Latest / The Starting Block / Why Bitcoin BIP-110 failed - ft Giacomo Zucco

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Why Bitcoin BIP-110 failed - ft Giacomo Zucco · The Starting Block

0:08
Good morning, good afternoon,
0:10
wherever you are around the world.
0:11
Welcome to The Starting Block.
0:13
My name is Gareth Jenkinson.
0:14
I'm the head of multimedia here at
0:15
The Block, and of course, your
0:17
host of the show.
0:18
We're coming up on two months of The
0:20
Starting block. It's been a
0:21
fantastic journey so far and a
0:23
great pleasure entertaining you,
0:24
informing you, and having some of
0:26
the biggest names in the industry
0:27
join us for big in-depth
0:29
conversation.
0:31
If this is the first time you're
0:32
watching the show, welcome.
0:34
It's a very simple format.
0:35
We've got three sections of the
0:37
shows on a good day.
0:38
Sometimes that changes, but we've
0:40
usually got the block briefing,
0:41
which is the top stories you
0:43
need to know in the last 24 hours
0:45
curated from the block's
0:47
newsroom. Then we jump into a
0:49
markets pulse segment with analysts
0:51
from around the industry.
0:52
And then we have a hot seat
0:54
interview segment where we bring on
0:56
a newsmaker every day to talk about
0:58
what's happening in the
1:00
headlines.
1:01
It's been an interesting few days
1:03
in the Bitcoin ecosystem and we'll
1:04
be dedicating today's show to
1:06
talk about.
1:08
Bip 110 Forking
1:10
off on the weekend and
1:12
its block its blockchain
1:14
Stopping after two blocks
1:16
on a Saturday night.
1:18
We've got Jacomo Zuko
1:20
from The Bitcoin ecosystem
1:22
a well-known name in Bitcoin
1:24
and Plan B forums Director
1:27
to join us to break all of
1:29
that down a little bit later on
1:30
the show But first things first as I
1:32
always do I'm going to give you your
1:34
top stories that you need to know
1:36
Today it is of course
1:38
Wednesday. We're in the middle of
1:39
the week downhill to the
1:41
weekend, but not quite there
1:43
yet So let's jump into the news
1:45
first story of the day Breaking
1:47
this morning from our news team
1:49
in Asia layer one blockchain
1:51
harmony has confirmed It was
1:53
exploited after an attacker minted
1:55
four billion one tokens using
1:57
empty blocks The one token
1:59
cratered down 34 percent
2:01
over 24 hours to around eight
2:03
hundredths of a cent putting
2:05
the stolen haul at roughly $3.2
2:08
million at current prices.
2:10
Unchained Sleuth-Jusberg flagged it
2:12
first, saying about 97%
2:14
of the minted tokens are already
2:16
sitting on exchanges sold or ready
2:18
to sell.
2:19
Harmony says it's working with its
2:20
team in exchanges to freeze the
2:23
funds. Really a rough one
2:25
for one holders this
2:27
morning. And it's been interesting
2:28
seeing some of the reaction from
2:30
the industry. One notable figure,
2:32
Zach XBT, saying he wouldn't be.
2:34
Helping in tracing the
2:36
flow of those funds given
2:38
an earlier dispute that he had with
2:40
Harmony following helping them a
2:42
couple of years back with another
2:44
exploit and not seeing
2:46
any fruit for his labors.
2:48
Moving on to our next story,
2:49
regulation could take a real step
2:50
forward at the end of the week.
2:52
The SEC has announced it will weigh
2:54
a proposal creating a tailored
2:55
offered regime for certain crypto
2:57
investment contracts and
2:59
investment bank TD Cowans calls it
3:01
potentially pivotal.
3:03
The agency hasn't shared details,
3:05
but Cowan's Jarrett Syberg says
3:07
the aim is a distinct disclosure
3:09
and compliance regime for crypto
3:10
assets, a way to offer these
3:12
products without forcing firms into
3:13
an impossible choice on securities
3:15
rules.
3:16
If the SEC stepping in after the
3:18
Senate failed to advance the Clarity
3:19
Act before the August recess,
3:22
watch Friday's meeting closely.
