Sa jednog drugog foruma, bogami ima puno da se pročita ali vredi:
A cAPSLOCK Saturday Long Post brought to you by
COFFEE, "
the liquid that keeps me going".
Why Layer 2 and Sidechains will do "All The Things"
According to Scott Adams our brains are "Pattern Recognition Machines". I think he's on to something. But like him, I also believe we are not really very good ones. AI and the like will end up running circles around us in the end. People get stuck in some of those patterns. We process our world using allegories. It's why memes work. We have a top-40 station playing our patterns to us in our heads all day long. The ones we have learned. The ones that benefit us and give us handles to manage what we do and how we think. And the ones that trap us. The old patterns we all fight to overcome. But I think it's not obvious how deeply these patterns go.
For example... take driving. If you are old enough to remember the days before maps on your smart phone, you remember using a paper map, or just knowing your way around town. When I have to go to the airport there is general set path I follow. It's worked great for all the years I have used it, and I have never missed a flight on account of being late. It is a GREAT route! It has worked for YEARS. Perfectly! IT IS THE ROUTE I USE. IT IS PERFECT.
Well... Then one day I decided to let Google tell me which way to go on account of the fact that it can help route around traffic. That's helpful tech right there. And it turns out it was a slow traffic day. Nothing to route around. But Google suggested a route that was one of the most ass-backwards things I have ever seen. It was taking me way further south, and then west than my more sensible PERFECT route that I have been using forever. Why on Earth would it do this? Why have me wind through all those intersections, and take a highway that is literally going the wrong direction for a while? Why on Earth?
Turns out the answer is simple.
That route takes 10 minutes less time than the one I have used for so many years. For 30 years I have been adding 10 minutes to my trip to the airport without knowing it. It has added up to hours in the car I could have otherwise spent doing something better like making another pot of coffee.
Wow! Thanks Google. Actually one small way you guys stuck to "Don't be evil"! But then this deeper thought hit me like an avalanche. Driving is one thing... I mean, who really cares of I have been going the long way. It's no big deal. But how many other ways do I have of processing the world that are sub-optimal? How many "routes" does my brain take that are really not the best choice? How many patterns have I deeply burned into my mind and muscle memory that I actually think are the best possible way to do or understand something, when in fact they are trapping me? Limiting me? Holding me back? Time to put some whisky in the coffee. Damn.
Well understanding money is a fundamental aspect of living in the world that we have all gotten really good at. Or bad depending how you look at it. And understanding Bitcoin is one level more abstracted since it is mostly novel.
We all know from trying to explain Bitcoin to a friend or relative how it's kind of hard to understand, even though it's not an overly complex concept.
We use
patterns to try to figure it out. Allegories to communicate what it is, and how it might be different than what we are used to. "
It's like the 'email of money'". "
It's like PayPal, but without a trusted third party". It is "
Peer to peer electronic cash" (The book of Satoshi 1:1).
NO! It's "
digital gold!".
NO!!! PEER TO PEER DIGITAL CASH!
Nuh uh! GOLD!
We have been going back and forth for the last 7 years or so on that last one. And it has driven the narratives to this day. And we have pitted those two concepts against each other like roosters in a cockfight.
"Since the community has chosen the 'digital gold narrative', transactions will be too expensive and all we care about is digital gold. ALL HAIL NGU TECHNIOLOGY!". Saint Saylor has sworn upon a stack of White Papers that
Bitcoin cannot threaten the dollar because it is just "digital gold", not transactional. Roger has frothed and almost popped his eyes out of his head insisting that
'Bitcoin Core' is broken and if we do not use it as cash (BCH Please!) then Africa will burn and babies will die!!! I'm sorry if i get worked up.. I JUST REALLY CARE ABOUT THE BABIES! OR: "
The banks have infiltrated Blockstream and set us on the path to the new world order which is just the same old one in disguise."
But here's the thing... are we really taking the best route to the airport? Or are we stuck in our same old patterns? Are we arguing about what Bitcoin really, really fundamentally
IS? Or are we really just letting two memes fight to the death in the land of narratives designed to help us understand a
NEW thing using our
OLD concepts?
We can't count on layers 2 to solve the problems! We are stealing revenue from the miners and giving it to Blockstream! Lightning is kludgy. We will never be able to open enough channels to make it work. Liquid is TRUSTED! They just use the word "federated". PayPal and Square are evil and if you let them hold your coins you will likely never see them again! If we don't scale on chain we are going against the Holy Scriptures.
