Why do Taproot gets so much hate?? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

347 sats \ 26 comments \ @didiplaywell 23 Jul bitcoin

I have seen many negative expressions towards Taproot, but that's it, that's all I see: frowned faces, "TapAss", "lightning labs bad", "shitcoin", etc... I'm not saying that it's good or bad, I don't have the knowledge to judge, but it surprises me that I see negative comments with exactly ZERO arguments and articulated in such a way that they seem to stem from resentment rather any other reason.

So, here and now: why? is there an actual, tech-based reason why Taproot can get such hate? I'm not talking about critics, that's inherent to anything for nothing can be perfect, but hate?

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30 sats \ 3 replies \ @Bell_curve 23 Jul

I saw this message a few days ago on group chat:

Have spent quite a bit of time thinking about this and would be happy to chat over DMs (especially if you are planning to write/speak about this topic). But some initial thoughts:

There are a lot of pros to issuing on Liquid, but the main con as far as I'm concerned is segregated network effects; even though there are some "impractical" (i.e. requiring trust and/or patience) alternatives, Liquid is obviously optimized to be used with L-BTC in place of mainchain/LN BTC.

Meanwhile, TapAss is clearly optimized for a user journey that's centred around an otherwise standard BTC/LN wallet "with extras" in the form of tokenized assets and the ability to swap between everything that can be stored in said wallet. The ease with which any Bitcoiner can get started with TapAss without making impractical compromises is an important pro that puts it miles ahead of Liquid in terms of potential for adoption and network effects...

But there's an important con also, which is that just like any approach to tokenizing directly inside Bitcoin instead of a sidechain, Taproot Assets commits data to the Bitcoin blockchain, competing with monetary (BTC) settlement txs for scarce and increasingly precious blockspace.

Every asset issuance, Lightning channel creation or rebalancing transaction for tokenized assets, and every transfer of an asset that has too little liquidity to practically be used over Lightning, will take up some blockspace, regardless of what you use. At the same pace as more and more financial instruments become tokenized and traded against BTC (an inevitable part of hyperbitcoinization), it's likely that Bitcoin's UTXO set will also be used less and less for anything other than settling large transfers of BTC. That's a problem which only a sidechain can solve - and also the reason why I'm working on Sequentia, a fork of Elements that aims to combine the best of both tradeoffs by providing a TapAss-like UX from a Liquid-like architecture.

@SequentiaSEQ

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @didiplaywell OP 23 Jul

Interesting! Thank you for bringing this up

I'm interested to see what Burak will come up with. He has a different approach to the UTXO set problem: VTXO.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 23 Jul

I copy and pasted someone else's answer

But I thought his words were relevant for this thread

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @03bebce944 24 Jul

Taproot Assets commits data to the Bitcoin blockchain, competing with monetary (BTC) settlement txs for scarce and increasingly precious blockspace.

IIUC, the data is a hash inside the script tree, so there're no additional bytes on chain compared to a normal transaction.

Which would we rather have: virtually zero transactions and 1 sat/byte for ever, or, a robust free market?

41 sats \ 5 replies \ @south_korea_ln 23 Jul

I heard at some point a big critique is that because both Taro and RGB use client side validation, you lose global consensus. So on the hand it sacrifices strongly on one of the core property of Bitcoin, but also it allows nefarious actors to take advantage of it. The critics kept hammering on this point while the developers kept ignoring it or claiming they solved that issue. Not sure what's true or how it has evolved since then.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 24 Jul

you lose global consensus

You don't need global consensus, as the only person that needs to verify the history of an asset is the receiver!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 24 Jul

You seem to know more about it. So how does the receiver know for sure the asset hasn't been given to someone else simultaneously?

121 sats \ 2 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 23 Jul

Thank you for that insight. I have learned to take such critiques with a grain of salt because most of the time, even if 100% accurate, they're solvable, or even a fully conscious and temporal trade-off for the sake of a quick PoC. It happens even in the world of mechanical engineering: I have made some quick designs with obviously temporal and easily solvable trade-offs to be critiqued for them like if the overall concept itself was flawed. I have seen that happening with LN itself, for in it's early stages it had blatant flaws which ended up not being inherent to the concept itself and where all solved one by one over time. I have also learned to not to take a critique that's more than one year old, I'm amazed to see devs (the ones who know the dynamic of the tech) stubbornly repeating old observations.

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 23 Jul

I agree.

I think the most vocal criticast i knew at that point was mostly frustrated by the fact that they did not want to acknowledge that limitation. Otherwise he thought the tech had some very valuable merits so he was not against it being developed. He just wanted more honesty.