3:25
Excuse me. Moving on to our next
3:27
story, Bitcoin's treasury pain
3:29
right here in
3:31
the numbers. 21 Capital posted
3:33
a $413.5
3:35
billion net loss in
3:37
the second quarter, and more than
3:39
97% of that came from the
3:41
falling value of its Bitcoin.
3:43
The Tetherback firm now holds 43,000
3:45
BTC worth around $2.8
3:47
billion, making it the second
3:49
largest public Bitcoin treasury
3:50
behind only MetaPlanet's
3:52
closing stack.
3:54
New CEO Raphael Zagari.
3:56
Wants to turn it into a more than
3:58
a treasury, a bigger picture Bitcoin
4:00
operating company.
4:01
The stock ticked up slightly
4:02
Tuesday, but it's still down nearly
4:04
50% this year.
4:06
Then Robinhood Chain is posting
4:08
record numbers, but you need to read
4:10
the fine print.
4:11
The network averaged 11.6
4:12
million daily transactions last
4:14
week, up about 30%, while
4:16
total value locked jumped
4:18
32% to $473
4:21
million.
4:22
What's the catch?
4:23
Daily active accounts rose just
4:25
3% and they're still 11%
4:27
below July's peak.
4:28
In other words, the same users are
4:30
trading more, new ones
4:32
aren't piling in.
4:34
And Athena's USDE now makes
4:36
up 43% of the chain's
4:38
stablecoins, a concentration worth
4:40
keeping an eye on.
4:42
Our final story, an unchained story
4:44
with a security twist, new Bitcoin
4:45
addresses spiked last week from
4:48
around 260,000 to over
4:50
330,000.
4:52
Sharply reversing this year's
4:53
downtrend.
4:54
The driver here was wallet
4:56
migrations tied to the ongoing
4:58
cold card exploit.
5:00
CoinKite hardware wallet users have
5:02
lost at least 1800 Bitcoin,
5:04
about $116 million across
5:07
four theft waves since
5:09
July 30th, traced to a
5:10
2021 firmware bug that generated
5:12
weak wallet seeds.
5:14
CoinKites is urging anyone who made
5:16
a wallet between March 2021 and
5:18
the patch to move their funds.
5:20
And there's been a
5:22
widespread efforts across the
5:23
Bitcoin ecosystem to help users
5:25
effective and push
5:27
to take
5:29
a look at open source Bitcoin
5:32
software code across the industry.
5:35
And yeah, we'll be getting a little
5:36
bit more into that conversation as
5:38
well with Jacmo Zuko,
5:40
who I do see is actually in the back
5:41
of the studio, we were going to take
5:43
short break.
5:44
But okay,
5:46
no, my producer is telling me we're
5:48
going to take a break.
5:49
But we do have Giacomo with us
5:51
in the wing, so we will be right
5:52
back, don't go away.
7:46
Welcome back to the starting block.
7:47
We are joined by
7:49
Plan B Forum Director, Giacomo
7:51
Zucco, of course, a well-known
7:53
figure in the Bitcoin industry to
7:55
talk about a very big
7:56
last few days, depending on which
7:58
side of the fence you were sitting
7:59
on.
8:00
BIP 110 activated over
8:02
the weekend, two blocks were mined
8:04
before the chain stalled.
8:06
And Giacmo, I watched you on a live
8:08
stream with a load of other big name
8:10
Bitcoiners unpacking.
8:12
Things in real time.
8:13
It was really interesting to see
8:14
that conversation play out, but it's
8:15
been a few days since then.
8:16
So we thought let's get someone who
8:18
knows Bitcoin better than most to
8:20
join us on the show and break things
8:21
down. First things first, how
8:23
are you doing?
8:25
I'm fine.
8:25
Even if, of course, for everybody
8:27
these last weeks have been more
8:29
eventful than the last two years.
8:32
Specifically, well, this BIP
8:35
110 drama was
8:37
not only interesting to
8:39
watch from a Bitcoin history
8:41
point of view, but also
8:42
it was intense for me because it
8:44
involved a few friends from
8:46
on the other sides.
8:48
It also involved the company I'm
8:50
an investor and shareholder in,
8:52
which is ocean, which I think risks
8:54
a lot.
