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On a first skim it looks like a bespoke blockchain that commits its state to the bitcoin blockchain to ensure finality. Seems kind of neat, but I wouldn't call

On a first skim it looks like a bespoke blockchain that commits its state to the bitcoin blockchain to ensure finality. Seems kind of neat, but I wouldn't call it "smart contracts on bitcoin".

vmception 6y ago
I've moved off the ideological train and hopped on the "can the market bear it" train. The market can bear committing states to the bitcoin blockchain, and there hasn't been a standardized way to do that. I would therefore call it smart contracts on bitcoin.
cal5k 6y ago
Layer 2 seems to be the logical way forward - network fees have gotten ridiculous on the Bitcoin blockchain, and reducing the frequency with which you need to settle there would be a big win. On top of all the added functionality of smart contracts, of course.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  Please, don't forget, Bitcoin Core (BTC) was hijacked years ago by corporate interests and purposefully crippled with high fees. From day one Bitcoin was designed to have low or no fees, it is only because Blockstream was able to wrestle control of the GitHub repo and stop the block size increase arbitrarily that high fees exists. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) long ago took over the "Bitcoin" project as designed by Satoshi Nakamoto and described in his White Paper. Bitcoin Core (BTC) is a broken system designed to enrich developers of "Second Layer" solutions like this. BTC has failed completely as Peer-to-Peer Digital Cash and today is push only by charlatans and scammers.
  - greggturkington 6y ago
    Please, don't forget, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was hijacked years ago by Ver who purposefully used misleading marketing. Bitcoin SV (BSV) long ago took over the "Bitcoin" project as designed by Satoshi Nakamoto and described in his White Paper.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >From day one Bitcoin was designed to have low or no fees How are miners supposed to be compensated, given that the block reward halves every few years? >because Blockstream was able to wrestle control of the GitHub repo Can you rebut these counter-claims made by one of the Core devs? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25566420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25566420 >is a broken system designed to enrich developers of "Second Layer" solutions like this. How are those developers being enriched? Lightning is free and open source.
    - kylebenzle 6y ago
      > How are miners supposed to be compensated, given that the block reward halves every few years? A solved problem by Satoshi. The block reward covers miners expenses for the next 100 years or so, THEN, once the block size is large enough and transactions are in the millions, a fee of a few cents per transaction replaces the block reward. > Can you rebut these counter-claims made by one of the Core devs? Yes, easily. This article [1] shows what I am saying, Core devs are funded by Blockstream. [2] Greg Maxwell (nullc) is, "a very dangerous individual whose [actions] speak for themselves". Just read about his past, he is a master social engineer and manipulator. [1] https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/60250/bitcoin-development-funding-is-led-by-blockstream-and-lightning-labs-says-bitmex https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/60250/bitcoin-developm... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74se80/wikipedia_admins_gregory_maxwell_of_blockstream/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74se80/wikipedia_admin... > How are those developers being enriched? Lightning is free and open source. Lightning does not work. It is a centralized "solution" to a decentralized problem. Sure, anyone can make a central database, hold Bitcoin and trade them, that is just an exchange, that is what Lightning is. What Blockstream is selling is not Lightning, their product is called Liquid.
      - tphyahoo2 6y ago
        lol. https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things Transactions need to be expensive, like the guy you were replying to said. It is beyond obvious.
      - 6y ago
chejazi 6y ago
Curious to understand how the peg integrates with Bitcoin's UTXO model. For instance, Matic [1] uses a construction of the Plasma framework [2] so that the peg can operate bidirectionally. [1] https://docs.matic.network/docs/contribute/matic-architecture https://docs.matic.network/docs/contribute/matic-architectur... [2] http://plasma.io/ http://plasma.io/
muneeb 6y ago
The smart contracts part comes with Clarity lang: https://clarity-lang.org/ https://clarity-lang.org/ Clarity contracts have direct visibility into Bitcoin state and can write logic against that.
- everfree 6y ago
  How useful is it to have a read-only glass window into Bitcoin that your smart contracts can look through? The only practical application I can think of is atomic swaps, which can be accomplished any number of other, easier ways.
  - jude- 6y ago
    It means that Clarity smart contracts always have all the data they need to validate Bitcoin transactions. Unlike wBTC and friends, there's no need to copy header hashes from Bitcoin into the Stacks chain. By extension, this means there's no need to worry about catastrophic corner cases, such as the copied data being missing or invalid, the copied data not being mined in the canonical fork, or the copied data corresponding to a minority Bitcoin fork.
    - everfree 6y ago
      Interesting. If you don't mind, what's an example of a practical application where it would be useful to validate a bitcoin transaction without the ability for a smart contract to custody it? Just asking because, again, the value proposition in practical terms is a little unclear to me.
      - jude- 6y ago
        Well, the intended use-case is to make it so the act of transferring BTC to a particular address will cause xBTC tokens to be minted in a Clarity contract by the principal that sent the transaction. From there, you can move the xBTC tokens around in Stacks. This would be paired with a STX-collateralized service that would ultimately let you trade your xBTC back for BTC. The service would put STX up as collateral, which would be depleted if the service quality degrades. The Clarity contract for the collateral would track the service's xBTC to BTC transfers, and would allow the service to post the BTC transactions it sends as proof of good service quality (thereby staving off depletion). Other ideas come to mind: * Proof of (attempted) mining a STX block. A Blockstack app could use a Clarity contract to determine if a user was also a miner, and offer them in-app perks for helping to secure the network. * Backwards-compatibility with BNS 1.0. Stacks 1.0 implemented a naming service (BNS) on Bitcoin, and Clarity's access to Bitcoin state can be leveraged to allow users to prove that they are OGs -- i.e. that they registered a BNS name before Stacks 2.0 went live (or did something specific with it, like updated it to have a particular owner or have a particular content hash). * Proof of payment to a particular address. Many organizations, including open-source projects, take BTC for donations. A Clarity contract could be written to identify Stacks users who donated to a particular organization earlier. * Proof of payment channel. You could demonstrate to a Clarity contract that you have opened a payment channel with a particular amount to a particular address, and post collateral that will be slashed if your payment channel closed before a particular Bitcoin block height.

