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2:54

Welcome back to the mining pod.

2:56

Charlie here, not Will. He is

2:58

in Miami and mining disrupt. Have

3:00

you ever wondered how that big

3:03

Tapper Wizard JPEG got on Bitcoin in

3:05

the first place? It kicked

3:07

off a year and a half of discussion on

3:10

Bitcoin consensus. Should there be NFTs

3:12

or JPEGs on Bitcoin? Are they

3:15

clogging the blockchain? What

3:17

are the mechanics of a transaction like that

3:19

actually getting on Bitcoin in the first place?

3:22

So I had a fascinating conversation

3:24

with Portland Hoddle, who built the

3:26

Slipstream product for Marathon Digital and

3:29

has generated significant fee revenue to their

3:31

pool, Marra Pool. This is

3:33

a very interesting hour and a half

3:36

long conversation. So if you normally pay

3:38

attention to like mining efficiencies and ASIC

3:40

production, this might be an interesting episode

3:43

to listen to in full because we

3:45

get into the weeds about how Bitcoin

3:47

works under the hood. So

3:49

stick around. We will be hearing advertisements

3:52

from our sponsors. Thank you to CleanSpark

3:54

and Foreman Mining for supporting the mining

3:56

pod. You'll hear from them throughout the

3:58

episode. Otherwise, sit back and listen to

4:01

this re-aired episode of Bitcoin

4:03

season two. Welcome Portland Hoddle to Bitcoin

4:05

season two. Thank you, Charlie, for having

4:07

me. Very excited to be here. And

4:09

looking forward to our conversation today. Hopefully

4:11

it's going to be about a little

4:13

bit of slipstream, maybe

4:16

some consensus relay policy. Who

4:18

knows? Future softworts. Yeah, it

4:20

could be all of those things. That's like the

4:22

hot topic right now, but let's pull

4:25

it back. Like I want to, um, I

4:27

want to make this approachable to the

4:30

ordinals, the NFT folks, even like the

4:32

traditional non-technical Bitcoiners. We

4:34

may have to talk about Bitcoin consensus and relay

4:36

policy, but maybe just to lay

4:38

a foundation, like, um, what

4:41

is like, what are your views

4:43

on Bitcoin in general? Like how

4:45

do you think about Bitcoin? Why

4:47

Bitcoin? And then why

4:50

did you end up building slipstream? My

4:53

views about Bitcoin are specifically

4:55

that Bitcoin is a peer to peer version of electronic

4:57

cash. Like literally is a white paper sense. I do

4:59

believe that is the ultimate use case for Bitcoin. But

5:02

secondary to that is that it is

5:04

censorship resistant, uh, freedom

5:06

money, right? As such, like that entails

5:09

permissionlessness and kind of all the other

5:11

properties of not having an actual governance

5:13

structure or like a top down enforcement

5:15

mechanism for the way transactions or Bitcoin

5:18

should be used. Um, and

5:20

going on Twitter, like, especially in 21, 22,

5:23

that was my first exposure to the public

5:25

culture of Bitcoin, not the private like working

5:28

on the GitHub and kind of Bitcoin talk,

5:30

but actual like communication free flowing real time,

5:32

especially over Twitter spaces. And like

5:34

it really kind of got in my head during that

5:37

period of time that like Bitcoin is literally

5:39

for anybody to do whatever they want with, as

5:41

long as it's within the consensus rules of Bitcoin.

5:43

Like I always heard the, the term Bitcoin is

5:45

for your friends as it is for your enemies.

5:47

And I really latched onto that

5:49

because in everything in life, there's some

5:52

sort of governance system on, okay, well,

5:54

this is the actual total scope of things you can do,

5:57

but you actually are only permissive. to

6:00

do like a much smaller section of that.

6:02

And so yeah, I believe that at

6:04

the end of the day, Bitcoin

6:06

is money. Bitcoin is also

6:08

a database of money that's

6:11

programmable. And as such, like

6:13

this is kind of the more technical side of it, but

6:16

you can program Bitcoin to do

6:18

things. And I don't want to

6:20

restrict anybody's use of Bitcoin for

6:22

any reason beyond the consensus limits

6:24

of what actually Satoshi set out,

6:27

that Bitcoin is like the rules, what kind of

6:29

programs you can write on Bitcoin. I

6:31

don't think that's my position to tell

6:33

anybody how to use their Bitcoin.

6:35

And like even like going like a little bit

6:38

deeper, like I'm gonna ask you a question. Like

6:40

if Bitcoin had no value at all, like you

6:42

couldn't exchange it for money or anything like that,

6:45

what would be the only thing you can do with

6:47

your Bitcoin? And what's the only, what's the intrinsic use

6:49

case for Bitcoin? Communication, I

6:51

guess. You're pretty close. It's

6:54

writing data to the blockchain. You can bribe miners.

6:56

That's literally it. If you have one Bitcoin, the

6:58

only value of that Bitcoin technically is how many

7:00

bytes could you write to the time chain? And

7:02

that doesn't necessarily mean arbitrary data. You could write

7:05

transactions to that time chain using that one Bitcoin.

7:07

But you like, for example, I could take my

7:09

one Bitcoin and send it to myself, okay, I

7:11

have less than one Bitcoin now because I had

7:13

to bribe the miner. I could do it again

7:15

and again and again and again. I would run

7:18

out of Bitcoin. But in the process of doing

7:20

that, I basically create this like trail of data.

7:23

That's the only actual use case of

7:25

Bitcoin is like writing data to this

7:27

database of money and programmable definitions of

7:29

what that money can do. And

7:32

like other utilities, for

7:34

example, gold, you could smash it into a watch

7:36

or a chain, but most people say it should

7:38

be money. That's like Bitcoin's intrinsic use case is

7:40

literally writing data. And it's such like concluding all

7:43

that, Bitcoin is

7:45

literally the freedom to write data as long as you

7:47

can bribe the miner. Like that's what it boils down

7:49

to. It's almost the other

7:51

term I hear, and

7:54

Satoshi used this, it's a distributed

7:56

timestamp server. Correct. So

7:59

it's an ordering event.

8:01

So let's get into

8:03

Slipstream. I mean, let's

8:06

just go right there. I mean, try to

8:08

keep it simple. Like what is

8:10

Slipstream at a high level? And then

8:12

why did

8:14

you build Slipstream? So

8:17

Slipstream at a high level is basically

8:19

the ability for a user to directly

8:21

submit their transactions to a miner. Regularly

8:24

in Bitcoin, if you have a transaction and you

8:26

broadcast it, you don't send it right to a

8:29

miner. You actually kind of ping pong along the

8:31

network and all these nodes. And eventually it gets

8:33

to a miner and the miner adds that to

8:35

the mempool because it pays fees and they want

8:38

to collect fees. And so

8:40

yeah, basically what this is, it's

8:42

basically saying your transactions down here,

8:44

marathons up here, just go

8:46

straight A to B and you can directly submit

8:48

it with a

8:50

little bit of an extra fee. So it's

8:52

kind of think of like an overnight shipping

8:54

service for transactions versus going through the postal

8:57

service where you'll have a bunch of hubs

8:59

along the way. Marathon literally drives the truck

9:01

out to your house and picks

9:03

up the transaction, drives it back to Marathon.

9:05

Like it's fully in Marathon's control. There's no

9:07

like USPS, the shipping hubs, like, oh, my

9:09

package went here to like Arkansas

9:12

that ended up back in Texas just to

9:14

go back to California kind of thing. And

9:16

the package is representative of a transaction. As

9:19

a part of that process, though, of doing a

9:21

direct submission, there's some unique properties that kind of

9:23

became apparent. First of all, we're

9:26

not bound to the rules of shipping or

9:28

relay policy on the Bitcoin network. So nodes,

9:31

I'm going to kind of use the analogy

9:33

of packages here, have

9:35

rules on them. So as I said, like,

9:37

normally you go all across the network to

9:39

all these nodes and eventually at a minor.

9:41

Well, each node along that route has a

9:43

set of rules defining what kind of packages

9:45

or transactions that it can accept. Because

9:48

these transactions can actually be pretty nasty and

9:50

cause problems for these nodes to kind of

9:52

not operate successfully or slow down too much

9:54

to be able to take in more transactions.

9:56

Like people can be malicious with this on

9:59

low end. hardware. So with that

10:01

said, that's the equivalent of like, you may

10:04

have a package, but you

10:06

go down to USPS here in the United

10:08

States and they say, hey, does your package

10:10

have lithium batteries? Well, to

10:12

you, you say yes. And they go, we're not

10:14

going to take that transaction or that package because

10:16

that's too dangerous for us to take as a

10:19

part of our shipping routes. But

10:21

other carriers will take that package and

10:24

take those things and put them into

10:26

or get them to their destination. Same

10:28

thing with Slipstream is because Marathon has

10:30

the computational power necessary to

10:33

operate a mempool that can kind of take

10:35

all these various packages, as long

10:37

as it's in a box or a transaction that is

10:39

valid to Bitcoin, it's still a package, we

10:42

will take it and mine it. There

10:44

are some carve outs for some actual

10:46

real dangerous packages or transactions, because you

10:48

can do pretty malicious things. But

10:51

in general, like things such as writing

10:53

arbitrary data to Bitcoin, that is not

10:55

a denial of service vector that Marathon

10:57

needs to be concerned about. And there

10:59

is an opportunity to earn more Bitcoin

11:01

because of that. So basically,

11:03

Marathon created a direct route to ship

11:05

transactions to them for an

11:07

extra fee that also kind of

11:11

lessens the restrictions of that relay policy. So

11:13

we will take more types of transactions than

11:16

anybody else, which actually adds to kind of

11:19

my thoughts and feelings about earlier, like

11:21

freedom money, nobody should be censoring stuff.

