5 ms·

Notably, Vitalik was run out on a rail by small blockers (mostly LukeJr) when he was trying to work on smart contracts on BTC back in the day. This is the entir

by px43 6y ago

Notably, Vitalik was run out on a rail by small blockers (mostly LukeJr) when he was trying to work on smart contracts on BTC back in the day. This is the entire reason he launched Ethereum, and took with him everyone else interested in working on smart contracts. Smart contracts are neat. Bitcoin is neat. Smart contracts on Bitcoin could have been a thing, but now it's too late. There is almost zero intersection between BTC maximalists and people who think smart contracts on BTC are a good idea.

midmagico 6y ago
These are of course multiple well-publicized but zero-fact assertions used as propaganda to trick people into ethereum and other altcoin bags.
- grubles 6y ago
  It's hard to believe people are still repeating these verifiable lies.
  - midmagico 6y ago
    The narratives are designed to be earwormy, and everyone wants to live in a spy novel filled with scary conspiracies, so when they hear it, it slips in the backdoor cognitive holes, and they do only minimal "verification" if any at all, and accept it, and then repeat it. It's also very easy to blame an all-powerful adversary for all your woes—did you lose money trading? Oh, that was gmax's fault. Did you get scammed? Oh, that was blockstream's fault. If they'd just did X, then the scam wouldn't have happened in the first place. Did your friend tell you something secretive that "only he knows" and it's "not public knowledge"? Well obviously the core devs are behind it. The absurdity is great when the altcoiners are staring at Bitcoin's behemoth economy with jealous eyes amplifying the narratives they sometimes even know are totally false. More insidious of course are the lies that are false but simple, where the factually verifiable truth is directly contrary but complex, like the foolish lie about gmax stealing credit, or Vitalik asserting that he was planning Ethereum until the core devs blocked him. It's easy for outsiders to be infected via their usual lines and information feeds. And, of course, Bitcoin has no marketing department, so obviously defence thereof is a long, painstaking process of careful dismantling and debunking over a long period of time. Thankfully, the actually helpful, intelligent, and ultra-competent people that are the safest to align with are people on whom these kinds of lies are basically completely ineffectual, so we tend to win, in that respect, just by default.
opreturn 6y ago
> .. now it's too late. Perhaps it is too late for replicating existing use cases. However, the general idea of running EVM-like smart contracts secured by Bitcoin PoW (e.g. merge mined sidechains) is still quite attractive
- grubles 6y ago
  Only if you enjoy all of the negatives of EVM-like smart contracts including chain splits, gas problems, subtle bugs that could drive exchanges to insolvency, mass theft, broken multisig, the list goes on...
  - opreturn 6y ago
    I don't enjoy the negatives. We'll move to better alternatives as they become available. Until then.. it's just like democracy or free markets.. no demonstrably superior alternatives yet
- px43 6y ago
  First off I recognize and appreciate your username :-) As such, you should know more than anyone how heated the OP_RETURN drama got, and how ANYONE using the BTC chain for anything other than moving money from point A to point B is a complete non-started and will be unanimously opposed by the core development team.
  - opreturn 6y ago
    :-) Yeah. There's some baggage there, but I was still surprised nobody wanted this username. Core devs may not agree with what some users do with the system (current specs/features).. but as the Ethereum miners showed with increase in block size, core devs' philosophical objections may not matter in the end
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Counterparty eventually adopted the EVM, and yet could not get traction for multiple reasons: 1. Network effects already on Ethereum 2. Bitcoin block time too slow and block size too low 3. Counterparty uses Bitcoin as a data layer, but Bitcoin itself cannot recognize Counterparty transactions, so Bitcoin consensus does not secure Counterparty transactions.

by px43 6y ago

midmagico 6y ago

These are of course multiple well-publicized but zero-fact assertions used as propaganda to trick people into ethereum and other altcoin bags.

grubles 6y ago
It's hard to believe people are still repeating these verifiable lies.
- midmagico 6y ago
  The narratives are designed to be earwormy, and everyone wants to live in a spy novel filled with scary conspiracies, so when they hear it, it slips in the backdoor cognitive holes, and they do only minimal "verification" if any at all, and accept it, and then repeat it. It's also very easy to blame an all-powerful adversary for all your woes—did you lose money trading? Oh, that was gmax's fault. Did you get scammed? Oh, that was blockstream's fault. If they'd just did X, then the scam wouldn't have happened in the first place. Did your friend tell you something secretive that "only he knows" and it's "not public knowledge"? Well obviously the core devs are behind it. The absurdity is great when the altcoiners are staring at Bitcoin's behemoth economy with jealous eyes amplifying the narratives they sometimes even know are totally false. More insidious of course are the lies that are false but simple, where the factually verifiable truth is directly contrary but complex, like the foolish lie about gmax stealing credit, or Vitalik asserting that he was planning Ethereum until the core devs blocked him. It's easy for outsiders to be infected via their usual lines and information feeds. And, of course, Bitcoin has no marketing department, so obviously defence thereof is a long, painstaking process of careful dismantling and debunking over a long period of time. Thankfully, the actually helpful, intelligent, and ultra-competent people that are the safest to align with are people on whom these kinds of lies are basically completely ineffectual, so we tend to win, in that respect, just by default.

opreturn 6y ago

> .. now it's too late. Perhaps it is too late for replicating existing use cases. However, the general idea of running EVM-like smart contracts secured by Bitcoin PoW (e.g. merge mined sidechains) is still quite attractive

grubles 6y ago
Only if you enjoy all of the negatives of EVM-like smart contracts including chain splits, gas problems, subtle bugs that could drive exchanges to insolvency, mass theft, broken multisig, the list goes on...
- opreturn 6y ago
  I don't enjoy the negatives. We'll move to better alternatives as they become available. Until then.. it's just like democracy or free markets.. no demonstrably superior alternatives yet
px43 6y ago
First off I recognize and appreciate your username :-) As such, you should know more than anyone how heated the OP_RETURN drama got, and how ANYONE using the BTC chain for anything other than moving money from point A to point B is a complete non-started and will be unanimously opposed by the core development team.
- opreturn 6y ago
  :-) Yeah. There's some baggage there, but I was still surprised nobody wanted this username. Core devs may not agree with what some users do with the system (current specs/features).. but as the Ethereum miners showed with increase in block size, core devs' philosophical objections may not matter in the end
CryptoPunk 6y ago
Counterparty eventually adopted the EVM, and yet could not get traction for multiple reasons: 1. Network effects already on Ethereum 2. Bitcoin block time too slow and block size too low 3. Counterparty uses Bitcoin as a data layer, but Bitcoin itself cannot recognize Counterparty transactions, so Bitcoin consensus does not secure Counterparty transactions.