By Bitcoin Cylchgrawn - 3 fis yn ôl - Amser Darllen: 8 munud
Bitcoin'S Future Is Ffracsiwn Wrth Gefn: Oni bai Ein bod Yn Gwneud Rhywbeth Yn Ei Amddi
Mae'r hyn a ddechreuodd fel un trafodiad o Satoshi i Hal Finney, wedi esblygu i fod yn system gymhleth o lowyr ar raddfa ddiwydiannol, meta-brotocolau esblygol fel y Rhwydwaith Mellt a Fedimint, a chofleidiad llawn o fuddsoddwyr sefydliadol gyda'r mewnlifoedd torri record i mewn i amrywiol newydd eu cymeradwyo. ETFs fan a'r lle.
Bitcoin has come a dramatically long way, and with that comes a somewhat earned sense of optimism for those who have invested their time, money, and enthusiasm.
Unfortunately this optimism, and sense of “inevitability” I have previously written on, has contributed to a culture of complacency. This is hallmarked by a narrative that early Bitcoin protocol ossification is acceptable or even desirable, itself underscored by the implicit assumption that the largest risks to Bitcoin now are potential changes and Trojan horses to the protocol.
Mae'r gred hon yn bendant yn ffug.
The greatest danger to Bitcoin is the certain future it has if it were in fact to effectively “ossify” today: Certain regulatory capture, an uncapped fractional reserve supply, and censored and monitored transactions.
Hen Newyddion
If that sounds extreme, then you haven’t been paying attention. The problems facing Bitcoin that lead to this inevitable result aren’t remotely new. In fact it was touched on by Hal Finney himself 14 years ago:
“Mewn gwirionedd mae yna reswm da iawn dros Bitcoin-yn cefnogi banciau i fodoli, yn cyhoeddi eu harian arian parod digidol eu hunain, adenilladwy ar gyfer bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain…
Bitcoin backed banks will solve these problems…
bont Bitcoin Bydd trafodion yn digwydd rhwng banciau, i setlo trosglwyddiadau net. Bitcoin bydd trafodion gan unigolion preifat mor brin â… wel, fel Bitcoin mae pryniannau seiliedig ar waith heddiw.”
From the very beginning, many of Bitcoin’s earliest adopters clearly understood its limitations and the resulting downstream implications. What has changed since then? Not the math.
Even with the Lightning Network, an innovation that Hal Finney would not be around to see, the upper limit for the number of regular users Bitcoin can onboard in its current state is optimistically 100 million. That number does not factor in usability/user experience whatsoever, which is an inherent challenge of the Lightning Network due to the very novel way in which it works compared to any other financial system.
Ym mhapur gwyn y Rhwydwaith Mellt ei hun, mae'r awduron Joseph Poon a Thaddeus Dryja yn ei gwneud yn glir nad yw'n unig yn unrhyw fath o fwled arian sy'n galluogi graddfa fyd-eang:
“If all transactions using Bitcoin were conducted inside a network of micropayment channels, to enable 7 billion people to make two channels per year with unlimited transactions inside the channel, it would require 133 MB blocks (presuming 500 bytes per transaction and 52560 blocks per year)”
The resulting cap on users who can leverage Bitcoin today in a self sovereign way without the use of a trusted 3rd party presents an obvious problem. Especially if we assume adoption and usage will continue to grow.
Saifdean Ammous authored “The Bitcoin Standard”, a book which received much fanfare for making the compelling economic case for Bitcoin as the ultimate manifestation of “hard money”. A Bitcoin standard, he argues, will out-compete the current fiat money system by virtue of its hard supply. Similarly, in 2014 Pierre Rochard popularized the idea of the “speculative attack”, arguing that the adoption of the bitcoin monetary unit would happen first gradually, then extremely rapidly.
In our projection of the future, we will assume both lines of thinking are correct, and that demand for bitcoin the monetary unit will attract an increasing amount of savings as its network effects only further accelerate its own widespread global adoption.
This “hyperbitcoinization” scenario however presents an impossible challenge for the current constraints of both the Bitcoin core protocol and Lightning Network. What will it mean then when hundreds of millions, and then billions, flee into the confidence of Bitcoin’s fixed supply as the mainstream Bitcoin community believes they will?
