LynAlden on Nostr: -I am relatively neutral on the drivechain tech itself, but lean toward not really ...

-I am relatively neutral on the drivechain tech itself, but lean toward not really thinking it’s the best solution. My relative neutrality is why I’ve not really commented on it directly much.

-However, the recent aggressive marketing push and attempted activation method by miners despite it being controversial have made me against it for now. I think bitcoin’s near immutability and maximal decentralization are its most important attributes for long-term success and monetization. So, the drivechain proponents have turned me from neutral to opposed on their proposed changes, at least for the next few years. Their arguments have numerous red flags such as overpromising the benefits, claiming there are no risks, claiming that bitcoin itself is at risk without their tech, using weak paid-for memes as part of the marketing strategy, being contradicted by their own dev Luke Dashjr, etc.

-I don’t agree with the “drivechain fixes the security budget problem” argument, nor do I necessarily agree that there is a security budget problem to begin with (let’s check back in 15 years and see then). We have no idea what bitcoin adoption will be in 15 years, and constantly tinkering with things is a central banker mentality. In truth, most of us are central bankers at heart, always wanting to tinker and optimize, and we are only prevented from doing so if the base layer is resistant to such temptations (eg gold or bitcoin). Bitcoin has like 1% of the volumes as Fedwire, does about as many transactions per day as Fedwire, is growing, and yet people are claiming it can never generate significant fees.

-I also don’t agree with the “Drivechain kills altcoins” argument. The killer feature of altcoins is seigniorage. That’s why they raise billions in VC money: to make use of regulatory arbitrage to harvest seigniorage via fast exit liquidity on retail investors. A small part of the altcoins ecosystem focuses on privacy or other good things, and drivechains mainly compete with that small part. Would I like to see some private sidechains, or more scalable sidechains, or more programmable sidechains on bitcoin? Sure. But we already have a number of them and they are not used much, in part because chain fees are usually low and in part because what most people want with altcoins is seigniorage (for creators and VCs) and speculation (for users).

-For now in terms of soft forks, I am more interested in covenants and like to see research in that direction. But even then, I would only support activation if they can build a very high level of consensus. But also I think scaling tech in general is under-explored, in part because of the low fee environment. I think people want to rush to change things at the base layer without fully fleshing out the tech, or understanding how people even want to use the network, or maximizing the existing set of options. I like the recent developments in chaumian ecash, which are barely implemented yet but are very interesting. I think Bitcoin is great, and there is no need to rush contentious base layer changes.