11:23

We shouldn't be picking and choosing the

11:25

winners and losers of who gets to

11:27

use what types of transactions. And as

11:29

such, yeah, Marathon kind of went with

11:31

let's open up and be less

11:35

censoring, I guess you'd say, or filtering, because

11:37

we have a wider set of total transactions

11:40

we'll accept compared to any other pool currently.

11:42

And by the way, if I ever use

11:44

the term we, I

11:47

am a contractor of Marathon. I do

11:49

not represent the brand and my statements

11:51

should be taken as such. I'm telling

11:54

you that I'm saying from my perspective,

11:56

working at Marathon, I'll try to make

11:58

sure that differentiation is complete. I

12:00

guess at the end of the day, the final

12:03

part about Slipstream that it enables

12:05

is a private mempool. So

12:07

that means users can directly submit

12:09

transactions to Marathon and

12:12

they go into the Marathon mempool to get mined, but

12:14

nobody else sees these transactions on the

12:16

network, which is either kind of a

12:18

really good thing if you're trying to

12:20

not tip somebody off in

12:22

the mempool that, hey, I'm doing something or

12:24

make a large movement, but also can be

12:26

problematic or fee estimation for other nodes because

12:28

you kind of have this miner that represents

12:30

a very small percentage of the hash rate

12:33

that has the secret, the fees are

12:35

likely higher for them than

12:37

anybody else. The reason why

12:39

I'm okay with that being that way

12:42

is Marathon isn't enough of a source

12:45

of hash rate to really kind of impact

12:47

overall fees. Having one

12:49

block a week that basically

12:51

displaces other transactions because the fees paid

12:53

in that block were higher and it

12:56

was private, nobody else could see it.

12:58

I don't think that is causing any

13:00

huge quality of life problems for Bitcoiners

13:02

overall. And second, we do have

13:04

an API open and you can go to the Slipstream

13:07

web portal and you can see the current fee rate

13:09

that's in the Marathon mempool. And

13:12

we can get into the further

13:14

conversation about private

13:16

mempools and the implications and

13:19

what a healthy, robust Bitcoin network

13:21

looks like. But I think it's

13:24

interesting and I

13:26

love your analogy of the

13:28

packages and like a messaging

13:31

like the kind of like almost like a mail

13:33

delivery service. Because

13:35

that actually, I think,

13:38

helps a few of the

13:40

hurdles when explaining mempool

13:42

relay policy and things like

13:45

Bitcoin core standardness. But

13:47

it's funny and this feels a bit like just this

13:50

conversation that comes up every time that

13:52

there's a soft or hard fork or

13:54

any kind of fork discussion in Bitcoin.

13:58

That and it all almost always seems to be a

14:00

bit of a problem. seems to center around mempool relay

14:02

policy. Can

14:05

you, you know, you just use a

14:07

great analogy, but can you actually describe

14:09

specifically what Bitcoin core standardness

14:12

is, what is mempool

14:14

relay policy, and then

14:16

the difference between Bitcoin consensus

14:19

and Bitcoin core standardness? Explaining

14:22

is standard. What is is standard

14:24

in Bitcoin? Basically every

14:26

node on Bitcoin has a

14:28

function built into it. It's

14:30

called is standard. Think of it like a

14:32

bouncer, okay? It basically says,

14:34

are you good enough to get in my

14:36

mempool, or do you fit within the

14:38

bounds of the mempool? Some

14:40

transactions are cool enough. Most are cool enough to fit

14:42

the mempool, but every once in a while, you get

14:45

this weirdo who comes in, and the bouncer goes, you

14:48

don't look very friendly. You're just weird.

14:51

It says, no, you're not getting accepted into the

14:53

mempool. That is

14:55

what the is standard function. It literally says,

14:57

is this transaction standard? And if you are

15:00

not standard as a transaction, you get removed

15:03

from the node, and you

15:05

do not get to pass into the

15:07

event, right? And what happens if

15:09

you go into the event, basically that is

15:11

quote unquote your node, putting it the transaction

15:13

mempool, and also additionally relaying it to

15:15

the next node as well, which will also do

15:17

the exact same function again. They have their own

15:19

bouncer, and as long as your transaction is part

15:21

of the standard group, you should be able to

15:24

go into each event all the way along, and

15:26

eventually you'll get to a minor. But

15:28

like I said, yeah, it's sometimes

15:30

there are scripts or Bitcoin transactions. If

15:32

you try to lock your thing up

15:35

in a weird way, they

15:37

don't quite like that, the nodes. And

15:40

so is standard is a way to

15:42

essentially filter transactions that go into the

15:44

mempool, hence the name filter policy, or

15:47

relay policy and typically associated with filtering.

15:50

And the most common thing

15:52

that I think people have demand for that

15:54

gets filtered are going to be

15:57

the four megabyte transactions right now on

15:59

Bitcoin. Bitcoin, the bouncer, quote unquote,

16:01

for your mempool will say you can be one

16:03

tenth the size of the Bitcoin block or 400,000

16:05

weight units. But

16:08

there is a lot of demand for people

16:10

to buy the entire block, to run like

16:13

a Bitcoin script and have that store so

16:15

far data. But you can also do more

16:17

interesting things like bit VM and actually execute

16:19

code. But yeah, so

16:21

that's a typical thing that a bouncer says,

16:23

hey, I'm or the standard policy says, hey,

16:25

we're not gonna take that to our mempool.

16:27

That's too big. That's heavy. It

16:29

takes a lot of bandwidth. Just get rid of it. And

16:33

so marathon, the slipstream, we

16:36

basically told the bouncer or the standard

16:38

function, we're cool with these things

16:40

like let's if you're four

16:42

megabyte, you're welcome into our mempool. If

16:44

you have two off returns, it's cool coming to our

16:46

mempool. But we will charge a

16:48

little extra because you're a little bit burned some to

16:50

us, right? Like we want you. We

16:54

also know there's an arbitrage opportunity between

16:56

like, hey, this is still

16:58

valid Bitcoin transaction according to

17:00

Bitcoin. But most nodes on

17:02

the network will make this very difficult for you to

17:04

get to a minor. And so

17:07

yeah, that's kind of what is standard is it's a

17:10

function to check if a Bitcoin

17:12

transaction is standard in kind of

17:14

the I guess I'll mention real quick the names of

17:16

these standard ones. But you might hear

17:18

of like legacy Bitcoin transactions that start with

17:20

like a one in the address. These

17:23

are typically like standard pay to witness script

17:25

hash and pay to witness public key hash.

17:28

Segue versions of these things or a taproot transaction.

17:30

These are all standard and you will have if

17:33

you're doing these types of transactions and they're not

17:35

too big, then they'll flow right

17:37

across the network. You will never touch any of

17:39

this stuff. But like

17:41

for example, one thing is with taproot,

17:43

you can actually create a nonstandard taproot

17:45

transaction when for example, you want to

17:47

embed a JPEG into it. So this

17:49

is where you take arbitrary data. And

17:52

then you do a special part of the tap script

17:54

zero op if and then it

17:56

doesn't execute that code, but it literally

17:58

just stores that information. on

18:01

Bitcoin. And that,

18:03

if you go above the standardness limits,

18:05

so 400,000 weight units, then

18:08

your transaction, if you send it off, the first

18:10

node that it gets to very likely will go,

18:13

nope, and it won't even enter the

18:15

mempool. It won't go anywhere. And you'll notice

18:17

your transaction won't show up on mempool space,

18:19

it won't get mined. It's DOA. That

18:23

is what standardness is. Consensus

18:26

is all things that are valid

18:28

on Bitcoin. So basically, any Bitcoin

18:31

script that isn't forbidden to

18:33

create, and there are

18:35

limits to that. One limit is, well,

18:37

why is the limit four megabytes of

18:39

data on Bitcoin or four megabytes per

18:41

script? Well, that limit

18:44

is consensus, because you can't

18:46

actually create a block that is bigger than

18:48

four megabytes. So you can think of like

18:51

the difference between consensus policy and relay policy.

18:53

Consensus policy is like physics on planet Earth,

18:56

right? Like we're bound to gravity. We're never

18:58

going to change gravity. That's just a property

19:00

of it, right? The

19:02

fact is we have inertia, all

19:04

these different properties, thermodynamics, like we

19:06

interact within the system. Relay

19:09

policy is the jurisdictional rule on how

19:11

we need to interact within that system.

19:13

So even though physics says you can

19:15

open up a locked door with enough

19:17

force, we do have

19:19

rules to say, no, you

19:22

don't or shouldn't do that, right? And

19:24

that's kind of like relay policy is

19:26

like the jurisdictional law, consensus is physics.

19:28

It's literally just the rule of Bitcoin.

19:31

There is no greater set of rules

19:33

in Bitcoin than consensus rules. And

19:35

with that said, relay policy is

19:37

always going to be smaller than

19:40

basically consensus. So relay policy

19:42

is like this big of

19:44

a box. Consensus is the rest of the frame. So

19:47

I love this example you use of the

19:50

bouncer. I've been personally struggling to

19:52

kind of try to use a good

19:54

analogy. And this is the best analogy

19:56

I've heard. I'll try to also add

19:58

my own twist. to it

20:00

and that, you know, consensus for the

20:02

bar for a bar is that you are

20:04

a human and the bouncer says, well, we

20:06

don't want certain people who are drunk. They

20:09

can be disorderly, but the weirdos or even

20:11

maybe the all ages folks, they could come

20:13

in, but you got to be a little

20:15

more careful. Sometimes you have

20:17

to add some extra checks for if you want an

20:19

all ages bar and also

20:21

serve alcohol and sometimes you're trying to

20:23

curate a specific vibe and

20:25

it's just much easier to

20:28

say, well, we're just going to use the conventional

20:30

rules for allowing people in.

20:32

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And

20:35

because there's good reason to have

20:38

a bouncer at the bar because not

20:40

all people are should be at a,

20:43

you know, at one of these places. And

20:46

this is, this gets into kind of how

20:48

you now getting a little bit

20:50

of the technical stuff like how you actually build

20:52

substream because you can't just like say

20:54

all transactions which are valid. Yeah,

20:57

there are dangerous transactions out there. Yeah.