Yn syml iawn, os na allant wneud hynny fforddio i ddefnyddio'r protocol craidd neu hyd yn oed y Rhwydwaith Mellt (does dim angen hyd yn oed drafod rhwyddineb defnydd neu UX yma, mae hynny'n her sylweddol ar wahân) oherwydd cyfyngiadau graddadwyedd caled, byddant yn cael eu gorfodi i ddefnyddio darparwyr canolog a gwarchodol. Hyd yn oed os nad ydyn nhw eisiau gwneud hynny.
Does dim curo o amgylch y llwyn hwn na'i ddymuno i ffwrdd.
If you accept the premise of bitcoin as a superior money, and also understand the practical limitations of the protocol today, then this is the certain outcome Bitcoin is currently on track to reach.
Safon Aur 2.0
Mae’n gwestiwn teg i ofyn pam y gallai hyn achosi problem o gwbl. Yn sicr nid oedd yn ymddangos bod Hal Finney yn awgrymu hynny yn ei swydd uchod ei hun.
Dychwelyd i'r Bitcoin Standard, Ammous dedicates a significant amount of the book’s opening chapters to discussing the history of the gold standard, its strengths, and most importantly its weaknesses. Crucially he identifies the Achilles heel: Gold was simply too expensive to secure and difficult to transact with in meaningful quantities.
O ganlyniad, daeth technoleg arian papur yn gyntaf i gael ei ddefnyddio fel IOUs cyfleus ar gyfer aur, a oedd ei hun yn cael ei storio mewn lleoliadau canolog yn arbenigo ar y dasg o warchod a throsglwyddo symiau mawr o aur yn ôl yr angen. Dros amser wrth i dechnoleg wella ac wrth i fasnach ddod yn fwy byd-eang, dim ond i dyfu y parhaodd y ceidwaid canoledig hyn i dyfu, nes iddynt gael eu dal yn y pen draw gan Wladwriaethau trwy bŵer rheoleiddio ac yn ddiweddarach fiat llwyr, a wahanodd yr arian fiat newydd yn llwyr o'r gefnogaeth aur sylfaenol.
In projecting the future for Bitcoin in its current state, we can see a very similar outcome unfolding. There might not be a cost issue with the storio of bitcoin using private keys and mnemonic phrases, but in our hyperbitcoinization scenario the ability to trafodiad with self custodied bitcoin quickly evaporates for all but the institutions and the super wealthy who can afford the fees, even when using Lightning.
Mae'r canlyniadau yn debyg iawn i'r hyn yr oeddent o dan safon aur. Platfformau fel Coinbase neu Cashapp fydd yn y canol, o ystyried bod trafodion o fewn eu llwyfannau carcharu yn sero cost ymylol gan mai dim ond mewn cronfa ddata ganolog y cânt eu holrhain. Gellir hefyd agregu taliadau traws-lwyfan rhwng y llwyfannau hyn gyda sianeli Mellt neu daliadau ar gadwyn yn hynod gost-effeithiol. Y canlyniad yw tirwedd nad yw'n rhy annhebyg o gwbl i gyflwr y safon aur ar ddechrau'r 20fed ganrif, gyda'r rhan fwyaf o'r cyflenwad yn cael ei ddal gan sefydliadau gwarchodol mawr y gallai gwladwriaethau eu dylanwadu, eu gorfodi a'u dal yn ddibwys.
To return to the question of the biggest threat to Bitcoin: In this future, there’s zero necessity in attacking the base layer if the only ones that can actually use it are large known entities with everything to lose.
To be sure, substantial differences from the original gold standard would in fact exist. Transactions being natively digital, proof of reserves being possible, and the supply being completely transparent are notable improvements over the gold standard. Still, none of these differences impact our self custody conundrum in any way. As far as the vision of Bitcoin being a censorship resistant money, once the vast majority is held by trusted third parties, there is nothing stopping States from strictly enforcing transaction monitoring, asset seizures, and capital controls. There is also nothing stopping them from enabling and even encouraging fractional reserve policies in the interest of prudent economic management.
