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Self custody is an essential requirement when using Bitcoin to fully benefit from all the properties that make Bitcoin valuable in the first place. To be able to truly transact without permission, benefiting from the censorship resistance of the network, you have to control your own keys. You can’t outsource that to someone else, you can’t trust the neutrality or honesty of a custodian, you must solely have direct control of corresponding private keys to your UTXOs. If you fail to do this, you will always be a second class user. Bitcoin as a system gives you almost total control over your own funds; control of custody, when it is spent and how it is spent, even the ability to completely destroy your coins through deleting your private keys.
When you outsource that direct control of the actual Bitcoin UTXOs on the network to a third party, you relinquish that control in its entirety. That’s not to say that there aren’t middle grounds to that, such as Lightning, Statechains, and other proposed second layer designs, but ignoring those for a moment, when you do not control your UTXOs directly, you do not have the ability to transact whenever and however you want. You do not have the ability to destroy and render your coins inaccessible if you want. You do not have something that is permissionless in your ownership and control.
So why do people choose not to withdraw their coins and leave them with a custodian? Some combination of apathy, lack of understanding, fear or doubt about their ability to correctly manage their own keys without losing money, or even concerns over being able to physically keep their keys safe. There are numerous reasons, and over time we will have different solutions to address the root cause. But one of the big causes for such a choice has yet to even really happen to any serious degree; the raw economics of blockspace utilization. If you only have a couple of dollars of bitcoin –or even less in the case of zapping satoshis around with things like custodial Lightning solutions– you cannot practically take control of those coins or spend them on chain cost effectively. Even when fees get that high however, it's still cost effective for a user in such a situation to handle their Bitcoin until they have enough to be able to afford to withdraw to self-custody at a reasonable cost.
That is not going to be the case forever. No matter what happens, if Bitcoin actually succeeds and becomes widely adopted for real use among normal people, that cost of blockspace is going to trend up; a tide that continues rising in sync with the growth of users forever. It will even rise without user growth whenever economic activity and money velocity picks up among the existing userbase. It is an inevitable reality, it cannot be stopped by anything short of the stagnation or complete failure of Bitcoin self.
So what is the solution here? That is pretty much the root of the tug of war between the old big block versus small block divide that has been going on since the beginning of Bitcoin. Taking custody of your own bitcoin by having them sent to key pairs you control is a foundational aspect to Bitcoin, but so is being able to actually validate that a Bitcoin UTXO controlled by a key you possess was really created on-chain. The relationship between the costs of these two things is, and will forever be, an eternal tug of war between the costs of one versus the other. If you make the verification cost of blockspace cheaper and increase its availability, more people will utilize it. If you make the use of it more efficient, more people will utilize it.
You can tweak those variables all day long, back and forth, you can make computational verification cheaper, you can make blockspace use more efficient, but either one will just enable more people to use it and inevitably (unless we are all wrong about Bitcoin) lead to an increase in demand for blockspace. And that is just looking at things in a basic vacuum of economics and how demand and availability regulate each other. That isn’t even considering the actual engineering trade-offs of the specific ways to accomplish either thing, and the downside risks each optimization creates.
En daar is baie afwykings betrokke by al die spesifieke maniere waarop enige van daardie doelwitte bereik kan word. Baie. Selfs die Lightning-protokol, met al die ingenieursglans daaragter, wat 'n eksponensiële toename in transaksionele deurset gee, het massiewe afwykings en beperkings. Dit is die mees skaalbare terwyl dit terselfdertyd die mees vertrouelose tweedelaagprotokol is wat tot dusver voorgestel is in terme van deurset versus vertroueloosheid. Maar selfs dit het nadele en fundamentele verskille.
Klik op die prent hierbo om in te teken.Lightning’s security model is reactive, meaning that the only way to ensure that you don’t lose money is to pay attention to the blockchain and react quick enough if someone tries to steal funds from you by submitting an old channel state to chain. While this is a perfectly workable solution to that problem, it is a great departure from the security model of just unilaterally holding a UTXO. All you have to do in that situation is verify once that a coin sent to you on chain was actually confirmed and then you are done. You do not have to continuously pay attention to anything after that in order to keep your money secure.
This fundamental difference between using bitcoin through Lightning rather than directly on chain will have a lot of consequences for users with less money or cost tolerance for blockspace. The higher the average fee rate trends up, the more people will be pushed into locking their coins on Lightning to be able to actually spend them more cost effectively. It doesn’t even begin to end there with them being forced into a reactive security model though. Lightning routes payments through Hash Time Lock Contracts to guarantee that the money is fully sent or fully refunded across an entire payment route. This is actually never done for small value payments that are not cost effective to enforce on the blockchain if necessary. Those 1-2 satoshi payments getting zapped around for fun are sent in an entirely trusted fashion without using HTLCs and just hoping no one along the path screws up or refuses to cooperate. As fees rise on the base layer, this will have to be done for larger and larger payments. It makes zero economic sense to spend $5 in fees to enforce a payment worth only $1. Imagine $10 fees, $20 fees, etc. As the fee market matures and the base level of fees rise, even the nature of payments across the Lightning Network will fundamentally change, moving from a trustless system enforceable on-chain to one ultimately depending on honest behavior.