On a first skim it looks like a bespoke blockchain that commits its state to the bitcoin blockchain to ensure finality. Seems kind of neat, but I wouldn't call it "smart contracts on bitcoin".

vmception 6y ago

I've moved off the ideological train and hopped on the "can the market bear it" train. The market can bear committing states to the bitcoin blockchain, and there hasn't been a standardized way to do that. I would therefore call it smart contracts on bitcoin.

cal5k 6y ago

Layer 2 seems to be the logical way forward - network fees have gotten ridiculous on the Bitcoin blockchain, and reducing the frequency with which you need to settle there would be a big win. On top of all the added functionality of smart contracts, of course.

kylebenzle 6y ago
Please, don't forget, Bitcoin Core (BTC) was hijacked years ago by corporate interests and purposefully crippled with high fees. From day one Bitcoin was designed to have low or no fees, it is only because Blockstream was able to wrestle control of the GitHub repo and stop the block size increase arbitrarily that high fees exists. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) long ago took over the "Bitcoin" project as designed by Satoshi Nakamoto and described in his White Paper. Bitcoin Core (BTC) is a broken system designed to enrich developers of "Second Layer" solutions like this. BTC has failed completely as Peer-to-Peer Digital Cash and today is push only by charlatans and scammers.
- greggturkington 6y ago
  Please, don't forget, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was hijacked years ago by Ver who purposefully used misleading marketing. Bitcoin SV (BSV) long ago took over the "Bitcoin" project as designed by Satoshi Nakamoto and described in his White Paper.
- gruez 6y ago
  >From day one Bitcoin was designed to have low or no fees How are miners supposed to be compensated, given that the block reward halves every few years? >because Blockstream was able to wrestle control of the GitHub repo Can you rebut these counter-claims made by one of the Core devs? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25566420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25566420 >is a broken system designed to enrich developers of "Second Layer" solutions like this. How are those developers being enriched? Lightning is free and open source.
  - kylebenzle 6y ago
    > How are miners supposed to be compensated, given that the block reward halves every few years? A solved problem by Satoshi. The block reward covers miners expenses for the next 100 years or so, THEN, once the block size is large enough and transactions are in the millions, a fee of a few cents per transaction replaces the block reward. > Can you rebut these counter-claims made by one of the Core devs? Yes, easily. This article [1] shows what I am saying, Core devs are funded by Blockstream. [2] Greg Maxwell (nullc) is, "a very dangerous individual whose [actions] speak for themselves". Just read about his past, he is a master social engineer and manipulator. [1] https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/60250/bitcoin-development-funding-is-led-by-blockstream-and-lightning-labs-says-bitmex https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/60250/bitcoin-developm... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74se80/wikipedia_admins_gregory_maxwell_of_blockstream/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74se80/wikipedia_admin... > How are those developers being enriched? Lightning is free and open source. Lightning does not work. It is a centralized "solution" to a decentralized problem. Sure, anyone can make a central database, hold Bitcoin and trade them, that is just an exchange, that is what Lightning is. What Blockstream is selling is not Lightning, their product is called Liquid.
    - tphyahoo2 6y ago
      lol. https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things Transactions need to be expensive, like the guy you were replying to said. It is beyond obvious.
    - 6y ago

