The way Bitcoin scales is offchain and other chains. Practically speaking, you either load BTC into an exchange and then do offchain transactions, or use something like wrapped BTC on another chain. That’s more hub-and-spoke than fully p2p, but anyone with BTC can set up a hub.
Omid Malekan 🧙🏽‍♂️
Omid Malekan 🧙🏽‍♂️2.8. klo 04.09
It's a quiet day in the markets with not much going on and a friend just asked me why I hadn't been more vocal on Bitcoin L2s, so here goes: I have a moderately strong intuition that none of these will ever work, both because of Bitcoin's culture (which prioritizes decentralization) and its network design. L2s need to post some combination of proofs and data to the L1 to be valid (otherwise they are just a sidechain). The issue with Bitcoin L2s is that Bitcoin block times are both far apart and unpredictable. This compromises finality. The further apart the blocks of an L1, the greater the trust assumptions required to use an L2. You have to wait for your transactions to be finalized by the main chain, and you don't even know how long. Also, whatever self-sequence/CR/escape hatch mechanisms the L2 might have, you won't know when you'll be able to use them. There are also the technical limitations of using Bitcoin for anything other than UTXO transfers, the cost of posting data, and so on. But those issues might be solvable, whereas dispersed and unpredictable block times are not-not without compromising the L1. That's just how PoW works. If I'm right, then the next question to ponder is how useful is a Bitcoin L2 with large trust assumptions? My intuition is not at all. You might as well wrap the bitcoins and do whatever you wanted to do with them on another L1. Don't get me wrong, it would be awesome if we could have native DeFi on corn, a game changer in fact. I just think that the same vectors of decentralization that make Bitcoin appealing as an asset disqualify its chain as a useful anchor for L2s. "But wait a minute Omid", a maxi, or crypto VC bro who didn't care about Bitcoin until a year ago, might say. "If you are right, why have people plowed so much money into so many different BTC L2s?" To which I say: LOL. Also, welcome to crypto, the industry where we throw billions at every bad idea. But if I am right, then Bitcoin is on a collision course with a crisis of economic security.
For example, with even 10 BTC you can set up a hub for a small community, much like a centralized exchange. So long as no individual settlement is over $1M USD you can handle most of the community’s business by just doing offchain settlement between parties. Yes, that hub is trusted, but the goal after all is to eventually rebuild high trust societies. And software is complex, so you can minimize trust but not eliminate it. There is some code whose correctness you will need to take on trust. AI can help, but ultimately you can’t personally diligence every one of the millions of lines of code in a modern OS and crypto stack. Of course, you can move around solo with your BTC, which is fine, but in order to recentralize in any community you’ll need a trusted hub of some kind. Bitcoin doesn’t fully eliminate trust, but it does give us a choice of who to trust.
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