8:55
During this debate and luckily,
8:57
everything has
8:59
been addressed in
9:01
a way that I think will bring to the
9:03
survival and even growth
9:05
of the company, but it was intense.
9:06
And of course, just a few days
9:08
before this, there was the BTC
9:10
server problem
9:12
that affected a lot of people,
9:14
including us in Lugano, we have
9:16
like 400 merchants accepting
9:19
Bitcoin and behind the
9:22
the city of Lugano point
9:24
of sales there is a BTCP server
9:25
running so we have to
9:27
halt the payment for a few minutes
9:30
but it was scary right
9:32
before that we had the bolt
9:33
situation which was very intense
9:35
because it meant that most
9:37
of the people even here in Lugana
9:39
using Aqua with
9:41
Liquid or using Arcade money
9:43
with Arcade they could
9:45
not pay lighting anymore until
9:47
the things was fixed right
9:49
now a little bit.
9:51
Provisionally, but it
9:53
was also a wake-up call in
9:55
terms of decentralization, because
9:57
we ended up relying a lot
9:59
on a single company, both which
10:00
was amazing, is amazing, amazing
10:02
people, amazing tech, but it very
10:04
centralized. And right before there
10:06
was the Kolkar drama that of course
10:08
was another wake- up call
10:10
about centralization, people that
10:12
were not really doing
10:14
multi-seam, multi-vendor, but
10:16
not even doing just,
10:18
you know, YOLO, Exchange,
10:20
Custody. There were people thinking
10:22
they were doing the advanced
10:23
security thing, but not really
10:25
doing the advance security thing.
10:27
So tricked into maybe
10:29
putting all their life saving on
10:31
one single vendor guaranteeing
10:34
one single services that
10:36
nobody was checking.
10:38
So yeah, I'm fine.
10:40
I'm tired, not sleeping that much.
10:42
But we will remember this
10:44
August for many,
10:46
many years.
10:47
Yeah, I think it's probably been
10:48
some of the most trying times that
10:50
I've been sort of involved in the
10:52
ecosystem as well.
10:53
And you've been here a lot longer
10:54
than I have.
10:54
I've only been covering the industry
10:56
since 2017.
10:58
But you may be getting a little bit
11:00
more sleep than people like Rob
11:02
Hamilton, who I think has been kind
11:03
of working around the clock with
11:05
Bitcoin, red team, you know,
11:07
looking for these vulnerabilities
11:09
and all the open source Bitcoin code
11:11
out there and disclosing them so
11:12
that teams can work quickly to fix
11:14
them.
11:15
I do want to talk about that in
11:17
a couple of minutes time, but I
11:18
think I just wanted to get a
11:20
post-mortem from you and your
11:21
general thoughts on BIP 110
11:23
stalling on the weekend.
11:26
I'm not one to, you know, hurl
11:27
insults or anything like that.
11:29
I think it was a very interesting
11:33
set of circumstances and
11:35
an event overall for the Bitcoin
11:37
ecosystem.
11:38
And my general take was there was a
11:39
lot of virtue signaling involved,
11:41
a lot coercion and a lot people
11:44
being led to think
11:46
emotionally versus practically
11:48
about what BIP 110
11:50
was proposing and how much
11:52
support it had and how the Bitcoin
11:54
protocol actually works and what
11:56
transpired. And what transpire was
11:57
two blocks ended up
11:59
being mined. It was way too
12:00
expensive from my layman
12:02
understanding for that to continue
12:03
happening. So it ceased and
12:05
that new blockchain halted
12:07
while the actual Bitcoin blockchain
12:09
continued.
12:11
But yeah, I'm curious to hear your
12:13
overall thoughts on what had
12:14
happened, because I've read quite a
12:15
few good takes from different
12:17
people in the industry.
12:18
And I think there's been enough time
12:20
now to digest and kind of figure
12:21
out, this is what happens, and this
12:23
is probably where we're going from
12:25
here.
12:27
Yeah, by the way, the two
12:29
blocks have been surprising to me
12:30
during the live stream because I was
12:32
thinking in an
12:34
economically rational way.
12:35
So the second block was not going to
12:37
come, in my opinion, I was wrong.
12:39
And right a few hours ago,
12:42
Ralph Nex started again.