chejazi 6y ago

Curious to understand how the peg integrates with Bitcoin's UTXO model. For instance, Matic [1] uses a construction of the Plasma framework [2] so that the peg can operate bidirectionally. [1] https://docs.matic.network/docs/contribute/matic-architecture https://docs.matic.network/docs/contribute/matic-architectur... [2] http://plasma.io/ http://plasma.io/

muneeb 6y ago

The smart contracts part comes with Clarity lang: https://clarity-lang.org/ https://clarity-lang.org/ Clarity contracts have direct visibility into Bitcoin state and can write logic against that.

everfree 6y ago
How useful is it to have a read-only glass window into Bitcoin that your smart contracts can look through? The only practical application I can think of is atomic swaps, which can be accomplished any number of other, easier ways.
- jude- 6y ago
  It means that Clarity smart contracts always have all the data they need to validate Bitcoin transactions. Unlike wBTC and friends, there's no need to copy header hashes from Bitcoin into the Stacks chain. By extension, this means there's no need to worry about catastrophic corner cases, such as the copied data being missing or invalid, the copied data not being mined in the canonical fork, or the copied data corresponding to a minority Bitcoin fork.
  - everfree 6y ago
    Interesting. If you don't mind, what's an example of a practical application where it would be useful to validate a bitcoin transaction without the ability for a smart contract to custody it? Just asking because, again, the value proposition in practical terms is a little unclear to me.
    - jude- 6y ago
      Well, the intended use-case is to make it so the act of transferring BTC to a particular address will cause xBTC tokens to be minted in a Clarity contract by the principal that sent the transaction. From there, you can move the xBTC tokens around in Stacks. This would be paired with a STX-collateralized service that would ultimately let you trade your xBTC back for BTC. The service would put STX up as collateral, which would be depleted if the service quality degrades. The Clarity contract for the collateral would track the service's xBTC to BTC transfers, and would allow the service to post the BTC transactions it sends as proof of good service quality (thereby staving off depletion). Other ideas come to mind: * Proof of (attempted) mining a STX block. A Blockstack app could use a Clarity contract to determine if a user was also a miner, and offer them in-app perks for helping to secure the network. * Backwards-compatibility with BNS 1.0. Stacks 1.0 implemented a naming service (BNS) on Bitcoin, and Clarity's access to Bitcoin state can be leveraged to allow users to prove that they are OGs -- i.e. that they registered a BNS name before Stacks 2.0 went live (or did something specific with it, like updated it to have a particular owner or have a particular content hash). * Proof of payment to a particular address. Many organizations, including open-source projects, take BTC for donations. A Clarity contract could be written to identify Stacks users who donated to a particular organization earlier. * Proof of payment channel. You could demonstrate to a Clarity contract that you have opened a payment channel with a particular amount to a particular address, and post collateral that will be slashed if your payment channel closed before a particular Bitcoin block height.