Should Mars have its own Bitcoin chain?
Don't worry: this isn't another pop science post about space Bitcoin -- it's about scaling and soft forks. Please forgive me if you find the Martian conceit tiresome.
Everyone knows Martians can't mine BTC
Light takes from 3 to 22 minutes to travel between the two planets, depending on where they are in their orbits. If you're trying to mine BTC on Mars, any block you are mining on is at least three minutes old, probably older -- possibly as many as 22 minutes old. And if you happen to find a block, you're going to experience the same delay before you can tell the rest of the network about it. Odds are, Martian miners aren't going to be adding blocks to the chain. But this is old news.
Mars needs its own Lightning Network
Mining BTC is out, but what about using it? Given the amount of back and forth communication between Lightning nodes, it seems unlikely that you could use Lightning between planets. At the least, the Lightning nodes on Mars would risk being partitioned off from nodes on Earth -- there might be lots of Martians-to-Martian channels but a channel between Mars and Earth seems a bit risky. But perhaps there could be a Lightning network local to Mars, just with some adjustments for the communication delay.
Using BTC on Mars means longer waits
It's possible Martians will keep using BTC, just with longer confirmation times and greater risk that their broadcast could be embargoed (who knows how centralized communication between the two planets will be). In the worst case scenario, their view of the chain is five or more blocks behind the people on Earth. The Martian portion of the network might get partitioned off if it doesn't have a healthy number of connections to the BTC network on Earth. And if all the miners are on Earth, there is a clear risk that miners could act to censor Martian transactions.
MBTC
So there are a lot of complications to making Bitcoin work with interplanetary latency, and it's worth asking the question: why not just take the same code as BTC and start a new Bitcoin chain on Mars? Even the Redditers got this far.
Perhaps, we could change a few things: like address encoding to make sure that people don't accidentally lock BTC from Earth to Martian BTC addresses -- just like we already do with testnets -- and possibly fix the 32-bit timestamp problem or maybe adopt a quantum-resistant signature scheme (if it isn't already part of BTC), and probably change the mining algorithm so the mining superpowers on Earth can't 51% attack the Mars chain.
Now Mars has MBTC and Earth has BTC -- both follow the description of Bitcoin in the whitepaper, but they are different chains and have different histories. Are both of them Bitcoin? If they are, did the Martians just scale Bitcoin?
Wait...isn't starting a new chain bad?
The noob question: "What stops someone from just starting a new Bitcoin?" isn't as stupid as it sounds. Arguably this is exactly what happened shortly after Bitcoin got going.
By the end of 2011, we already had BitDNS, Namecoin, Multicoin, Ixcoin, Devcoin, Solidcoin, Geist Geld, Tenebrix, and Litecoin.
In general, early Bitcoiners seemed to be excited about these new chains. Some of them changed very little from Satoshi's original client. Others altered so much that they clearly didn't even fit the somewhat broad description of Bitcoin laid out in the whitepaper. There were a few chains that were obviously scams, but the most frequent complaint about these new chains was the premines.
A blockchain doesn't scale
Bitcoin is famously bad at scaling. Bitcoin blocks are mined every 10 minutes on average. Because of the difficulty adjustment, nothing speeds this up. Increases in the number of miners, advances in ASIC efficiency, and access to cheaper power all get leveled every 2016 blocks when the difficulty adjustment irons out the wrinkles and gives us a new epoch of 10 minute blocks.
Since we can't speed Bitcoin up, the most common scaling proposal is that we should increase the size of blocks. Bitcoiners seem to have generally accepted the conclusion that this doesn't result in much scaling either because it comes at the cost of reduced security (which is changing the product, not scaling) and it seems dubious that there is some optimal blocksize beyond which we will never need to increase.
If increasing the amount of blockspace that has similar security assurances to BTC is the goal, it seems that a possible solution would be starting another chain that has similar security assurances to BTC. Afterall, if MBTC gets more people using Bitcoin, isn't that scaling?
Is it the chain or the consensus rules that make it Bitcoin?