21:00

And so this gets into like how hard

21:03

is it technically to build something like

21:05

slipstream and like

21:07

how do you navigate the reality

21:10

that you're producing blocks, which are about

21:12

a quarter million dollars each. So each

21:14

one is like a pretty big, you

21:17

don't want to mess that up. Yeah. Exactly.

21:21

Exactly. Talk to me like the technical

21:23

challenges you have when building

21:25

and designing slipstream. So

21:28

the first technical challenge to building slipstream is

21:30

you're going to be modifying Bitcoin core and

21:32

you're going to be relaxing that relay policy,

21:35

but you need to make sure that you relax

21:37

the relay policy in a way that is safe.

21:40

And part of that was kind

21:43

of getting a deep understanding of the

21:45

different kinds of transactions that are absolutely

21:47

like. So that's a lot of technical

21:49

challenges you have when building and designing

21:51

slipstream. So the first

21:53

technical challenge to building slipstream is you're going

21:55

to be modifying Bitcoin core and you're going

21:58

to be relaxing that relay policy. But

22:00

you need to make sure that you relax the

22:02

relay policy in a way that is safe. And

22:06

part of that was kind of getting

22:08

a deep understanding of the different kind

22:10

of transactions that are absolutely like, do

22:12

not take these because under

22:15

no circumstance, like I know I'm open

22:17

to like freedom of all transactions for

22:19

Bitcoin consensus valid, like we'll take

22:21

it all. There are actually a

22:24

class of transactions that I do believe would

22:26

negatively impact Bitcoin to the point where you

22:28

shouldn't mind them for any amount of money.

22:30

Like this is a nation state attack on

22:32

Bitcoin, if these types of transactions happen. And

22:35

these would be first of all, putting in

22:38

safeguards against like once you turn off

22:40

that standardness rule, putting in safeguards against

22:43

specifically a quadratic hash attack. So

22:47

that's a transaction with a bunch of legacy

22:49

input that are single, that

22:51

you essentially can create a block

22:53

that takes 12 to 14 seconds

22:55

to validate. Not too bad,

22:57

right? Because your node gets it,

22:59

takes 12 seconds, one not going to kill

23:01

you. You're already downloading an IBD for like

23:04

what, five hours minimum, two weeks maximum. But

23:06

if you get a lot of these in

23:08

a row, that's problematic. And then there's a

23:10

second class opcode separator that I'm not going

23:12

to go into detail how it can be

23:14

used, but you can get blocks to become

23:16

hour long blocks to validate. And that actually

23:18

is pretty advantageous for a miner if you

23:20

do release one of these and it's really

23:22

bad for node runners, because of the fact

23:24

that you could broadcast this block. And

23:27

if other miners don't have their stuff set up,

23:29

right, they're taking this block and they would be

23:31

spending a lot of time validating it. Well, they're

23:33

still working on the old block. And then your

23:35

pool gets ahead because you've already validated, you know

23:38

that that block is correct. And you just continue

23:40

to mine. So you get a few hours, like

23:42

an hour to yourself, while everybody else

23:44

spins their wheels. That if

23:46

you get one of these successfully into the network, all

23:49

the nodes have to validate that. And you

23:51

can just lower each during the IBD that you just increase that

23:53

time per block. So those two

23:55

types were the first, like, let's make

23:57

sure that can't happen on Slipstream. those

24:00

were guarded against in Bitcoin Core, the

24:02

implementation. And by the way, if you

24:04

want further details as somebody who's interested

24:06

in like, standardness policy and slipstream

24:08

of the creation, look up the great consensus

24:10

cleanup by Matt Corrillo. It's called the great

24:13

consensus cleanup, you can Google it. And there's

24:15

a new person's kind of

24:17

championing that bit Antoine, but this

24:19

outlines some of the consensus or

24:21

the physics of Bitcoin, or the

24:24

ultimate roles that Bitcoiners must follow when

24:26

interacting with Bitcoin network. The

24:29

attacks that can be

24:31

done to create very problematic blocks for

24:33

Bitcoin. I think the three that I

24:35

actually needed to care about for slipstream

24:38

were the time warp attack, the

24:40

quadratic hash problem and opcode separator.

24:42

Both these are pretty well documented

24:44

overall, the quadratic quadratic hash problem

24:46

and opcode separator were pretty easily

24:49

solvable. The time warp attack, I

24:51

don't think I could have implemented

24:53

a solution to that, that would

24:55

essentially not risk marathon

24:58

mining an invalid block or

25:00

orphaning, or forking themselves

25:02

off the network with some block that they

25:05

didn't say was valid and they start mining on

25:07

top of some old tip. But

25:10

the time warp attack is more systemic across

25:12

the network still. Yes, it

25:15

is literally the manipulation of timestamps. And we can

25:17

go into that as part of the testnet attack James

25:19

and Lop did. But yeah,

25:21

moving forward, the ultimate thing about slipstream

25:24

was first of all mitigating bad

25:27

blocks that would actually attack Bitcoin from

25:29

a DOS perspective, DOS's denial of service.

25:31

This is when you can deny nodes

25:34

the service of operating, being

25:36

a Bitcoin node. And so with

25:38

that said, I don't

25:40

believe that data on Bitcoin is a DOS

25:42

attack. We have a block size limit for

25:45

a reason. That's the limit. That's the DOS

25:47

protection mechanism is the fact that you can

25:49

download this much data per on

25:51

average 10 minutes. And but

25:53

the real DOS attacks, I think are

25:55

definitely problematic are outlined in the great

25:57

consensus cleanup. There may be others we don't know about. But

26:00

with that said those attack CPU cycles.

26:03

So the block size things

26:05

arbitrary data You're like putting more bits onto

26:08

the network, right? You're putting more bits on

26:10

the hard drive But you can't

26:12

actually make the node like utilize that

26:15

CPU the actual brain of the node

26:17

to do these calculations Or be

26:19

really slow so it can't do other things. It's just

26:21

data and Yeah,

26:23

basically the class of attacks that are absolutely

26:26

actually problematic to Bitcoin or DOS

26:29

vectors that DOS CPUs and

26:31

the actual hardware processing things

26:35

Being generally nice to developers with slipstream

26:37

So there are upgrade hooks in Bitcoin

26:39

For example, we use like op 0

26:41

op 1 op 2 op 3 for

26:44

segwit and segwit versions Kind of

26:46

like preventing people from utilizing those unnecessarily

26:48

and building meta protocols on top of

26:50

those op codes that then developers are

26:52

forced later on to go Well,

26:55

we want the soft work We

26:57

rug all these people so as

26:59

such we kind of There's a

27:02

few upgrade hooks that we left alone that

27:04

you can't utilize the slipstream. You'll get a

27:06

little notification Hey, don't use this off code

27:08

here That's as a courtesy to developers and

27:11

just like making Bitcoin upgrades easier later

27:13

on so we don't end up with Well

27:16

an off-code separator issue where we want

27:18

to turn it off But we really can't because we

27:20

don't know who's used the off code Because

27:23

pay to script hash and we as Bitcoin

27:25

developers You don't want to soft work anything

27:27

in that would censor the ability for somebody

27:30

to spend the money they've locked to that

27:32

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28:27

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28:30

result in revenue to

28:32

a company or whatever

28:34

they're working on. You

28:37

have a unique position here where Marathon

28:40

has generated millions in

28:42

additional revenue, I believe,

28:44

from this. I don't

28:46

know what the actual number is. I don't know

28:48

what the latest number is, but it's considerable. It's

28:50

public data. It is public data. And that's another

28:52

thing about Slipstream. First of all,

28:54

I wanted to build it to create this freedom

28:56

and Bitcoin being a permissionless protocol. If

28:59

you have Bitcoin, feel free to use it in

29:01

what way you can as long as consensus is

29:03

valid. But we also have made sure all the

29:05

transactions at some point were paid in a block.

29:07

It was not outside of the actual block through

29:10

like, hey, send this to us inside of

29:12

a transaction. We'll put it in our purse.

29:15

Everything went through a block. With that

29:17

said, it's not millions yet.

29:20

It's been out for two and a half months and

29:22

I do have the statistics available. The

29:24

sum of all revenue right now that has

29:26

been generated through Slipstream, 14.83 Bitcoin. I

29:30

think at $70,000 a coin that is close to $1 million are just

29:32

over. So

29:36

yeah, if the Bitcoin price goes up another 5%

29:38

today, you're looking at a direct

29:42

result of seven

29:44

figures, which is

29:47

pretty wild. Not a lot of developers can

29:49

say I worked for X number of months.

29:52

I use these resources. This

29:54

is the direct net additional

29:56

revenue to the company. Which

30:00

is kind of, that's really surprising to me. It's

30:02

also surprising to me that we don't see other

30:04

people building this. That was my, like, we'll get

30:06

into that in a second. But yeah, like in

30:09

general, yes, this has

30:11

earned Marathon a lot more than I've gotten paid.

30:13

So I don't really care, because like I'm a

30:15

contractor and so what, I like, I agree to

30:17

my terms and that's the rules, right? If they

30:20

make a bunch of money from it. But yeah,

30:22

it wasn't hard to develop and it was a

30:24

very successful, it wasn't, is a

30:26

very successful product. The

30:28

sum of profit, so we actually do

30:30

keep track of this metric. So what

30:32

mempool.space expects us to have had made

30:34

for that block versus what we received? 10.511

30:38

Bitcoin. So

30:40

multiply that times the exchange rate, 700,000 bucks.

30:43

Like it's not too bad for some

30:45

like, okay, you got a single dev that literally just

30:48

kind of like built this thing and like didn't blow

30:50

up any blocks for Marathon. You

30:52

know, it's a bit of a

30:54

rhetorical question here, but we, I,

30:56

you know, some people ask like,

30:59

why isn't everybody doing this?

