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213 sats \ 2 replies \ @endothermicdev 20 May \ on: Went to Steak n Shake today. Seeing SATS on the receipt was the craziest thing bitcoin
I made the pilgrimage on Friday and was met by a several other bitcoiners. Pretty cool experience and I'm glad to see like minded individuals supporting lightning as a medium of exchange. I'll definitely be going out of my way to give Steak n Shake some repeat business.
At the end of the day, we expect skin in the game. I would argue there are plenty of ways in which people have skin in the game simply by being alive and living in a state. There are separate ways in which taxpayers have skin in the game when it comes to laws authorizing spending. Still others in which parents and young people have skin in the game when it comes to legislation disproportionately impacting future generations.
I don't think it's a one-size fits all answer here, but it certainly seems like we could do better. It also doesn't help that we generally vote for politicians rather than individual measures/legislation.
It was fun hearing from people I know and respect on both sides make their case in person.
I think minimizing utxo set bloat and maximizing miner decentralization are both fairly critical to the bitcoin network, so I'm generally for removing the limit. It's unfortunate that people want to use the blockchain for cruft, so I'm sympathetic to the motivations of team filter as well. However, ultimately we have to follow consensus rules and the mempool cannot afford to diverge too much from what the consensus-valid market for block space bears - if it does our decentralization is toast. Ultimately I'm here for decentralized, censorship-resistant currency. Perhaps arbitrary data on the blockchain is just the price we have to bear.
CLBOSS has five different "FeeModders" which collectively adjust channel fees. Some are configurable and some not. The most relevant one here is probably FeeModderByBalance which I've tried tweaking, but it doesn't have publicly accessible config parameters. We've been discussing in the calls ways to make it more responsive.
The power failure scenario is definitely a concern. I have a script to replace an outdated db, but I'm not sure such a feature from within the plugin would be appropriate. Maybe the plugin could document a generic pre-start db restore script though.
Great tips and data, thank you! I had a couple notes after reading - hope you don't mind.
- 1M sat sat channels are fine now, but if we hit more mempool congestion a high fee environment with heavy routing could cause problematic force closes. Be careful with smaller, busy channels if onchain fees spike.
- Ken Sedgwick has been maintaining CLBOSS recently. There's an ongoing biweekly meeting for node runners and contributors.
- Core Lightning has the backup plugin to keep a duplicate sqlite db synced, or better yet postgres replication might be appropriate for serious funds. Either way should keep channels and funds safe in the event of catastrophic disk failure.
If people storing data in the witness script can do it more cheaply than having the data in OP_RETURN, why wouldn't they just continue to do that?
I would refer to Sjor's reasoning
I'm simplifying terribly, but I think the general issue is that putting the data in the witness makes syncing and validating the chain harder for future and current node operators. Validating each transaction requires checking it against all unspent transaction outputs from the entire blockchain (utxo set.) These have to be kept in memory by the nodes forever. If you can avoid having every node add to this with something that's in fact unspendable and only meant to record data, it makes validation quicker and nodes are cheaper to operate. It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Obviously the utxo set is going to grow regardless, but we might as well not encourage it to get worse by needlessly adding outputs that can never be removed.
Buying a ledger without having a P.O. Box. At least it taught me that all customer data really is toxic.
The problem with arbitrary data is that it takes up space that should rightfully be used for monetary transactions.
This is an incredibly lazy argument, and this self-righteous moral high ground is a complete nonstarter for me. Are we for a free market or not? How about a free and open protocol anyone can use? Yes, I'm sure most of us would love it if the bitcoin network was only used for actual bitcoin transactions. But guess what, it's not. It turns out people love to use bitcoin in ways that may seem irrational to us. Whether that's messages memorializing life events, Merkle tree roots of timestamped data, or meme jpegs, it doesn't really matter. There are ways to embed this data in bitcoin transactions, and the worst offenders will bloat the utxo set in such a way that it makes running and syncing a node harder for everyone joining the network. OP_RETURN was always a pragmatic solution here. Furthermore, the relay policy has increasingly little bearing on what makes it into blocks, much less what's allowable by consensus. All limiting mempool relay does is encourage third party, out-of-band tx relay, which further incentivizes mining centralization. Is there anyone who really thinks mining pools aren't already centralized enough? Next they're going to explain to us how no speak easies existed during American prohibition because alcohol was outlawed.
The icing on the cake is that filling blocks with 700KB of OP_RETURN data would actually go a long way towards Luke's goal of 300KB blocks to validate. (An argument that was interesting and thought provoking.) Most of the time to sync a new node is in validating transactions and mapping the UTXO set, to which OP_RETURN doesn't contribute as it's unspendable. It doesn't even get a witness discount!