What do we mean when we say Bitcoin Only? Do we mean this particular chain with exactly these proofs of work and exactly this transaction history or do we mean exactly these consensus rules? Mining is probabalistic and so clearly the blocks that get mined could have a different proof of work and still be considered "real" Bitcoin blocks. And whether you choose to send a transaction today or not doesn't change the reality that the BTC chain is Bitcoin. All of which leads to the conclusion that it's the consensus rules that make the BTC chain Bitcoin.
But if it is a coin's consensus rules that make that particular coin Bitcoin, we certainly can entertain multiple Bitcoin chains with the same rules.
Scaling bitcoin with soft forks vs scaling bitcoin with new chains
The soft fork conversation is often synonymous with the scaling conversation. There are many proposals that will make it easier to use Lightning or to run Ark, but making those things easier is something that should be evaluated on their own merits.[1] But as far as changing Bitcoin in order to allow more people to use Bitcoin, soft forks are talking about scaling.
I recently read Antoine Poinsot's article on soft forks and noted his emphasis on being cautious when it comes to soft forks:
To be taken seriously, anyone suggesting to activate anything needs to acknowledge a soft fork comports substantial political and technical risks to a network that millions depend on for their censorship-resistant payments and that secures trillions of dollars worth of other people’s money.
This is a good approach to keep in mind, especially when the justifications for changing consensus are mostly what-ifs: what if fees get too high, what if government tries to enforce KYC-AML onchain -- perhaps hypotheticals aren't reason enough to change consensus rules.
It also makes me wonder, is there a world where a new chain is a more reasonable scaling solution than a soft fork?
For instance, Lightning settles within seconds. That's awesome. Bitcoin doesn't do that. So saying we should change Bitcoin in order to make this functionality easier to use is an interesting conversation. But it is a different conversation than the one about getting more people access to Bitcoin via Lightning. ↩
This might interest you: in the shape of a fictional story, I theorized about a possible rigging scenario regarding bitcoin if used as inter-planetary currency: Die a Friend or Live a Foe.
It was inspired on previous discussion here: How would Bitcoin work in an Interplanetary Economy?.
To be taken seriously, you have to respect those that disagree with you. And the best way to do that, even if you're a life-long grant recipient from any gazillionaire, is by setting the bar so high for consensus that there is actually a possibility that you fail to achieve it. So if you think you need the lowered 90% activation threshold like taproot, set it at 95%. Give half of the 10% that doesn't like your proposal the chance to be convinced, instead of preemptive exclusion.
And if then it takes 3 rounds and 5 years to get your proposal through, awesome.
Respect for those who disagree with you does not seem to be a common attitude. I worry that as the user-base of bitcoin gets bigger reaching something like 95% consensus on some significant change is impossible.
I think we may be underestimating the value of the already-agreed-upon nature of the current block validation rule-set. I don't want ossification. Though i'm not knowledgeable-enough to specify how, I'm optimistic enough to believe that Bitcoin can be improved upon. However, I think the risk that comes with debating the block validation rules is increasing -- it is probably more valuable than I know that there is something all bitcoin users on earth agree about every 10 minutes on average. Any change to block validation rules risks that some users will stop agreeing.
I also realize that I may need to try a new tune. This Mars article was published a year and a half ago, and it sounds suspiciously like #1572805 and even #1566339.
Then every change is doomed, because for the rules of Bitcoin to stay enforced, you need 100% consensus. You cannot have 99% consensus. Or 51%. Bitcoin consensus isn't optional, it is a precondition to a functioning network, like you say:
This is exactly why I'm a fan of high bars. Because that is what makes it tick - literally. We see some skirmishes on the side happening with chaintip races, but these become too expensive to grow too large at depths, don't grow larger than a few blocks (long live FPPS? hah!)
