1 00:00:16,460 --> 00:00:18,820 Life from interest. This is Bitcoin. 2 00:00:19,020 --> 00:00:20,820 Explain. Hey, sure. 3 00:00:20,940 --> 00:00:24,380 Happy New Year. What an amazing day, a new 4 00:00:24,380 --> 00:00:28,780 Bitcoin explained episode. It is truly amazing we are 5 00:00:28,780 --> 00:00:33,260 exponentially slowing down as we approach episode number 100. 6 00:00:33,260 --> 00:00:35,580 The singularity. Exactly. 7 00:00:35,620 --> 00:00:41,840 But this is episode 96. Yes, and Episode 96 like many 8 00:00:41,840 --> 00:00:46,080 other episodes is sponsored by our friends from Coinkite who 9 00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:50,800 produce the cold cart and who are kind enough to pay for 10 00:00:51,280 --> 00:00:54,520 sources mortgage of this beautiful penthouse where we're 11 00:00:54,520 --> 00:00:56,480 recording. Or just a Frappuccino. 12 00:00:56,480 --> 00:01:00,120 Probably somewhere in between. Sources. 13 00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:03,440 We have a problem. We do. 14 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:07,440 Bitcoin mining is becoming too centralized. 15 00:01:07,960 --> 00:01:11,840 Becoming too centralized. I think it already is too 16 00:01:11,840 --> 00:01:15,720 centralized. Yes, it's it's it's been 17 00:01:15,720 --> 00:01:19,800 trending in the wrong direction since mining was invented. 18 00:01:19,800 --> 00:01:22,080 Well, that's not strictly speaking true, of course, 19 00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:25,400 because Satoshi at first was the only miner exactly so for a 20 00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:27,640 little while. We had a centralization phase, 21 00:01:27,640 --> 00:01:29,880 then we had a decentralization phase, and now we are heading 22 00:01:29,880 --> 00:01:31,200 towards the centralization phase. 23 00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:32,760 We're trending in the wrong direction again. 24 00:01:33,240 --> 00:01:35,920 Yep. And, and I think we should 25 00:01:35,920 --> 00:01:39,440 nuance that because I think pools are heavily decentralized, 26 00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:42,800 heavily centralized. I think the mining, physical 27 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:46,160 mining equipment is actually quite well distributed over the 28 00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:48,040 planet and in weird remote places. 29 00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:52,800 But it's these pools that seem like potential choking points. 30 00:01:53,600 --> 00:01:58,480 Yeah, there there's different layers of mining central, this 31 00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:03,080 mining centralization, right. So there's indeed where is the 32 00:02:03,080 --> 00:02:07,560 hardware located, but a lot of this is getting centralized in 33 00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:10,840 big data centres as well. So there's centralization 34 00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:13,000 pressure there. And then there is where are the 35 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:17,960 mining pools operated from or rather maybe how many mining 36 00:02:17,960 --> 00:02:21,320 pools are there at both, I guess where are they operate from and 37 00:02:21,320 --> 00:02:24,360 how many are there? So mining pool on the pool level 38 00:02:24,360 --> 00:02:28,160 of centralization and there's the chip production 39 00:02:29,040 --> 00:02:32,520 centralization before we get. So in this episode, we're going 40 00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:36,960 to tackle a couple of solutions that are in development of have 41 00:02:36,960 --> 00:02:41,760 recently launched or like some ideas to help counter this 42 00:02:41,760 --> 00:02:46,000 trend. I'll also real quickly mention 43 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:49,640 that the upcoming Bitcoin Magazine print edition that I'm 44 00:02:49,640 --> 00:02:52,720 the Azure and chief of is going to be focused on this topic as 45 00:02:52,720 --> 00:02:54,280 well. We're going to have a whole 46 00:02:54,280 --> 00:02:57,880 special around mining centralization and different 47 00:02:57,880 --> 00:02:59,280 solutions. Sounds good. 48 00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:03,360 So, and a couple of them we're going to explore in this episode 49 00:03:04,400 --> 00:03:08,520 specifically just to spoil that for everyone, spoil that for all 50 00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:12,440 all our dear listeners, all 17 that are still left. 51 00:03:13,640 --> 00:03:16,640 There's the stratum V2. We're going to, well, we're not 52 00:03:16,640 --> 00:03:19,000 really going to discuss like I guess because we, we did a whole 53 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:25,400 episode on that, but Stratum V2 Datum, the bit Axe and P2 pool, 54 00:03:25,440 --> 00:03:27,800 P2 pool. P2 pool and and its friends. 55 00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:29,360 Right, Yeah, P2 pool and its friends. 56 00:03:29,840 --> 00:03:32,840 So we'll all we'll we'll cover all of these to some extent. 57 00:03:32,840 --> 00:03:35,760 So different, different ways that mining is hopefully 58 00:03:35,760 --> 00:03:37,320 becoming more decentralized again. 59 00:03:37,640 --> 00:03:39,320 Yeah. And so some of these focus on 60 00:03:39,320 --> 00:03:42,960 making pools more decentralized than others on the physical 61 00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:45,680 equipment, although the making of does not. 62 00:03:45,680 --> 00:03:47,760 None of them fix the making of the chips. 63 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:53,320 No, but there are some interesting developments there 64 00:03:53,320 --> 00:03:57,200 as well, as you can read in the upcoming Bitcoin Magazine print 65 00:03:57,200 --> 00:03:58,920 edition. All right, this sounds like an 66 00:03:58,920 --> 00:04:02,960 ad. Speaking of ads, did you know 67 00:04:03,120 --> 00:04:05,880 that the Genesis book is now also available in Dutch? 68 00:04:05,880 --> 00:04:07,600 Sure. I saw that. 69 00:04:07,640 --> 00:04:09,440 You can finally read the Genesis book. 70 00:04:09,600 --> 00:04:10,960 I think I read the English version. 71 00:04:11,880 --> 00:04:15,560 Yeah, it's interesting because I had it translated to Dutch. 72 00:04:15,560 --> 00:04:17,760 It was translated to Dutch, but not by me. 73 00:04:18,800 --> 00:04:21,079 But did you give any feedback on the translations to? 74 00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:23,280 To the. Original intent of the author. 75 00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:35,040 No, because I was I I did want to do that, but it it was weird 76 00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:39,600 to read my own text in my own language but not written by me 77 00:04:40,760 --> 00:04:43,480 and I. This is how Alexi Pertzer feels 78 00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:45,920 in court, because he's right. He's, you know, he wrote 79 00:04:46,080 --> 00:04:49,000 statements in Russian and then they got translated to Dutch. 80 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:51,400 And then the the judge would read them out in Dutch and then 81 00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:54,400 the translator would turn it back into English and he would 82 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:56,720 not have any idea what it's about, even though it's his own 83 00:04:56,720 --> 00:05:00,000 words. Yeah, it, it, it was weird that 84 00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:01,640 I, I'm not sure how to explain it. 85 00:05:01,640 --> 00:05:04,920 It's, it's, it's like my text but not my text or something. 86 00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:08,360 It's like if I had written it in Dutch originally, I would have 87 00:05:08,360 --> 00:05:11,400 said, you know, I've written things differently, but I would 88 00:05:11,400 --> 00:05:13,880 have written many things differently actually. 89 00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:16,680 Like there's just a difference, I guess in how I think in 90 00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:19,760 English and Dutch or you know, just, it just comes out 91 00:05:19,760 --> 00:05:22,520 differently. Yeah, that's what I would expect 92 00:05:22,520 --> 00:05:27,200 as well. Yeah, so it was like, what if 93 00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:30,520 I'm going to start giving feedback here on like how I 94 00:05:30,520 --> 00:05:33,160 would write it, Then I'm I'm just going to rewrite the whole 95 00:05:33,160 --> 00:05:34,600 thing pretty much so. Yeah. 96 00:05:34,600 --> 00:05:36,720 And if you do that, then the question is would you improve 97 00:05:36,720 --> 00:05:38,240 things? So would you write entire new 98 00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:43,080 chapters into it or? So I decided in the end, I'm 99 00:05:43,080 --> 00:05:46,080 just going to treat this like any other translated version of 100 00:05:46,120 --> 00:05:50,800 a book that I would that, you know, that I can't read it. 101 00:05:50,800 --> 00:05:54,360 Just, you know, the translator just does it and whoever wants 102 00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:55,760 to read it in that language can do it. 103 00:05:55,920 --> 00:05:58,360 So no, I did not actually do that. 104 00:05:58,360 --> 00:06:01,600 I just sort of trusted the translator with it. 105 00:06:01,600 --> 00:06:03,120 I haven't even read the whole thing even. 106 00:06:03,480 --> 00:06:05,440 Are you going to do a Dutch audio book? 107 00:06:07,560 --> 00:06:11,800 Well, so then, then I would have to what would I do it myself? 