By Bitcoin Revista - fa 3 mesos - Temps de lectura: 7 minuts
Meme, o no Meme: El CAT
És realment sorprenent, tenint en compte que els gats han dominat essencialment Internet durant les últimes dues dècades, que els mems de gats finalment s'hagin apoderat del Bitcoin space as well in the last few weeks? Cats are the most viral meme on the internet, so it's not shocking in the least bit that the Taproot Wizards have leaned into it, reinforced by the trolling Luke over his “dietary choices.”
The question has to be asked though, are meme campaigns really how we want to go about deciding and discussing consensus changes to a protocol as valuable as Bitcoin? I’ve seen numerous music videos, campaigns to go out in the world and “educate” people on OP_CAT, and the whole “Quest” system that Taproot Wizards has launched taking place…but the reality is the vast majority of this content that I have seen has been incredibly superficial.
Rijndael, "Artificer" de Taproot Wizards i una de les poques persones, si no l'única persona, que realment juga i juga amb OP_CAT per crear exemples de casos d'ús, ha fet una demostració d'un script de pacte basat en OP_CAT.
This script enforces a specific amount of Bitcoin be sent to a specific address, and by consensus there is no other way to spend these coins except with a transaction that meets those exact conditions. Look at the size of this script:
OP_TOALTSTACK OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT de890a8209d796493ee7bac9a58b62fbced10ccb7311e24f26c461c079ead08c OP_SWAP OP_CAT OP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP_CATOP . 54617053696768617368ce256b256bfcdb424950303334302dce6368616d6f656b6765f256 OP_DUP OP_DUP OP_TOALTSTACK 79 OP_ROLL OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_SHA667 OP_DUP OP_DUP OP_TOALTSTACK_ OP_TOALTSTACK 9 OP_ROLL OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_SHA55 OP_CAT OP_CATUP_SWAPSTOP06295 CAT OP_ROT OP_EQUALVERIFY 870 OP_CAT 07029be2ef28dcbbac959a2815ce16b81798bfcdb2dce256d1f2b79f667 OP_CHECKSIG
Això és el que es necessita per emular CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY. L'script equivalent que utilitza CTV seria simplement:
CTV.
Pregunto, quin és el valor d'alguna cosa com OP_CAT per emular el cas de pactes de plantilla bàsics (coses que requereixen una transacció de despesa per complir determinades condicions definides amb antelació per ser vàlides) com aquest? Sabem exactament com gestionar els esquemes que fan complir una plantilla en transaccions que gasten una sortida bloquejada a un pacte de plantilla i tenim diverses propostes per a ells. CTV, TXHASH, OP_TX i fins i tot APO poden emular aquests esquemes introduint una signatura a la sortida de bloqueig d'una transacció al preu de 64 bytes addicionals.
What actual use is OP_CAT in “experimenting” to meet the needs of a class of use cases that are mature enough in design that there are at least 4 covenant proposals that can handle those use cases with a tiny fraction of the data cost? “Oh, we want to experiment with CAT because it’s flexible!” You want to use 30 OP calls to do something that can be done in one? That is a reason to actually enact a consensus change to Bitcoin? The logic of that is beyond absurd.
Minimitzant els riscos
En un buit, OP_CAT es ven com a "simplement concatenant dues cadenes", i molts dels mems intenten emmarcar-lo com "com pot ser perillós?" Aquesta és una narració salvatgement falsa que envolta la proposta i ignora completament com interactua amb altres aspectes existents i futurs del guió.
In particular CSFS + CAT opens a massive amount of possibilities in terms of what can be done with Bitcoin script, not all of it necessarily positive. CSFS allows you to verify a signature on an arbitrary piece of data in the course of executing a script, and CAT allows you to “glue” different pieces of data together on the stack. These two things create a massiu design space for what it is possible to do with Bitcoin.
