52 sats \ 16 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 15 Jun \ parent \ on: Fedimint vs Liquid bitcoin
Do you believe liquid is trustworthy just because of their Blockchain? You mention fedimint with public members would be more trustworthy yet liquid's functionary members are not public.
On this page:
https://liquid.net/
If you click "Member Details", federation members are all listed, and there is the picture of each member on the board (among which the board deciding of membership changes in the federation):
https://liquid.net/governance
So I think we can fairly say the federation members are public.
However it looks like the block-signers subset is not identified. And I didn't find this info on mempool.space either, whereas for Bitcoin we know which pool created a block.
And since the federation members are dynamic and can apparently leave at any time, the web page could be outdated at the moment we speak. I don't know how often the page is updated.
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There is a difference between liquid members and liquid functionary members. It's intentionally confusing. The public list is are just partners allowed to peg out.
The people running the network are nowhere on there to be seen and they're the "guardians" in liquid's case.
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I just checked again and I think what you call guardian is what on the Liquid network is called block-signers, like the miners on Bitcoin. And the watchmen are those who are responsible for managing bitcoins on a multisig. I don't think there is confusion about this.
However indeed the list of block-signers and watchmen, although I assume is in the list of functionaries looks like hidden. I will ask on their community group.
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no the list is not public, the functionary operators of the federation can decide for themselves whether to be public about it, for example Nym is a public operator.
watchmen and block signers are currently the same 15 set
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I don’t use Liquid. These are all relative statements not absolute ones like “liquid is trustworthy.” The more black a black box is, the less I trust claims about what is going on inside of it.
I didn’t realize they weren’t public (which is consistent with “I don’t know much about liquid”), but presumably Blockstream knows all the members? So they are known to someone, and while it doesn’t make them trustworthy, it does make it theoretically possible to hold functionary members accountable for bad things if Blockstream wishes to hold them accountable, right?
I’d be more interested in your thoughts on these tradeoffs than mine. Is fedimint better than Liquid in every possible way?
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I didn’t realize they weren’t public
This is very commonly the case when I ask the question. People assume it's public and that it's more trustworthy as a result, even if they have no idea who it is themselves (because it's not actually public). Only last week did one just get announced as a functionary member (Nym), other than that, they're unknown to the public.
In fedimint's case, you can see the bitcoin locked to the multisig and you can see the outstanding ecash issued. Fedimint can be ran by anyone, so the trust assumptions can go from none to very great (depending on who is the federation in relation to the user, it could be family), and that's better than Liquid unless you're related to adam back. It also has an open gateway structure and everyone is allowed to withdraw out, which is better than Liquid which only partners can withdraw from the federation.
So yes, I believe fedimint is better than liquid in every possible way.
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Have you used Liquid?
Why do you hate Adam Back?
Fedimint is better in every possible way because I am unbiased
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If the Fedimint is run in solo mode you could be rug pulled as well. In the case of Liquid there are quite a few ways to peg out. Through Boltz, BTSE, Sideswap and others. In this case to me Liquid feels less risky.
By using Fedi I didn't see anyway to verify by myself how many guardians there are (it could be a limitation of the application they provide and/or my misconception as well).
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In the case of Liquid there are quite a few ways to peg out. Through Boltz, BTSE, Sideswap and others. In this case to me Liquid feels less risky.
How does the presence of multliple swap services reduce the risk of Liquid? In the threats I can imagine for Liquid, e.g. them freezing your assets or liquid getting hacked and L-BTC losing its value, you would also not be able to redeem your bitcoin through these services.
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Because it is required that two third of them all decide together to freeze our assets. So the risk is diluted. I assume that by "them" you refer to the watchmen who manage the keys for Bitcoin in the multisig.
Personally I would be more worried about assets such as USDt "frozen" than about L-BTC.
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Because it is required that two third of them all decide together to freeze our assets. So the risk is diluted. I assume that by "them" you refer to the watchmen who manage the keys for Bitcoin in the multisig.
I think we are talking about different things here. What I was saying is, that if two thirds of the federation members decide to freeze your L-BTC, additional swap services will not help you, because in any case you would not be able to send your frozen L-BTC to the swap service.
Personally I would be more worried about assets such as USDt "frozen" than about L-BTC.
With USDt you mean USD-Tether, right? The threshold to asset freezes is certainly higher for a federation like liquid than for tether, but on the other hand if I look at how fast most companies tend to proactively comply when shit hits the fan, I don't think its so much higher either.
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Good point
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How do you know liquid isn't actually being ran by just one person?
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I don't know. Maybe by using Wireshark on my Liquid node to vaguely capture traffic and try to vaguely find who might be the block signers if I can capture the right traffic from a peer.
That being said if we can minimally agree the information from Coin Telegraph and mempool.space is correct, at least you have proof there was 1 block signer in Japan:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/liquid-network-block-production-resumes-following-transaction-processing-issues
At the end of the day for any community there is some trust involved. 1-2 years ago I got rug pulled by Fiatjaf around 80-90 sats in a telegram group. Given that there is at least a good track record for Liquid since 2018 I feel confident we may not be rug pulled. That being said to my friends I recommend them Bitcoin, not Liquid or Fedi.
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You mean the entire federation is controlled by one person or colluding?
That seems impossible.
Let’s pretend it’s controlled by one person. So what?
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