108 00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:16,560 I I did so did consider that. And in that case I was probably 109 00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:19,360 just take the Dutch translation. But now I have to read it out 110 00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:23,600 loud in my own voice, my own text, which is not my own. 111 00:06:23,600 --> 00:06:26,040 I don't know, it gets too weird. So I think not. 112 00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:30,680 So you'd have an AI voice that sounds like you trained on this 113 00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:32,720 podcast when you're speaking English, right? 114 00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:37,480 Anyway. Anyways, what were we talking 115 00:06:37,480 --> 00:06:38,520 about against yours? What? 116 00:06:38,520 --> 00:06:40,720 What are we doing here? Well, the problem is mining 117 00:06:40,720 --> 00:06:42,840 centralization. And we're making a podcast. 118 00:06:42,840 --> 00:06:45,800 Bitcoin explains all mining centralization and potential 119 00:06:45,800 --> 00:06:46,840 solutions. That's right. 120 00:06:48,920 --> 00:06:50,920 So the first solution. Oh, do we? 121 00:06:51,920 --> 00:06:55,320 Again, I think the 17 listeners that are left listening to this 122 00:06:55,320 --> 00:06:58,240 podcast probably all know why mining centralization is a 123 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:00,880 problem. But should we explain this real 124 00:07:00,880 --> 00:07:01,800 quick? We should, yeah. 125 00:07:01,960 --> 00:07:03,720 It may be useful to spell out a few things. 126 00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:08,920 So in principle, centralization doesn't have to be a problem 127 00:07:08,920 --> 00:07:12,160 because the way it works is you, you as a user create a Bitcoin 128 00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:15,960 transaction and some miner doesn't like you or they are 129 00:07:15,960 --> 00:07:20,560 asked by some men with a gun do not like you and they block your 130 00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:22,080 transaction. They don't put it in a block. 131 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:25,040 But then as long as somebody puts it in a block, you'll 132 00:07:25,040 --> 00:07:28,320 eventually get in there. And you know, we, we were not 133 00:07:28,320 --> 00:07:31,200 that worried about super fast confirmations anymore because we 134 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:34,000 have the Lightning Network. So really, you know, as long as 135 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:36,400 a few percent of miners let your blocks in, you're fine. 136 00:07:37,640 --> 00:07:40,400 But it's still not great. That's, that's one objection. 137 00:07:42,240 --> 00:07:44,840 So we'd like, you know, we, we, we wouldn't want a situation 138 00:07:44,840 --> 00:07:47,120 where 90% of miners suddenly decide to not like you. 139 00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:49,360 And then you, you kind of have to hope that 10%. 140 00:07:50,400 --> 00:07:52,080 Yeah. I mean, I guess the, the, the, 141 00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:56,640 the short version of it is we want Bitcoin to be censorship 142 00:07:56,640 --> 00:07:58,800 resistance. That's kind of one of the design 143 00:07:58,800 --> 00:08:00,840 goals, I think that's fair to say. 144 00:08:01,440 --> 00:08:05,440 And for it to be censorship resistant, it needs to be 145 00:08:05,440 --> 00:08:08,440 impossible to regulate mining basically, because what the 146 00:08:08,440 --> 00:08:13,240 regulators tend to do is they tend to blacklist to certain 147 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:17,000 people or institutions or companies or well, or countries 148 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:20,840 or, you know, so if we want to stop that from happening, then 149 00:08:20,840 --> 00:08:24,640 basically regulators need to not be able to regulate Bitcoin. 150 00:08:24,640 --> 00:08:29,080 And specifically in this case on the mining level, if mining 151 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:31,920 centralises too much. So there's, you know, if if 152 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:36,600 mining happens by too few people or in, you know, all in the same 153 00:08:36,600 --> 00:08:39,760 location or something like that, then regulators have a place to 154 00:08:39,760 --> 00:08:43,480 go and they can start to impose the censorship on Bitcoin 155 00:08:43,480 --> 00:08:45,080 through these miners. Yeah, and I guess. 156 00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:49,080 This is much harder to do. Yeah, and another thing to to 157 00:08:49,080 --> 00:08:52,960 consider is defence in depth. So usually you don't want to 158 00:08:52,960 --> 00:08:55,640 have only one line of defence. Like you could say, well, even 159 00:08:55,640 --> 00:08:58,880 if 90% of the miners censor me, doesn't matter because this 10% 160 00:08:58,880 --> 00:09:02,080 is still left. But it's, you know, it's better 161 00:09:02,080 --> 00:09:04,880 to to be safer and make sure that that 90% is not even going 162 00:09:04,880 --> 00:09:08,880 to censor you. So you want to you want to 163 00:09:08,880 --> 00:09:12,000 defend yourself in multiple places, not just just have one 164 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:14,120 last thing that that you think will protect you. 165 00:09:14,120 --> 00:09:17,360 And then some surprise happens and turns out you're not 166 00:09:17,360 --> 00:09:18,040 protected. Yeah. 167 00:09:18,560 --> 00:09:21,720 One such surprise could be the government ordering the 168 00:09:21,720 --> 00:09:27,960 compliant miners to re orc out the evil miners because then 169 00:09:27,960 --> 00:09:30,400 that 10% is won't you won't get through it. 170 00:09:30,760 --> 00:09:33,320 Right. So one of the ways you know the 171 00:09:33,320 --> 00:09:37,040 what I explained, one of the levels of centralization is pool 172 00:09:37,040 --> 00:09:40,440 centralization, right? So a mining pool is, you know, 173 00:09:40,440 --> 00:09:45,040 some entity that allows other people to bundle their hash 174 00:09:45,040 --> 00:09:48,640 power through you. But at that point, you are also 175 00:09:48,640 --> 00:09:51,520 the entity that's doing the transaction selection typically. 176 00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:54,760 So. So you are then, you know, even 177 00:09:54,800 --> 00:09:59,320 if there's like 10,000 people with ASIC machines mining all 178 00:09:59,320 --> 00:10:02,120 across the world, if there's only one person doing actual 179 00:10:02,120 --> 00:10:04,480 transaction selection, the operator of the mining pool, 180 00:10:04,760 --> 00:10:07,640 then again, the regulator just needs to find this one person in 181 00:10:07,640 --> 00:10:11,200 order to impose censorship. Today we live in a world where 182 00:10:11,600 --> 00:10:16,720 two or three mining pools have more than 50% of the total hash 183 00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:21,600 power on Bitcoin. So, you know, now I'm sort of 184 00:10:21,600 --> 00:10:24,240 leaving out the part where hash power can move to different 185 00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:26,320 pools if this starts to happen. But at least sort of 186 00:10:26,600 --> 00:10:30,160 superficially at face value, that means right now you only 187 00:10:30,160 --> 00:10:33,320 have to contact, you know, a regulator only have to contact 188 00:10:33,320 --> 00:10:36,800 two or three mining pools and. Yeah, I guess this goes into the 189 00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:39,440 fact that mining pools are doing multiple things. 190 00:10:39,800 --> 00:10:43,160 And so even if you can't make the pool smaller, at least you 191 00:10:43,160 --> 00:10:46,880 can maybe make mining pools do fewer of those things. 192 00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:49,840 So, so mining pools combine funds. 193 00:10:49,840 --> 00:10:53,400 That's a way to reduce your risk as an individual miner so you 194 00:10:53,400 --> 00:10:56,560 always get the same payout instead of maybe once a year or 195 00:10:56,560 --> 00:10:59,600 or less. But another thing it mining pool 196 00:10:59,600 --> 00:11:01,560 does is it decides what goes in the block. 197 00:11:01,960 --> 00:11:04,760 And so there are several proposals that remove that role 198 00:11:04,760 --> 00:11:06,760 from the mining pool. Even though the pool might still 199 00:11:06,760 --> 00:11:10,240 be big, they don't get to decide what's in a block or to some 200 00:11:10,240 --> 00:11:14,560 extent. Yes, so that's first the the 201 00:11:14,560 --> 00:11:18,120 first project that's realized this was trend fee 2, right? 202 00:11:18,120 --> 00:11:19,040 That's what you're talking about. 203 00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:23,320 So, so indeed you have a mining pool, a mining pool operator 204 00:11:23,320 --> 00:11:26,160 that usually selects which transactions go in a block. 