Un exemple concret seria el potencial d'aplicar quantitats, o relacions entre diferents quantitats, d'entrades i sortides específiques en una transacció. CAT us permet crear un hash de transacció a partir de peces individuals de la pila, i CSFS us permet verificar una signatura amb una clau pública a l'script de bloqueig contra peces arbitràries d'aquesta transacció a mesura que es construeix. Això podria permetre, en última instància, la creació d'UTXO oberts que qualsevol pugui gastar, sempre que la transacció de despesa compleixi certs criteris, com ara que s'enviï una quantitat específica de monedes a una adreça específica. Combineu això amb la realitat dels actius basats en OP_RETURN, i això comença a entrar al territori dels intercanvis descentralitzats (DEX).
Some of the worst incentive distortion problems that have come to fruition on other blockchains ultimately stem from the creation of DEXes on those chains. Having direct non-interactive exchange functionality on the blockchain is one of the worst forms of MEV, especially when the potential exists for miners to lock-in their profit across multiple trades in the span of a single block, rather than having to actually carry the risk of a position across multiple blocks before closing it out and realizing profit.
Part of the movement behind Taproot Wizards is “bringing the innovation back.” I.e. that lessons learned in shitcoin land are coming home a Bitcoin, now while I firmly reject the notion that anything useful has been developed on other coins in the last decade other than the basic concept of zero knowledge proofs, this mantra getting louder ignores a massive component of that dynamic even if you disagree with my view there: hi ha lliçons per aprendre sobre què NO fer i què fer.
DEXes are one of the things NOT to do. Nothing has caused as much chaos, volatility in fee dynamics (which we need to smooth out over time for sustainability of second layers), and just all around incentive chaos regarding the base consensus layers of these protocols and their degree of centralization. The idea that we should rush to bring these types of problems to Bitcoin, or exacerbate them by introducing a way to trustlessly embed the bitcoin asset into them in more dynamic and flexible ways, is frankly insane. This to me speaks of large swaths of people who haven’t learned anything from watching what happened on other blockchains in the last half decade or so.
Per sempre encadenat pel gat
Looking at the dynamic above between CSFS + CAT, it is worth pointing out that Reardencode’s recent LNHANCE proposal (CTV + CSFS + Internal Key) offers a path to give us eltoo for Lightning in a way that is actually more blockspace efficient than using APO. If this argumentation, and build out of proof of concepts, winds up winning over Lightning developers who want LN symmetry in order to simplify Lightning channel management and implementation maintenance, we very well could wind up getting CSFS in the process. If OP_CAT were active prior to this, then there is no way to avoid the types of detrimental side effects of the two proposals being combined.
This would hold true for every soft fork proposal going forward if OP_CAT were ever activated. It would be impossible to escape whatever side effects or use cases were enabled by combining OP_CAT with whatever new proposals come in future. On its own OP_CAT is clunky, inefficient, and rather pointless. But in combination with other OPs it begins to get stupidly flexible and powerful. This would be a dynamic we would never be able to escape, and features that might wind up being critically necessary in the future for Bitcoin’s scalability could inescapably come with massive downsides and risks simply because of the existence of OP_CAT.
És aquesta una realitat a la qual volem entrar simplement per una campanya de memes? Perquè la gent vol jugar amb mitjans molt ineficients per fer les coses en lloc de mirar propostes molt més eficients i dissenyades per a propòsits? Jo diria que no.
Meme campaigns can be fun, I know this. They foster a sense of community and involvement, it's an inherent and inescapable part of the internet and the numerous cultures that exist on it. But this is not how we should be deciding the development process of Bitcoin. They can be fun, and they can even be viciously savage at stabbing directly to the heart of matters people dance around or equivocate on. But they are atrocious at capturing nuance and complexity in many regards.
Trying to steer the consensus of a network like Bitcoin purely based on the value of a meme, rather than reasoned consideration of proposals and their implications, is a disaster waiting to happen. The conservatism and caution of Bitcoin development is what has kept it at the forefront of this space as shitcoins have come and gone, imploding in the consequences of their fly by night carefree development attitude. As much as Bitcoin sorely needs to break out of its current rut of stagnation and lack of forward progress, devolving to uncritical memes and music videos is not how to do that. It risks destroying what made Bitcoin valuable in the first place, its solid and conservative foundation.
Font original: Bitcoin Magazine