12:43
So now we are we have four
12:45
blocks on a stale
12:48
branch of the chain.
12:49
So it's impressive.
12:51
Let me go back to the beginning.
12:52
I think that BAP 110 was
12:54
a very complex social
12:56
phenomenon because it was
12:59
mixing together very different
13:01
front and sometimes people
13:03
have perceived, for example, myself
13:05
as being fan-sitting,
13:08
but I was never fan- sitting.
13:09
I was just in different camps
13:11
depending on the specific sub-issue
13:13
that BIP 110 tried
13:15
to put all together.
13:16
So the different issues that you
13:18
have to account for are
13:20
one, the spam
13:22
debate.
13:23
And the spam debate itself
13:25
has several different subdebates.
13:27
For example, there is a
13:28
philosophical one.
13:29
What is ever spam?
13:31
Is spam even possible when
13:33
you have fees and hash cash?
13:35
So there is philosophical debate in
13:37
which I was pretty much triggered
13:39
because I think that the
13:41
spam relativists were completely
13:43
wrong.
13:44
And some people perceive the BAP
13:46
110 as a way to
13:48
settle this debate.
13:49
And I'm completely against that
13:51
because I think that spam prevention
13:53
doesn't belong in
13:55
consensus rules, which are very
13:57
static while spam is very dynamic,
14:00
but it's also a
14:02
lot of technical stuff packed into
14:04
this. There is the discussion
14:05
between consensus rules and
14:07
mempool policies.
14:08
There is a fact that there is a harm
14:10
mitigation discussion in which
14:12
if you allow something less harmful,
14:15
then you can maybe mitigate it
14:17
to be something more harmful.
14:18
And there is lot of complex
14:20
technical debate.
14:21
Then there is a second point, which
14:22
is entirely unrelated, but people
14:24
completely into the same
14:26
big bucket, which is the
14:30
uneasiness of people
14:32
with some parts of the
14:34
governance process of Bitcoin core
14:36
repository. So we have this
14:39
GitHub repository, which is
14:41
serving as the reference
14:42
implementation for the network,
14:44
which is important that people can
14:45
stay in sync with and where most
14:47
of the brain power of Bitcoin is
14:49
now concentrated.
14:51
And this repository, of course,
14:53
is an open
14:55
process and a very decentralized
14:57
process to some degree.
14:58
But to some other degree, there are
15:00
companies like ChainCode and Bring
15:02
that created physical gathering
15:04
points where people were actually in
15:05
the same office and there have been
15:07
selection. Of maintainers
15:09
which also underwent some social
15:11
dynamics including somebody
15:13
being somebody else's girlfriend or
15:15
like wanting women
15:17
to some position for the
15:19
sake of having diversity and stuff
15:20
like that. Some people were
15:22
mad at these specific dynamics and
15:24
they were thinking BIP 110
15:27
as a way to basically fight
15:29
this dynamic and push back
15:31
against this dynamic like score
15:33
some points in this
15:35
kind of debate.
15:36
Then there was the third debate,
15:37
which was not really about
15:40
core, specifically chain
15:42
code,
15:44
blink, or the
15:46
specifics of governance right now,
15:48
but in general about governance as
15:50
a fight between nodes and
15:53
miners and ashrate and
15:55
money, and this
15:57
idea that this
15:59
revisitation of 2017,
16:01
in which the activation of SegWit
16:03
meant...
16:04
That the number of nodes,
16:07
and even a minority number of nodes,
16:09
is enough above some kind of
16:11
arbitrary threshold to enforce
16:12
changes.
16:13
So there was this reading that
16:16
UASF in 2017
16:18
meant that if you just pin up
16:21
some nodes on AWS,
16:23
such that you reach 20%
16:25
of the network or 30%
16:27
of whatever, now you can impose
16:28
new rules.
16:29
And of course, I think that was a
16:31
very, very misguided reading of
16:33
history. Right now, Samson Mo
16:35
is helping out a little bit to
16:37
readjust
16:39
the perception of this history to
16:41
something more realistic.
16:43
And then the last part was the
16:45
CSAM emergency.
16:46
So the idea that not only
16:48
you have spam, but some of this spam
16:50
can be encoding of illegal stuff.