205 00:11:26,760 --> 00:11:29,120 The idea was let's decentralize that. 206 00:11:29,240 --> 00:11:31,720 So in the same way that the hash power is decentralized, there's 207 00:11:31,720 --> 00:11:35,320 all these ASIC machines, you know, these thousand people 208 00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:37,080 having ASIC machines all across the world. 209 00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:40,520 As I just mentioned, the idea was let's design A mining pool 210 00:11:40,520 --> 00:11:43,960 so that these thousand people, they are actually deciding 211 00:11:43,960 --> 00:11:46,600 themselves which transactions they're including in a 212 00:11:46,600 --> 00:11:48,600 blockchain mining and then they're still sharing the 213 00:11:48,600 --> 00:11:50,760 reward. So that's Strand MP two. 214 00:11:50,760 --> 00:11:53,240 We did an episode on Strand MP 2 episode 80. 215 00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:55,160 Yeah, it's not the only thing Strand MP2 does. 216 00:11:55,160 --> 00:11:57,960 It also adds encryption. It tries a lot of things. 217 00:11:57,960 --> 00:11:59,640 Indeed. We did an episode about it. 218 00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:04,240 I guess one thing we can say about it that's relevant for the 219 00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:07,040 next topic, I think, is that it's somewhat complicated. 220 00:12:07,680 --> 00:12:11,360 So Stratum V2 really tries to be the first actual spec because 221 00:12:11,360 --> 00:12:13,440 the first version of Stratum did not have a spec. 222 00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:15,560 It's just code. So there's an actual 223 00:12:15,560 --> 00:12:18,480 specification. There are different components, 224 00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:21,440 different roles as they're called, that communicate with 225 00:12:21,440 --> 00:12:24,240 each other and that also need to be implemented. 226 00:12:24,760 --> 00:12:27,360 And so one of the downsides is that it's not, you know, it's 227 00:12:27,360 --> 00:12:29,400 not that easy to get started with Stratum V2. 228 00:12:29,920 --> 00:12:33,200 And so you know other people have tried other methods that 229 00:12:33,200 --> 00:12:34,800 are easier. Right. 230 00:12:34,800 --> 00:12:35,720 OK. Yeah. 231 00:12:35,720 --> 00:12:40,040 And currently there are two Strategy 2 projects basically, 232 00:12:40,040 --> 00:12:40,960 right? Yeah. 233 00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:44,680 So there is a firmware implementation by Brains on 234 00:12:44,680 --> 00:12:47,280 their Brains OS, which is a custom piece of firmware that 235 00:12:47,280 --> 00:12:49,600 you put on your ASIC. Yeah, Brains is a mining pool. 236 00:12:49,640 --> 00:12:51,360 Yeah. The only downside with that is 237 00:12:51,360 --> 00:12:53,760 that it's actually behind on on the current spec. 238 00:12:53,920 --> 00:12:55,800 So they're working on it, but it could take a while. 239 00:12:56,880 --> 00:13:00,880 You don't need to have Stratum V2 support on the firmware 240 00:13:00,880 --> 00:13:02,600 itself. You can run a translator that 241 00:13:02,800 --> 00:13:06,040 converts the modern Stratum V2 to the old fashioned Stratum, 242 00:13:07,200 --> 00:13:10,120 but now you're dealing with a separate piece of software, and 243 00:13:10,120 --> 00:13:12,440 this is where the complexity comes right back at you. 244 00:13:14,120 --> 00:13:17,440 And there is the Stratum Reference implementation Sri, 245 00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:21,120 which is a Rust project that implements basically all of the 246 00:13:21,120 --> 00:13:24,560 components in Stratum V2. So you can run your own pool or 247 00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:26,360 you can run some software as a user. 248 00:13:26,600 --> 00:13:30,000 Yeah. And Sri is actually implemented 249 00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:33,000 by Demands Ball right now, so that is in use. 250 00:13:33,360 --> 00:13:37,520 They're using it, yes. You don't have to use it right. 251 00:13:37,520 --> 00:13:39,720 You can implement stratum V2 yourself. 252 00:13:40,160 --> 00:13:42,960 It's a reference, so you can use that code to see how you would 253 00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:44,440 want to do it. But in this case they use the 254 00:13:44,440 --> 00:13:47,040 actual code, probably with some changes for themselves. 255 00:13:48,360 --> 00:13:51,000 Yeah. OK. 256 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:52,440 So that's Stratum V2, I think, right. 257 00:13:52,440 --> 00:13:56,400 We so we're not really going into detail beyond this. 258 00:13:56,440 --> 00:14:00,080 I put there, there's, I'm sure it's been a while, it's been 259 00:14:00,080 --> 00:14:04,120 like 2 years, but I'm sure there was plenty for more detail in 260 00:14:04,120 --> 00:14:06,600 the actual episode, episode 80. Yeah, and also some history. 261 00:14:06,840 --> 00:14:10,320 Right. So, OK, I, I mean, I don't 262 00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:15,120 remember that at all, but maybe I'll, maybe I'll really listen 263 00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:16,840 to it myself someday. Sure. 264 00:14:16,920 --> 00:14:21,200 Could be a good idea. There is a new similar ish 265 00:14:21,200 --> 00:14:24,840 project as well. Yes, Datum, yeah. 266 00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:29,160 So datum is implemented by ocean, Ocean pool, are they just 267 00:14:29,160 --> 00:14:31,640 called ocean or ocean pool? I'm not actually not sure. 268 00:14:31,640 --> 00:14:34,160 Anyways, I think it's just ocean, so there. 269 00:14:34,200 --> 00:14:37,280 So, so we have an episode explaining how Ocean's tight 270 00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:39,080 system work. Is there a way of share 271 00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:41,400 accounting? This would be completely 272 00:14:41,400 --> 00:14:46,920 separate from that anyway. They released a basically a 273 00:14:46,920 --> 00:14:51,240 piece of software that you run and it communicates to that pool 274 00:14:51,240 --> 00:14:53,440 and it makes sure that you can make your own templates. 275 00:14:54,120 --> 00:14:58,920 How does that magic? Because the specification is not 276 00:14:58,920 --> 00:15:00,840 out there. There's no specification yet but 277 00:15:00,920 --> 00:15:03,920 but my impression is it's somewhat similar to stratum P2 278 00:15:05,280 --> 00:15:07,360 but it does does have some different trade-offs. 279 00:15:08,520 --> 00:15:10,760 But this, you know, we can, we can do an episode when there is 280 00:15:10,760 --> 00:15:12,080 a spec. Do do you know what the 281 00:15:12,080 --> 00:15:16,920 trade-offs are? No, I, I think we can go back to 282 00:15:16,920 --> 00:15:21,120 stratum P2A little bit. So there are there's three ways 283 00:15:21,120 --> 00:15:24,280 in which you can do templates in Strata V2. 284 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:26,800 One is you can just use the template that the pool tells you 285 00:15:26,800 --> 00:15:29,520 to use. That's the old Strata V1 model 286 00:15:29,520 --> 00:15:33,280 essentially. The other is where you, and this 287 00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:36,680 is the model we talked about in the last episode 2 years ago 288 00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:40,560 where you announce to the pool, I want to make this template. 289 00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:43,080 So you've made your template, you have to tell the pool about 290 00:15:43,080 --> 00:15:48,520 it and then the pool could reject it and they can also see 291 00:15:48,520 --> 00:15:51,600 it. But there's a third way, which I 292 00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:55,960 think Datum uses and Stratum V2 is sort of changing the spec to 293 00:15:55,960 --> 00:15:57,840 also do this. And I don't know which, which 294 00:15:57,840 --> 00:16:00,840 one came first or whatever. But the idea is that you don't 295 00:16:00,840 --> 00:16:02,520 actually tell the pool what you're going to mine. 296 00:16:02,880 --> 00:16:05,440 You just give it a bunch of the Merkel hashes. 297 00:16:05,720 --> 00:16:07,280 I think we've covered Merkel trees before. 298 00:16:08,080 --> 00:16:12,520 And then they know that the block, you know, they, they know 299 00:16:12,520 --> 00:16:15,080 how much, how much fees they're being paid, but they have no 300 00:16:15,080 --> 00:16:17,680 idea what's in the block until you publish it to the 301 00:16:17,680 --> 00:16:20,640 blockchain. So you as the minor, if you find 302 00:16:20,640 --> 00:16:22,480 the winning block, you put it on the blockchain. 303 00:16:22,480 --> 00:16:24,920 And that's only when the pool learns what was actually in it. 304 00:16:25,440 --> 00:16:28,280 That makes censorship impossible, right? 305 00:16:28,480 --> 00:16:30,880 Or at least other than self censorship. 