke Dasher also likened Counterparty to a form of abuse.
[00:24:23] It's abuse because you're forcing others to download store your data against their free choice. Every full node must download the full blockchain. Prunable or not every full node has consented to download and store financial transactions. Not every full node has consented to store anything else. You need 100% consensus for this, not merely some subset that is not miners, not developers, or even a majority Furthermore, everyone is free to store data that isn't in the blockchain. There is nothing to be gained by putting it in the blockchain except that you force it on others who don't want it to explain how this is anything but abuse Anger at Bitcoin Developers as one might expect, the concern from bitcoin developers was eventually met with frustration and anger from some counterparty developers and users. We have included some of their comments below. Firstly, from a user called porcupine commenting on Luke Dasher's mining pool blocking counterparty transactions.
[00:25:18] Great. Instead of developers responsibly engaging towards finding a solution, you're promoting cat and mouse. You realize that you're also saying fuck it to net neutrality and trying to take it into private hands with kind of transactions people should and shouldn't make on the blockchain. What's next? Sanctions of certain individuals you don't like? Sanctions for transactions broadcast from nodes in countries whose government's foreign policy you don't Approve of?
[00:25:40] On 21st March 2014, porcupine went on to say, wait a minute, when was it decided that every node is consented to store X type of data and not Y type of data? Maybe I also did not consent to store transactions for blundered money, illicit drugs and weapons, human slavery, etc. You're basically negating protocol neutrality and deciding what the protocol should and should not be used to store. And more than that, you aren't speaking in first person but using the pronoun us, giving the impression that you are speaking for all miners or protocol users as a whole.
[00:26:11] Others expressed concern about why Jeff and Luke had a right to block certain use cases over anyone else.
[00:26:18] I can't believe this attitude. I didn't know bitcoin had owners. I thought I and about a million others were owners.
[00:26:26] Phantom Freak, the counterparty co founder said, first of all, counterparty transactions are financial transactions. Second, every full node has consented to download and in store, and the bitcoin blockchain no less. That is Transactions that accord to the Bitcoin protocol, which counterparty transactions obviously do. Satoshi embedded a political message in the genesis block for Christ's sake. You have a much narrower view of the possible use cases for bitcoin than do others, he or she continued. Bitcoin does lots of things that it was not originally intended to do. Yes, we'd greatly prefer to use a more elegant solution than what we have now. Counterparty was originally designed to use the operator output to store all of its message data, which I feel is very elegant and leaves a minimal impact on the blockchain. We planned all of our message formats around the 80 byte limit announced by Gavin on the official Bitcoin blog. We only use multisig outputs because we have no other choice. We don't want to extend the bitcoin protocol. We want to do something entirely within it and as simply and as directly as possible for the benefits to stability, security, etc.
[00:27:28] Again, we only store financial transactions in the blockchain and we are paying for the space that we are using financial transactions in. Operator outputs aren't any more painful for a full node to store than anything else.
[00:27:40] Another user called Bitwiz said, if you don't want to store it, don't. Fairly simple. Don't use bitcoin, don't download the blockchain. You're scot free. However, my consent means that I believe bitcoin has more functionality than just for transactions and based on the fact that nobody owns it and there is an oper turn feature, I don't see why that functionality should be eradicated because you don't want to store the data which you already have. A free choice on another Anon LOL said, I really cannot understand how a counterparty transaction would not constitute a financial transaction. Nor can I understand the point of view that because say one node out of a thousand is not willing to accept this data by default, it should be forbidden. After the recent nightmare that was Mount Gox and huge amount of hacks, thefts, closures and losses that came from storing your balance on a centralized entities, it seems that counterparty had come up with a solution that allowed a decentralized trustless solution to this problem.
[00:28:34] Bad dw the fact is arbitrary data can be stored in the blockchain by anybody at any time. It has been and is being used for this purpose already. Everybody running a bitcoin node should already know this and if they aren't, it should be part of the notice that comes up when they install Bitcoin. Qt if there is one, I don't recall seeing one. Any bitcoin transaction could just be a simple movement of funds, or it could be a love note, or it could be a trigger of setting off a bomb. Eliminating this possibility would kill Bitcoin, period.