16:52
And this illegal stuff can basically
16:54
bring the police to knock
16:57
on your door to bring you down
16:58
because of your node.
17:00
And if you run VIP 110,
17:02
that will not happen.
17:03
Because now all the encoding will be
17:05
non-contiguous or something else.
17:07
I think this fourth thing was
17:09
completely crazy.
17:10
It was, I think, most of this,
17:13
I told this in order because I
17:15
think that the spam problem is,
17:17
the spam discussion was healthy to
17:18
have because there was some
17:19
confusion and there was, there is
17:21
some concern about spamming Bitcoin,
17:23
in my opinion, not easy to fix it,
17:24
not trivial to fix it, which feels a
17:26
bit overdubbed.
17:27
The second point was a discussion to
17:29
be had, especially a few years ago,
17:31
I think we did face some
17:33
kind of governance failure.
17:34
And I think that the management
17:36
of the
17:38
opreturn thing was
17:41
probably the peak of the expression
17:42
of this mismanagement.
17:44
So it's fine.
17:45
I think the third one was already
17:46
pretty dubious in the
17:48
sense that there was this fake
17:50
narrative that you can just spin up
17:51
node and win.
17:53
And then the last one was terrible
17:54
because it was the last one
17:56
was. The thing that created the fake
17:58
sense of emergency that made
18:00
people call, disagreeing
18:02
people like pedophiles and made
18:04
people washing into something that
18:06
has to happen now.
18:08
Otherwise, everybody's, otherwise
18:09
Bitcoin is dead.
18:10
And when you enter the rhetoric that
18:12
Bitcoin is that if you don't do my
18:14
thing, then you know that
18:16
the shit coin fork is going to
18:18
happen. It was a very Roger Ver kind
18:20
of disposition in which, you know,
18:22
sky's falling, children are dying
18:24
and if you don't do my
18:26
thing. Bitcoin is dead, people
18:28
are dying, children will be hurt.
18:30
And so it turns a technical
18:31
discussion or an economic discussion
18:33
into this kind of moral panic.
18:35
And that's probably a big part
18:37
of the
18:39
events now.
18:40
Yeah, I think that's a very succinct
18:43
breakdown of the major kind of
18:44
considerations there And I I always
18:46
took it, you know exception to
18:48
point number four that you made You
18:49
know the debate around CSAM and the
18:51
encoding of that kind of material
18:53
on Bitcoin And I think the reality
18:55
was it's incredibly hard to even
18:57
you know act upon that
18:59
encoded material You know if it is
19:01
there and you know, I'm
19:03
trying to remember who it was
19:05
Peter Todd, actually, I think in
19:07
2018, over email told,
19:09
I asked him this, is it true that
19:11
this kind of material exists on the
19:12
Bitcoin blockchain?
19:14
And there were some, like you said,
19:16
encoded data points here and
19:18
there, maybe, but incredibly hard to
19:21
even access
19:23
for a normal Bitcoin user or
19:24
whatever.
19:26
And obviously just a very emotional
19:27
point that was used kind of
19:29
as ammunition
19:31
to ral people up.
19:33
And for me, there's just a lot of
19:35
cognitive dissonance across the
19:36
ecosystem with people
19:38
for and against.
19:40
And yeah, to see it kind of end as
19:42
it has has been really interesting.
19:45
It's not really ended as well.
19:46
I think that for me is the
19:48
hardest thing to kind of wrap my
19:49
head around now is that the
19:51
main proponents for BIP
19:53
110, Mechanic,
19:57
Luke Dasher, they're
19:59
still going on with this, right?
20:00
They wanna change the proof of work.
20:03
Consensus that that chain is using,
20:06
and then they're going to continue
20:07
on, and they're calling normal
20:08
Bitcoin the legacy chain,
20:10
and this the actual Bitcoin, and I'm
20:12
just like, at what point do you
20:13
realize that you're going down the
20:15
same point as Roger
20:17
Veer, Craig Wright,
20:19
all the people that forked off and
20:21
found out?
20:22
I don't know at which point, so
20:24
knowing Luke, which is the person
20:26
that I was close with
20:28
and I respect, but he has a very
20:30
particular mind, that works in a
20:31
very particular way, not typical,
20:34
and he can go basically,
20:36
he can basically...