There's no risk in debates if it stays at debates, other than people falling asleep and being bored out of their mind. There's risk when we no longer agree with the shared codified truth that until that moment united us, like recently happened, or when there is discontent that the code didn't move a particular way, which happens much more often; i.e. someone's values are diverging from the mean and they find themselves and their values more important than the mean. Which is fine. The radicalization and the bullshit isn't, but I think that that's more a function of empires declining - which has never been pretty - than of Bitcoin intrinsically. Is there anything we can really have high profile, public discussions about? It always turns into a shitshow. And if it isn't then someone that likes shitshows for the lulz will come along and make it one.
That will always happen. We don't need to be religious about the truth we codified for us. If someone cannot live with it, let them go. We're not saving souls (or murdering babies a la Ver.) We can discuss and disagree and even leave. Why not? I dislike it when people leave, but I like it less if they're prisoners.
I wonder what you mean by:
In what way? Is it possible that for now Bitcoin is in a good position, and that although it is not perfect, it is in balance, and while this may change, there is a time when that comes and that does not have to be now per se? Or did you mean something else?
Surprising conclusion! Why? This feels sincere and sincerity is really a great thing to have? If you're convinced, then that's good?
By underestimating the value of the already-agreed-upon nature of the current validation rule-set, I think I was trying to get at an idea I've been struggling with all summer:
Bitcoin allows us to do something pretty incredible and that is to agree on the state of a ledger though we don't trust any of the other editors (the Byzantine General thing). But we can only do this so long as we all use the same block validation rules. Every time we alter these block validation rules, don't we run the risk of losing our Byzantine General protections?
The method Satoshi developed of solving the Byzantine Generals problem cannot be used when we negotiate changes to block validation rules (I think this was actually a crucial misunderstanding on the part of the BIP 110 people -- they thought heaviest chain mechanics could be used to "vote" on block validation rule changes, and that was just completely misguided).
But we still have a Byzantine Generals problem when we try to talk about block validation rule changes: we don't trust any of the actors in the debate. So, changes to the rules are fraught with danger. Your emphasis on a very high bar for measuring consensus seems like a potential way of avoiding the problem, but there's no real way to measure such a thing. Aren't we always kinda living on a prayer when it comes to miner signalling or thigns like that?
I wondered about needing a new tune because I don't think I've really come to a much deeper understanding of this topic in the last year and I feel that writing new versions of the same thoughts over and over is offputting (even if the thoughts are sincere).
No, you just risk ending up with 2 chains and most sane people agree that that is an undesirable outcome. I think that that's the other thing we may need to do besides respecting those that disagree with us: acting for the better of the whole, including those that disagree with us.
Isn't that where many proposals that come from more respectfully operating people (that may still ragequit) get stranded? Where the benefits (for everyone) don't clearly outweigh the risks (for everyone)? I think in these scenarios too that this is not a bad concept at all and that there, to date, is some balance, and maybe it even tips just a little bit to the influential-changer, looking at taproot, which in hindsight could have used maybe one more wide iteration before proposition (though maybe that really is only in hindsight - activation ultimately happened so quickly that I was astonished by it.)
I don't think that Luke after so many years stopped understanding the mechanics around how chaintips work. Instead I just think they overestimated their importance outside of their echo chamber. This is a fairly common mistake when people plan for coups, and why throughout history, many a general has been imprisoned, exiled, beheaded or otherwise disposed of.
If before you commence to battle, 95% of your generals are telling you they're not going to obey you, is there really a Byzantine Generals problem at all? I think that if we watch reality as if everyone doing a proposal is a retarded child that will rather fork off than just not get what they want, then yes, we're in deep shit. But I've only really seen this once before and that was even more emotional than this.
chuckled out loud at that last paragraph.
I think I need to take my Byzantine General speculations back to the drawing board. I am still quite fascinated by the way we negotiate changes to bitcoins rules, but I always find that I haven't yet found a really good model of it in my head. (This despite initiatives like BCAP and the like.)
Well. Theres this one thing we should not underestimate: every consensus protocol change to date has originated from a single repo. So we can develop a whole lot of theories, but afaik that is where we stand today.
I made a poster about this:
This is a feature.
