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nic carter's talk on bitcoin's security budget, still relevant todaywww.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOyNF-bCkA
1832 sats \ 14 comments \ @standardcrypto 5h bitcoin
discovered through lyn alden article on same theme: https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-security-modeling/
nice to look at old analyses of the security budget, in light of recent stacker news chatter eg
#912374 "Scaling DEBUNKED: No More Than 5-10 Million Can Use Bitcoin, EVER!"
on minimum viable amount per sovereign user estimated at 20k sat by justin_shocknet above. While I agree with some of the math, and I agree that lightning is not currently bottlenecked and therefore scaling softforks are silly, I think this can be refined further, yielding a possibly lower minimum sovereign user threshhold. I hope to write this up in the next few days, using these sources as an important background.
more background breadcrumbs
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/15ezua9/bitcoin_transaction_fees_will_need_to_increase_to/
https://www.btcsecuritybudget.com/
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530 sats \ 1 reply \ @standardcrypto OP 4h
another take:
"there are no PoW coins that survive on fees alone" (peter todd)
Personally I disagree with this, but just reading the room.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 4h bot
https://xcancel.com/peterktodd/status/1880065537608478892
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @standardcrypto OP 5h
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @standardcrypto OP 5h
The dilemma as I see it revolves around "relative miner revenue" when fees replace block subsidy. This is estaimated at 0.004% by the btcsecurity tool.
BTW I think drivechains are dumb, and this estimator is by the drivechain guy, but it's still a very useful tool for the current task.
Anyway an interesting question is, what is a reasonable security budget? IE, why is 0.004% too low for our 2140 future?
Another key factor: how many chanops/year will a typical self sovereign lightning user need. I'm thinking one a month is probably generous upper bound, to be reasonable and to not get screwed in unafoffordable justice transactions.
Another question, assuming hyperbitcoinization of 10mm btcusd current purchasing power, what percent of planetary energy use is monopolized by bitcoin? CBECI estimates current percent at 20GW (10 hoover dams, sounds about right), working on getting total energy consumption. (Note, total energy not total electrical energy)
And there are probably some other factors I haven't thought of yet.
Gini coefficient is probabbly one, but I think we can take current world gini coefficient for sanity.
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0 sats \ 9 replies \ @justin_shocknet 5h
I was actually in the room for this one!
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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @standardcrypto OP 5h
noice
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0 sats \ 7 replies \ @justin_shocknet 5h
The more I think about our convo, and a convo with James OBierne where he actually suggested this, the more I think private mempools could be an interesting model for miners, its already kind of happening with tx accelerators etc...
You can have out-of-band spam protection to lower the entry cost, and normalize revenue over time with a subscription/membership model
Is it trusted? That depends. Is it sovereign? Also depends...
But, its an alternative to the lobbying over a centralized code repository, which is untenable... its not just consensus changes but stuff like tx relay policy that people need to be allowed to try (and fail if warranted)
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @standardcrypto OP 4h
I think things change when there is pressure to change.
With $2 transactions, there simply isn't much pressure to do much of anything, from real users.
From shitcoin dreamers, sure there is pressure for a scaling softfork.
This isn't the fault of the bitcoind monorepo. Bitcoind as the reference client has been under attack for years and everyone has ptsd and paranoia I guess, largely justified.
Things will change when there is fee pressure, if that ever happens.
IE, people will switch from bitcoind to other clients to get their relay policies, or bitocind itself will get more flexible, or however.
But there just isn't the pressure now. So we spend all the attention and energy arguing with the shitcoin on bitcoin defi douchetards, who are the only ones applying any pressure now.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @justin_shocknet 3h
Agreed it's not the fault of the repo itself, but the culture in Bitcoin around it, where changes are lobbied for implementation in the default rather than just implemented and left to sink or swim
Most people blindly use or upgrade Core without regard for what changes are or are not in it, because of the reputation of devs past. If there were no "default" bitcoin repo, then it would be more of a marketplace for what is a good and bad idea... not coat tails taken up by modern devs.
  • James is against Core because it doesn't implement what he wants
  • I am against Core because it is churning too much
In-congruent wants yet making us both happy simply means eliminating the appeal to authority, just archive the repo to reset the defaultism culture
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17 sats \ 0 replies \ @standardcrypto OP 3h
maybe relevant:
https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/antoine-poinsot-on-bitcoin-cores-priorities/1470
summarized: https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2025/03/07/
"In the third post, he recommends splitting the existing project into three projects: a node, a wallet, and a GUI. This is within reach today thanks to the multiple-year effort of the multiprocess sub-project (see Newsletter #39 for our first mention of this sub-project in 2019)."
if nothing else, reducing the project scope to (just) a node would at least decrease the noise and the blast surface of the debate about consensus changes.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @standardcrypto OP 3h
I think the culture is not a bitcoind thing, but a bitcoin thing.
To change the culture, is by definition to lobby, perhaps a pejorative word so let's say to communicate honorably and effectively.
There will always be bad actors doing bad lobbying, the medicine is to counteract it with better more honest and effective communication (better lobbying).
But there's no getting away from lobbying.
If bitcoind somehow falls in prestige and userbase, some other schelling point will be found and same dynamics will eventually emerge.
Perhaps winston churchill would say that bitcoind is the worst possible bitcoin client, except for all the others. ("Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.....")
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 3h bot
https://xcancel.com/shocknet_justin/status/1898055760803741852
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