31:01

Seems to me like, you

31:04

know, aren't there just a bunch of Bitcoin developers

31:07

out there and isn't the business of block production

31:09

one of like trying to, you

31:11

know, take any margin you

31:13

can get? Like what's going on

31:15

here? Why isn't everybody doing this? I

31:17

fully agree with that statement. So I

31:19

think you're pretty well aware that Luxor

31:21

pioneered the Foremegger with the Tap of

31:23

Wizards inscription number 652. I

31:27

remember seeing that and I was absolutely fascinated

31:30

by that, like not the fact that it

31:32

was a wizard, but like why

31:35

did more people do this? And then yeah,

31:37

so like back to the consensus policy. And

31:39

then from there I realized like, oh wow,

31:41

Luxor is going to capture this market of

31:43

basically these nonstandard transactions. And

31:45

then nothing happened. Like

31:47

they, I think they've done a couple of them, but

31:49

there wasn't a lot of activity there. And

31:52

moving forward. Yeah. So going

31:55

into Marathon in

31:58

November and realizing like,

32:00

okay, there's hash rate here. Maybe

32:02

I want to create

32:04

the product that I believe in as a Bitcoin

32:06

or that Bitcoin should be. But second, nobody else

32:08

took that. If two pool didn't take it, Luxor

32:10

didn't take it. I had no idea why nobody

32:12

took this. And so with that said,

32:14

yeah, it just went to work. And literally, I

32:17

thought that this was a project everybody's going to

32:19

copy immediately, especially going into the

32:21

halving. Everybody's got to be talking about these

32:23

fees. How are we going to earn enough

32:25

revenue to pay for all this electricity? And

32:27

so just like January, February, just full on

32:30

race to the finish line to create slipstream,

32:32

get it locked and loaded. And yeah,

32:35

I'm still fascinated that other miners didn't

32:37

do that. And I think part of

32:39

that potentially might be the outsourcing of

32:41

templates to block

32:43

producers, which I would say

32:45

currently Antpool would be

32:48

the most notorious because of Xerox B10c's,

32:50

I think it's like work monitor tool. And

32:53

basically what he does is he looks at

32:55

kind of like the templates these stratum pools

32:57

are giving out to their workers and looking

32:59

for patterns in them. And

33:02

he noticed in the patterns, the

33:04

Antpool makes a template and then a couple

33:07

other pools have the

33:09

exact same template. And when you

33:11

build blocks, your node always is going to

33:13

be a little bit different than everybody else's

33:15

node and the transactions that are in there.

33:17

So your template that you're building on the

33:20

jobs you submit to the workers should

33:22

all be different for each pool.

33:24

No pool, two pools should have

33:26

the exact same Merkle

33:28

root to everything. And

33:30

which it turns out that, yeah, you

33:33

had, I think Binance, SBI

33:35

Crypto and a couple of brains on

33:38

especially the Habbings or XB10c live

33:40

played it. And he identified

33:43

these things by color. So if there's a

33:45

pattern of colors, if the colors matched in

33:47

the rows, that means they're using the same

33:49

one. And you saw just like a list

33:51

of like eight different pools, they all have

33:53

the exact same colors as Antpool. So what

33:55

that means is Antpool, along with making the

33:57

blocks for their pool are

33:59

all also selling block templates or providing, I'm

34:02

not going to say selling, I don't know

34:04

exactly what's happening on the backend, but they're

34:06

providing that template for these other pools. And

34:08

I think there are two reasons to do

34:10

that. First of all, potentially

34:13

literally just technical incompetence, right? So they don't

34:15

know how to produce templates. It's easier just

34:17

to ask some nodes somewhere else, hey, can

34:20

you just give this to me? And

34:23

second, maybe it's to mitigate the risk of

34:25

missing out on fees, because if you produce

34:27

your own templates, like for example, Merit does,

34:30

you are responsible for when you make

34:32

less fees or something goes wrong with block.

34:35

If you blow up a block because you

34:37

decided to run your own template generator,

34:39

your own Bitcoin core node, and

34:42

you have people that are subscribed to your pool, how

34:45

do you think like if F2 pool blew up a

34:47

block? I guess F2 pool

34:49

has blown up a couple and it doesn't actually matter.

34:52

Yeah, that's a sick off point last year, but okay.

34:54

Yeah, it's a two sick off. These

34:57

things go, and I think those are relatively

34:59

unnoticed, but like Merit blew up a block

35:01

back and this was before my time. I

35:03

just got to say like, I wasn't there

35:05

when this happened. But

35:07

yeah, they blew up a block and it went all

35:09

over Twitter that Merit had literally like imploded this block

35:11

because they decided to reorder the transactions and

35:14

reorder. And if any other

35:16

pool did that, and that got that much

35:18

traction, they would have to make

35:20

some sort of statement to their hashes going,

35:23

this is why we screwed up. This is

35:25

how we used your hash rate to mine

35:27

on something that's garbage and isn't even Bitcoin.

35:31

Why not just outsource it to Antpool from

35:33

just an ops perspective of just take

35:35

it easy and then if it goes

35:37

wrong with Antpool, it goes wrong basically with what percentage

35:40

of the network is affected by this, like 30, 40%

35:42

at this point. You

35:45

get a little bit of leeway. So those are

35:47

my two thoughts in regard to why

35:49

other pools are using Antpool to produce

35:52

templates. Yeah, so we have, yeah,

35:54

keep going. My final note

35:56

is if you're subscribed to a pool like

35:59

Antpool to produce your... templates, that

36:01

means that you cannot inject your own transactions

36:03

into that. So you can't run a slipstream

36:06

while also being subscribed to some

36:08

other nodes, template generation services. That's

36:10

just not possible. Yeah.

36:13

And so, so you bring up this, uh,

36:15

this observation that

36:18

this may be happening

36:21

very statistically unlikely that these

36:23

are not the same block

36:25

template construction, but

36:28

you also dial in on something, which, I'll

36:31

probably resurrect from a previous comment

36:33

we've exchanged previous, which is,

36:35

um, developer

36:38

resources and technical competence. I

36:40

think this is something that I personally have

36:42

been very surprised by, especially as over the

36:45

past two years, I've been forced to be

36:47

much more in tune with the technical community

36:49

in Bitcoin. And I used to think,

36:52

Oh gosh, well there's hundreds, there's thousands of

36:54

like incredibly deeply competent Bitcoin

36:56

devs. Like you could just pull one

36:58

off the shelf and hire someone

37:00

and they know what they're, and, but, but

37:03

in my eye, as I have discovered, I

37:06

think the landscape for even

37:08

not just the average Bitcoin

37:10

users, technical competence, but even

37:12

the amount of developers who

37:14

have a deep understanding of

37:17

Bitcoin engineering is

37:19

surprisingly limited. Is this

37:21

your experience and what are your thoughts on this? Absolutely.

37:24

100%. Like I, ironically,

37:27

I didn't realize the value of

37:29

my own skillset at all.

37:32

Like literally I had been doing open source

37:34

contributions to Bitcoin core kind of continuously for

37:37

almost two years, three years before I got

37:39

hired on with Maron. Maron was the first

37:41

Bitcoin company I got hired on that. I

37:43

was literally running my own startup, right? And

37:47

it's pretty interesting because like

37:50

this, I'll just say the story upfront

37:52

that I gave them my rate that

37:55

I would normally charge my customers for

37:58

my normal company. They just,

38:00

doubled it right away. It's like, what?

38:02

Can't you guys find Bitcoin devs to

38:04

do this? No, we can't find any

38:06

Bitcoin devs. Most importantly, ones we

38:08

trust that can communicate ideas well. And

38:11

so, yeah, that is... And

38:14

then the calls that followed up a slipstream

38:16

about people were interested, like,

38:18

hey, I saw what you do. How

38:21

can you work for us? Or what can you

38:23

do? We can't find Bitcoin devs. I had no

38:25

idea that this was even a problem. I thought

38:27

you could literally just go on Fiverr or whatever website

38:29

and just go, yeah, I need a Bitcoin dev

38:31

to work on it. That's not the case at all.

38:33

So definitely understanding

38:36

Bitcoin core as a

38:38

protocol and just the

38:40

concepts around what makes Bitcoin work

38:42

in combination with specifically Rust, you

38:45

can do really, really well, I

38:47

would say overall. You got to be able to

38:49

market yourself and develop a brand around your individual,

38:52

maybe something to separate you from the

38:54

other kind of Bitcoin devs in that

38:56

space, but you don't have a lot

38:58

of competition. And my final statement is

39:00

that my education is

39:02

all self-taught. There's no other

39:04

industry that I could go into being

39:07

self-taught without a formal degree and

39:09

all these accolades and stuff, and

39:13

get even remotely the ability to have

39:15

this much fun and do this much cool stuff with

39:18

exahashes. You're building templates

39:22

for 25 exahashes, like megawatts of

39:24

power. It's incredible

39:27

because I have worked in these

39:29

corporate cultures, and if you don't have

39:31

a degree that anchors you down a lot, or you don't have

39:33

the skillset, or you got to work your

39:36

way up this ladder of accolades and certs

39:38

and stuff, maybe

39:40

Bitcoin will become that one day. Maybe someday

39:42

you will have to have your Bitcoin certs.

39:44

You'll have to be certified to understand Bitcoin

39:46

core or Bitcoin protocol. But right now, being

39:50

self-driven and understanding Bitcoin, you

39:52

can do really well. And yeah, you're

39:55

100% correct that the demand

39:57

for Bitcoin or Bitcoin engineers is there.

40:00

And I would say that, yeah, just you can't just

40:02

be at the level of like,

40:05

I'm using JavaScript to interface with Bitcoin core.