306 00:16:32,960 --> 00:16:38,320 While also the other thing I wanted to bring up is I do think 307 00:16:38,320 --> 00:16:42,000 there is a legitimate, you know, sort of critique on this 308 00:16:42,280 --> 00:16:45,240 approach. The the third one you mean? 309 00:16:47,440 --> 00:16:50,800 Either of them really like I just did this, this concept in 310 00:16:50,800 --> 00:16:59,200 itself, like I like fundamentally, if regulators 311 00:16:59,240 --> 00:17:04,640 would go out and take the step of censoring, you know, imposing 312 00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:09,720 censorship through pools, they can't do it with these kinds of 313 00:17:09,720 --> 00:17:12,359 pools indeed, because these pools aren't doing the 314 00:17:12,359 --> 00:17:17,119 transaction selection. However, if a regulator wants to 315 00:17:17,119 --> 00:17:21,560 get serious about it, they can of course still say, well, you 316 00:17:21,560 --> 00:17:24,200 have to. So you just can't do this type 317 00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:26,720 of mining then if if you can't do it with this type of mining. 318 00:17:26,880 --> 00:17:29,000 Yeah. So in in Stratum V2 in that 319 00:17:29,000 --> 00:17:31,360 sense the design is more flexible, which you could see is 320 00:17:31,360 --> 00:17:34,840 a good thing or is a bad thing. One thing a pool could do if 321 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:38,480 they wanted to is they can get the templates from a compliant 322 00:17:38,480 --> 00:17:40,800 company. So they wouldn't let the users 323 00:17:40,800 --> 00:17:44,040 make their own templates, but they would basically as a pool 324 00:17:44,280 --> 00:17:46,560 have another company that they get the template from. 325 00:17:46,560 --> 00:17:48,640 So they're still not. It's not their responsibility to 326 00:17:48,640 --> 00:17:50,800 make a template. Somebody else is doing it that. 327 00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:53,040 I don't think that would help decentralization much though. 328 00:17:53,480 --> 00:17:55,600 Well, it wouldn't help censorship persistent much. 329 00:17:56,320 --> 00:18:00,760 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I've, I, I think a more 330 00:18:00,760 --> 00:18:04,200 practical by the way, and I want to discourage this type of 331 00:18:04,200 --> 00:18:05,800 development. I do think it's at least 332 00:18:05,840 --> 00:18:09,760 thinking in the right direction and there's probably potential 333 00:18:09,760 --> 00:18:13,520 in that direction. I I just do think there's, it's 334 00:18:13,520 --> 00:18:17,280 not as if this is now a magic bullet and it's now actually 335 00:18:17,600 --> 00:18:20,120 completely solved. For no and, and I guess you 336 00:18:20,160 --> 00:18:23,720 know, a similar analogous discussion is happening more in 337 00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:25,640 practice around lightning right now. 338 00:18:25,640 --> 00:18:30,520 So in in Europe, we have these new, you know, even stricter KYC 339 00:18:30,520 --> 00:18:34,680 rules that were tagged along with Mikar and, and other laws. 340 00:18:35,360 --> 00:18:39,720 And they basically require exchanges to do all these on 341 00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:43,120 chain surveillance things. So this this basically spying on 342 00:18:43,120 --> 00:18:46,520 the users on the blockchain. And as soon as people use 343 00:18:46,520 --> 00:18:48,920 lightning that such spying becomes more difficult. 344 00:18:49,320 --> 00:18:52,840 So I would expect on a much shorter term for regulators to 345 00:18:53,080 --> 00:18:56,440 be annoyed by that in some way. We haven't seen any evidence of 346 00:18:56,440 --> 00:18:57,440 it yet, but. Right. 347 00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:00,000 And there might be the potential that they will just say, well 348 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:02,480 you can't use lightning then. Yeah, so, so, but then the 349 00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:05,680 regulators have to say like, no, your customers must use a 350 00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:08,160 privacy unfriendly way. They must jeopardize their own 351 00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:10,200 privacy in order for us to be able to spy on them. 352 00:19:10,480 --> 00:19:13,160 So if you know that there could be a whole legal battle around 353 00:19:13,160 --> 00:19:14,680 that if people want to actually pick the battle. 354 00:19:14,680 --> 00:19:16,960 But it's a similar discussion as what you brought up. 355 00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:20,360 Like you can force a pool, you can tell pools like you cannot 356 00:19:20,360 --> 00:19:22,880 allow decentralization because we cannot control it. 357 00:19:23,760 --> 00:19:25,280 That's that's definitely possible. 358 00:19:25,400 --> 00:19:29,800 And so then the idea would be so the, so the pool still has 359 00:19:29,800 --> 00:19:33,600 power. It still, it still has a benefit 360 00:19:33,600 --> 00:19:36,400 of being big. I guess there's just two things. 361 00:19:36,400 --> 00:19:38,920 So, so even though it's not doing the transaction selection, 362 00:19:38,920 --> 00:19:44,960 it's it is doing the payouts. And so as a user, you want to be 363 00:19:44,960 --> 00:19:47,520 able to get paid and that gives the pool some power. 364 00:19:47,520 --> 00:19:49,200 Even though they might not control what's in the block, 365 00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:51,640 they are the one who who are organizing the payment. 366 00:19:51,640 --> 00:19:53,360 And by being that person, they can. 367 00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:55,480 Yeah, there's still a choke point in it. 368 00:19:55,920 --> 00:19:59,400 So I think one question that's interesting to answer is why are 369 00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:04,120 these pools so big? Related to that, because being 370 00:20:04,120 --> 00:20:06,680 big is also what makes them at an attractive target in the 1st 371 00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:09,080 place. If there was just a million tiny 372 00:20:09,080 --> 00:20:12,960 pools, then although in theory you could enforce it on all the 373 00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:14,280 million of them, you can't really. 374 00:20:14,320 --> 00:20:17,760 You want to explain why mining is centralized? 375 00:20:18,120 --> 00:20:22,000 Yeah, so one of the problems is that a lot of miners want to be 376 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:23,760 paid a constant amount of money. You. 377 00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:26,920 Already explained that short. Well, not entirely. 378 00:20:27,360 --> 00:20:30,720 What I explained is the reason you use a pool in the 1st place 379 00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:32,600 is to get a relatively constant payout. 380 00:20:33,520 --> 00:20:34,800 But there's still some luck involved. 381 00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:37,200 The pool might find a block or a pool might not find a block. 382 00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:40,280 And some people want even more certainty than that. 383 00:20:40,280 --> 00:20:42,840 They just want to say if I provide hash power, I want to 384 00:20:42,840 --> 00:20:45,960 get paid. And this game theory is tricky, 385 00:20:46,720 --> 00:20:49,520 but basically it means that a pool has to take some financial 386 00:20:49,520 --> 00:20:52,600 risk to do this. They have to have capital in 387 00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:54,960 order to pay you, even though they're not finding a block, and 388 00:20:54,960 --> 00:20:57,000 they might not find a block for a very long time and they could 389 00:20:57,000 --> 00:20:58,920 go bankrupt over that. Right, right, right. 390 00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:01,080 Yeah, there's a good point to bring up actually. 391 00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:04,280 So a rather actually like the explanation I gave earlier is 392 00:21:04,280 --> 00:21:10,000 actually not strictly correct. It's not the case that, well, 393 00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:13,040 no, it it's sort of it's, but the the the point, the point 394 00:21:13,040 --> 00:21:15,800 here is that a lot of miners are basically just selling their 395 00:21:15,800 --> 00:21:17,840 hash power and then getting a fixed. 396 00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:19,880 Payment. For their hash power. 397 00:21:19,880 --> 00:21:22,360 Yeah, the idea of pools started out with just the idea. 398 00:21:22,360 --> 00:21:25,120 Like, OK, if I just mine on my own, it will take me 5,000,000 399 00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:27,440 years to find a block. That's not good. 400 00:21:27,480 --> 00:21:29,960 But as soon as you can find a block every day or so, you 401 00:21:29,960 --> 00:21:33,040 should be fine. But that's not enough for some 402 00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:35,160 people. And so they want to be paid 403 00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:37,600 constantly. And now in order to do that, you 404 00:21:37,600 --> 00:21:39,800 need to take financial risk. And it turns out that this 405 00:21:39,800 --> 00:21:42,240 financial risk taking works better at scale. 406 00:21:42,800 --> 00:21:46,560 So this is a massive incentive towards just there being one 407 00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:49,640 pool like, and then they're financed by Goldman Sachs and 408 00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:56,640 that's it. And the solution to that what 409 00:21:56,640 --> 00:21:59,640 what kind of might get back to it tangentially, but kind of 410 00:21:59,880 --> 00:22:02,160 really none of the four things we're mentioning really solves 411 00:22:02,160 --> 00:22:07,800 this problem. So the ocean pool, for example, 412 00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:09,720 does not solve this this problem. 