You only arrive at the consensus once people stop talking to each other and debating. That's just politics, NGO's via coordinated influence operations have an outsized voice. The high bar for consensus exists to deprive influence operations of power.
If Bitcoin were to actually need something, something critical and perceptible without politics, the response would be innate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)
Martians can mine BTC just fine, particularly when in a 3-minute orbital state. Earth currently has an advantage due to its existing hashrate deployment, but this isn't an inherent property of the protocol. When the chaintip is on Earth, Earth miners have a latency advantage. When the chaintip is on Mars, Martian miners have a latency advantage. It's a tug-o-war, and the planet with the highest hashrate will take ownership of the chain over the long run.
Failures! All of you!
So you want to have used Bitcoin on Mars?
Sorry, my comment is just a total recall joke. I still need to actually read this post.
so was mine!
("So, Mr Quaid, you want to have gone to Mars." although, more properly, my joke was based on the Philip K Dick story)
Touché! I can't believe I missed that!
A Bitcoin network spread across planets would create some seriously weird problems.
They can run a federated sidechain like Liquid or Rootstock, with peg in and peg out to Bitcoin.
But why? My question is why any of that (or a soft fork) is necessary when a new chain can follow pretty much the same consensus rules.
If we want more blockspace (or more users at a lower fee level) why not just start a second chain? Why add complexity to get the same result?
because a new chain will be issuing more coins, inflating the limit of 21m sats
Disagree. They wouldn't be sats, they'd be whatever the people using the chain want to call them.
This is the difference between whether you think it is the chain history that makes it Bitcoin or the consensus rules.
if you don't care to use hard money, no one can force you to. bitcoin is not just the consensus rules or a "blockchain technology". it is a hard limit and network effect that cannot be repeated.
This is one of the points I find most interesting: is there some special about btc and how it got started, such that no other chain, even using the same consensus rules, can ever duplicate it?
yes. first mover advantage and immaculate conception.
Is it the same result, when accounting for whatever interplanetary commerce will be happening?
This is a very interesting point. I imagine people would probably agree to settle in whatever currency is most conducive to that particular trade (kinda like international trade now).
Mars having its own chain actually makes more sense the longer you think about it.
Quantum entanglement will fix this.
"SolarCoin" would unite all planetary coins. Imagine a block chain with kilobyte blocksize and week/month/year-long block times.
Such a coin could have a center of hash near the center of our sun, rather than favoring any particular planet. It could become the interplanetary settlement chain.
Lunaticoin has a podcast in spanish about if btc can be interplanetary. You should check it out https://fountain.fm/episode/Lcfge15yZ0C16nkZe2ea
Thanks for the heads up. I will!
Ironically, the latency issue is one of the many reasons big blocks are retarded, I mean literally retarded, big blocks take longer to propagate. Even just a few milliseconds increases miner centralization by benefiting the miner of the most recent block.
(not that we should even perpetuate the idea that big blocks scale anything, the only scaling limitation is the indivisible supply)
Though technically, it wouldn't be impossible for Martians to get lucky and find a block and broadcast it back to earth before earth finds a block. Hour+ deltas between blocks happen all the time, now what if a few major miners on earth become subject to a grid-level attack or DoS? An asymmetrically weaker mining operation on Mars could take control of the chain with much less hashrate.
Getting back to reality yea, Mars will be a centralized colony for the foreseeable future with no need for external currency... SpaceX coin credits for the cafeteria don't need decentralized trustless Lightning channels.
Because there's plenty of scammers and even more useful idiots
The only scaling limitation Bitcoin has now is supply, as in, not enough people will ever be able to own enough sats (5-6 digits worth of sats) to transact, even if the chain is at a perpetual 1 sat/byte due to gigameg blocks or other shitfork.
Given the size of large player stockpiles, at most < 1 billion households/organizations will ever have sovereign access... really it's probably a fraction of that. That means there's no real-world transaction bottleneck.
Since big blocks or shitforks can't actually lower the minimum transaction cost of sovereign utility, scammers must obfuscate that with their centrally coordinated, sybil prone, fake L2 applications.
The website smells like scam.