[00:29:01] And he went on to say, many of the greatest developments in computing history, and indeed human technological history on the whole, are the result of people finding uses for things which were unintended by their inventors. Good thing that most inventors are not so protective of their inventions that they decline to let others use it for new things. Those that did found themselves surpassed quickly.
[00:29:21] It is clear from these comments that many counterparty users and developers were surprised and disappointed by the stance from Bitcoin developers.
[00:29:28] Although the project continued as did Mastercoin, it is likely that for better or for worse, some developers left Bitcoin as a result of this and instead built their own protocols on other blockchain systems such as Ethereum.
[00:29:41] It is this 2014 moment that was, in our view, more significant than any other. However, others may have a different view Merge Mind Sidechains throughout the opreturn debate, opponents of counterparty and blockchain bloat typically mentioned some form of merged mine sidechains as a solution for dapps. Actually, Satoshi is said to have favored this path and is said to have supported it for a domain name system in December 2010 I think it would be possible for bit DNS to be a completely separate network and separate blockchain, yet share CPU power with Bitcoin. The only overlap is to make it so miners can search for proof of work for both networks simultaneously.
[00:30:27] There are many difficulties with implementing these DAPP systems as sidechains, and our understanding of these weaknesses is better understood today than it was in 2014 when many people just assumed they could work.
[00:30:40] Complexity One of the most significant weaknesses is the complexity in implementing and building sidechain solutions. In a race to get the protocol out early and win market share, these projects did not have time to build a sidechain and the merge mining system with Bitcoin.
[00:30:56] Bitcoin as a native asset it may not be possible to have non custodial bitcoin as an operating asset on a side chain because a trustless two way peg may not be possible to build.
[00:31:09] This is a large weakness for many dapps who may, for example, want to use Bitcoin as the main trading pair in a distributed exchange.
[00:31:18] This weakness did not appear to be well understood in 2014 with many people just assuming it could work somehow.
[00:31:25] Limited Scaling Benefits the benefits of using a sidechain may vary depending on the use case. For example, if one wants to build a distributed exchange, every bid, offer and match may require all the security guarantees of the main chain. With this much main chain usage for every possible action of every user on the exchange. The the scaling advantages of the sidechain system may be extremely limited. Submitting a bid on chain natively may only use around 90 bytes, while storing a hash of the order information and the structure and overhead around it necessary to be identified could be around 50 bytes on chain, so not much of a space saving in March 2014, counterparty developer X Nova outlined his opposition to the sidechain's point as follows.
[00:32:15] Moreover, unless I'm overlooking something here, we would still need to parse out the data from the blocks in that second blockchain, assuming it's a Bitcoin or a Bitcoin derivative implementation, at least to get our stored data. So it would not enable SPV type counterparty clients for what counterparty offers over colored coin functionality, I.e. dEX betting, asset callbacks, dividends, CFDs, etc.
[00:32:41] It would lessen security of counterparty transactions. It would greatly increase the complexity of the implementation, that is Increasing the chance of bugs and vulnerabilities. The only dubious benefit would be the slight lessening our storage requirements on the blockchain, that is maybe 2040 bytes less per transaction. I just don't see how this would make any sense here. One more point. Counterparty can bring immense benefits to Bitcoin, and this will especially become more apparent if or as Ethereum and other similar non bitcoin meta 2.0 type coins enter the picture. My personal feeling here at least is that Bitcoin may very well need offerings in the ecosystem with this kind of functionality to effectively compete with Ethereum and future crowds, feature list and draws or risk becoming obsoleted at least among investors and financial market operators, which offer the ability to bring billions and even trillions into the bitcoin ecosystem as it gains more recognition, trust and mind share with them.
[00:33:40] It seems that some of the people arguing in favor of sidechains as a solution were not particularly interested in many of the DAPP applications, nor had they experimented with them. Therefore they never thought through the complexities of building a distributed exchange and how almost every single action from every user requires security.