40:08

You actually probably could get decently far with that. But

40:10

it's like really understanding the nuances of

40:12

like how Bitcoin core works and you'll

40:15

do really well. So I personally think

40:17

it's about time Bitcoin engineers start getting

40:19

dangle large checks in front of them

40:21

because it's we need I would

40:23

love to see. No, I think two

40:26

sides to that. But continue. Well, well,

40:28

I just I just wish it were

40:30

not such a binary choice to do

40:32

Bitcoin and not make money. I

40:35

wish there was way more ranges of

40:37

like, you know, actual

40:39

profit incentive to go work on

40:42

Bitcoin. But yeah,

40:44

you wanted to reflect on that.

40:46

Yeah, I have some reflections. And

40:48

that is personal biases. Right. So

40:51

I especially after working for Marathon, like,

40:54

you have to make sure that yes, your

40:56

profit driven in terms of yourself because you

40:58

need to eat and survive. Right. Like

41:01

just live at least comfortably. There's definitely nothing too

41:03

fancy or be humble, basically. But

41:05

at the same time, like once you take

41:07

money from an institution, I don't

41:11

think there's any human way to get rid of

41:13

the biases towards that institution. I've even watched my

41:15

own like kind of mindset. I used

41:17

to be a lot into the Bitcoin core RPC

41:19

and the function calls around that. And

41:22

now basically the majority of stuff I'm working on is

41:24

all mining related because that's created

41:27

this feedback loop. The more I work on like get

41:30

block template, etc., like get block hash and

41:32

like all these functions, the

41:34

better off I do. And like there's a direct

41:36

like carrot on a stick. And so I got

41:39

to be incredibly careful that I'm not becoming biased

41:42

against like over time my own beliefs of what

41:44

Bitcoin is. Like I need to make sure I

41:46

still stay grounded in that and that the money

41:48

doesn't create bad incentives to basically

41:50

go directions that maybe even the free

41:52

market wouldn't agree with. out

41:56

there that seem like their parent

41:58

company is like pushing rope. And then these

42:00

things waterfall into changes like PRs and Bitcoin

42:03

Core. We need this to do this kind

42:05

of stuff. And there isn't actually any market

42:07

demand for that. It's just a parent

42:10

company who might be seated by

42:12

some VC funding. There's just

42:14

basically keeping track of biases

42:16

and understanding that by

42:19

taking money from a corporation, you

42:21

will become biased. And as such,

42:23

the altruism that comes

42:25

with just freely with

42:27

your own extra time contributing to Bitcoin Core,

42:30

that really, it doesn't go away completely.

42:32

You just got to understand why, how

42:35

your system will change when you get

42:37

hired onto a company like this. And

42:41

yeah, overall, I think it's so far I've done

42:43

a pretty decent job at not trying to exert

42:45

corporate influence into any of my Bitcoin Core PRs,

42:47

which ironically, I haven't had much time to work

42:50

on lately because of the fact that I've been

42:52

so busy with marathon. So

42:54

before we get into the testing, because I

42:57

want to chat about the test net. You

42:59

said you get to do fun things

43:01

with multiple eggs of hash. Let's

43:03

just talk about one or two of those fun things. The

43:08

famous M block, I think it

43:10

got maybe one or two days

43:12

worth of Twitter discourse. But

43:15

I think it's probably one of the most

43:17

fun things to happen this entire year. Talk

43:20

to me about the M block. What's

43:22

the story behind it? The M

43:24

block, that was literally an overcommitment

43:27

on my part. So I had just brought

43:29

up Slipstream Core and released it and we

43:31

started using it on the template generators at

43:33

Mara. And so we're running it live

43:35

and the CTO goes, what

43:37

can it do? Transaction

43:40

ordering in Bitcoin is

43:42

absolutely insane to get

43:44

right. And so overall,

43:46

there were three runs at

43:49

this that happened. And

43:51

two failed, but the good news is they

43:53

failed in such a way that nobody noticed

43:55

or cared because there weren't massive failures. Then

43:57

the kind of. The

44:00

nice part about the M block is

44:03

that if it's successful, it

44:05

becomes a massive success like all over Twitter like it

44:07

did. But if it failed, kind

44:10

of wrong. So AKA the M was backwards,

44:12

upside down, cock eyed or it's flipped. You

44:15

get roasted, you're done. Like Twitter is going

44:17

to do just absolute new cue. You're the

44:19

old fat company, blah, blah, blah, all these

44:21

things like that. They come out of

44:23

this stuff. But if you fail really bad,

44:25

it just looks like a scrambled block.

44:27

So nobody kind of knows what you're up to. The

44:30

other thing is not tipping your hat on testnet

44:32

that we were doing this. So it like literally

44:34

we went live with every single one. Blowing

44:38

up a block was a concern because all

44:40

these transactions were injected through a said

44:42

raw transaction, which means that they did pass

44:45

mental acceptance policy. And

44:47

then the last thing is, okay, we

44:50

had two choices between creating our

44:53

own transactions and using

44:55

mempool based transactions that were already

44:57

there. We

44:59

wanted to use mempool based transactions and I had

45:02

the code to do it. The problem

45:04

with it though, the fees were so low in the

45:06

mempool, it was all green. There was no contrast. You

45:08

couldn't make a picture because of the fact that the

45:10

fees were eight cents a beat byte.

45:12

But that also led into why it was so easy

45:15

to do that stunt is because if

45:17

it is successful, you

45:19

only forego like $7,000 in

45:22

fees and you get the entire two

45:24

days of mindshare on Twitter and you

45:26

get to demonstrate the flex of like,

45:28

this is our template generation capacity and

45:31

marathon. Like we have all these cool tools

45:33

built from slipstream. And so it was

45:35

obviously like, okay, let's just do this. I know there's going

45:37

to be some people that are, there are going to be

45:39

some people that don't like it, but at

45:41

the end of the day, there actually were monetary

45:43

transactions in that block, but mempool dots face only

45:46

shows 7,396 squares before it truncates the rest

45:50

of them. So there's actually another like 1000

45:52

monetary transactions or a third of the block

45:54

that exists above that that you

45:56

can't see. And then the next thing

45:58

is okay. We decided to use our

46:01

own transactions because a mempool wouldn't produce enough color. Well,

46:04

Marathon then has to basically pay for

46:06

those transactions because nobody else is going

46:08

to pay those fees. You

46:11

have to build these exact transactions. They're all consistent, 7,396

46:13

of them. There's

46:16

some interesting things. First, don't lose the money. With

46:20

that said, you have a bunch of pre-signed transactions that are paying

46:22

fee rates of up to $130 a transaction or 2,000 cents a

46:24

fee by. If

46:28

a miner were to basically get a hold

46:30

of your stratum jobs, they could then work

46:32

and get one transaction, not too

46:34

bad. But the worst would be a reorg. If

46:37

we did make the mblock with those

46:39

really high fee paying transactions, and just

46:41

by chance, amp-pool also mines block. The

46:44

network accepts amp-pool's block and our block. Next

46:47

thing you know, amp-pool's block gets mined on top of... Oh.

46:51

Those transactions would all go back into

46:53

the mempools of the nodes, yet reabsorbed.

46:56

At that point, you would... Well,

46:59

the odds of marathon just mining a block right

47:01

after that are zero. Is this

47:03

a dumb question, but is

47:05

there a scenario where amp-pool might get the

47:07

mblock in its own block? No. The

47:11

other transactions were such a low fee rate. It would

47:13

be basically the really high fee rate, 2,000 sets of

47:15

B-byte, the 150 sets of B-byte, and

47:17

then the rest of their eight sets per B-byte,

47:19

but the one set per B-byte once, the green

47:22

squares, and that would all just get thrown away.

47:26

They would basically walk away with, I think, a

47:28

total value of $130,000 worth of transactions. Of

47:32

course, some

47:35

teams on Twitter would get like, yeah, they took marathons,

47:37

buddy, look at those guys, they screwed up. But

47:39

at the end of the day, I actually used

47:41

the filters to my advantage. I

47:45

created, if you look at each one of those transactions,

47:47

the amp-block, they're non-standard. They have double lock returns. That

47:49

means if the block did get

47:52

orphaned, those transactions, when they

47:54

tried to get injected into the mempools

47:56

of the other miners, would get rejected

47:58

from that. As such, I had the...

48:00

unilateral exit ready. So if we did

48:02

have an orphan, I would just basically

48:04

broadcast one standard transaction that consolidates all

48:06

these giving Marra their money back. Yeah.

48:09

I feel like this is, you know,

48:11

for if anybody's managed to stick with

48:13

us this far, I know, no,

48:16

no, no, like I don't know how

48:18

you explain this without, without getting super deep

48:20

and technical. Like you, like you just, you

48:22

have to, you have a lot riding on

48:24

a lot of very specific ordering

48:28

of, yeah, yeah, scenarios.

48:30

And, and you're doing it

48:32

with multiple exit hashes

48:34

behind you. Correct. This is

48:36

like a golden era for

48:39

experimentation in Bitcoin.

48:43

Yeah. Well, what are your thoughts on that? It

48:45

is a goal. It was the golden

48:47

era, probably still is, but there are some

48:49

other things that also allowed this to happen.

48:52

First of all, the fees being so low, right?

48:54

Like if the fees were actually like, let's say

48:56

a Bitcoin in that block Marra

48:59

probably go, no, we don't want to give up the

49:01

fees to do this marketing stuff, but because it was

49:03

so low, whatever. Right.

49:05

Second, the fees were so small

49:07

compared to the sub-seat, you're getting 6.25 Bitcoin for

49:10

that block. So even if the end logo didn't

49:12

work out, you still got a

49:14

ton of Bitcoin.

49:16

Like, so you know, it's

49:19

a screw up, but it's not worse. So, but now

49:21

it's 3.125. Okay. So the fees

49:24

add up to be a lot more as

49:26

a percentage. So experimentation is hindered a little

49:28

bit more because can you actually afford to

49:31

lose those fees for one block? If

49:33

something goes wrong, the answer probably still is

49:35

you're probably going to be okay. Right? Like it's still

49:37

0.1 BTC, not too bad. And

49:40

then you get into the future where it's

49:42

all fees. You won't be

49:45

able to do this any longer because you can't afford

49:47

to lose that kind of value with the hash rate.