413 00:22:10,760 --> 00:22:12,720 They just pay you whenever they find a block. 414 00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:16,120 And so that means that the people who can use them are 415 00:22:16,120 --> 00:22:19,880 people who are OK with that. Now, the benefit that they offer 416 00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,520 is transparency, which we explained in the Tides episode. 417 00:22:22,840 --> 00:22:27,920 So although you might get paid unpredictably, you know exactly 418 00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:30,720 that the pay you got plus fair, which is very difficult to do 419 00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:33,000 with these other schemes where it's very untransparent. 420 00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:35,760 So you think you're paying a 2% fee, but are you really paying a 421 00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:37,120 2% fee? You have no idea. 422 00:22:37,120 --> 00:22:39,640 Yes, exactly. Yeah, yes. 423 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:46,280 And in order to fix this, basically this constant flow of 424 00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:49,480 money problem that would require really fancy derivatives 425 00:22:49,720 --> 00:22:53,240 products, you know, discrete lock contracts. 426 00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:55,880 There's all sorts of fancy ideas around it, but gets pretty 427 00:22:56,520 --> 00:23:00,280 pretty abstract very quickly. OK, let's move to the next 428 00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:02,080 topic. This one is interesting and 429 00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:05,080 probably a little shorter. I just wanted to say one more 430 00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:07,320 thing about Datum. So because it's so simple, like 431 00:23:07,320 --> 00:23:10,160 just install one piece of software, there's already an 432 00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:12,560 umbrella app for it. So it's just very easy, 433 00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:15,440 especially for hobby miners, to just try it out and play with 434 00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:17,760 it. I'd like for start MV 2:00 to be 435 00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:19,720 able to do that as well. I think it's technically very 436 00:23:19,720 --> 00:23:21,080 possible. It's just a matter of having 437 00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:25,320 enough people doing these things anyway. 438 00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:30,520 OK, so the next topic is an interesting one, the bit X. 439 00:23:30,840 --> 00:23:33,520 The bit X. What is the bit X short? 440 00:23:34,120 --> 00:23:36,600 It's an X. Is it those? 441 00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:39,440 No, it's not. It's basically what they did. 442 00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:42,480 Well, what it looks like is a very small device, about the 443 00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:46,360 size of a well half the size of a teacup, or 1/4 of the size of 444 00:23:46,360 --> 00:23:50,040 the teacup. If you have a big teacup, it 445 00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:53,800 basically and. It it's when are we measuring 446 00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:57,880 the mining hardware in teacups? We have Americans listening and 447 00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:00,640 they use all these weird non metric units so we should 448 00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:01,560 endorse. Them a bit. 449 00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,680 Quarter teacup. Sorry. 450 00:24:07,120 --> 00:24:10,480 Anyway, it's a very small device that's kind of a fun way to 451 00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:12,560 hobby mine. So it's not a way to make a lot 452 00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:15,640 of money, but it's it doesn't use a lot of power either. 453 00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:17,320 You might use 15 watts or something. 454 00:24:17,320 --> 00:24:19,040 So it's like a couple of LED lights. 455 00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:21,080 It's the kind of thing that you can have in your living room and 456 00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:25,480 brag about it. However, inside of it is a 457 00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:29,840 single ASIC chip. Where does that ASIC chip come 458 00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,400 from? It comes from a bigger minor. 459 00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:35,680 So what basically happens if you take a big minor? 460 00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:37,040 Those have. How many? 461 00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:39,800 How many tea cups? They have They are the size of 462 00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:43,120 two shoe boxes. It's getting very complicated. 463 00:24:43,120 --> 00:24:46,200 Originally, like the S 9 was one shoe box and then you, the newer 464 00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:48,280 miners are two shoe boxes and. That well, how many? 465 00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:50,240 How many teacups in a shoe box? I don't know. 466 00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:53,760 Anyway, So what happens is you somebody takes those those big 467 00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:59,240 miners and carefully takes out the individual chips or they can 468 00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:03,640 order the individual chips on Ali Ali Baba, those kind of 469 00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:05,600 sites depending on the on the spy chain. 470 00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:09,880 And then you take one of those chips and you put them on a mini 471 00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:12,240 computer. They're very simple, ESP 282 472 00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:15,600 mini computers. And then there's an open source 473 00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:18,360 operating system that is able to control the individual mining 474 00:25:18,360 --> 00:25:21,280 chip. And so you end up with perhaps 475 00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:26,080 with the modern ones, I think it's about 1 Tera hash compared 476 00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:29,520 to maybe 200 Tera hash in a proper minor machine. 477 00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:31,520 So 1. So 200 of bit axis is the 478 00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:35,240 equivalent of 1 double shoebox professional mine. 479 00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,640 And imagine there's hundreds of thousands of of normal mining 480 00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:41,680 machines in a big data centre and you get a sense of the scale 481 00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:43,680 of of this mining. Right. 482 00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:52,080 I guess the advantage would be what I mean having an actual 483 00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:58,320 ASIC miner hardware thing that's going to be loud and produces 484 00:25:58,320 --> 00:25:59,800 heat and all that kind of stuff, right. 485 00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:01,000 Like that's not really something. 486 00:26:01,360 --> 00:26:04,360 Yeah, this thing is very quiet. It does need a fan, but it's a 487 00:26:04,360 --> 00:26:06,120 very small one. Right. 488 00:26:06,120 --> 00:26:09,360 So like you said, you can just why would you like? 489 00:26:09,360 --> 00:26:12,240 Is it just for people that actually want to make money or 490 00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:14,600 is it more like for fun? No, because for one thing, 491 00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:16,840 you're probably going to run this thing at home and at home 492 00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:20,120 your electricity prices are going to be too high even with a 493 00:26:20,120 --> 00:26:26,800 professional mining machine. So, but it is, I think a way for 494 00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:30,600 people to become familiar with mining at all because mining is 495 00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:33,200 so far away now from the end user, because it's such an 496 00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:36,640 industrial project. It's a very nice entry level 497 00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:38,400 device. You can actually connect it to a 498 00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:42,800 pool and basically you see all the moving parts to some open 499 00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:44,920 source software involved that you can get, you know, that you 500 00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:46,800 can start playing with. So hopefully it's a way to get 501 00:26:46,800 --> 00:26:48,120 more people interested in mining. 