[00:33:59] Most bitcoin developers seemed quite open about what they are interested in and clear about what they want, censorship resistant money, non political money, electronic cash, etc.
[00:34:13] Conclusion after around 2014, most developers interested in Dapps focused on building on Ethereum or other systems not on Bitcoin. Ethereum then achieved a critical mass of developer interest and momentum and DAPP development on Bitcoin was minimal. The key point of this article is to emphasize that the main driver for this was not necessarily fees or Ethereum's virtual machine and Ethereum's stronger technical capabilities. It is simply that many bitcoiners and bitcoin developers did not want dapps on Bitcoin and they were not interested in these features. For better or for worse, some developers deliberately pushed many of these DAPP developers away. Some bitcoiners believe that most of the DAPP activity is related to unsustainable scams, or that this activity is undesirable on Bitcoin for security or other reasons. At the same time, some promoters of alternative coins, for example Ethereum, may have exaggerated the impact and significance of the so called op return wars to boost their burgeoning chains.
[00:35:17] The views of many people have changed since 2014.
[00:35:21] Bitcoin needs transaction fees to survive in the post2016 environment in which we have many full blocks and somewhat higher fees, it is more widely appreciated that any fee paying transaction is is quote, legitimate. Certain dapps on Ethereum, such as exchanges like Uniswap or lending protocols like AAVE and Compound, have proven to be both successful and interesting to some extent. Despite this, whether bitcoiners even care enough to want these protocols on bitcoin, let alone if anyone will actually build and use them, remains an open question.
[00:35:55] All right, so I really tried to find the Peter Wella quote that I mentioned at the beginning so I could read it directly, but I am not coming up with anything and I don't want to spend all day looking for a quote just to be accurate or precise, I guess is the better, the better term because I remember exactly what the, the theme or the concept behind it was. And that's what made it stand out to me so well, is why I thought this was such a great representation of the, of both sides of this, this drama or this, this big debate that's happening in which direction to take or how to think about bitcoin development, how to think about Bitcoin core and the reference client, how to think about the nodes and well, really, really actually about the decisions for spam as a policy decision in Mempool, because there are definitely other issues around this.
[00:36:52] But I think this is one of the really core pieces of the puzzle here.
[00:36:58] And I don't mean that as like, no pun intended, but the heart of the argument, so to speak. And so what he said was essentially there's no way to stop the, you know, somebody from getting something technically larger than 40 bytes or 80 bytes or whatever it was, and it's better for them to be using OP return which is provably prunable than using something else like multisig or some less use or less efficient or less desirable use of the chain to do the same thing.
[00:37:36] However, they seem to have been discouraged from doing this at scale and loosening the opera turn in order to give them a quote unquote better way to do this, to not cause so much damage may actually invite much more of the exact activity because it may appear as an invitation is like, oh well, it's totally cool to do this, just do it right here. And we could get a lot more of an undesirable behavior because we're submitting or changing our policy to match a technicality that has a big impact in the social layer. Now that is a very long this was literally like three sentences, but that's what the concept behind it was. And I thought it was great because it was so such a perfect summation.
[00:38:22] As he said far more succinctly than I did of the issue is that there is a technical reality and then there is a social reality and a potential social and economic incentive consequence of just assuming that the technical that some technical element is all that actually matters and that there's not a human side to this whole thing. And that in my opinion is the biggest divide between the two different positions of this is that raising the opera turn to 100 kilobytes is an invitation. It will be seen as an invitation and we are probably going to get 10 times the amount of the exact behavior, maybe even in inscriptions, maybe even in all the ways that we don't want it, that it all just overall gets worse because it invites a whole bunch of shitcoiners and a whole bunch of NFT people thinking that now bitcoin isn't going to get in our way.