49:50

And then my last note about the

49:52

M block specifically was

49:54

the feedback mechanism.

49:56

So AKA ensuring your transactions were in

49:59

the right position. in the template because you had

50:01

to modulate them in the order. So

50:04

basically, I had outlayed with the

50:06

preside transactions, the exact transaction IDs in the order from

50:08

0 to 7,395. And I would check

50:12

the block template to make sure

50:14

everything's lined up. If anything wasn't lined

50:17

up, I'd wiggle it, basically adjust that fee

50:19

rate by prioritized transaction until it fit into

50:21

its correct slot. That's my final note. That

50:23

was the last technical challenge, is creating a

50:26

feedback mechanism to validate with 100% certainty

50:28

that the moment that block gets mined,

50:31

you know that it's going to be the correct output.

50:34

Okay, that's all. So experimentation is

50:36

limited. Yeah, one of the

50:39

things I keep telling people is like, I

50:42

don't think Bitcoin is for JPEGs long

50:44

term. I would like people to price

50:46

out JPEGs. In the

50:48

meantime, while we're not pricing out

50:50

these transactions, we

50:52

can still experiment, which is

50:54

a double-edged sword. One, Bitcoin is

50:57

perhaps on a slower path to

51:00

realizing its fee revenue towards miners. But

51:02

on the other hand, it's

51:05

a blessing that we have this time

51:07

to actually experiment because I feel like

51:09

there hasn't been... There's been Bitcoin experimentation,

51:12

but not at this

51:14

level. And I'm surprised that as

51:16

far as I'm aware, nobody's done

51:19

this kind of stuff, even in Bitcoin's 15-year-long

51:23

history. So... I would say

51:25

there have been some awesome experiments in

51:27

the past. People are creating all sorts

51:29

of interesting blocks. And there's actually an

51:32

entire file system built onto Bitcoin in

51:34

2013. The guy basically in the outputs

51:36

of pay to multisig wrote

51:39

a Python program. So if you decode these

51:41

addresses, there's actually a Python program in how

51:43

to use the Bitcoin blocks as a file

51:45

system back then. It's ordinals without the ability

51:47

to transfer them. It was just data storage

51:49

on Bitcoin. And it was used for actually

51:51

a little bit because I went through and

51:54

I looked at all the nonstandard transactions in

51:56

Bitcoin that were using these kind of pub

51:58

keys in multisig addresses instead of... using

52:00

those types of transactions for money, they're using

52:02

it for data. And basically

52:04

storing data on Bitcoin has a history that

52:06

goes back. It's not just now, it's literally

52:09

been for ages. People have

52:11

been storing data on Bitcoin. This

52:13

is fascinating. I had no idea. I thought

52:15

I'd done like my own deep dive into

52:17

the various ways people have used Bitcoin's, I

52:19

would say data layer, but like that

52:23

is fascinating. I

52:25

was super excited to see

52:28

that because what happened was I

52:30

wrote a PR basically to filter out

52:32

stamps on Bitcoin and make them completely

52:35

unspendable. So if somebody put a completely

52:37

invalid public key in there and

52:39

marks it as unspendable. And so I went through

52:41

and like, how many of these transactions exist on

52:43

Bitcoin? They're totally unspendable. You never could spend them

52:46

ever. They're literally mathematically impossible. And then

52:48

I get to like block out like 230,000 or something. It

52:51

starts like, I saw my script just start lighting up with

52:53

a bunch of these transactions. What's going

52:55

on here? Who was doing

52:58

data on Bitcoin back then? And then I

53:00

convert these pub keys into ASCII. That's

53:03

a Python file. And it's literally called

53:05

file store on Bitcoin. Somebody

53:08

like literally embedded the program into Bitcoin.

53:10

And then you see there are files that

53:12

use this file store protocol to

53:14

be read from the Bitcoin time chain. And yeah,

53:17

it's been happening for years. And yeah,

53:20

it's just the white paper itself

53:22

is embedded in Bitcoin, not using

53:25

that particular protocol, that uses multi-segue

53:27

addresses. I want to see

53:29

you do a whole thread on this to

53:31

like break down the obscurity. You might call

53:33

it Bitcoin archeology that

53:36

you've discovered in your travels

53:39

along the chain. So

53:42

I don't wanna get too far. I

53:44

wanna talk about testnet because this

53:47

is one of the other, I think under

53:49

appreciated like side

53:51

stories. Because I mean,

53:53

first of all, like most Bitcoiners don't even think about

53:55

testnet. They don't even realize that there are various nets

53:58

to test. Um, and,

54:02

uh, but you re-orged an

54:05

entire blockchain, you re re-orged entire

54:07

approval work blockchain that

54:09

we call testnet v4 and

54:12

maybe talk about that first, but then pull

54:14

back and then talk about like, what

54:17

preceded this in the discussion

54:19

on, on Bitcoin's

54:21

testnet v3. So let's

54:23

jump to you re-orging testnet

54:25

v4. Yeah. So re-orging

54:27

testnet v4, I got

54:29

excited. So I saw, um, on

54:32

mempool.space at the top of testnet three, cause

54:34

I'm always working on testnet. I saw

54:36

the top all new testnet four came out. I

54:38

was like, what there's a testnet

54:40

four. And then I go

54:43

in there and it's like an entire

54:45

block explore for testnet four. This is interesting.

54:47

And then I do have mononaut and I was like,

54:50

dude, why isn't this testnet four? He links me to

54:52

the PR on Bitcoin core. And I

54:54

was like, okay, cool. I'm going to run it. And

54:56

then, uh, after going through and I look at the

54:58

difficulty as like, whoa, that's a low difficulty. That's not

55:01

very secure. And it's like,

55:04

I've always wanted to do this. I've always wanted to know, can

55:06

you go back to the beginning of a chain and redo

55:08

all the proof of work? So, um,

55:11

basically I'm mind a few thousand blocks in

55:13

like a minute or two, uh, with an

55:15

ASIC and that's 19 J pro on testnet

55:17

four. And then I stopped because like, okay.

55:20

I definitely have enough hash power to do this. And

55:23

so the first thing I do is I go

55:25

into the Bitcoin core node. And I invalidate block

55:28

number one. So I just do invalidate block

55:30

and the hash of block number one. So

55:33

that's not the Genesis block. The Genesis block is zero, but the

55:35

first block I said it was invalid. That means

55:37

that all the subsequent following blocks on that chain

55:39

then become invalid to my node. So

55:42

my node right now looks like it's at a

55:44

height of zero, the Genesis block. Well, it's

55:46

time for me to start creating a few blocks. And

55:49

so I fire up CK solo. It's

55:51

a free, uh, pool implementation. You can download. I

55:53

would highly recommend it for anybody with like a

55:55

bit acts that wants to actually do a real

55:57

solo minor in a self-sovereign manner, uh, to

55:59

you. But yeah,

56:02

I point and that's 19 at this thing. And like

56:04

within that, I had like

56:06

500 blocks, that the thousand

56:08

blocks that hit my first difficulty adjustment. And the

56:10

nice part is it was building blocks so fast

56:12

that the limit to the speed at which it

56:15

could mine was the bandwidth, how fast it could

56:17

interact with the network, not how fast it can

56:19

hash. And so that implicitly

56:21

kind of lowered my hash rate relative

56:23

to what it would see. And essentially,

56:25

the max difficulty adjustment upwards is up

56:28

to 4x or add 300% to the

56:30

current. So, okay,

56:32

I mine my first 2016 blocks. Portland

56:37

HODL has to have its first difficulty adjustment. It

56:40

increases by 4x or up 300%. And

56:43

then it doesn't even slow it down. It's still

56:45

moving, just like, just turn it out blocks. I

56:48

turn on another 2016 blocks, like another 10 minutes, no problem. So

56:51

I'm at 4,016. I got to get to 7,000,

56:53

like something. I'm

56:57

posting in this group chat. I'm

56:59

like, I'm coming through your coins, like Rhyme

57:02

Mail, MonoNot, and all these guys. And I'm

57:04

posting every type of mining towards that chain

57:06

tip. And then, okay, start

57:09

going. And then another difficulty adjustment. Now

57:11

I'm starting to feel it a little

57:13

bit. Now it's like 35 minutes for

57:15

that difficulty adjustment to go through. And

57:17

then to get to 8,000, whatever, then

57:20

it was a little bit slower. And then after that,

57:22

it started getting really slow. But I basically

57:24

got to utilize that

57:26

difficulty adjustment upwards in the limit to allow

57:28

me to mine through those number of blocks.

57:31

And of course, as I got

57:33

the heaviest chain, my question is, what

57:35

did the nodes do with this? Now that

57:37

I've created this beautiful, very long chain that's

57:39

longer than the regular testnet 4 chain, will

57:42

the other nodes just willy-nilly download it and go,

57:44

this is the heaviest chain. We're going to use

57:47

it, even though Portland Hoddle mined every single block

57:49

to himself and now has over a million testnet

57:51

4 coins? And the

57:53

answer is yes. All the other nodes very happily

57:55

saw that I had the heaviest chain. They took

57:57

in these blocks in order. put

58:00

them together and then deleted all the old blocks and

58:02

like in the morning I saw like bottom

58:05

dot those guys are like my money's gone

58:07

you know like all their balances show zero

58:09

because the chain when validated against that their

58:12

money doesn't exist any longer. So

58:14

that was my reorg on testnet second

58:16

part of that the good guy aspect.

58:19

Well game theory does play out a little bit here.

58:22

I do want to keep my test net coins and

58:25

if I was a bad guy and I reorg

58:27

the chains take everybody's coins that

58:29

they're just going to change the genesis block before the release.

