Damus

Recent Notes

Dr. LowTimePref · 161w
For now - let's put discussion of Nano on side bar - I literally know NOTHING about it ..... what I do know is 99% of every token coin I have ever spent over 1 day investigating has been a scam - pre-...
MJ profile picture
So look into it or ask questions.

I've also spent countless hours looking into potential alternatives only to be disappointed. Nano is the first of which that hasn't been the case.

And it took me about 2 years of skepticism before fully understanding it, but I always have and always will keep an open mind to other potential improvements.

I've been a backend software engineer for 15 years and studied economics for about a decade, and Nano just makes sense on all fronts.

I frequently hear this argument from non-technical Bitcoin maxis that Bitcoin will simply "absorb" ("subsume thru soft forks") advancements from other projects, and it's flat out incorrect for many reasons.

Firstly, it's technically infeasible. In order to achieve what they've achieved, networks like Nano have fundamentally and radically different system architectures and processes to that of Bitcoin's legacy blockchain and Nakamoto Consensus. It simply isn't possible for Bitcoin to adopt what Nano has created.

Even if it was possible (it's really, really not), the Bitcoin community has proven time and time again that it has no interest in allowing fundamental changes to Bitcoin. It would never pass social consensus.

I'm not saying you should go buy Nano or stop supporting Bitcoin. I'm just saying you should also be asking questions about Nano or any other projects that are potentially better solutions.

Help evangelize them as well.
MJ profile picture
Does Bitcoin have a long-term security plan?

Bitcoin might have a major problem and likely an existential crisis when it comes to long-term security.

The built-in subsidization model (block rewards) for miners is logarithmic (halving every ~4 years).

This means that, in order to maintain the current level of miner hashrate (and network security), BTC's market value must continue doubling between each halving.

But BTC's market value can only double another 4-5 times before exceeding the market cap of gold, and only 6-7 more times before exceeding the global money supply.

There will literally be no more opportunity for growth.

As the block reward diminishes, miners will become more and more significantly dependent on fees for subsidization of their operational costs in order to maintain profitability.

This means that fees must rise exponentially in parallel with the logarithmic decrease in block rewards, and will likely surpass $50/tx within 15-20 years.

All of this happening concurrently to the existence of at least one alternative that offers instant transactions with zero fees, better decentralization, better security, better scalability, and better usability and a fixed security model that does not diminish with time (this has not been true during previous halvings).

As fees grow exponentially, people will migrate to these alternatives, exacerbating the drop in resource investment into BTC.

BTC's security model is variable, dependent on continued exponential growth in market value. Its future is, at best uncertain, and at worst will tumble into irrelevance.

Why has it become the norm to dismiss these significant concerns rather than focus on an alternative with

* a permanently fixed security model
* better decentralization
* better transactional security
* better latency and throughput
* better usability with instant full confirmation and zero fees

Why should the global economy continue to choose to use a financial system with 30-60 minute latency, 3-7 tps throughput, exponentially rising fees, and obscene energy consumption when an alternative exists that offers instant confirmation with zero fees and negligible energy consumption?

Lightning is a decent attempt at providing a similar experience built on top of Bitcoin, but in doing so, it makes absolutely massive compromises to decentralization, custodialization, security, usability, and complexity, leaving it susceptible to bugs, vulnerabilities, and failures.

On top of all of this, moving transactions from Bitcoin's base layer to Lightning actually removes fee subsidization from Bitcoin's base layer, further exacerbating it's long-term security problem.

In many ways, Lightning is the antithesis to everything Bitcoin represents.

It's time to move on from Bitcoin and focus on more optimal solutions.

note1wp3s6...
MJ profile picture
Totally fine, as long as you're not just outright dismissing it and convincing others that nothing can ever be better than Bitcoin.

You're just clearly not the type of person I'm reaching out for.

Nano obviously needs more advocates, and I'm trying to find people that can understand from a technical perspective how much potential it has.

I did the same thing with Bitcoin from 2011-2017, and thought I'd never see the day that the average person was interested in it.

These things just take time.
Dr. LowTimePref · 161w
TLDR - oops - I missed the Lightning table ..... wonder why. I think I am assuming a multi layer world that is a parallel to todays physical world - Might want to read the Book Layered Money by Bha...
MJ profile picture
I've read Layered Money.

As much as I respect Nik Bhatia, "it's always been done that way" is not a valid reason to continue doing something (layered monetary systems).

The entire first half of Nik's book makes many strong cases *against* attempting to build a layered monetary system.

It's one of the biggest problems that's led to our utterly broken fiat system.

You can't scale technologies in layers. You can only build applications in layers.