[00:39:14] And what I found interesting about this piece is that it seems to argue that like, oh well, Ethereum, like the shitcoins and all this stuff seem to have happened because bitcoiners pushed them away. But I bet there's a whole hell of a lot of bitcoiners who would be like, oh, so that's actually why they stayed off of bitcoin and they didn't do all of this bullshit on bitcoin. There's probably a lot of people that actually see that as a really good thing. In fact, I kind of do as well in probably 98% of the cases when it comes to what is being done with those chains and what kind of bloat and like data and stuff that they're being used for. Even a lot of the dapps, like, there is certainly an, a case to be made for an open protocol for, you know, like an exchange protocol or whatever. But the problem is that most of these open protocols literally rely on their own token. They rely on their own system, like a circular system to actually be of any use. And the only use case for any of this stuff has been gambling on shitcoins. Like, it's like 99% of all of the activity is essentially that. Like, if you literally take away all of the shitcoins, none of those have any real use case. And that, I think is the problem of failing to recognize what things we're actually trying to build, like atomic swaps, actually do the job. And now there's an important caveat that I think the article actually brought up is that, you know, people who are criticizing or saying you can just do it this way are not people who are super Interested in building DApps or building decentralized exchanges. And I will agree there's a thousand percent an element of that like that. That is not something to be outright dismissed, because that's a good point. But honestly, what did that, all of that get the crypto industry other than a horrible, horrible reputation that bitcoin is still being lumped in with? And it's difficult even, even despite the fact that we pushed them away, it's still, it's still difficult to not have the bitcoin quote, unquote brand or the bitcoin network itself be tarnished with all of the crap that they're doing.
[00:41:31] And there's a lot of people who say that, you know, if all of that activity came back to bitcoin, it would make bitcoin better. Right? Is it, you know, let's say I can't remember exactly what the numbers are, but let's just for the sake of simplicity, say it's 50%. All of crypto is 50% of the Bitcoin market cap. So Bitcoin is $2 trillion and all of the rest of crypto is 1 trillion. Is. A lot of people say it was like, oh, well, if, if we just embrace this on bitcoin and we got them all to come back, then that $1 trillion would be added to bitcoin and so now bitcoin would be worth $3 trillion.
[00:42:11] And I actually argue the opposite. I actually believe that the reason bitcoin's value is what it is is because of how unchanging, because of the culture is such a this is a rock solid foundation and we don't do stupid crappy things on it that we're serious about this. This isn't gambling on shitcoins. We're not issuing our own tokens. We're not trying to dap everything in the world. We are trying to make reliable, high integrity, high assurance money. And we are doing everything in our power to narrow that focus to that and to stop the things that abuse and or are poor stewards of that network itself. I think Bitcoin is seen as more legitimate because those things were pushed away. And I actually believe Bitcoin's market cap would come and meet. It would, we'd meet halfway probably it would, Bitcoin's market cap would fall if the rest of Ethereum and crypto and everything went to it because it would look like a less serious competitor. It would look like a, it would be seen as more scammy and like a less serious protocol. And the overall market cap would probably be something like one and a half trillion dollars because governments and large asset institutions and people looking for safe havens, they would not see, they would not see it as, as, as seriously as they see it today because of what the ecosystem looks like. That, that is in my opinion what I literally think would happen. And I find it interesting that the context of this article is that the social culture is actually drove away the economic investment in the tools that abused this, abused the protocol. And what's funny is that that's technically an argument that spam filtering works because of the economic and social consequences of it is that nobody wants to in, nobody wants to make an NFT company using a wallet that where the transactions may literally get, get filtered out by a huge portion of the nodes in two days because they don't want this being a major, a major use of the Bitcoin protocol. And now I've argued and we've talked endlessly about the idea of whether or not a legitimate transaction is a legitimate transaction and that's it. If they pay the money, it doesn't matter what the data is. It's a free market. And I over and over again the analogy that I think matters more than anything else and why I think that is a foolish way to look at it because it's not about a free market necessarily can only be a free market because there are rules to the market. The market has to be established first. If there aren't property rights, then there is no such thing as a free market because a free market requires that people individually have property. They can define that property and that they can mutually agree to trade, and that that trade has some semblance of finality, that there is an assurance that that contract can go through. There are. There is no way to have a free market until you have established those norms. And those norms are largely social. It's basically common law that arises that enables that, and it is culture that enables that. There