Yn hollbwysig, pe bai'r camau hyn yn cael eu cymryd, ni fyddai gan y mwyafrif helaeth o ddefnyddwyr y gallu i optio allan drwy dynnu arian yn ôl i'w dalfa eu hunain.
It’s not all bad. In this scenario, bitcoin the monetary unit still appreciates by leaps and bounds. Everyone who’s humored me this far with their attention will still likely stand to financially benefit immensely in this future.
Ond ai dyna ydyw?
Is the vision of Bitcoin as a foundational tool for censorship resistance, and separating money and State, dead?
Os byddwn yn parhau i wadu, neu annog yn waeth, y llwybr presennol, yna nid oes unrhyw amheuaeth ei fod. Ond nid oes rhaid iddo fod.
Ofn Camosodedig
Fortunately, there’s no reason or prevailing argument for the Bitcoin network to have already ossified. It remains firmly within the grasp of the core community to continue to push forward research, debate, and proposals for further improving the base protocol to increase the scale and usability of solutions like the Lightning Network, as well as enable whole new potential constructs such as the Ark protocol, advanced statechains, and more.
Fodd bynnag, mae’n bwysig cydnabod sut rydym wedi cyrraedd y fath bwynt nes i “ossification” ddod yn arwyddocaol rhagnodol naratif, yn hytrach nag un pur ddisgrifiadol idea of the eventual end state of a widely adopted Bitcoin protocol. Such a prescription is necessarily rooted in the assumption that Bitcoin’s largest attack vector comes from future code changes.
This line of thinking isn’t baseless. It is true that protocol changes can be an attack vector. After all, we’ve actually seen that very attack play out before with Segwit2X when a consortium of large Bitcoin institutions and miners coordinated a unilateral hard fork to the Bitcoin protocol to increase the base block size in 2017.
However we must also acknowledge that Segwit2x failed in a miserable fashion. Worse still, the futility of the attack was obvious before its eventual collapse as it entirely misjudged the dynamics involved in introducing changes to a distributed peer to peer protocol.
The participation of many of the individuals and companies involved with Segwit2X suffered lasting reputational damage in many cases, making it not only a failed effort, but a costly one. For any enterprising attacker looking to compromise Bitcoin for good, it would be abundantly clear that attempting to repeat this approach or any variation of it is a fool's errand.
A much easier and cheaper approach with a much higher likelihood of success, would be to invest in slowing the already challenging work of building consensus to introduce beneficial extensions to the Bitcoin protocol, ensuring that the experiment in both sound and censorship resistant money is ultimately a victim of its own success. Whether or not you believe this is actively happening today, the actions that need to be taken are identical.
Felly Beth Nawr
Ultimately, where we are now and what we must do is not so different from the time Hal made his observation in 2009: We must continue critically examining the limitations of the Bitcoin protocol and ecosystem, and push forward as a community to address these shortcomings.
Thankfully a number of research advancements and proposals have been made for further increasing scalability that don’t require larger block sizes. Bitcoin core contributor James O’Beirne released a post blog last year with a sober technical analysis of Bitcoin’s immediate scalability prospects and gives good context to some of these proposals, and more recently Mutiny wallet developer Ben Carman has taken a critical look at the issues surrounding the Lightning Network yn fwy penodol.
There has never ceased to be a strong signal amidst all the noise, and the best we can do is put in the individual work to identify and amplify it, while actively pushing back against counter productive narratives that do not contribute to meaningfully improving Bitcoin.
Drwy wneud hynny, efallai y gallwn ddod o hyd i ffordd i raddio'r weledigaeth o arian cyfoedion i gyfoedion ac arian sofran i bob person ar y blaned.
Mae’n ddigon posibl y byddwn yn dal i fethu, ac nid oes unrhyw sicrwydd o gwbl.
Ond mae'n werth ergyd.
Dyma bost gwadd gan Ariel Deschapel. Eu barn eu hunain yn gyfan gwbl yw'r safbwyntiau a fynegir ac nid ydynt o reidrwydd yn adlewyrchu barn BTC Inc neu Bitcoin Cylchgrawn.
Ffynhonnell wreiddiol: Bitcoin Magazine