Dieselfde dinamika sal uitvloei of 'n gebruiker in die eerste plek selfs 'n Lightning-kanaal kan oopmaak en in stand hou (of iemand anders likiditeit aan daardie kanaal sal wil toewys sodat die gebruiker ontvangskapasiteit het). As dit $10 gaan kos om transaksies aan die ketting te doen, dan is jy dadelik op die haak vir 20$ – in die veronderstelling dat fooikoerse nie nog erger word nie – om daardie kanaal oop te maak en onvermydelik te sluit. As jy nie-samewerkend moet sluit, selfs met geen HTLC's in vlug nie, is dit $30, want daardie sluiting neem twee transaksies. Hoeveel geld gaan mense in 'n kanaal moet sit om fooie te oorweeg wat so hoog die moeite werd is? Dinge sal baie vinnig baie uitsluiting begin raak wanneer fooie werklik vir goed begin groei wanneer blokruimtevraag versadig word.
So what does this mean? Lightning isn’t enough. It gives a lot more headroom in scaling self-custody, but it does not completely solve the problem and will itself wind up subjected to the exact same economic scaling issues that are present on the base layer of the blockchain. Not to mention introducing new security assumptions in the process along the way. It’s like building up a barrier of sandbags around your house in a flood; it will keep your house safe as long as the water level doesn’t rise above it. But if we are right about Bitcoin and its adoption continues unabated, the water level will keep rising well above the top of that barrier. Lightning by itself is not enough to raise the barrier much higher.
Watter konkrete en ontplooide alternatief kan dit hoër verhoog? Staatskettings is 'n konkrete voorbeeld. Hulle kan 'n massiewe toename in die doeltreffendheid van blokruimtegebruik bewerkstellig, maar verrassingsverrassing - dit behoort nie 'n verrassing te wees nie, hulle stel selfs meer afwykings as Lightning in. Wanneer jy met 'n Lightning-kanaal handel, maak jy dit oop vir 'n spesifieke teenparty en dit is die enigste persoon met wie jy kan kommunikeer. Om die persoon met wie jy interaksie het te verander om toegang tot roetes na ander mense te kry, moet jy eintlik daardie kanaal uit die ketting sluit en 'n nuwe een met iemand anders oopmaak. Statechains verander die dinamiek daar heeltemal.
Met 'n staatsketting kan jy munte oordra aan enige nuwe persoon met wie jy nog nooit voorheen interaksie gehad het nie, heeltemal buite die ketting. Maar jy kan net die hele UTXO oordra en 'n derde arbitrerende party is betrokke. Nadeel nommer een; sodra jy 'n muntstuk in 'n staatsketting sluit, kan die hele ding van die ketting af oorgedra word, maar net alles op een slag. Tweedens, die hele manier waarop dit werk is deur in wese 'n neutrale derde party te vertrou om uitsluitlik met die huidige eienaar saam te werk. Die werklike manier waarop dit op 'n ketting afgedwing word, kan op 'n paar verskillende maniere gedoen word, maar die lang en kort is dat die oorspronklike eienaar 'n staatsketting skep deur munte in Lightning-styl met 'n diensoperateur te sluit, en 'n voorafgetekende onttrekkingstransaksie kry wat is tydgesluit net soos in Weerlig om eensydig te onttrek. Die truuk is wanneer jy die "multisig" opstel, jy gebruik 'n skema soos Schnorr waar daar net 'n enkele sleutel is waarvan elke party 'n deel het. Daar is kriptografiese protokolle wat gebruik kan word om gedeelde sleutels te herskep op 'n manier dat opeenvolgende gebruikers en die diensoperateur met verskillende sleutelaandele, gelykstaande aan dieselfde publieke sleutel, eindig. Wanneer jy 'n staatsketting oordra, is die sender, ontvanger en operateur betrokke by 'n off-chain protokol en die operateur vee hul ou deel vir die vorige eienaar uit sodat hulle nie eers in staat is om iets in samewerking met daardie gebruiker te onderteken nie.