is no way to have a free market if that is not the culture. If that common law and that those basic property rights don't exist. It's like the rules of the road that everybody goes on green and everybody stops on red and you slow down on yellow, et cetera, that the rules are uniform. Everybody drives on the right side of the road. That's not because they're censoring people who are driving on the left side of the road or they're censoring people who are driving. Driving through red lights. It's not. We should have a free market. And then everybody can just drive through red lights or stop at green lights however the hell they see fit. They can do whatever they want. As long as they're on the road and they've paid for a car, everything's good. The structure of the road system and the behaviors on the road, the standardization of those things are explicitly so the road system works and people don't die, and instead they actually just get to where they are trying to go. So the analogy I like to use is that when Bitcoin is being used as an arbitrary data store, it is like a courtroom being rented out for concerts. The only reason the ticket to your concert is worth anything is because you have a structure. You have a system of property rights that says they need to redeem it for a seat or you should get your money back if something doesn't go through. Now, that might not always be the case. There might be fine print or whatever, but there is this unspoken. In fact, it's so assured, it's so trusted that this will work and that there is some sort of semblance of genuine ownership and obligation between these two parties in society that people don't read the fine print because they expect a refund if they don't get to go to the concert. If they have to shut down the concert and they never get to see the show, it is expected that they are going to get their money back. But the reason this expectation is there is because of the culture and the reliability of its enforcement, because of the court system. Which means if you bloat the court system and make it hard make people have to wait in line to get through court such that people just stop going. And they start going externally. They go through external means to settle their disputes or get their money back. And so there's a slow general breakdown of the expectation that the ticket is actually worth anything. It actually undermines the economic activity that the court system is actually trying to uphold because a whole bunch of people are outsiders screaming free market. We can use the court system for whatever we want. You should just pay a fee and then you can get, get in and we can have parties and concerts and whatever the hell we want. The reason that's not an argument is because nobody's stopping you from doing those things. Nobody's stopping anybody from having a concert or doing any of that stuff. There are a billion alternatives for exactly that. Nobody's being censored. It's that there is no alternative other than the court system for settling and having assurance of property rights and the dispute of disagreements. So the argument for, in the context of Bitcoin would be that we don't have an alternative for decentralized, stateless, apolitical, global, permissionless money. There are a literal, infinite, like never ending number of alternatives for storing a jpeg. So purely conceptually, purely in a theoretical and philosophical sense, it must be looked at that way. That the court system must absolutely be used for settling disputes above or to a priority over any other use of that courtroom that is net negative to its ability to institute and enforce property rights. And in that context, Bitcoin is absolutely a monetary system. It is about decentralized stateless money and all of its other benefits mean Jack, mean exactly nothing if it cannot serve that purpose. Now I know what the other side would come back and say. I know what the argument against. They would immediately be like. Well, you can't, you can't stop concerts from getting into the courtroom. So we should just make another room for them so that they can have concerts in that room and everybody else can go into the main room or whatever. I don't know, it'd just be a technicality that you can't stop them from having concerts. So what's the point? Well, the point is, is that it seems like that discouragement actually worked. Now that's not to say that counterparty should be included in that. That's not to say that there's not any, there's no use or no reason to have any opportunity space at all. I don't think. I think 83 bytes is totally fine. I'm sure there are interesting Things, specifically financial or monetary things that you can do with that data. But if we actually believe in the incentives and think that those things matter, why would they pay more to do it in opera turn if they can do it in an inscription? And we unfortunately made changes to the protocol that gave them a discount for doing it the wrong way. And that's a huge part of the problem, in my opinion. But going back to the idea of the social and economic incentives or the cultural incentives is that very simple changes in the filters and a very explicit stance against arbitrary data going into the chain basically prevented and pushed away a lot of the people building and using the data in exactly that way. And it wasn't because filters technically censor everything, or that there was no way for them to get it into a block or they couldn't mine it themselves. Of course, there were always ways around it. The point is, is if they felt uninvited and that there was going to be undo or unnecessary maintenance and constant dealing with how to solve the fact that the culture and the environment didn't want them there, they were going to leave and they did.