58:31

They're probably going to do it anyways right but

58:34

nonetheless my chances are lower if I

58:36

just give them back their money

58:38

right and then everybody plays nice and fair and I

58:40

mine off of their tip and I end

58:42

up mining more coins that way. So

58:44

what I did was I actually went

58:46

through invalidated block number two on my

58:48

own chain re accepted or reconsidered block

58:50

for the one I invalidated previously. One

58:52

node on the network still had the

58:54

old chain I picked that chain up

58:56

and then I started mining on top

58:58

of that chain until I became the

59:00

heaviest chain again and thus

59:03

replacing my previously attacked chain. Everybody

59:05

got their money back I ended up with 800,000, 900,000

59:08

test net coins. Everybody's happy but

59:10

it was so exciting to literally

59:12

just point and ASIC at

59:15

a chain that had only been CPU mined

59:17

and what that like largely shows first of

59:19

all why having the highest hash rate possible

59:21

is the most important thing for any chain.

59:23

Like you have to have a secure chain

59:25

because if you don't you

59:27

could just re-org you could just rewrite

59:29

all this data all the monetary history

59:32

if you don't secure it via that hash

59:34

rate enough hash rate to ensure that the

59:37

honest actors represent the chain not the dishonest

59:39

actor like Portland Hoddle was on

59:41

testnet for only by the way like

59:43

I fully intended on making things right

59:45

so yeah

59:47

like just people should always

59:50

think about that especially with chains like BSD

59:52

or BCH like what happens if

59:54

Bitcoin miners decide to just point there? How long

59:56

would it take to just re-order? or

1:00:00

just write empty blocks on top of the

1:00:02

last checkpoint to where you are now. The

1:00:04

answer is not long. 2X hash is not

1:00:07

enough security for a chain at all. So

1:00:10

that's my testnet for exploration. And then yeah, so

1:00:12

I ended up the honest actor. I think I'm

1:00:14

back to like 800,000, 900,000 testnet for coins. Which

1:00:20

I think is hilarious. I actually didn't

1:00:22

realize you re-orged yourself again. So

1:00:27

that's really fascinating. And

1:00:30

it's, yeah, to your

1:00:32

point about hash rate

1:00:34

as a measure of security, there's been a

1:00:36

lot of discussion on this. But

1:00:39

kind of like even a lot of the

1:00:41

software conversations, it's all been theoretical. It's all

1:00:43

been papers and not a lot of actual

1:00:45

implementation of what does it actually look

1:00:47

like to re-org a chain? Have we

1:00:49

actually tested whether the nodes do accept Evie's

1:00:51

chain? We know you've got the rules in

1:00:54

there, but like, have we seen it? What

1:00:56

is the testnet for, if not,

1:00:58

to test and demonstrate these types of

1:01:01

things? Which leads me to another, the

1:01:04

other question, that of

1:01:06

testnet v3. There

1:01:08

was some discussion of this on the Bitcoin

1:01:11

mailing list. Jameson Lop

1:01:13

notably started with doing what's called a

1:01:15

block storm, I think. Is that the

1:01:18

right term? Yeah, correct. You

1:01:20

basically can game the time stamps to do the blocks

1:01:22

for the path. I want to try to

1:01:24

explain, you know, maybe to kind

1:01:26

of lower the education level here and

1:01:28

like explain what exactly was

1:01:31

going on with testnet v3 and

1:01:34

why we started to see Lop

1:01:36

and other people like Nick from

1:01:39

Luxor, Hashbinder also jump in. Why

1:01:41

was there interesting block

1:01:44

production, block

1:01:46

storm production on testnet v3?

1:01:50

It was because of the difficulty of the

1:01:52

attack. It's fairly low on testnet to attack

1:01:55

testnet. And by attack, typically

1:01:57

that is creating a bunch of blocks.

1:02:00

very quickly that have nothing in

1:02:02

them. And so I guess

1:02:05

a little bit of history is that recently

1:02:07

some projects were asking Jameson Lott

1:02:09

for testnet four, or sorry, testnet

1:02:12

three coins, and

1:02:14

he gave them testnet three coins, he

1:02:16

found out they're kind of actually running

1:02:18

shitcoin projects with these testnet three coins

1:02:20

and claiming that these coins had real

1:02:22

world proof of work backed value. And

1:02:25

that's not a lie. They are actually backed

1:02:27

by proof of work. But the problem is

1:02:30

the proof of work back to my previous

1:02:32

statement about security. It's basically three S 19

1:02:34

or $6,000 in machines that they're back that

1:02:36

whole networks backed by there is no security

1:02:39

to test that three. So

1:02:41

moving forward, there also was another

1:02:43

website that popped up by testnet

1:02:45

coins.com or something like that. And

1:02:47

they were actively selling testnet coins

1:02:49

for pinpoint giving testnet coins value.

1:02:51

And that typically has always been

1:02:53

the tripping point for, Hey,

1:02:57

we got a, we got to take care of testnet. Let's nuke

1:02:59

it. And like, let's get the new one going

1:03:01

after these coins accrue some real world value. You

1:03:03

can't have that happen. And you got to enforce

1:03:06

this to make sure that people don't ever try

1:03:08

to give test set up. You have to reset

1:03:10

blowaway test that. So what that means is

1:03:13

that when you reset testnet, you

1:03:15

start from zero first block and then you start mining

1:03:17

all the way to the new shame tip and

1:03:20

testnet is for development purposes anyway. So who

1:03:22

cares if it gets blown away. Next

1:03:26

James and lock exploited a rule in testnet

1:03:28

called the 20 minute rule. And

1:03:30

that is that if no block has been found in 20

1:03:33

minutes, the next block is allowed to be any hat.

1:03:37

So that doesn't mean there needs to be number

1:03:39

of zeros or any difficult to do it. You

1:03:42

can just submit a block and it will get accepted. The

1:03:46

reason why James and lock was so easily able to submit these empty blocks

1:03:49

was he would create the empty block at like basically right

1:03:51

after a block was created

1:03:53

and then he would hold on to that empty block. And

1:03:55

if 20 minutes had passed and nothing was

1:03:58

there, you would submit that empty block with the. and

1:04:00

boom, next thing you know, he was able to get

1:04:02

that difficulty adjustment to drop

1:04:04

creating a blockstorm. AKA,

1:04:07

instead of having a nice consistent pace of one block

1:04:10

on average every 10 minutes, he

1:04:12

created several thousand blocks an

1:04:14

hour, I think like 20,000 blocks a day or something.

1:04:17

That's really hard on nodes because of the fact that

1:04:19

these blocks are propagating through the network, they're

1:04:22

validating in some sense and the network are slower than others and

1:04:24

things are getting re-orged on top of each other. And

1:04:28

it created such a mess that even more than Mara

1:04:30

does some internal testing on testnet and

1:04:33

he broke a few things. So yeah, at

1:04:36

that point it was actually really nice. He did

1:04:38

that because we then realized some flaws in

1:04:40

the implementations of software we have, or Mara has.

1:04:43

And so, but yeah, essentially what he did

1:04:46

was he created a lot of blocks really

1:04:48

quick and two, he created some

1:04:50

time stamps in orders that like

1:04:52

the actual time that is recorded on the block,

1:04:54

it's not required to actually be accurate, has

1:04:56

to follow a few rules. But yeah,

1:04:58

these were not accurate time stamps on

1:05:01

these blocks and that caused some other

1:05:03

problems. So yeah, essentially Jameson Lock named

1:05:05

testnet for unusable for quite a period

1:05:07

of time. And now that attack is

1:05:09

very well known publicly and there are

1:05:11

other people also still doing this on

1:05:13

testnet. If you go to mempool.space right

1:05:15

now, you'll see that there are

1:05:17

a lot of empty blocks. They haven't gotten the

1:05:19

same block storm that he got where the difficulty

1:05:22

moves really low, but it's still

1:05:24

pretty decent, really

1:05:26

problematic. Yeah, and in the reason to

1:05:28

go and do infinite degeneracy, maybe

1:05:33

we can just kind of help them

1:05:35

lose interest. That was kind of my

1:05:37

interpretation of it. I think that's

1:05:39

really all you can do. And then second, mitigate

1:05:42

these kinds of attacks on testnet for higher stability.

1:05:44

So you can actually, because next question is how

1:05:46

do you create a permissionless testing platform that doesn't

1:05:48

just get attacked and destroyed, right? Like

1:05:50

testnet has- I don't know how, yeah. Like

1:05:53

if you want to test out merge mining for

1:05:55

a side chain, you have to use testnet. You

1:05:57

can't use signet. You need actual mining equipment running

1:05:59

on that. The testnet's the only proof

1:06:01

of work backed Bitcoin test network.

1:06:03

Signet, it doesn't do that. And

1:06:06

so the second thing as well is if you want to test

1:06:09

block propagation, block connection times, et

1:06:11

cetera, testnet works really

1:06:13

well for this also because you're actually

1:06:15

interacting with real miners. A stratum pool

1:06:17

implementation. So let's say you modify your

1:06:20

pool. Well, testnet does

1:06:22

really good for that too. So you can't do these

1:06:24

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this was a really good conversation about Slipstream

1:07:02

and testnet, but I have some

1:07:04

other topics that I want

1:07:07

to introduce. I want to get your

1:07:09

thoughts on, and some of them can

1:07:11

be a little spicy, but there are

1:07:13

topics of the day, especially given that

1:07:15

it seems to me that there

1:07:18

is real material conversation

1:07:21

again on Bitcoin

1:07:23

Core, this topic of spam,

1:07:25

the potential soft fork, and

1:07:28

even just Bitcoin consensus broadly.

1:07:32

I guess I'll probably start with Bitcoin

1:07:34

Core as your contributor, and you spend

1:07:36

a lot of time caring about this.

