Bitcoin as a model of physics \ stacker news ~science

pull down to refresh

1434 sats \ 3 comments \ @machuPikacchu 18 Apr science

In physics there's conservation of energy [1] . There's mass-energy [2] (as opposed to dark-energy [3] ) that can't be created nor destroyed and there's spacetime [4] that seemingly tends to expand according to our observations.

Sats (the monetary unit in bitcoin) can be thought of as mass-energy and the UTXO set can be thought of as spacetime. Sats must exist in UTXOs on the blockchain but can do so in almost arbitrary density. They can't be created nor destroyed: even if you lose your keys, the sats still exist on-chain. Newly mined bitcoin aren't "created" but rather found through the mining process.

In the physical world mass can't exceed the speed of light [5] just like transactions on-chain can't exceed an average rate set by the protocol. Dark energy in the physical world is thought to drive the expansion of spacetime whereas a mempool [6] drives the expansion of the UTXO set.

Physicists theorize that just after the big bang [7] all of the mass-energy was concentrated in a small volume and as time went on it was distributed into galaxies and stars and nebulas and planets. In the early days of bitcoin sats were highly concentrated in the hands of a few and as you can see on-chain there are smaller and smaller UTXOs.

The early universe produced primordial black holes [8] that are akin to early adopters losing keys to large UTXOs.

In quantum mechanics there's a concept called superposition [9] that says a quantum system can be in multiple states concurrently. The bitcoin blockchain tip can exist in many states until after a few blocks have been mined on one of them and thus establishing consensus and therefore a coherent past.

view all related items

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @davidw 23 Apr

Love these analogies. If I’m interpreting correctly…

Bitcoin coinbase tx ~ white hole / big bang
Mempool ~ Dark energy
Transactions ~ All physical mass
Sats per byte ~ Speed of light
Boating accidents ~ Black holes
UTXO set / block-count ~ Spacetime

I touched on just the 1st in #360669

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @machuPikacchu OP 25 Apr

I think there's a few ways we can interpret this connection. Mempool as dark energy seems appropriate. Sats as mass-energy is a natural fit due to the conservation laws in the physical world and the protocol. Boating accidents as black holes makes sense as it represents mass-energy lost to the outside world.

I think it makes sense to think of the genesis block as the big bang since it marks the start of "the universe" so to speak. All subsequent coinbase transactions could then be considered white holes?

The speed of light is the fastest a signal can travel in the physical world (quantum entanglement is faster but can't carry signal). Mass can only travel at less than speed of light. Maybe this correlates with 10-minute average block times? For example we can't have more than 2016 consecutive blocks significantly faster than 10 minutes on average due to the difficulty adjustment.

On that last point, ASICs are improving at an exponential pace but eventually they'll plateau. Who knows how long before then. Once they do, we can expect fairly consistent block times and little difficulty adjustment. Perhaps then the "speed of light" in bitcoin will be a firm 10 minutes?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @machuPikacchu OP 25 Apr

The lightning network can be thought of as creating covalent bonds [1] between two UTXOs. The base layer UTXOs are combined to form a higher level object: a channel. In the physical world two atoms form a bond and become a molecule; a higher level object.

Lightning channels, as of now, are like diatomic molecules [2]. If the bitcoin network embraces covenants then we'll more complex "molecules." If the analogy holds then covenants make more "chemistry" possible.

I think it would be beneficial to the community if more people explored this model. Perhaps it can help guide the evolution of this system and help avoid pitfalls. For example, some molecules are great for life, others are not...