[00:51:11] That is the argument from the filters side is that it works because it adds a marginal cost on chain. It makes it slightly more difficult for them to use their tools and their protocols to just arbitrarily stick data in the chain and then the culture pushes them away and discourages investment into big long term projects like that. Now there is an argument to be made, there is a debate to have as to whether or not we still want to have that way, have it that way, that we still want to drive it all away and that there isn't something useful, the counterparty doesn't have some sort of a tool or network or something that we want or Citria or whatever. But I think it's dishonest to not just have the debate at that layer because I think it's pretty clear that the filter, the, the people who are pro filters argument that the social and cultural investment and whether how much activity we will get depending on whether we look invitational or if we look opposed to this sort of activity, that that matters, that matters a lot in how much of that activity actually occurs. And that filters are basically a cat and mouse game that if actually kept up with, can and do have a significant effect. And so the argument that inscriptions are so bad, inscriptions are so bad right now from that perspective is that they stopped caring about filters and they stopped doing anything about it. In other words, the spam is so bad because nobody's been fighting the spam for a while and, and that it would actually be easy if you had the default client and a pretty cohesive mempool policy to stop a lot of it and to annoy the people who are investing in these projects and make them go away. And there is historical example that that may very well be what happens if you take that route, if that's the path that we choose to take and that the opposite may also be true. That flipping it on its head is that even if we say it's undesirable, if we just unleash the OP return limit, it may literally create a flood of people using it to cram arbitrary data into the chain and use the Bitcoin relay network to just pass a bunch of garbage around. And whether or not you have a stance for or pro against filters or upper turn limit of this, that or the other doesn't matter. I'm saying that I think we can, we should be able to agree that those two things are true. Now the question is, is it worth it?
[00:53:45] Is there something to be gained? Is there enough to be gained for that to matter? Or maybe specifically for that to be a net positive? And really, is there any reason to suspect that the negative way to do this, the more abusive way to do this, that causes an even greater problem with the UTXO set bloat, is that actually going to be reduced at all? Because I think, I think there's a lot of things that come from the pro filter. I mean, excuse me, the anti filters side and the raising of the oper turn limit a lot of things that they say kind of make me really seems like they are admitting or at least a lot of the developers that I've listened to kind of admit that no, it's probably not going to do anything for inscriptions and that there's actually only like one project that they have been focused on or using as an example of where they would actually rather use OP return than inscriptions. And specifically one project that isn't even gonna have like there's gonna be completely negligible volume for them as opposed to any of the other things that people use inscriptions for, which is mostly issuing tokens and NFTs and literally all of the obvious cheap low value garbage. And so I don't understand how the anti filters side, the people who are like Core V30 or whatever, who think this is a good decision, regardless of any of the other things which I've been speaking to a dev God keep forgetting to schedule it's Iornic I can't remember. I can't remember exactly the name, but we've been chatting and he wants to get together and just kind of have a chat off show, uh, without making a podcast to make like drama in public or whatever. And I keep forgetting to go back and actually schedule with him, but I'd actually like to hear his take. Cause he has been talking about like other things in V30 that are actually really positive, like a, you know, significant boost to the initial block download and some other things that we actually didn't get into, and that's why we wanted to have a conversation, is to actually go through those. But things that are actually really good for the client. And you know, part of me, like my.
[00:55:51] Probably something that I'll ask him and maybe he listens to this, I don't know. But something that I would ask is that, well, why.
[00:55:58] Why try to attach those. To those things to something that's so obviously political divisive and politically divisive and something that I just cannot see. I can't get behind the argument that there's going to be any meaningful difference to this problem. That changing, constantly changing, this is only just going to make things worse. I just can't see how there's a benefit here to how people are using.