I think if it was run by actual scientists with Mars colony ambitions, the website would look a lot more janky, lol.
What you lose with scaling with more chains is that the smaller chains will have weaker security due to a lower hashrate, but in turn they will have cheaper transaction fees.
This is kinda already happening but the other chains also have differing consensus rules, outside of the mars situation I don't know how a smaller copy of bitcoin would get off the ground while we have L2 solutions for the main chain.
Yes. I would agree that it is already happening. But I do find it curious that there isn't a serious "almost exactly the same consensus rules as btc" chain.
No doubt it comes down to getting off the ground.
Maybe a new blockchain is the more logical choice. And it won't be bitcoin, it will be some other name coin. Unfortunatelly since everybody knows the game now, I am not sure if it is possible to grow organically like bitcoin without early martian settlers capturing it.
What if there is a node/miner/watchtower in space somewhere in the middle between the Earth and Mars? The time to get to this middle point would be half from both planets. There can be more such floating nodes on 1/4, 3/4 of the distance to increase decentralization, reliability and probably even trust.
(Just thinking loudly.)
I had similar thoughts. Hypothetically, the "center of mass" of mining could drift to a point in between Earth and Mars: perhaps an enormous train of miners sling-shotting between the two planets.
That would only work for these two planets, though. @Scoresby's underlying point would still hold if we switch our example to Io or something else further out in the solar system.
Unfortunately, there's no way around the speed of light.
Martians already have their https://www.marscoin.org/
😂😂😂😂
It seems kinda shitty. The TM is a bit of a giveaway.
What did you expect from martians?
Bro. Let's get there and build a house and some shit before we start talking about payment rail infrastructure..I like where ur head is at tho. Lol
I'm not really that interested in Mars. I'm just a simple earthling wondering if we shouldn't start a second Bitcoin chain here instead of soft forking...
Well it's definitely thought provoking. If we go to mars. We'll need money there. I don't see why the Blockstream Satellite won't be able to help.
Bitcoin is worth what it is because of its simplicity and, most importantly, because no government controls it. If this new chain doesn’t have the same properties, I think it’ll flop. Can’t give you a straight answer to your question, but that’s how I see it.
There probably isn't a straight answer. But I'm curious what people think would be necessary for a chain following Bitcoin consensus rules to be a viable scaling solution.
That’s a legit question, but I don’t really have the expertise to give a clear answer. If there was a concrete proposal, maybe I could say something.
I think the premise here is that the Mars chain does have the same properties as the original Earth chain.
Same enough to still have roughly similar consensus rules.
For me it's the consensus rules and I believe in this purely by the Shakespeare's philosophy of "What's in a name?"
I also believe that the easier the tech is, the faster the adoption will be.
i think that one cannot solve such challenging problems only with the currently available technology.
i am of the opinion that useful technology is being given back to the average people at a very slow rate, only as fast as their pleb brains can handle it.
with regards to the Mars blockchain, we have to be given back superluminal frequencies and perception of quantum entanglement - then everyone can synchronize to the bitcoin timechain easily. this is particularly useful because people on Mars might otherwise have no idea what timeline they're in - they shall be timed by fiat.
i actually wish that the difficulty of getting on and off the fiat rails will become incredibly high, similar to getting on and off Mars. at the very least, the cost of getting back onto fiat rails shud become prohibitively high. right now it's the opposite!
Either the technical same-chain problems are worked out or the problems of interplanetary exchanges are worked out, but somehow value needs to be able to move between planets.
Yes, for me the interesting thought experiment here is our general resistance to the idea of a second (or multiple chains), and how the "excuse" of a different planet allows for a different viewpoint on alternate chains as scaling solutions.
Indeed. I'm not particularly dogmatic about the purity of one chain, so the possible solutions to these problems are what interest me.
The Mars scenario highlights a real tradeoff: one global chain gives Bitcoin a shared history, while separate chains could improve local usability but fragment liquidity and security. I’d lean toward keeping the base layer unified and scaling around it with Lightning or other layers.
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