502 00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,920 You could also see it as a lottery system because your 503 00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:54,000 chances of winning are absolutely tiny. 504 00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:58,200 But generally people will use this in a solo mode where if the 505 00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:00,960 device finds a block, which might happen once every, you 506 00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:04,600 know, million years, but that's like, you know, every million 507 00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:05,320 it's. Like a lottery. 508 00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:09,440 Yeah, it's like one in a million every year per person, right? 509 00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:11,320 So somebody will find it not. Exactly. 510 00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:12,920 It's like a lottery. Yeah, it's like a lottery. 511 00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:18,080 And then you get, you know, the full whatever, 3.25 BTC, which 512 00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:22,600 is nice. Yeah, and I so. 513 00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:25,920 We're, we're hoping to see a bottoms up, bottom up 514 00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:29,880 development here because mining the, the machine, the making of 515 00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:34,240 these machines has been very proprietary, very like far away, 516 00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:38,440 very close source. And maybe somebody can figure 517 00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:40,480 out how to make these bid axes bigger. 518 00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:44,160 So you start with a small device, which is uneconomical, 519 00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,680 but there's already designs where you put six of these ASICS 520 00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,600 chips in a single one that's already a little bit better in 521 00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:54,200 terms of overhead. And you could imagine going, you 522 00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,680 know, building it eventually building a professional machine 523 00:27:56,680 --> 00:28:01,120 that's built on all these open source standards, and then maybe 524 00:28:01,120 --> 00:28:02,960 those would be used by industry eventually. 525 00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:05,560 The other reason why I personally find them interesting 526 00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:09,360 is because it's plausible that we can have stratum V2 on one of 527 00:28:09,360 --> 00:28:12,800 those devices and then start testing start MV2 with it. 528 00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:16,160 Because start MV 2 has a bit of a chicken egg problem where you 529 00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:18,680 know, there's, it's complicated, so it's hard to test, but you 530 00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:20,920 want people to test it. Otherwise the big, the big boys 531 00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:23,480 are not going to use it. And so getting a group of 532 00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,240 hobbyists to use start MV 2 would be a very nice way to 533 00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:29,760 bootstrap this stuff. OK. 534 00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:35,840 So, yeah, the the, the, the reason why you mentioned it 535 00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:40,600 here, I guess it, you know, it hopefully in a sort of ideal 536 00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,480 world, this is something that catches on. 537 00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,280 And actually because there's like, you know, at some point 538 00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:48,520 it's like millions of people having one of these things in 539 00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:52,000 their home and then mining hardware, you know, mining 540 00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:53,640 becomes very decentralized in that way. 541 00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:55,280 It's sort of. A well that that's another 542 00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:58,680 angle. So, so we have the DIY hobby. 543 00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,880 Interesting that that could pay off in the long run, more of of 544 00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:07,680 an R&D strategy, I guess. Then there is the study said the 545 00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:10,200 lottery is solo mining. And then there's also, if 546 00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:12,800 there's enough, it might actually make a difference. 547 00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:15,360 Let's say all the big miners are being censored. 548 00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:19,160 Now there's millions of these tiny miners and as long as they 549 00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:22,640 can find one block, you know, every couple weeks at least, you 550 00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:25,040 can still get your transactions through sort of as a last 551 00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:27,560 bastion and, and very hard to shut down because these things 552 00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:30,680 would be literally everywhere. So, you know, you'd have to 553 00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:33,080 search people's houses for them and they would be tiny and in 554 00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:35,520 quarters and that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah, they're. 555 00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:37,680 Probably too small for that, but it's. 556 00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:41,880 That's assuming that these blocks then wouldn't be reorged 557 00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,840 about exactly going deep into the, you know, adversarial game 558 00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:47,640 theory here. But at least it's another it's a 559 00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:50,680 nice extra line of defence. Yeah, and because they're 100 560 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:52,720 times smaller than a normal minor, and they're typically 561 00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:55,600 only one in one place, you know, they can be spread out very 562 00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,640 well. Yeah, cool. 563 00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:00,760 Do you have one? I do, yes. 564 00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:03,440 I'll I'll show it to you if. You remind me. 565 00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:06,360 I think everyone, all our 17 listeners knew you had one 566 00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:07,720 because I think you mentioned it. 567 00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,080 I probably. Did I know in the Netherlands 568 00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:13,560 there's quite a few because Satoshi Radio, the podcast sold 569 00:30:13,920 --> 00:30:18,280 200 of them and then had to assemble them because that's the 570 00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:19,320 part we didn't mention they also. 571 00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:22,960 Have their mining pool now basically right or or they were 572 00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,160 on one of. The one of the lowest latency 573 00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:27,360 mining pools in Europe or solar pools. 574 00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:28,640 Right. Yeah. 575 00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:32,280 Yeah, you can. You can buy them. 576 00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:34,600 There's different shops that sell them. 577 00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:37,040 You can also completely make it from scratch from components. 578 00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:44,200 FIFA, La Revolution, whatever, bottom up mining, let's go. 579 00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:51,960 OK. OK then finally, sure there have 580 00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:57,000 been some developments in the P2 pool domain. 581 00:30:57,480 --> 00:31:02,600 Entrance. Yeah, this is something I have 582 00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:05,920 not, you know, the Obi Wan Konobi meme. 583 00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:08,960 That's a name I've not heard for a long time. 584 00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:13,560 This was like a thing, I think even when I got into Bitcoin, 585 00:31:13,560 --> 00:31:17,320 which was early 2013, I think even then that was sort of 586 00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:19,440 already becoming kind of outdated. 