I'm so tired of this debate. I get that you're morally superior, but at least develop a coherent argument I can entertain before throwing ad hominems and then claiming victimhood at the hands of the cabal.
I appreciate your contributions Murch! Zero moderation is not practically feasible without a tragedy of the commons situation. I'm sorry that the alternative inevitably puts every action under a microscope for public airing of the grievances. We're all just passionate about the project.
This is interesting, and somehow I don't doubt the results. Much like assuming absolute responsibility for your place in life is beneficial on an individual level yet can lead to problems when applied to society at large, perhaps the existence of smartphones and social media is anxiety inducing for society as a whole, yet the rational individual choice is still to participate, so as not to get ostracized and miss out on social engagement. We can't compare results with a counterfactual society, but maybe polling students at schools with no phone policies vs students elsewhere could provide some insight.
Exactly this. But I would also assign a rebuttal (could be brief), and even the counter-argument to the rebuttal. Get comfortable with the process of reasoning and laying out an argument. Logical reasoning shouldn't stop because your agenda is satisfied. After all, empathy and an understand your opposing view's perspective should help you refine your case, or even your position if you have an open mind.
We recently did one of these with my son on fracking. While the initial stance was "not worth the risks," there were several compelling counter arguments, especially when taking second order effects into account. It's clearly not a cut and dry issue, but one that depends heavily on context.
As an engineer and someone who has filed several patents, I like the idea of incentivizing creativity with a temporary monopoly on your own work, and then opening it up to the commons with full documentation. In practice, I think the system is abused and does more harm than good in this day and age. Patents are now mostly used as defense in high cost, high stakes lawfare.
The patent system needs major reform and the USPTO needs much better help vetting submissions. The duration is too long on fast developing fields and claims are being accepted that should never be patentable in the first place. There's a whole cottage industry of patent trolls who have never created anything of their own, but can theorize someone else might try to make a product that does X and they file an overly broad patent for it. If these sort of abuses can't be corrected, I think we'd be better off without IP rights entirely.
I worked in one for many years as an engineer. Granted, I did mostly design work, but I had a great time automating some of our more tedious manual processes. Creating custom tools for the technicians and the real time feedback of improving designs for manufacturability was rewarding as well.
Czar of the universe answer is to fix this in an elegant way early with a decade or so to move the coins before anything consequential happened. In the real world, you would never build consensus for such a thing. Even if you did, the process would be so contentious that a vocal contingent could cause a substantial loss of faith in the immutability of bitcoin. It might even be preferable to let the chaos play out. Unless there's overwhelming consensus, any solution becomes a poisoned chalice - even if it's technically elegant.
Literally pay a mining fee? Because then once you brute force a private key you just buy some mining hardware and sit on the tx until you can mine a single block, right?
To be frank, this last month is the first time I saw Bitcoin not behave like the typical risk-on asset it’s long been lumped in with. It didn’t act like quite the safe haven gold has, but it has firmed up in its beta with the overall market.I want to be clear: it’s still early, and this trend could reverse on a dime. But this month has felt like a potential break in the pattern—like we might be witnessing the first glimmer of Bitcoin decoupling from risk on, and drifting towards safe haven.
There's a long way to go yet, but it does feel like bitcoin the monetary network is transitioning to a new era. (I'm also encouraged by the record high 1 zettahash hashtate as miners turn on even more hashpower in the face of global trade and monetary uncertainty.) As someone who was sick of seeing bitcoin trade as just another leveraged tech play, this is really quite exciting development. Once it establishes a safe haven reputation, the game will be in full swing.
Prior to working on lightning I designed electronics and ran a pick and place machine for a small EE company. We could produce thousands of PCBs per day on one line (solder stencil + pick & place + reflow oven) though the average run was much smaller. We did the same basic operations as described in this article - populate PCBs, flash with firmware, package them, and test. Pretty much all of these steps can be made much more efficient if you have the volume to justify it. My takeaway was that it's really a numbers game.
I can't imagine they sell that many $2,000 underspecced phones, but I'm sure if they did, they could find further efficiencies in chip procurement costs, assembly, testing, even shipping. And that's not to mention amortizing the engineering and design costs over a large number of goods sold.
Mempools are brilliant for censorship resistance. They're also critical to:
- Miner decentralization - keeping transactions in a publicly available mempools makes it easier for smaller miners/pools to participate.
- Layer two contracts, i.e. lightning nodes need accurate feerate estimation in order to broadcast reliable, time sensitive transactions.
- Protocol reliability. The alternative, centralizing around a singular block template creator creates fragility in the network.
IMO, mempools are highly underappreciated for all the benefits they bring.
Is it a nice service, or does it hinder accurate fee estimation for peer-peer users when a significant portion of fees are paid out-of-band? Is this peer-peer usage of the network? What affect does it have on miner decentralization?