This tech will never work. Things we already know how to use are better. It does not fit into the tried and true systems we already use. These damn horseless carriages are going to spook all the horses on the road. It will never work. There are too many problems to solve.
In my lifetime I have seen many technologies emerge. The Internet. Pocket super computers. Digital music. And the old guard fought it, tried to capture it, and eventually learned to live in harmony with it in each case. The smart ones have even started to make money again in spite of it.
One thing I have seen over and over is technology will find a way.
In the early days of what we now call the internet there were arguments about how network should scale that should seem very familiar to us now. The original TCP protocol contained both datagram transmission and routing, but some early tech folks who could see a little further than their peers began to realize that something as important than this would need to move the different parts of the protocol into separate layers for it to work well.
Jon Postel, an early internet pioneer, was extremely prescient to point out:
Quote
We are screwing up in our design of Internet protocols by violating the principle of layering.
And TCP evolved into TCP/IP. It was sort of the "Segwit" of 1973. And now not only can we send rudimentary text messages back and forth to people around the world, but we can watch a HD video documentary about the birth of the internet using protocols
LAYERED on top of that very network itself! Nifty! Oh and thanks, Jon.
Water finds the easiest path from the mountain to the sea, and technology finds a way to scale. All our mental pictures we try to use to explain it all will not make one WHIT of difference to Bitcoin in the end. Is it digital Gold?
Yes. Peer to Peer Electronic Cash?
Yes. Expensive to transact in?
Yes. Almost free to transact in?
Yes. Something powerful organizations will try to control?
Yes. Will it help the babies? I bet so, yes.
Here is a little tool that just begins to pull the hood back on the future:
https://coinos.io
That's just another web wallet cAPS. True.
It's also custodial! Yuck! True.
What's so special about it? Glad you asked!
You can send and receive Bitcoin to and from this wallet. Nothing new there.
You can send to a
bitcoin address like:
Code:
bc1q9dfmmzc9c7hz9e74fd5hdkf74gpzzd7ue7rtt3
Or you can send to a
Liquid address like:
Code:
VJLDLJLuxKMM42UzRkZEYE67ygngd6nQKShuULyUa3zKy4VthbPMwsWZdvy557wRjzPKu3coZaQL8r6Z
Or you can even use a
lightning invoice like:
Code:
lnbc1ps8raztpp5qdzxep544n53amx3tqwj7tjdzc0h0cv5cchyw2nqtch0nz3q7lsqdqqcqzpgsp5dfgfne2y5vdzqynrnxfnezgpsxaft9c2hqwgu7uv528x5enqejqq9qyyssqwpg8fsh5je6rrhewa3jly2lrlpg8ldxwurcysha0cftl6geckdrjg7ds2x6gacg23hahgxta3aehlupgzqw4tma79538lv24p8y7tcgq4e6lrw
(feel free to load those up... I promise it will go to a good cause (beer/coffee/whiskey))
And then you can send value
OUT of it using any of those three systems as well. It does not have to do any calculations... it's all just Bitcoin. Send it 0.0013 BTC (~$75 today) and you can send that out on any of the three layers. Base/LN/Liquid. Does not matter... Same/same. 1BTC = 1BTC. Only the fees and security model will change. Coffee? Let's use the lightning network! Groceries? Maybe Liquid. Lambo? Let's use the base chain. Oh and while we are at it, I don't suppose we will want to buy our new Lambo with a web wallet.
But you get the point, right?
water flows downhill
we need ways to send value
tech will find a way
It blows up all our models. Digital gold cannot be transactional? I beg your pardon? People can stop saying things like: "
Since the Bitcoin community chosen the path of Digital Gold, Bitcoin will never be able to ______" because Bitcoin is not limited by the models we use to describe it! Bitcoin is NOT digital gold. Or even peer to peer electronic cash (may Satoshi shine his wisdom upon us). At least not all the time. It can change form at the touch of a finger. (I was going to say "click of a mouse" but even that 'idea pattern' is starting to get a little old).
Things change. Money is changing. And the patterns we used yesterday to understand how it works are breaking down. And new ones are emerging faster than we poor pattern recognition machines can really understand.
Honey Badger don't care. And tech will find a way. A better way than we had before. Better in ways we can only begin to imagine.
CCMF!