[00:56:27] How people are spamming the chain and putting in arbitrary data because they unintentionally have a discount right now. And why would they pay more to be good stewards when they could already be good stewards and not put their dick butts on the blockchain? And I'll be perfectly honest, I would love to think that version 30 will actually. Would actually solve this problem that would actually get people to use the opera term, but as I kind of see it now, is that there's two options. And I'm not saying there are explicitly two options. I'm just using this kind of as an analogy. Like let's say that the current state of things, there's like inscriptions and stamps, right? And that these are the two main ways that people abuse the UTXO set and push arbitrary data into the chain. There's just whatever those two methods are, there's like two main ones that people use. And what we're going to do is we're going to unlock OPER so that they'll stop doing those things. This is the idea, right? Is they're going to stop doing those things as much and they're going to use OPER turn, which is a technically better way for them to do this, which is not as bad to the bitcoin network. But what I see and when I think the quote unquote pro filters people generally see is, is that there's currently two ways to do this and now there's gonna be three ways to do this. And the third way is helpful to maybe a handful of different people or use cases and it's also a lot more expensive. So very likely nobody stops using the first two ways. But in will come a lot of new people using the new third way and thinking that they're being nice. And this is, this is now what bitcoiners want. And I just don't see how that's an unreasonable view of what the outcome of this is. And I honestly don't think people really know what the outcome of this is going to be. But that's absolutely a possibility. And anybody saying that they know one way or the other exactly how this is going to play out is wrong because nobody knows. And in my opinion, if the effect isn't clearly positive, and there's a lot of different potential consequences of something, is that err on the side of not changing or giving it some more time to see whether or not this is the right way to go, especially if it's hugely contentious and people don't even want to run your software anymore for it. And even, especially, especially if there's like a whole bunch of other things that you think are great and nobody is going to adopt them because of this one thing that we're belligerently holding onto, that a huge portion of the people who literally run your software are saying they don't want.
[00:58:57] I mean, there's got to be something to that. And if somebody can call me a retard or an idiot, or you're just a stupid podcaster and you don't know what you're talking about. Well, that's not an argument about how, why that position is unreasonable. It doesn't sound unreasonable to me and I've still not heard a good argument as to why that is unreasonable. Saying that I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm a podcaster is just a way to get out of arguing the point. And I personally actually think there's a debate to be had. I don't think it's clear cut either way. I do fall on, quote, I unquote, one side more than the other. But I think this article is such a clear example of why this is not clear. And for the sake of bitcoin, I think a little bit of humility is called for from everybody, mind you, I'm not calling out one side here, but throw the entire filter thing out the window. Just in the context of the relationship between the developers writing the code and the people running the code, you have a kind of pseudo service provider and customer sort of relationship. And I do not believe the customer always knows best. I'm very much of the Steve Jobs, if you ask, or the Henry Ford or whatever. If you ask the customer what they want, they're gonna ask for a faster horse. So I don't believe in the slightest that this should be a democracy and users should decide what, what people put in core reference client and what they don't. But if a huge number of people who run the software that you make and who are some of the most dedicated operators of the network that you work with, they tell you they vehemently don't want something and you don't at least engage honestly with them, you outright dismiss and just push something through and literally call them stupid children. I don't care what the topic is, and I don't care how big or how significant or insignificant the change is.
[01:00:49] Don't be surprised if people stop running your software or trusting you as a developer. That's just simple, that's just basic. How do you treat people who like or use your software? And what does the Node runner want in that software? Again, that has nothing to do with the filter argument. That has nothing to do with op return.
[01:01:12] 80 bytes or 100 kilobytes, doesn't matter.
[01:01:15] The issue could have been anything. Treating it the way that it has been treated and just basically saying everybody who disagrees with us is stupid. Just not a smart decision.
[01:01:26] I don't know, we'll see how it plays out.
[01:01:28] But for better or worse, which I am not, I.
[01:01:33] I'm not even going to say whether I think it is better or worse, because while I tend to agree with the Pro Filter side, I don't.
[01:01:43] I don't really know. You know, that's just the way I think about it. That's the way I see it. And I think we should have an honest discussion about it. I think that just stopped happening a good little while ago. But for better or worse, I think Core, largely what Core has done as a, as a group, as an organization, has just done reputational damage to themselves.
[01:02:06] And that specifically could be bad for Bitcoin. Not that I think it would kill Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin's a hell of a lot more resilient than this little drama.
[01:02:16] I think there Is and also, I will also say one thing is there was never an optimal path.