587 00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:24,080 Yeah, so P2 pool, but it has existed for a long time and it 588 00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:27,640 might be coming back. But more generally if you Google 589 00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:32,640 Braid pool or rat pool, you will find similar concepts that have 590 00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:36,360 all been in the last two years or so been resurfacing. 591 00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:38,320 So people are revisiting this this concept so. 592 00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:40,120 What is? What is the concept? 593 00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:45,200 Roughly the the concept is that there is no pool in a very 594 00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:49,720 matrix style way. Instead, you have you 595 00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:55,240 collaborate with people to yeah, basically remove the pool from 596 00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:57,320 exist. So so basically not need a pool 597 00:31:57,320 --> 00:31:58,440 at all. So we we. 598 00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:01,440 Have to decentralize the pool. Yes. 599 00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:04,440 Yeah, No, there what there's no pool operator, let's put it that 600 00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:05,600 way. That's that's the right way to 601 00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:07,520 put it, right? There's no central operator. 602 00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:09,080 So the it's a decentralized pool. 603 00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:13,480 Yeah, and the way you do that is by creating a mini blockchain in 604 00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,320 a way. The terms that are used are 605 00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:20,520 shares or weak blocks. That, yeah, that's how pit pool 606 00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:22,920 always works. That's that's that was the 607 00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:25,360 original design, right? Yeah, there's variations on that 608 00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:27,480 design. P2 pool indeed already worked 609 00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,200 that way. So everybody, I think because I 610 00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:35,280 I never actually studied the P2 pool original that well, my 611 00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:39,600 understanding is that you would have between real blocks, you 612 00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:44,480 would have a chain of basically weak blocks and a weak block is 613 00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:46,120 just a block with a lower proof of work. 614 00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,560 So I mean, that's how mining pool always works basically. 615 00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:52,680 Well, that's how. Shares work. 616 00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:54,480 Yeah, exactly. In a mining pool, you submit a 617 00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:56,320 share to the pool to prove that you're working. 618 00:32:56,320 --> 00:33:01,040 Yes, Now, but these shares are independent, so one share does 619 00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:02,880 not point to another share. Yeah. 620 00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:08,840 So, so to, to put that simply, sort of normally, you know, when 621 00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:12,920 you're mining Bitcoin, it has to be, you have to hit a certain 622 00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:15,320 difficulty target, right? Which means that's the hash of 623 00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:19,040 the block has to be, or the hash of the block header has to be, 624 00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:21,440 has to start with some number of zeros. 625 00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:23,440 And then higher difficulty means more zeros. 626 00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:29,320 And then these weak blocks have require fewer zeros, so it's 627 00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:32,080 easier to find them. And then they're not a valid 628 00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:35,480 block for the Bitcoin blockchain, but they were still 629 00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:38,640 kind of hard to find. So it still proves to the mining 630 00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:40,520 pool that you are at least trying. 631 00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:42,760 Yeah, exactly. So you're using proof of work, 632 00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:44,640 that's already how pools work, right? 633 00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:46,960 That's what shares are you. You make one of these weaker 634 00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:49,800 blocks and that proves to the pool that you've done an amount 635 00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:51,760 of work and they will take that into account. 636 00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:54,960 Now in P2 pool, it's not the pool that takes it into account, 637 00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:57,240 just the other miners in your pool that take it into into 638 00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,760 account. Well, specifically, but correct 639 00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,200 me if I'm wrong. So the idea is basically that 640 00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:08,320 you are these, these pool pools, No, sorry, these miners, you 641 00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:11,360 know, they are trying to find a Bitcoin block, a valid Bitcoin 642 00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:15,920 block, but they're also doing that by hashing on top of the 643 00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:18,960 previous weak block from another line there in the pool. 644 00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,239 And so that's the difference. Whereas in a pool, in a normal 645 00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:23,440 pool shares are independent things. 646 00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,560 You just submit it and it's it's validated based on itself. 647 00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,400 What you're doing this B2 pool type design is you have a chain 648 00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:32,679 of weak blocks. So every weak block points to a 649 00:34:32,679 --> 00:34:35,760 previous weak block and and you would have a much higher block 650 00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:37,560 frequency. So the weak block frequency 651 00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:42,920 might be ones every 10 seconds. So you'd have about 60 weak 652 00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:45,120 blocks in the time that you have a normal block. 653 00:34:45,639 --> 00:34:49,760 Now this the way you do this is by actually adding kind of 654 00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:51,880 adding a blockchain on top of a blockchain. 655 00:34:52,199 --> 00:34:54,679 Yeah, the mining pool itself has an internal blockchain. 656 00:34:54,679 --> 00:34:57,480 Yeah, the internal blockchain. Between each actual Bitcoin 657 00:34:57,480 --> 00:34:59,160 block. So the internal blockchain is 658 00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:04,720 basically a weak block plus a reference to the previous thing 659 00:35:04,720 --> 00:35:05,520 in that chain. Yeah. 660 00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:09,760 And then you as a miner are supposed to always build on top 661 00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:13,360 of the last the last week block. You're not supposed to ignore 662 00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:15,960 the last week block. So I think the problem with this 663 00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:20,000 at the time, at least as I remember it, and which also just 664 00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:30,000 sounds right, is that you now get extra costs by mining on a 665 00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:32,440 PITA pool. Namely, you have real work 666 00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:35,760 risks, so sometimes you will mind a block that's that won't 667 00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:37,440 make it into the internal blockchain. 