20:37
Set the world on fire just to
20:39
follow his specific view and he
20:41
will not change his mind against
20:43
new evidence because he pretty much
20:45
made up his mind in a very
20:47
general and internally consistent
20:49
way. So I'm not surprised that
20:51
Luke is working off.
20:52
I think it's bad because
20:55
as Adam Beck used to say
20:57
he was a contrarian, very useful
20:59
to the world of Bitcoin
21:01
and Luke basically even if it
21:03
was very annoying to work with.
21:05
For many in the ecosystem.
21:07
He was the one that
21:09
discovered a huge
21:11
consensus problem in the Satoshi
21:13
era and helped fixing them.
21:14
And he was the ones managing to get
21:16
Segwit as a soft fork instead of a
21:18
hard fork.
21:19
He managed to do a lot of important
21:21
things by thinking outside of
21:23
the box and by being very resistant
21:25
to peer pressure.
21:26
So Luke was, he is totally
21:28
resistant.
21:29
The problem with this is that if you
21:31
are the independent thinker, that is
21:33
at the margin and can influence
21:34
Bitcoin by bringing out
21:36
of the box ideas and being
21:38
resistant to pressure, that's good.
21:40
But if you become the leader of
21:42
something, that is not good because
21:44
you cannot maintain your
21:46
leadership position because you are
21:47
too weird.
21:48
And you cannot really stop
21:50
when it's time to stop because you
21:52
just see a reality in your
21:54
own way.
21:55
So Luke has said for
21:57
me that Bitcoin is losing debt.
22:00
Other people are
22:02
greeting and they are
22:04
celebrating.
22:05
I think they're wrong because what
22:07
they are seeing now is a very
22:09
short-term advantage.
22:10
Luke would not be annoying them
22:12
with something.
22:13
And so many developers are like,
22:15
Yeah, now we have an
22:17
easier job.
22:18
But the problem with
22:20
centralization of everything,
22:22
including of thinking and opinion
22:24
and mental processes, is that it's
22:26
always efficient, but always more
22:27
fragile.
22:28
Loop was an inefficiency factor,
22:30
for sure. People are
22:32
complaining that they were losing
22:33
time, for sure, but
22:36
not losing time sometimes
22:38
means not facing or
22:40
seeing some risk.
22:41
So I think it's a loss overall for
22:43
the ecosystem, but it was
22:45
unavoidable in the inside.
22:47
I'm more surprised by other people,
22:50
but to
22:52
some degree, there's also the fact
22:53
that when the discussion becomes
22:56
too emotional and you call everybody
22:58
disagreeing with you like an
23:00
evil child molester, you
23:02
burn bridges and you don't
23:04
feel you can go back without eating
23:06
a very, very large humble
23:08
pie and not everybody has
23:11
a large enough stomach to eat
23:13
that. So when you burn your breeches
23:15
You are desperate.
23:16
You don't know what to do.
23:18
And you will do everything.
23:19
Right now, there is this random
23:21
selection of a new proof of work,
23:23
which was an unmitigated disaster.
23:26
Still, there was also an educational
23:27
part in this, because it shows
23:29
how hard it will be to reboost
23:31
Bitcoin right now from scratch.
23:33
What happened is that Luke said,
23:35
we will just check this testnet
23:37
block.
23:38
And when we will check the last
23:39
character, and we will select one of
23:41
several algorithms.
23:42
And so people, of course, started to
23:44
troll by generating more blocks on
23:46
the testnet.
23:47
And then he had to call it
23:49
off and call it on again.
23:50
So it became super centralized under
23:52
him. So he's basically calling the
23:54
shot on this court.
23:55
That's the highest level of
23:56
centralization you can imagine.
23:58
And that shows that there is no
24:00
way we can reproduce Bitcoin
24:01
in a fair way, even when people
24:04
were trying to do fair launches like
24:06
I remember.
24:07
I don't know.
24:10
Like Casper.
24:11
Yeah.
24:12
Casper or other
24:14
green cryptocurrency.
24:17
I remember green especially.
