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Smart contracts on Bitcoin

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Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#201

Post by hanniabu »

x3sphere wrote: post #20

I remember Counterparty (XCP) tried something like this a long time ago. Not full blown smart contracts, but things like asset creation (tokens) and decentralized exchanges like on Ethereum. Anyway at the time they received a lot of pushback from some Bitcoin core devs and some threatened to block them over their use of OP_RETURN. Wonder how sustainable Stacks approach is in comparison? Don't know if it works the sam…

I don't think there'll be any issue since it's a separate chain and just submitting checkpoints to bitcoin so they can pretend they're a sidechain for marketing hype.

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#202

Post by hanniabu »

zionic wrote: post #177
grubles wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitalik's claim is a lie. No "OP_RETURN wars" happened. It's a complete fabrication. See https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/1187470076833697794

Lol are you honestly linking your own twitter as a source

Didn't you see the username? It's clearly not him =P

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#203

Post by hanniabu »

muneeb wrote: post #184
Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #5

We already have this. It's called WBTC and TBTC. Turns out it's way easier to port Bitcoin to Ethereum than to rebuild Ethereum on Bitcoin.

I'd argue the inverse. It's easier to build more complex things on top of simpler primitives than vice versa. So a simpler base layer (say TCP/IP for the internet) opens the doors to more complex things on top (say http or JavaScript). You don't want a Solidity bug (and there are many) to mess with the supply or ownership of Bitcoin. The limited/simple scripting language is there for a reason. It's easy to add comple…

I get you have a product to push, but I think we all know that's not true.

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#204

Post by hanniabu »

opreturn wrote: post #96
wmf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stacks doesn't inherit Bitcoin's network effects except for mining security. No existing Bitcoin wallets or exchanges can make Stacks transactions, while many Ethereum wallets are flexible enough to support arbitrary tokens or smart contracts.

> except for mining security where did you see that? I don't think their security model has any connection with Bitcoin mining. They are not merged-mining with bitcoin

I believe they're using checkpoints similar to the security service that komodo was offering to other chains.

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#205

Post by hanniabu »

vmception wrote: post #67
bjoernw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's because 99% is purely held to speculate on the price going up?

In the following order of nuance, the 99% of Bitcoiners: Don’t know about this Don’t like the idea of any other distributed ledger attracting capital away from Bitcoin purchases Don’t know the Ethereum platform is different than any other “altcoin” Don’t like Ethereum based on valid or fictional criticism Don’t like WBTC Don’t like renBTC in its current state Know about all of this, don't mind it, are not interested…

As someone with only a cursory knowledge of wbtc and renbtc, what are the issues that people see with it?

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#206

Post by hanniabu »

muneeb wrote: post #12
DennisP wrote: post #6

Moving bitcoins to Stacks is easy, since Stacks reads the Bitcoin chain. But how do you move them from Stacks back to the Bitcoin main chain? Since Bitcoin clients aren't aware of Stacks, it's difficult to see how that would work without trusting someone to issue the correct transaction. I looked over the Stacks site and didn't see a clear answer to this question.

Muneeb here, Stacks co-founder. Great question. You are right that Clarity smart contracts have direct visibility into Bitcoin, so you can write a contract that has logic triggered by pure Bitcoin transactions. Moving Bitcoin to Stacks is a bit more complicated and there are several ways: a) Wrapped assets. Tokensoft + Anchorage (custodian) have a solution that they're calling xBTC where a "wrapped Bitcoin" is issued…

> c)

Is this fine with p2sh?

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#207

Post by bouncycastle »

This is not on Bitcoin, but a seperate network with its own token (STX) that is secured by "Proof of Transfer" - see https://www.stacks.co/

Also, it could, in theory, be attached to Ethereum too, and probably more trivial to do. These networks come with their own security guarantees, trade-offs & governance pitfalls, but unfortunately do not mention these on their home page of their shiny professionally designed website.

I also don't see a future for these things on Bitcoin, because as soon as bitcoin block rewards diminish, the miners would need to be paid from transaction fees. However, for the miners to be profitable, the transaction fees would need to increase an order of a magnitude - making solutions such as these potentially expensive and infeasible.

There were a few projects like this in the past, one from memory was called Counterparty. Not sure what happened to that. I guess the 10 minute block times and high fees might have been the culprit.

Conclusion: Anybody promoting this is just trying to sell their bag of STX tokens.