Weerlig is in wese 'n eensydige ooreenkoms tussen twee gebruikers waarin óf die ketting te eniger tyd kan afdwing, solank hulle aandag gee aan die blokketting. Maar jy kan nie die kanaaldeelnemers in daardie ooreenkoms verander sonder om aan die ketting te gaan en die nodige fooie te betaal nie. As gevolg van hoe die boete-sekuriteitsmeganisme werk (neem al die geld van iemand wat met 'n ou staat probeer kul het), kan jy ook nie daardie ooreenkomste tussen meer as twee mense skep nie. Dit is (prakties, nie letterlik nie, as gevolg van die berekeningskoste) onmoontlik om 'n manier uit te vind om skuld toe te ken en slegs die korrekte party te penaliseer in ooreenkomste tussen meer as twee mense.
Staatskettings is dieselfde tipe ooreenkoms, behalwe oop-einde by wie betrokke kan wees, solank enigiemand wat wil wees bereid is om die diensoperateur te vertrou, wat daarop gelet moet word dat dit onder 'n groep gefedereer kan word, en eensydig afgedwing kan word as solank jy kyk hoe die blokketting en die diensoperateur(s) eerlik optree.
Wat hier gebeur het in hierdie vordering, van Lightning tot Statechain, is dat jy dit moontlik gemaak het vir meer as twee mense om veilig op 'n off-chain manier te kommunikeer as hulle bereid is om 'n neutrale party te vertrou om 'n eerlike uitkoms af te dwing. So 'n groot mate van skaalbaarheid is verkry vir die koste van die bekendstelling van vertroue bo en behalwe die reeds bestaande vereiste om aanlyn te bly en die blokketting te kyk.
Hoekom? Want dit is regtig die enigste manier om daardie groter skaalbaarheid te bewerkstellig sonder om nuwe funksionaliteit by die blokketting te voeg. Voeg vertroue by die prentjie. Soos sake nou staan, kan ons waarskynlik heelwat skaalbaarheid vir die blokketting bereik sonder om tot volle bewaring toe te pas om 'n enkele entiteit te vertrou om nie jou geld te steel nie, maar elke stap wat ons neem na groter skaalbaarheid sal meer vertroue inbring.
Daar is geen manier om dit nie; óf nuwe funksionaliteit moet by die blokketting gevoeg word óf ons as 'n kollektief van verskillende groepe gebruikers moet aanvaar dat dit is hoe dit gaan verloop. Meer vertroue sluip by die rande in vir gebruiksgevalle met 'n laer waarde en gebruikers met 'n laer netto waarde.
There has been quite a lot of concern and discussion around this entire dynamic this year. The higher the average fee trends for space in a block, the more people will be priced out of using Bitcoin, even when you take into account things like the Lightning Network. Inscriptions and Ordinals caused a massive divide in the more active minority of people in this space, and all of it at the root was centered around the dynamic of one use case potentially raising the fees for blockspace to the point that another use case was priced out of being viable on Bitcoin.
It has been a very illuminating year so far watching people call Taproot a mistake, rally around publicly decrying the incompetence of developers in not realizing what they did, and dig in further into a dogmatic attitude. “Never upgrade or change Bitcoin again because it is perfect and infallible.” These same people in a vast overlap tend to also be the same people championing Bitcoin as a tool for self-sovereignty. They seem to always be the same people preaching self custody as a magic remedy for everything, and when scaling problems get brought up? Oh, Lightning is THE solution to that. Then they point at Ordinals and inscriptions again and start screaming about how one use case will price out another one, and so that bad one has to be stopped.
It is missing the forest for the trees. Any use of bitcoin that is profitable and cost effective to deal with demand is going to happen. There is literally no way to stop that, and Bitcoiners convincing themselves they can are fooling themselves. All of the backlash against Ordinals and Inscriptions very quickly led to people intentionally doing even more costly things like STAMPS, which instead of using witness data that doesn’t have to be stored in the UTXO set, puts their data inside the actual UTXOs. Rather than acknowledging the reality that if people think it is profitable to pay for blockspace they will, many people are falling victim to a knee jerk reaction of trying to stop what they think is bad while completely ignoring the reality that there are other worse ways to accomplish the same thing anyway if it makes economic sense. An impulsive reaction to the rise of Ordinals and Inscriptions is dragging down the entire attention span of involved people in this space into a pit of wasted efforts to stop things causing fee pressure that they don’t agree with instead of considering how to adapt and scale things they do agree with to that fee pressure.
Click the above image to download the PDF.'n Goeie persentasie van die mense wat so betrokke raak, stry letterlik met die wind. Hulle probeer vir ons sê om op te hou blaas, want dit slaan dinge om in plaas daarvan om dinge vas te bind of die fondament te weeg om dit te verweer. As jy inskripsies suksesvol blokkeer of sensor, sal mense net STAMPS, of OP_RETURN, of tegnieke wat selfs meer verkwistend is van netwerkhulpbronne gebruik.