The Cashu guys took a different approach. Calle always emphasized the sacrifices made, with a mint being able to rug you the most noticeable one, hence they seem to be getting a pass from the vocal maximalists.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 23 Jul

That's the way! Grown up devs there

41 sats \ 4 replies \ @freetx 23 Jul

There are those that say that Taro was a fairly blatant ripoff of RGB....I have no way to really judge that claim, but I think it has been said from the founder of RGB himself.

I know Blockstream has been flirting with RGB, so I think some of this is just friction between different implementations of "assets on bitcoin" tech.

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 23 Jul

If that's part of the reason, then it's childish to say the least. It's the Open Source world, there's nothing like a "ripoff" of anything, that's precisely the reason "forking" is an in-built functionality. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Despite that, so far I have read about RGB in their own documentation, the projects are nothing alike, for RGB is an L2 project that goes way beyond Taproot current goals, so it's fairly safe from Taproot and it's to RGB to prove to be a superior contendent. Other than that you can't get mad at Taproot for achieving goals first, that's high-school level immaturity.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @freetx 23 Jul

then it's childish to say the least. It's the Open Source world, there's nothing like a "ripoff" of anything,

True, but imagine you were a solo developer working on a passion project and a well-funded multi-million dollar company came along and "forked" your project and then used their considerable marketing muscle to lead the world to think they had some great new invention.

You would probably be asking yourself....why didn't they just contribute to my project (monetarily + code)....why just rip me off?

(Note: I'm not saying this is what happened, I'm simply pointing out that there are human stories behind all these projects)

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 23 Jul

I fully agree that in such a situation I would be pissed at such shitty attitude, but not angered nor resented, simply because those are the upfront rules of the game you accept the second you play by the OSS rules. And it's not a bad thing, because if you made your project OSS sharing it with no market scheme behind, then either you're naive (besides being well intentioned), or you just want to see it happen, in which case you should be happy that a company made it a reality without you having to make further efforts. Everyone wins.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 23 Jul

Using Brave search AI...

Based on the provided information, here are the key differences and similarities between Taro and RGB:

Similarities:

Both Taro and RGB aim to enable the issuance and transfer of assets on the Bitcoin network, with a focus on scalability and privacy. They share conceptual similarities in their approaches to achieving this goal.

Differences:

Smart Contract Focus: RGB has always been a smart contracts system, whereas Taro is a token protocol with "probable support of smart contracts." Implementation: RGB has released reviewable code, while Taro is still in the specification phase, backed by Lightning Labs, a reputable team in the Lightning Network ecosystem. Asset Model: Taro uses the UTXO model, which is more secure and private due to avoidance of key reuse and lack of balance information revelation. RGB's asset solution is not specified. Scalability: Taro leverages Taproot and the Lightning Network for scalability, while RGB's approach is unclear. Asset Types: Taro enables the issuance of non-fungible assets (collectibles) and assets, whereas RGB's focus is on smart contracts and asset solutions.

Plagiarism Claims:** Some sources suggest that RGB developers have accused Taro of plagiarizing their protocol without giving credit. However, others argue that Taro is conceptually similar due to the limited number of paths to achieve asset issuance on Bitcoin, and that Taro uses Tapscript to do more than RGB did.

In summary, while both Taro and RGB aim to enable asset issuance and transfer on Bitcoin, they differ in their implementation, asset model, scalability approach, and asset types. The plagiarism claims remain unclear, with some sources suggesting that Taro borrowed ideas from RGB, while others argue that the similarities are due to the shared goal of asset issuance on Bitcoin.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 23 Jul

Memes are not technical evidence?

You have set the bar too high because we are lazy Americans and Europeans.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 23 Jul

I have to concede that memes are the ultimate authority in any field of knowledge

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @fierillo 25 Jul

Is basically people that think that inscriptions are bad and shouldn't exist

but at the same talk marvelous about permissionlessness of Bitcoin.

Anyway, a bunch of hypocrites.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 25 Jul

Makes sense

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @eduardopro 24 Jul

Because shitcoins built on Bitcoin are still shitcoins.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 24 Jul

I agree, but that do not precludes useful projects from being built with this new functionality. It's like saying that we should ban eating with forks because "forks used for stabbing are still forks used for stabbing". If there's any inherent reason of the functionality itself that's hurtful, then that's a genuine concern. Like for example using forks made with asbestos, where the bad consequences are inherent to the modification regardless on how you decide to use that fork. Or if it's way too error prone so that even with the best of intentions and with actual good use being possible it's still ticking a time-bomb.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @nullcount 23 Jul

Based: butt joke funny lol Cringe: why so much hate?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell OP 23 Jul

I'm not sure I understood your comment but, just in case, I'm not endorsing Taproot, I'm asking, to be informed, why the hate. I hate shitcoins for instance, like "bitcoin-cash", because it's flawed by design. I'm not against justified hate, I'm asking why the hate.