[01:02:22] And what I mean by that is that there are plenty of things. The network, excuse me, the Internet is still decentralized. It is today. There are a lot of drawbacks, there are a lot of trade offs, there are a lot of things that didn't go the right way. But. But the Internet is a global, decentralized communications layer that anyone can use and that works everywhere in the world. Even with all of its centralization risks here or there and its vulnerabilities and the dependencies that it relies on that have this problem or that problem, whatever it is. Bitcoin has been able to exist on the Internet because the Internet remains an open, permissionless system as well, or for it to build on. But you know what? We did not get here in the perfect way. The Internet is not perfect. The idea that Bitcoin is going to have some perfect path, and I'm saying this specifically to the pro filter side, that there is going to be a perfect culture and everybody is going to do the right thing for the best of Bitcoin and there will never be a step backward or there will never be risks or directions that Bitcoin ends up taking or developments that happen on Bitcoin that the monetary maximalists don't like or that aren't part of the perfect path to Bitcoin being global, permissionless, decentralized money is a pipe dream that's never going to happen.
[01:03:45] Any system with people in it means that there's going to be a thousand different directions and developments and any and everything that can happen or can happen very stupidly or incorrectly will still occur because that's how people are. But I absolutely believe Bitcoin will survive as open, permissionless, decentralized, global money. I am not worried about the 21 million bitcoin limit. I do not believe this is existential.
[01:04:12] I do believe there is a better option and it's worth talking about what that option is. And there's absolutely nobody who can say that because I know some code or because I read a bunch of stuff about Bitcoin or because I'm really good at philosophy or I'm really good at economics. There is absolutely nobody that can say, say because of what I do or the thing that I know I'm the one who has the right answer and the technical reality is this. And everybody else can shut up and you don't have a, you don't have an opinion worth hearing and you have nothing to say. And I'M not going to listen to you because that's not even slightly true. That is an appeal to an authority that Bitcoin does not have. There is no authority. I know plenty of Ethereum devs who could probably write really good transaction software and don't know jack about money or economics or the cultural consequences of doing certain things on Bitcoin versus Ethereum or whether or not you need a blockchain at all. Just because they can write code doesn't mean they have the end all be all answer of every decision that should ever be made around Bitcoin. If that's how you treat other people, they're not going to trust you.
[01:05:19] We got something out of this article I think.
[01:05:22] I think it's very worth digging into.
[01:05:26] I hope you listen whether regardless of whether you're on this, this or that side of the aisle for this particular issue, I think this is useful to know. And like I said, when I'm trying to figure something out, I I read everything I can get. On that note, there's actually a piece by Shinobi we will be reading about this particular topic but I want to kind of spread it out so that it just doesn't this show doesn't become the Op return show. The best in filters made audible this is opreturn audible so I don't know exactly when I'll do it but it's coming up, it's coming up soon. I just want to spread it out a little bit.
[01:05:58] So we will be covering a piece by Shinobi. There's obviously aggressively again like just shits on filter people. So be warned pull your panties up and get ready and subscribe to Bitcoin Audible Shout out to Leden ledn IO for bitcoin backed loans. I've been using them for a while and I'm very happy with it. I mean nothing is perfect and obviously has risk but if you haven't checked out bitcoin backed loans you really should and use a trustworthy company, someone who's been around the block. And I got a special link for you down in the show notes Shout out to synonym and pubkey P u b k y dot app. I've actually got a video coming soon about solving the login problem that's super relevant so you'll hear about it. Then a shout out to the HRF for supporting the show. And lastly git chroma the bitcoiners trying to make bitcoiners aware of our light health. Find them all right down in the show notes Discount Goodies special links, you name it.
[01:06:50] All right, guys, don't forget to a shout out to a few of the people who've been, you know, reposting and letting people know about my episodes. That's, that's freaking awesome. Thank you. That goes a long way.
[01:07:01] And if you want to leave a review, that's a massive help and free to do and I will catch you on the next episode. And until then, that's my two SATs.
[01:07:25] Life isn't about finding yourself.
[01:07:28] Life is about creating yourself.
[01:07:32] George Bernard Shaw.