24:18
Green was a fair lunch with
24:21
GPUs and then I remember
24:23
people in back channels
24:25
contacting me to buy in
24:27
advance the
24:29
FPGAs that could be needed for
24:31
green. So even when you try to
24:33
do it fair, you cannot do
24:35
it very more because this is what we
24:37
were calling the immaculate
24:38
conception of Bitcoin.
24:39
Bitcoin was created and maintained
24:41
for a few years.
24:42
Outside of the spotlight
24:44
of markets, governments,
24:46
government agencies,
24:49
intentional disruption attempts by
24:51
government agency, speculators,
24:53
over-speculators, gamblers,
24:55
trolls, people that just want to
24:57
be annoying and to have fun
24:59
by disrupting your process.
25:01
This would be almost impossible to
25:03
reproduce. So also a pretty
25:05
educational event.
25:07
Yeah, my final points on that,
25:10
obviously, I think in the last 24
25:11
hours or so, Luke
25:13
was also removed as a BIP editor.
25:16
Your thoughts on that?
25:17
I think it's wrong, it was a
25:19
wrong move at the wrong time.
25:21
It's another example of the same
25:22
kind of
25:24
not
25:27
being able to read the room socially
25:29
and being tone deaf by
25:31
most Bitcoin developers.
25:33
They are very good at code and it's
25:34
unsurprising that people very good
25:36
at code are not very good social
25:38
interaction.
25:39
The reason for this is that there is
25:41
no practical change that will happen
25:43
very soon.
25:44
Filtering out whatever Luke was
25:45
writing on that repository was not
25:47
hard. It was not active on anything
25:49
which was not VIP 110 anyway.
25:52
So it doesn't make a material change
25:53
or a relevant one.
25:56
And it seems like this
25:58
kind of retorsive,
26:00
like retribution, so
26:02
retribution for being wrong.
26:04
Either you did that, also doing
26:06
it immediately after the failure of
26:09
the VIP seems even more like
26:11
politically naive.
26:12
You do it before, at least you
26:15
are getting people angry, but you
26:16
are doing that because it's urgent.
26:18
You do one year after, you do it
26:20
because at this point, Luke is far
26:21
gone and his own shit is not
26:23
relevant anymore.
26:25
Doing it the
26:26
day after in order to
26:29
leverage most of the
26:30
resentment of people being
26:32
disillusioned seems like a political
26:34
move which is.
26:35
Too good to be non-political,
26:37
but also too bad to be wisely
26:39
political, and it seems
26:41
for me also it's a
26:43
sign that I think
26:45
core devs, I think they were most of
26:47
them, not all of them.
26:48
It's not a monolithic group.
26:50
Most of them they were right on
26:53
BIP 110, dead right,
26:55
and I was with them
26:57
about that all the time, and they
26:58
have been proved economically right
27:00
and technically
27:02
right. But they are still a little
27:04
bit socially inept
27:06
in terms of
27:09
managing reading
27:12
the room basically.
27:13
There was no need to do that,
27:15
it just created even more,
27:17
it gave more fuel to
27:19
the fire of conspiracy theories
27:21
about this kind
27:23
of centralization capture of
27:26
Bitcoin. Still.
27:28
Whatever, the BIP process
27:30
is not very relevant to Bitcoin
27:31
anymore either,
27:33
and I think that long-term core will
27:35
not be relevant to bitcoin at all.
27:37
Good developers will,
27:39
we were mentioning the cold card
27:41
debacle,
27:43
one of the things that also
27:45
didn't help BIP 110,
27:48
not that he had any chance anyway,
27:50
but something that didn't happen is
27:51
that during the cold-card debacle
27:52
most of the people helping out,
27:55
saving people's assets.
27:56
They were on the core side
27:58
because they have the more
28:00
technically proficient people,
28:03
and the others are like podcasters,
28:05
economists, and stuff
28:07
like that, with the exception of
28:09
Luke, of course, which is a
28:11
very experienced developer.
28:12
So, it's
28:15
a matter of fact that
28:17
the developers that are now...