Ultimately no technical filter will be good enough to stop people from doing dumb or non-monetary things with the Bitcoin network. The only filter that will successfully stop anything from being done on Bitcoin is economics. And that filter is equally created and equally affects every use of Bitcoin. It’s time to stop trying to fight externalities driven by economic demand and try to counter them through improving efficiency.
As jy dink Bitcoin’s primary value and purpose is to transfer value, then rather than obsess over somehow stopping all other uses of Bitcoin, you should be focused on considering the trade offs of different mechanisms that can improve its efficiency in transferring value. You are either going to have to choose between progressively adding more trust to things in order to accomplish that, or adding new features to the Bitcoin protocol itself to build more efficient things without depending on trust.
Buraq, die berugte moordenaar van Weerlig, het onlangs TBDxxx voorgestel, 'n nuwe tweede laag protokol. Dit is in wese 'n groot veelparty-staatsketting/kontantstelsel wat nie-toesig is nie, wat nie vereis dat die diensoperateur soos 'n staatsketting vertrou word nie, en baie gebruikers in 'n enkele ketting-UTXO kan pak. Dit vereis ANYPREVOUT(APO) of CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY(CTV) om te werk, so dit benodig 'n konsensusverandering. Kanaalfabrieke is 'n manier om 'n enkele UTXO te neem en Lightning-kanale bo-op mekaar te stapel, so een UTXO kan dosyne gebruikers verteenwoordig wat almal 'n gewone Lightning-kanaal aan die bokant het. Dit vereis ook ENIGE VOORUIT.
Both of these proposals can scale the use of Bitcoin to transfer value much further than Lightning can now, but ultimately both of them are subject to the same economic fee pressure that Lightning and on-chain use are. To join one of these multiparty channel pools, or exit one, or enforce something non-cooperatively on chain you still have to pay fees. For something like a channel factory this will involve one person who needs to close or enforce something actually unfurling and closing (fully or partially) the entire channel factory with everyone in it, creating costs and on-chain implications for everyone. Even despite accomplishing a huge increase in scalability without trust, it still falls victim to the effects of the blockspace market maturing.
Om dit te versag (nie op te los nie), sal ons waarskynlik nog meer OP-kodes nodig hê. Dinge soos OP_EVICT of TAPLEAFUPDATEVERIFY. OP_EVICT laat 'n groep gesamentlik 'n nie-samewerkende lid uit 'n veelpartykanaal skop sonder om iemand anders daarin te sluit of te beïnvloed deur 'n enkele transaksie met een inset en twee uitsette te gebruik. Dit los nie die probleem op nie, maar dit maak dit baie doeltreffender deur toe te laat dat een persoon uitgesit word met 'n baie kleiner voetspoor aan die ketting. TLUV bereik dieselfde ding, behalwe dat almal anders iemand uitskop, dit laat 'n enkele gebruiker toe om al hul fondse te onttrek sonder om enigiemand anders te ontwrig of iemand anders nodig te hê om saam te werk.
To address more of the issues, we need to make more changes to Bitcoin. There’s no way around that. Taproot “opened the door” to Inscriptions in the sense that it relaxed limits enough for people to go nuts with it, but they were already possible before Taproot. You can look at Taproot as having provided efficiency gains for both monetary use cases as well as non-monetary use cases. It made multisig the same size as a regular single sig address, which helps make using a higher security set up for keys or second layer protocols cheaper, but it also made it cheaper to inscribe arbitrary data.
Two sides of the same coin. And that is how it is. Same as it ever was. Making use of the blockchain more efficient is not always going to improve solely the use case you want, but it is absolutely necessary to scale Bitcoin in a way that is self-sovereign and self-custodial. It’s time to either accept that and start considering the reality of finding the optimal efficiency gains for value transfer with the least efficiency gains for detrimental or non-value transfer uses, or it’s time to accept that the only way to scale value transfer is to introduce trust.
A good number of people in this space have already made their choice one way or another, but there is a large contingent of people in the middle who refuse to accept either. This loud group in the middle needs to wake up and smell the coffee, and accept the reality of the situation. This is how blockchains work. Pick one; either brace yourself to accept the injection of trust into things, or accept the reality that changes need to happen. You can tell yourself all day long that you don’t have to choose, but your actions in attacking the notion of any change to Bitcoin at all while simultaneously championing self-custodial Bitcoin as a solution for the world are implicitly making the choice to accept more trust being introduced into the system, whether you want to acknowledge that or not.
Hierdie artikel verskyn in Bitcoin Tydskrif se "Die Onttrekkingskwessie". Klik hier om nou in te teken.
'n PDF-pamflet van hierdie artikel is beskikbaar vir Aflaai.
Oorspronklike bron: Bitcoin Tydskrif