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Yes, and we’re already seeing exactly what happens with bigger blocks from Ethereum. The entire thing is being run on Consensys’s centralized Infura servers on

Yes, and we’re already seeing exactly what happens with bigger blocks from Ethereum. The entire thing is being run on Consensys’s centralized Infura servers on AWS. It’s not even decentralized. This is an unavoidable physical constraint given Bitcoin’s architecture. You can either prioritize decentralization (and with it, censorship resistance), or you can prioritize TPS or in Ethereum’s case heavy-weigh smart contracts (at the cost of decentralization).

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
Everyone having a copy of the whole blockchain is not needed. What you need is sufficiently distributed hashpower that no actor can perform a 51% attack. That's all. Small-time users can use thin wallets; mega-power users can download the whole blockchain and spend whatever (in perspective, not super significant) amount of money they need for sufficient storage. Users in between can carry a reduced form of the blockchain that doesn't care so much about a full transaction log but accurately describes the state of every wallet's balance (thereby functioning the same from a "verify that they're not bullshitting me" perspective).
- xiphias2 6y ago
  You just described a way to decrease the security of Bitcoin. Users already decided collectively that no amount of security should be exchanged for other features inside Bitcoin. Even taproot, which is a relatively small change takes years to get to a point that it's accepted. It's like Kosher food: if a small percentage of people want food to be kosher, it's often easer to make all food Kosher. As Michael Saylor says, Bitcoin is good enough to store hundreds of trillions of dollars. Just don't f*ck it up.
xiphias2 6y ago
While I agree with you on everything, and I'm all in on BTC as a store of value, I love some of the contracts that are built on top of Ethereum. Uniswap is an example system that should be implemented in Bitcoin as well over time, as it brings transparency to trading and asset ownership. It doesn't need turing completeness (so gas is not required), though as it needs state management, I think it's important to be able to account for the cost of UTXO created.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Yes Ethereum is useful and interesting as an experimental platform to see what's possible with this new tech, and what better-designed L1 protocols, programming languages, and APIs may be able to support. But I'm not comfortable with their marketing it as a "world computer" among other things, implying it's more production-ready and robust than it really is.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago

Everyone having a copy of the whole blockchain is not needed. What you need is sufficiently distributed hashpower that no actor can perform a 51% attack. That's all. Small-time users can use thin wallets; mega-power users can download the whole blockchain and spend whatever (in perspective, not super significant) amount of money they need for sufficient storage. Users in between can carry a reduced form of the blockchain that doesn't care so much about a full transaction log but accurately describes the state of every wallet's balance (thereby functioning the same from a "verify that they're not bullshitting me" perspective).

xiphias2 6y ago
You just described a way to decrease the security of Bitcoin. Users already decided collectively that no amount of security should be exchanged for other features inside Bitcoin. Even taproot, which is a relatively small change takes years to get to a point that it's accepted. It's like Kosher food: if a small percentage of people want food to be kosher, it's often easer to make all food Kosher. As Michael Saylor says, Bitcoin is good enough to store hundreds of trillions of dollars. Just don't f*ck it up.

xiphias2 6y ago

While I agree with you on everything, and I'm all in on BTC as a store of value, I love some of the contracts that are built on top of Ethereum. Uniswap is an example system that should be implemented in Bitcoin as well over time, as it brings transparency to trading and asset ownership. It doesn't need turing completeness (so gas is not required), though as it needs state management, I think it's important to be able to account for the cost of UTXO created.

SkyMarshal 6y ago
Yes Ethereum is useful and interesting as an experimental platform to see what's possible with this new tech, and what better-designed L1 protocols, programming languages, and APIs may be able to support. But I'm not comfortable with their marketing it as a "world computer" among other things, implying it's more production-ready and robust than it really is.