I agree we should probably let it rest for now, but as for the merge miners being invested in the security of rootstock, it seems like they don't have to lose all that much if something goes awry with rootstock as they don't incur any real marginal cost from mining it and the payments they get are I believe also not all that significant. In any event, this has been an interesting discussion and it's entirely possible that my views on this will change as I learn more about it.

If RBTC traded at 50 cents while Bitcoin is at 80k, this would presumably mean that people think there's something seriously wrong with the bridge. The value of RBTC just seems to reflect people's view of the integrity of the pegging mechanism and the trustworthiness of the pegnatories. By contrast, the value of Bitcoin or Ethereum reflects people's view of the security, usefulness and future of the chain itself. It feels like, in the case of Bitcoin and Ethereum there's more overlap between those who are defending these chains and those who have their economic interests bound up in them, and there's less of a single point of failure, but I guess I'll need to look into this more. Also it's of course perfectly fair to predict that things will get better in the future with BitVM, but the prediction doesn't substitute for what it presently is.

I think I've never met a plumber. I wonder if they are nice people.

Google Maps is the reason I got a smartphone 14 years ago. I saw it on a friend's phone and thought oh it would be useful to have that. As far as I know, it's the only distinctive product Google ever made.

With rootstock, I guess the main discomfort really does come from the fact that its funding isn't endogenous, its being pegged to Bitcoin. Looking into this a bit further, it seems like the pegnatories aren't anonymous happily, but it's still unclear why one would want to trust a handful of companies with peg-outs. This feature makes it seem rather fragile.

I think I agree, it requires a modest amount of effort and a willingness to direct ones attention to it from time to time, as do many things in life. Like learning a bit of algebra or trigonometry, or maybe playing the piano or volleyball with some basic proficiency. Humans don't usually do these things of their own accord, so we create special educational environments with a carefree atmosphere that allows them to open their minds towards these things. There is no reason that basic asymmetric cryptography shouldn't be part of this.

Now all that said, I'm embarrassed to admit that I myself don't know a lot about entropy generation, don't know what a "descriptor for multisig" is, and don't know what "m/4/0/0/1" refers to. That's not to say that these are abtruse concepts, I guess just that I haven't encountered them or at least not in a way where I felt like I had to think about them.

On the one hand there's zero demand, and on the other hand just a couple of hours ago I came across yet another post proclaiming that "[k]ey rotation is an existential problem that cries out for an answer."

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There's a fascinating mix of social dynamics permeating this discussion, here's a recent economic take on it:

"Relay discovery is still a challenge."

You could try AI Search for nostr at https://www.inkan.cc. It's pretty good at discovering interesting content on relays you've never heard of, example below 👇

In this case I guess it's just a story that I read that was told by Plato about a conversation between Phaedrus and Socrates in which Socrates says that there was a myth told by the ancients according to which there was this conversation between two Egyptian gods in the city of Naucratis.

I've tried driving, skateboarding, riding a bicycle, using a checking account, pilates, long division, excel, bodybuilding, hula hoops, powerpoint, and a few others, can 't remember all of them right now. Not to speak of such feats as reading or learning Spanish.

This generally makes sense to me, except I don't think that glm 5.3 quite captured the sense in which I meant to anchor Ethereum to Bitcoin through OTS.

First, I agree beacon block roots are the right thing to timestamp. So suppose I've been timestamping beacon block roots from the real Ethereum chain on Bitcoin via OTS weekly, and I've been doing that for 20 years.

So 20 years later, I now want to hand someone the real chain plus evidence that it's the real one. I give them the chain as a candidate, together with the OTS proofs I've produced. Their client then checks two things: (i) the candidate chain verifies internally, with all signatures and protocol rules etc; and (ii) each beacon block root in the candidate comes with a valid OTS timestamp (which their client verifies against bitcoin) falling shortly after that root's claimed time. Their client accepts the history only if both tests pass.

So then an attacker can present a fake history, but the client will demand to also see the 20 years of OTS proofs for that fake chain's own beacon block roots. And the attacker cannot create these after the fact. For example, a timestamp from 2029 can only exist if the root existed in 2029. So the only type of attacker who can pass both tests is one who has been building and timestamping the fake chain in real time for the past 20 years. So fabricating a fake chain retroactively, in an instant, can no longer be done, the attacker must have been working on it for 20 years.

That was the point.