1
Dr. LowTimePref · 161w
For now - let's put discussion of Nano on side bar - I literally know NOTHING about it ..... what I do know is 99% of every token coin I have ever spent over 1 day investigating has been a scam - pre-mine - shitcoin - rug pull set up . Some more blatant than others. I missed out on loads of PUMPS ...
Dr. LowTimePref · 161w
TLDR - oops - I missed the Lightning table ..... wonder why. I think I am assuming a multi layer world that is a parallel to todays physical world - Might want to read the Book Layered Money by Bhatia . Bitcoin is the ALPHA base layer protocol which is 100% optimised for security over speed -a...
Ian "nostr.naut.social" D · 161w
The war for sound money won't be won by the most optimal solution. Like most things, it will be won by the Good Enough solution. If you want to take on BTC/LN being better technically, doesn't matter...
MJ profile picture
But why not at least be open to it if you can recognize it's technical superiority?

Why do Bitcoin maximalists outright reject it?

What's wrong with saying "well, obviously I'm going to continue using BTC for now since it has a lot of support at the moment, but I'll also help advocate for this incredibly promising technology"?

And yes, Nano really is is "SO MUCH" better, Bitcoin maximalists just refuse to acknowledge it as such.

### Compared to Bitcoin
instant >> 30-60 minutes for confirmation
deterministic finality >> probabilistic finality
feeless with no barriers for even the poorest people >> $2 and eventually $70+ fees
zero supply inflation >> 2% annual inflation
uncapped throughput >> 3-7 tps
incentivized decentralization >> incentivized centralization
Nakamoto Coef of 10 with $125M market cap >> NC of 2 with $500B mc
no rent-seeking middle-men >> miners
negligible energy usage >> 120TWh annual energy usage

### Compared to Lightning
feeless with no barriers for even the poorest people >> "minimal" fees
on-chain decentralization and security >> centralized and custodial sidechain
simplicity >> extreme complexity prone to bugs, vulnerabilities, and failures
direct P2P payments >> liquidity channel management with invoices

Have you actually tried it? It's an incredibly delighting experience.
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Dr. LowTimePref · 161w
your table of comparisons is a JOKE - people I know would never buy a cup of coffee on the BTC main chain - we all use Lightning - it is virtually instant - because of this HORRIBLE over reach - I TLDR the entire rest of your comparisons assuming each are equally inane. At least be honest with y...
MJ profile picture
Open discussion. I get a lot of shit for mentioning Nano anywhere on nostr, but who here has **actually** looked into Nano?

**If you have, what did you not like about it?**

I've studied Bitcoin for more than a decade, and Lightning and Nano (and many others) for many years now. Nano is unlike anything else I've seen.

It is painfully obvious to me that it's a much more optimal solution than Bitcoin+Lightning, and I have yet to see any valid arguments against it.
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Ian "nostr.naut.social" D · 161w
The war for sound money won't be won by the most optimal solution. Like most things, it will be won by the Good Enough solution. If you want to take on BTC/LN being better technically, doesn't matter. You have to be SO MUCH better that everyone goes "gotta move over". Market cap nano is $125M and ...
MJ profile picture
Just noticed that hamstr.to seems to support markdown to some extent?

Testing a couple notations

# header1

## header 2

*italics*

**bold**

***bold italics***

- unordered list

1. ordered list 1
2. ordered list 2

`in-line code`

```
block code
```

---
^ horizontal rule

[links](hamstr.to)
Epetit · 161w
Lack of security, lack of decentralization, lack of adoption. The base layer should be as sound as it gets, hence bitcoin only.
MJ profile picture
> Lack of security

What exactly do you mean by this?

Nano has instant deterministic finality with far better security than the probabilistic finality of Bitcoin.'

Once a node sees quorum voting weight to determine a transaction block is valid, which occurs in about half a second, it cements the block as final and will not reverse it, no matter how much voting weight any other node can obtain.

Do you mean something else?

> lack of decentralization

Nano's lack of monetary incentives means that both node operators and users are directly incentivized to decentralize as much as possible. Despite its relatively low market cap, Nah has already achieved better operational decentralization than Bitcoin, with a Nakamoto Coefficient of about 10, compared to Bitcoin's NC of 2-3.

Nano has far greater potential for decentralization and resistance to seizure and censorship than Bitcoin.

> lack of adoption

Adoption / network effect is an emergent property of utility and demand, it is not inherent to the technology. It only comes with time.

> The base layer should be as sound as it gets, hence bitcoin only.

And yet Nano is even more sound than Bitcoin in just about every fundamental way. Why reject this?
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MJ · 161w
And thank you for giving me a real response.