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#208

Post by vmception »

hanniabu wrote: post #205
vmception wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the following order of nuance, the 99% of Bitcoiners: Don’t know about this Don’t like the idea of any other distributed ledger attracting capital away from Bitcoin purchases Don’t know the Ethereum platform is different than any other “altcoin” Don’t like Ethereum based on valid or fictional criticism Don’t like WBTC Don’t like renBTC in its current state Know about all of this, don't mind it, are not interested…

As someone with only a cursory knowledge of wbtc and renbtc, what are the issues that people see with it?

WBTC is essentially custodial. A couple partners hold some multisig keys on all Bitcoin that is deposited to be minted on Ethereum as WBTC. It is mainly BitGo, Kyber Network and Republic Protocol (Ren, the same people behind renBTC). WBTC requires KYC with BitGo to mint and redeem. Centralized, custodial, a few distributed key holders. Feature complete, so its not changing. Institutions like that actually, so it is pretty popular.

renBTC is by Republic Protocol, through their main product RenVM. RenVM allows holders of the REN token to stake 100,000 REN to create a "Darknode", which process all the minting, burning and storage of assets that go between chains. renBTC is Bitcoin to erc20 Ethereum. There are various other assets the Darknode holders process and earn. The amount Darknode holders earn in dollars has been increasing around 20% per month. The issues with RenVM and renBTC is that is actually hasn't reached that state. The darknodes do earn, but the current state does not use the darknodes for the decentralized storage of assets, instead, the Ren team has 12 keys stored around the world and requires collusion between the people on the Ren team to compromise. Now, some people call this is criticism, but this is still better than exchange cold storage which people already trust with billions of dollars of assets. For example, Gemini Exchange (Winklevoss Twins) brag about how their cold storage is 3 keys stored around the globe. lol, only three. People's concern is that while in this current state, the Ren protocol's geographically distributed team can be compromised by a government. Doubtful because nobody in one country has all the keys, and they are quickly speeding towards upgrading away to putting all processing on the darknodes. Anyway, for earning fees as a darknode its current state is quite unique, for users it is a stopgap solution (and not unique enough for BTC on Ethereum) as their bridge simply has more assets and doesn't require KYC or impose any limitations. Both the current and future iteration is using MPC cryptography for security. And again, their team is part of the mastermind behind WBTC. Darknode holders evangelize renAssets and get them into various other DeFi projects, which causes more people to want to mint and burn RenAssets, mostly renBTC so they can earn interest on their bitcoin. As you can see by this thread, many times renBTC is not mentioned at all. But it is the second largest Bitcoin on Ethereum. RenVM is not limited to minting assets onto Ethereum, they have or will be rolling out bridges to other chains as well, to Darknode holders delight.

there are competitors to renBTC such as tBTC, which aims to chisel at just the trustless BTC hegemony and not much else. Its growing decently.

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#209

Post by kikowi »

People tried to gain influence over the Bitcoin network in the past and they never succeded. Its much like the power of the Queen in United Kingdom. Theoretically she could overthrown the government, but in practice that will never happen.

Several Bitcoin mining pools tried to attack the network in the past, but the majority of their hashpower vanished and new hashpower appeared to protect the network.

The fact that Bitcoin was able to sustain security for 12 years makes it so valuable (especially because the incentive to take over is worth so much (market cap of $0.7T).

Ethereum's new PoS might be better in the future, however we are still many years away from properly verifing that. However I don't think it is possible to theoretically design a system that is secure and cheap to sustain at the same time. I believe security comes from expensivness (miners energy waste and slow transactions).

Re: Smart contracts on Bitcoin

#210

Post by uncletammy »

cheaprentalyeti wrote: post #106
uncletammy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say that. Here's a super informative thread laying out those events from the perspective of one of the Decred developers. https://old.reddit.com/r/decred/comments/6wxueo/your_best_pi... TLDR: Smart contracts on BTC were intentionally strangled because it would necessitate bigger blocks. At the same time, BTC core devs were gearing up to start their sad push in creating artificial scarcity on a perfectl…

At the moment the Bitcoin blockchain size is some 310 gb while the bitcoin cash blockchain, with its larger blocks, is some 180 gb. I just looked it up. (I think I looked it up the last time I saw this argument too.) (I also can't easily find it for BSV, the search turned up too many articles about how they're increasing their block size to 2 GB.)

I dont follow. What does the size of either of those blockchains have to do with the discussion?

What point are you making?

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