28:19
Sympathizing with core will
28:21
be important for Bitcoin going
28:22
forward, but I think that the core
28:24
repository itself will be less and
28:25
less important over time because we
28:27
are seeing even now,
28:29
even all this debate was started
28:32
to some degree by Liberallet,
28:33
which was a fork of
28:35
core, just like the knots was
28:38
a fork for core, and we
28:39
have more exotic forks like
28:42
Floresta that is doing this
28:43
kind of Vutrexel kind of
28:46
management and We have a- now
28:48
re-hardened, VibeCoding a
28:49
new client, and we had
28:51
Libitcoin for a very long while,
28:54
and we have BTCD, which
28:55
is this client in Go
28:57
used for L&D.
29:00
So not all
29:02
Bitcoin is layer
29:04
one validation, that's just one
29:06
part of Bitcoin.
29:07
And it's a part that also should be
29:09
the most static part, the part with
29:10
less evolution, with less change.
29:12
So, I think that more and
29:14
more we will just take.
29:16
Bitcoin thinks out of core.
29:18
Very few people are using core as
29:20
a wallet since Electrum
29:22
and stuff like that.
29:24
Nobody's using core for lightning,
29:25
which will become a more and more
29:26
important part of the ecosystem
29:27
because the blockchain doesn't
29:29
scale.
29:30
So eventually, I think that this
29:32
situation will resolve by the,
29:35
not really by reformation
29:37
processes, of course, of core,
29:39
but mostly by just
29:41
this consistent moving.
29:43
To give this
29:46
repository less and less importance.
29:48
Chakram, I know you've got a hard
29:49
stop at three, so I'm
29:52
actually just going to cut
29:54
it there. I did want to ask you a
29:55
little bit about the cold card
29:56
exploits and the efforts of
29:58
Bitcoin's red team.
29:59
But I think we all know that there's
30:01
a lot of good people out there doing
30:03
a lot of good work to make sure that
30:05
Bitcoin stays
30:07
safe and moves very
30:09
quickly to patch any vulnerabilities
30:11
that could impact the ecosystem
30:12
anymore, because...
30:13
Cold card exploits been really bad.
30:15
BTC pay was also particularly
30:17
bad. When I saw that happen, I was
30:18
like, holy shit, this is
30:20
not good either.
30:21
But hopefully it's the worst of
30:24
the worst behind us and we move
30:25
forward. But thanks so much for
30:26
taking the time to chat to us and
30:29
looking forward to seeing you in
30:30
Lugano for Plan B Forum.
30:32
It's my pleasure, my pleasure.
30:33
See you here.
30:34
Awesome, thank you.
30:36
Thank you very much to Giacomo for
30:37
joining us on the show and thank you
30:39
for catching us Again
30:41
on the starting block.
30:42
It's it's been a great journey so
30:43
far. We're nearly two months into
30:45
the show today We just
30:47
wrapped up with Giacommo Zucco
30:48
talking about Bitcoin
30:50
and BIP 110s activation
30:52
over the weekend and it's
30:54
inevitable stalling very
30:55
interestingly Another
30:57
block was mined on that
30:59
chain. So it's got four blocks to
31:01
date but still
31:03
very much seemingly dead in the
31:05
water.
31:06
Thank you very much for joining us
31:07
on The Starting Block today.
31:09
If you wanna catch up with any of
31:10
the interviews that we've had over
31:11
the past few weeks, you can go onto
31:13
The Block's YouTube channel and find
31:15
a lot of those interviews there,
31:17
including our launch episode
31:19
with CZ.
31:20
You'll just have to scroll down a
31:21
little bit down the timeline to find
31:22
that one.
31:23
I highly recommend watching that.
31:25
We do have a big show lined
31:27
up tomorrow.
31:28
We're gonna have CZ back on The
31:30
starting block.
31:31
Set a reminder on your calendars
31:33
10 a.m.
31:34
Eastern time tomorrow.
31:35
That's 5 p.m Central European time.
31:38
We're gonna have CZ here on the
31:39
starting block to talk about a
31:41
very, very big announcement that
31:44
has to do with the United States and
31:46
his legacy.
31:47
I'm not gonna say more than that.
31:49
Please come and join us tomorrow.
31:51
It would be a great pleasure to have
31:52
you back with us.
31:53
Until then, have a fantastic
31:55
afternoon, morning, wherever you are
31:56
around the world.
31:57
We'll be back tomorrow.