Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #161 \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Bitcoin Optech Newsletter #161 bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2021/08/11/

4 sats \ 5 boost \ 4 comments \ @ugmug_old 11 Aug 2021 bitcoin

1 sat \ 3 replies \ @k00b 11 Aug 2021

It's cool to see that prominent people in the space really deserve their prominence by contributing to core/lightning etc, e.g. Lopp's PR.

I still don't entirely grok the fidelity bond concept.

Someone might ask "why would anyone lock up coins for months or more, let alone burn coins forever, just to run a maker bot". The only way this would even happen is if makers can generate a higher income that justifies the fidelity bond sacrifice. That higher income can only come from taker's coinjoin fees (or possibly coinswap fees one day).

If this is true, don't we just end up in the same place we started? The attacker burns/locks a bunch of funds, but they recover the funds in fees, making the cost of the attack low again. What am I missing?

The musig stuff remains over my head. I need to hunt for some better reading.

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @alex 11 Aug 2021

The attacker burns/locks a bunch of funds, but they recover the funds in fees, making the cost of the attack low again. What am I missing?

The attacker now needs to lock up resources. This is actually a big ask for a lot of enforcement agencies which have strict funding requirements for this type of work. But more importantly it should eliminate people running multiple maker bots to earn more in fees and as result compromising the anonimity set for the takers. You will make more as a maker by just puting all your resources into a single maker bot rather than splitting them up, which is more profitable without fidelity bonds.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @k00b 11 Aug 2021

So the attack surface might still exist but is smaller. I feel like there might be stronger incentives here than that though given how much attention this feature is getting, but again I'm a noob so forgive me if I'm wrong.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @alex 12 Aug 2021

That makes two of us. I'm just trying to reason from first principals and experimentation. Anonymity is a tricky business, but a lot of fun to think about.