By Bitcoin Iris - 3 mhí ó shin - Am Léitheoireachta: 8 nóiméad
BitcoinIs Cúlchiste Codánach é 's Future: Mura ndéanaimid Rud éigin faoi
Is é an rud a thosaigh mar idirbheart aonair ó Satoshi go Hal Finney, ina chóras casta mianadóirí ar scála tionsclaíoch, meitea-phrótacail ag teacht chun cinn cosúil leis an Líonra Lightning agus Fedimint, agus glacadh iomlán infheisteoirí institiúideacha leis an insreabhadh sáraithe is mó riamh isteach i éagsúla nua-cheadaithe. spot ETFs.
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.
Tá an creideamh seo bréagach go catagóiriúil.
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.
Sean-Nuacht
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:
“I ndáiríre tá cúis an-mhaith le Bitcoin- tacaíocht do bhainc a bheith ann, a n-airgeadra digiteach féin a eisiúint, infhuascailte do 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…
droichead Bitcoin tarlóidh idirbhearta idir bainc, chun glanaistrithe a shocrú. Bitcoin beidh idirbhearta ag daoine aonair príobháideacha chomh hannamh agus… chomh maith, mar Bitcoin based purchases are today.”
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.
I bpáipéar bán an Lightning Network féin, cuireann na húdair Joseph Poon agus Thaddeus Dryja in iúl go soiléir nach piléar airgid de chineál ar bith é a chumasaíonn scála domhanda:
“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?
Go simplí, mura féidir leo acmhainn chun an croíphrótacal nó fiú an Líonra Lightning a úsáid (ní gá fiú éascaíocht úsáide nó UX a phlé anseo, is dúshlán suntasach ar leith é sin) mar gheall ar theorainneacha crua inscálaithe, cuirfear iallach orthu soláthraithe láraithe agus coimeádta a úsáid. Fiú más rud é nach bhfuil siad ag iarraidh a.
Níl aon bhualadh timpeall an tor seo nó é a iarraidh.
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.
Caighdeán Óir 2.0
Is ceist chothrom í a chur cén fáth a bhféadfadh sé seo a bheith ina fhadhb ar chor ar bith. Is cinnte nach raibh an chuma air go raibh Hal Finney le tuiscint amhlaidh ina phost thuasluaite féin.
Ag filleadh ar an 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.
Mar thoradh air sin, tháinig teicneolaíocht airgead páipéir ar dtús le húsáid mar IOUanna áisiúla don ór, a bhí stóráilte féin in áiteanna láraithe speisialaithe chun suimeanna móra óir a chosaint agus a aistriú de réir mar is gá. Le himeacht ama de réir mar a d’fheabhsaigh an teicneolaíocht agus de réir mar a d’éirigh an tráchtáil níos domhanda, níor lean na caomhnóirí láraithe seo ag fás, go dtí gur ghabh Stáit iad go léir faoi dheireadh trí chumhacht rialaitheach agus níos déanaí go hiomlán, rud a scar an t-airgead fiat nua go hiomlán ón mbuntacaíocht óir.
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 stórála of bitcoin using private keys and mnemonic phrases, but in our hyperbitcoinization scenario the ability to idirbheart with self custodied bitcoin quickly evaporates for all but the institutions and the super wealthy who can afford the fees, even when using Lightning.
Tá na hiarmhairtí mórán mar a chéile agus a bhí siad faoi chaighdeán óir. Beidh ardáin cosúil le Coinbase nó Cashapp i lár an aonaigh, ós rud é go bhfuil costas imeallach nialasach ag idirbhearta laistigh dá n-ardán coimeádta toisc go ndéantar iad a rianú i mbunachar sonraí lárnach. Is féidir íocaíochtaí tras-ardáin a chomhiomlánú freisin idir na hardáin seo le cainéil Lightning nó íocaíochtaí ar slabhra an-éifeachtach ó thaobh costais de. Is é an toradh atá air ná tírdhreach nach bhfuil mórán comhchosúil le staid an chaighdeáin óir go luath sa 20ú haois, agus an chuid is mó de sholáthar i seilbh institiúidí móra coimeádta a bhféadfadh Stáit tionchar fánach a imirt, a chomhéigean agus a ghabháil.
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.
Rud atá ríthábhachtach, i gcás na ngníomhartha seo, ní bheadh ar chumas formhór mór na n-úsáideoirí rogha an diúltaithe trí chistí a tharraingt siar dá gcoimeád féin.
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.
Ach an é sin é?
Is the vision of Bitcoin as a foundational tool for censorship resistance, and separating money and State, dead?
Má leanaimid ar aghaidh ag séanadh, nó ag spreagadh níos measa, an chonair reatha, níl aon amhras ann go bhfuil. Ach ní gá go mbeadh.
Eagla amú
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.
Tá sé tábhachtach, áfach, aitheantas a thabhairt don chaoi ar bhaineamar an pointe sin amach gur éirigh “ossification” suntasach saintreorach insint, seachas scéal amháin tuairisciúil 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.
Mar sin, Cad Anois
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 blog post 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 go sonrach.
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.
Tríd an méid sin a dhéanamh, b'fhéidir gur féidir linn teacht ar bhealach chun an fhís d'airgead piaraí go piaraí agus ceannasach a scála do gach duine ar an phláinéid.
Seans go mbeidh muid fós gann, agus níl aon ráthaíochtaí ann.
Ach is fiú lámhaigh é.
Is post aoi é seo le Ariel Deschapell. Is a gcuid tuairimí féin go hiomlán agus ní gá go léiríonn siad iad siúd de chuid BTC Inc nó Bitcoin Iris.
Foinse bunaidh: Bitcoin Magazine