1:07:40

What are your thoughts on Bitcoin

1:07:43

Core and the current discussion on

1:07:45

it? I

1:07:47

think Bitcoin Core is the best we

1:07:50

have as humanity for reference implementation of

1:07:52

Bitcoin. There is no better implementation.

1:07:54

It's Slipstream Core by me. It's not better

1:07:56

than Bitcoin Core. Libre Relay,

1:07:58

not better than Bitcoin Core. introspection,

1:34:00

create different types of activity

1:34:02

on Bitcoin, and enacting or enabling

1:34:04

that software, and then going later on,

1:34:07

I kind of wish we didn't do that. And

1:34:10

like closing up that whole line of

1:34:12

thinking, SegWit to me was

1:34:14

kind of that exact line of thinking. I

1:34:17

wanted it, I loved the idea of SegWit, the

1:34:20

kind of block size increase, the sell

1:34:22

of the people basically prune, be able

1:34:24

to prune these inputs through

1:34:27

the witness section, increase in TPS,

1:34:30

and later on I realized like, okay,

1:34:32

through other softworks, including Taproot, it created

1:34:34

some pretty poor incentives that led to

1:34:36

my previous statement of, we

1:34:39

have Bitcoiners that aren't out competing

1:34:41

data. Bitcoin is the

1:34:43

data that people get discounts. Like, so

1:34:47

I want very fixed opcodes. I

1:34:49

appreciate that. Yeah,

1:34:51

I think it's interesting because I

1:34:54

feel like a lot of us are unified on

1:34:58

one general criticism of Bitcoin, which is that

1:35:00

not enough people use it yet. And I

1:35:04

think this, in my own personal kind

1:35:07

of Bitcoin understanding and

1:35:09

exploration, I've learned that, oh, there's

1:35:11

not that many Bitcoin developers. Oh,

1:35:14

to me, we have

1:35:16

a huge top of funnel problem for

1:35:20

Bitcoin, and I think it should cause some

1:35:22

self reflection, which then leads me to one

1:35:25

of my, I wanna close this

1:35:27

out with a really good, one of my, the

1:35:29

way I was introduced to Portland Hoddle, which

1:35:32

was I was introduced to you as

1:35:34

a Bitcoin educator. That

1:35:36

was my, like the first, I

1:35:39

actually read through some of your old threads

1:35:41

or things you'd said in different

1:35:44

places where you were explaining kind

1:35:46

of very difficult technical concepts in

1:35:48

Bitcoin. And I

1:35:51

feel like a lot of the true, the

1:35:53

most hardcore Bitcoiners, the

1:35:56

most, the biggest passion projects we have

1:35:58

are in education. and bring new people

1:36:00

into the ecosystem. I

1:36:03

kind of want to. So I just I

1:36:05

would love to ask you some questions about your

1:36:07

how you how do

1:36:09

you Orange Peel people or the

1:36:12

effective talking points for you? And

1:36:14

then what education topics are you? Do

1:36:17

you think are severely lacking in the

1:36:19

existing Bitcoin or knowledge

1:36:22

base? The first one, Orange

1:36:25

Filling. I don't think I've ever been

1:36:28

good at Orange Filling people. Unfortunately,

1:36:30

I'm typically pretty technical overall

1:36:32

in my discussion. And one of the things,

1:36:34

by the way, a little bit of background,

1:36:36

I apologize. I work out of my kitchen.

1:36:38

So good. Yeah. So with that said,

1:36:41

most of my education is really focused

1:36:43

around self custody. That's

1:36:45

the most important thing of Bitcoin that you

1:36:47

have a UTXO on layer one that you

1:36:50

secure your keys and really focusing on not

1:36:52

getting scammed. So by scammed,

1:36:54

I mean having your Bitcoin taken from you,

1:36:57

losing out on buying Bitcoin because you

1:36:59

end up not you, but someone ends

1:37:01

up buying a shit coin like why

1:37:03

Bitcoin over BSD or BCH? Like

1:37:06

I said earlier, you don't want to put

1:37:08

your money in a network with two extra

1:37:10

hashes of security like these kind of things

1:37:12

and then creating formats

1:37:15

that are easily accessible to people such as the

1:37:17

slide decks. So I would create like these slides

1:37:19

on Twitter and. Ultimately,

1:37:23

analogies. So always

1:37:25

try and refine analogies to

1:37:27

relate Bitcoin based ideas to

1:37:29

real world things that

1:37:31

has always been kind of the go to way

1:37:33

to try to orange pill people. But

1:37:36

at the end of the day, no, I don't think

1:37:38

I've been the world's best orange. I think I've given

1:37:40

a lot of people are getting into Bitcoin that

1:37:43

have been orange built by like the Jeff Booth,

1:37:45

et cetera, that are really actually good at this

1:37:47

stuff, giving them tools to

1:37:49

further refine their interest or satisfy that

1:37:51

inquisition or inquisitiveness to dig into the

1:37:53

box of what is Bitcoin at that

1:37:56

point? What kind of hardware wallet should

1:37:58

I buy like these kind of. things.

1:38:00

And that's kind of what I think

1:38:02

I've been hopefully really good at. And

1:38:05

especially through Twitter spaces where you can

1:38:07

directly talk to people in real time. So

1:38:09

if somebody doesn't understand what I'm saying, they'll

1:38:11

literally come on stage. Portland, you make no

1:38:13

sense. Tell me in simpler terms. Then we

1:38:15

back up. And then we basically go back

1:38:17

to the basics of this is where you

1:38:20

get all your good analogies. Correct.

1:38:22

Because if you say something that doesn't make sense

1:38:24

on Twitter spaces, guess what? Somebody's come up. What

1:38:27

did you say? And then you got to,

1:38:29

okay, let's rethink this analogy. So,

1:38:33

and then, yeah, so the fall question

1:38:36

is, um, where, what do you think

1:38:38

the existing Bitcoin or landscape, uh,

1:38:41

needs to learn what is not being communicated

1:38:43

or is there

1:38:46

what, what do Bitcoiners typically not

1:38:48

grok about the very network they

1:38:50

love and promote? Oh

1:38:53

boy. Um, should

1:38:57

I go with the dark Portland answer

1:38:59

or the light Portland answer? Uh, start

1:39:01

with dark and with light. Do both. Okay.

1:39:03

The dark Portland answer to

1:39:06

make Bitcoin successful long-term it is when

1:39:08

I go back, it is technically already

1:39:10

inevitable, but the ultimate scaling

1:39:13

solution or to create the scaling

1:39:15

problem we're developing solutions for Bitcoiners

1:39:17

need to provide value. Like

1:39:20

they need to provide goods, services,

1:39:22

things to do with Bitcoin, incentivize,

1:39:24

take Bitcoin, do a marketplace, ask

1:39:27

for being paid in Bitcoin for your work. If

1:39:29

you can stomach the volatility, like do things

1:39:31

with this internet money, right? Like that's

1:39:33

how value is money is worthless if you

1:39:36

can't spend it anywhere. Like store of value

1:39:38

to me, it just, I

1:39:40

started to say, I think it represents a

1:39:42

giant trap because if we have the store

1:39:44

of value that nobody uses and

1:39:46

the network's unsecured, none of it mattered in

1:39:48

the end anyways. It would just be rewritten

1:39:50

by ASINs. You have to

1:39:52

have on-chain activity and as such, yeah,

1:39:55

just see like as a Bitcoiner

1:39:57

how you could provide value to Bitcoin,

1:39:59

like really. like, can you program something?

1:40:01

Can you ask for Bitcoin? Just

1:40:03

don't just buy Bitcoin and then literally just forget

1:40:05

about it. Expect to sit on your butt in

1:40:08

GU. It probably will do that anyways. But

1:40:10

if you really want to put rocket fuel on that thing to

1:40:12

make it go just like that, find

1:40:14

great use cases for Bitcoin. Use

1:40:17

it as money. Find reasons for people to exchange

1:40:19

with it. Yeah,

1:40:23

that's kind of the ultimate

1:40:25

future for Bitcoin, I think. We

1:40:27

really need the use cases on

1:40:29

chain to truly fulfill my original

1:40:32

idea that monetary transactions will outprice

1:40:34

every other type of transaction in

1:40:36

Bitcoin. That's the Dark

1:40:38

Portland answer. So- Give

1:40:41

me Light Portland. Listen on a good note here.

1:40:43

Okay. Light

1:40:46

Portland is that Bitcoin is inevitable. It's

1:40:48

going to happen anyways. It's

1:40:50

literally the strongest money. It's backed by

1:40:52

the most hash rate out of any

1:40:55

chain in existence. Nothing has

1:40:57

just the amount of energy going into

1:40:59

it. Bitcoin is successfully operating day after

1:41:01

day after day without failure. Bitcoiners

1:41:05

right now are more engaged than they

1:41:07

ever have been in the technical discussion

1:41:09

of Bitcoin. So trying to shape their

1:41:11

ideas and viewpoints. I'm watching the same

1:41:13

people that came into my Twitter space

1:41:15

lessons to learn about how to set

1:41:18

up their first hardware wallet, now

1:41:20

discussing softworks like OpCTV and

1:41:23

OpCAT. That

1:41:25

gives me a lot of hope for Bitcoin that

1:41:27

we're going in the right direction, that people are

1:41:29

really starting to understand not

1:41:31

just that Bitcoin is something you

1:41:33

were sold because of NGU. That

1:41:35

instead it's about what Bitcoin is

1:41:37

and what you want Bitcoin to

1:41:40

become because Bitcoin cannot be defined

1:41:42

by any one individual. So

1:41:44

that's what gives me hope is

1:41:46

that people are understanding more than ever

1:41:48

what Bitcoin is and that we're shaping

1:41:51

the future of Bitcoin to be what

1:41:53

Bitcoiners overall, the social consensus of

1:41:55

Bitcoin needs to be. I don't know what

1:41:57

that's going to be. Maybe it's an OpCAT future. Maybe it's