Bitcoin Tech Talk #357

Interesting Stuff

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  1. Three Cities - This is an essay on a useful metaphor between technology, reason and religion. The three cities are representatives of each, Silicon Valley, Athens and Jerusalem and it’s an interesting way to view modern life. Essentially, the argument is that we’ve let Silicon Valley take over too much of our life and the lack of meaning is due to a lack of both Athens and Jerusalem. But that’s not how I read it. To me, Silicon Valley doesn’t represent technology, per se, but money. And not just any money, but fiat money. It’s intruded into life in a way that’s undeniable and I would argue, terrible for civilization.

  2. Whig History and Progress - This article explores how current historians frame the arc of history. Particularly useful is the definition of Whig History, which is a narrative of the past that’s based on some progress toward a particular outcome and its inevitability. The article brings in many questions about the assumptions we bring in to analyzing history. As a Christian, I kept coming back to this person’s lack of a metaphysical anchor, which made the analysis, of better or worse, good or bad very difficult. As with most subjects in academia, it’s a mess created by hurricane Fiat.

  3. Allergies - It’s a rather curious fact that allergies are a modern phenomenon. Few people had allergies before the 1950’s and they’re going up everywhere. The article looks at what the causes might be, including antibiotic usage, overly clean environments, modern diets and lack of exposure to the outdoors and/or farm animals. I wish the article would have explored the possible link to vaccines and seed oils.

What I'm up to

  1. Bit Block Boom - I’m going to outline the conferences I’ve committed to thus far this fall. First up is Bit Block Boom which is next weekend in Austin, TX. It’s always a fun time and Gary has planned a gun range shoot, a steak dinner and a chess tournament among other things to hang out and talk with other Bitcoiners. I’ll be around to sign some books and participate in some of these activities.

  2. Pacific Bitcoin - I’m also going to be in LA/Santa Monica for the second edition of this conference and from what I heard, it was a lot of fun last year. There will be a Thank God for Bitcoin side event where I’ll be speaking. Come join us and fellowship with other Christian Bitcoiners!

  3. Bitcoin Amsterdam - Soon afterwards, I’ll be at Bitcoin Amsterdam. They’ve been kind enough to give me an affiliate code and if you want to support my work, please use the code JIMMYSONG for 10% off tickets. I am looking into running a Programming Blockchain Seminar after this event. If you are interested, please fill out the form so I have an idea of public interest.

  4. Lugano Plan B Forum - I will be returning to Lugano, Switzerland for the Plan B Forum. Last year was a lot of fun and I honestly did not expect the audience that this picturesque town attracted. Though the city is expensive, it is absolutely gorgeous.

Nostr Note of the Week

What I’m Shilling

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Bitcoin

  1. libbitcoin Vulnerability - The project that was started by Amir Taaki had a serious vulnerability in its random number generation as it essentially used a timestamp for generating new keys. This is, of course, a terrible idea as there has been less than 2 billion unix timestamps. I’m honestly a bit surprised anyone uses this software to generate keys as there are so many other ways to generate keys that are way easier to manage. Still, if you’re using libbitcoin for private key generation, stop.

  2. Ark Explainer - This is an explanation of Ark and why it’s very different than Lightning and has different tradeoffs. The main vision of Ark seems to be that Ark Service Providers facilitate the bulk of user transactions, and if users are in different ASPs, then Lightning is used to bridge between them. The cool part is that though you are dependent on ASPs to transact, you can withdraw at any time unilaterally to a UTXO on chain. It’s conceptually simpler since it’s a bunch of hub and spoke networks joined by lightning rather than a distributed network which is what Lightning is.

  3. Payjoin over Nostr - An interesting way to complete a payjoin asynchronously over Nostr is out and it’s part of the system that was proposed in response to an HRF bounty. The main idea is that the encrypted communication essentially hides the purpose of what’s happening to third parties and by using different keys for each round, we can get good security around it.

Lightning

  1. Mutiny Architecture - Ben Carman describes the architectural choices they made in their web Lightning Wallet. They’re using LDK and compiling to WebAssembly to get the safety and security properties that you would want from a Bitcoin wallet. It’s an interesting choice, and I’m curious how much this will limit the very large attack surface that web browsers generally represent. Still, it is awfully convenient and we’ll see how this plays out in the real world as it won’t need app companies’ permission.

  2. CivKit - BitFinex blog describes CivKit, a marketplace over Nostr using Lightning for payment. The main idea is that there’s a Nostr relay that also hosts a market board for various goods and services. The result is that we get a permissionless marketplace. Using Nostr public keys as identities in this system, users can gain or lose reputation. It’s an idea that I would love to see developed, though it’s hard to know how well it will work until people complete transactions on it.

  3. Lightning Misconceptions - Viktor Bunin hasn’t looked at Lightning stuff since 2019 and finds that many of the weaknesses of the network are no longer there! The article is an excellent summation of the major UX improvements we’ve seen in Lightning over the years, including lightning addresses, submarine swaps and non-custodial usable not-always-online wallets.

Economics, Engineering, Etc.

  1. Custodia - Caitlin Long’s very long road to making a new kind of bank is finally coming to fruition! Custodia is now accepting dollar deposits and unlike traditional fiat banks that rehypothecate and create money through loans, Custodia only does the custody side of banking services. This has been the vision of the Wyoming legislature after they passed a bill allowing for these kinds of banks, but the regulatory approvals at the federal level have been challenging to say the least. I would love to see these kinds of banks thrive as runs on them are in theory impossible.

  2. Nostr Password Manager - Want to have the convenience of 1Password or LastPass without the risks of centralized hacks? Here’s your solution. You don’t have to run a server as the encrypted payload is on different Nostr relays, and you get access to your passwords with your private key. It’s a nice solution and one that is essentially retrofitting passwords to a public key cryptography. I really hope more of these services pop up and I expect that some trickling lightning payment to relays for storing these encrypted payloads would make this viable. Of course, it would be much nicer if websites would just let you log in with public key cryptography.

  3. MPC vulnerabilities - BitForge has released a disclosure of vulnerabilities in several multiparty computing protocols. This apparently affected a lot of altcoin wallets. Cryptography is hard and it’s crazy to me that so much money has flowed into such insecure projects. But then again, it’s never been about security, has it?

Quick Hits

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Fiat delenda est.

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