668 00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:41,240 Plus there's extra latency. Well, no, that's still real. 669 00:35:41,520 --> 00:35:44,480 You have still still risk. So yeah, or or or. 670 00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:46,800 Still risk or for risk, Yeah, that's that's what I mean 671 00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,880 actually. So I guess that was sort of the 672 00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:52,320 main problem there's. I think yeah, I think there were 673 00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:55,280 at least several problems. 1 is what you just described. 674 00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:58,560 Because this frequency of blocks is higher, you're more likely to 675 00:35:58,560 --> 00:36:01,160 produce a block that just doesn't make it to your peers on 676 00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:04,160 time well. And in in a normal mining pool 677 00:36:04,240 --> 00:36:06,800 it doesn't have to make it to your peers on time. 678 00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:08,800 No, because it only goes to the centralized pool sector. 679 00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:11,160 So there are no orphans in that sense. 680 00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:12,880 Exactly. So that's that's an extra 681 00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:16,720 problem introduced by P2 pool and which makes it maybe, you 682 00:36:16,720 --> 00:36:19,720 know, economically, yeah. Another thing is that has to do 683 00:36:19,720 --> 00:36:22,360 with the Coinbase payout. I think we'll we'll cover that 684 00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:24,320 later. Or go for it now. 685 00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:26,400 Yeah, the Coinbase. We're here now. 686 00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,360 We're normally according now. Might as well explain it now. 687 00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:31,160 Yeah. So normally a pool would simply 688 00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,120 you would have an account with the pool and they would 689 00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,840 occasionally pay you out on chain, but not every time. 690 00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:40,480 And the problem with this design is that everybody, because it's 691 00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:42,840 decentralized, everybody wants to make sure they're getting 692 00:36:42,840 --> 00:36:44,640 paid. And so your Coinbase transaction 693 00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:49,800 might have a lot of outputs, which uses space that cannot be 694 00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:53,440 used to, you know, for to mine actually profitable 695 00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:54,920 transactions. So especially in a world with 696 00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:57,320 high fees, there's an opportunity cost there. 697 00:36:57,600 --> 00:36:59,960 Now, it's not necessarily too bad, especially with Taproot, 698 00:36:59,960 --> 00:37:01,640 because Taproot outputs are pretty small. 699 00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:05,120 So you can fit a couple hundreds in there without, you know, too 700 00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:09,520 much sacrifice. But there was a bit of a snatch 701 00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:14,440 that the Ant miner firmware at the time that ran on the ASICS 702 00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:17,000 could not handle more than 19 outputs. 703 00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:20,480 And ocean pool has run into the same problem. 704 00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:24,120 I think we've mentioned that in in the earlier broadcast that, 705 00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:27,040 but that can be solved by running sane firmware on the 706 00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:30,120 device like brains OS or some other custom firmware. 707 00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:31,920 So that problem has kind of been solved. 708 00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:34,720 But, you know, by the time the problem was solved, P2 pool was 709 00:37:34,720 --> 00:37:38,560 already dead. The problem about stale blocks, 710 00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:42,440 you know, in the meantime, we have seen networks like Ethereum 711 00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:46,720 introduce uncle blocks and ways of accounting for these stale 712 00:37:46,720 --> 00:37:49,200 blocks. So you would basically, if 713 00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:51,920 you're nice enough to point to one of these blocks that was 714 00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:56,400 abandoned, you get 20% of it and the original guy gets 80% of it. 715 00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:00,000 So it's a way to incentivize you in pointing to other blocks. 716 00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:03,160 And there's been a lot of academic research around it that 717 00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:05,680 suggests that at least for the purpose of running a mining 718 00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:07,560 pool, it might be quite useful, right? 719 00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,160 You you won't want to do it on Bitcoin itself, but for a pool 720 00:38:10,160 --> 00:38:12,840 it might be fine. Another another thing that 721 00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:14,440 hasn't. Something good coming out of 722 00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:18,080 Ethereum that Bitcoin could use. Yeah, and another place what's 723 00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:20,960 interesting to look at is Monero still has P2 pool. 724 00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:23,880 Basically they copied the idea and they're still running it and 725 00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:26,680 it's being actively used. I believe they also have 10 726 00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:29,040 second block times. As far as I know, Monero always 727 00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:32,520 runs behind Tor and they don't barely have any of these 728 00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:36,320 orphans, uncles, what you want to call it, which suggests that 729 00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:40,760 the latency problem, you know, is, is very solvable, maybe just 730 00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:44,920 by a slightly better technology that we have now in Bitcoin. 731 00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:48,320 We also have compact blocks now, which are a way we've, I think 732 00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:50,400 we've covered that in an earlier episode, like a way to very 733 00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:52,560 efficiently broadcast a block without sending the whole 4 734 00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,760 megabytes using the fact that everybody has the same and pool. 735 00:38:56,720 --> 00:38:58,720 Perhaps that can be used as well. 736 00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:01,960 So in other words, it, it, it is, I think it's worth looking 737 00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:05,280 at these concepts again using some of the more modern tooling 738 00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:06,840 that we have and see if we can revive them. 739 00:39:07,720 --> 00:39:10,160 Because it does take the, you know, it, it removes the 740 00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:12,120 centralized pool. So it's a very good feature. 741 00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:22,720 Another problem, see well about this number of outputs that go 742 00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:24,920 into a coin base because every participant wants his own 743 00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:27,280 output. There are ideas floating around 744 00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,360 that to fix that through lightning or through atomic 745 00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:33,320 swaps. But basically we've already got 746 00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:37,080 this blockchain on top of a lock chain and in P2 pool. 747 00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:39,480 This blockchain was just pointing to the previous one, 748 00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:42,040 wasn't anything else. But you could make this 749 00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:44,560 blockchain a bit more fancy by having actual transactions in 750 00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:48,240 it, a very small number, and those transactions would be 1 751 00:39:48,240 --> 00:39:51,600 minor saying to the other minor. OK, here's an atomic swap. 752 00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:52,840 Would you like to take my reward? 753 00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:56,720 So as a small miner you would get paid on lightning by a big 754 00:39:56,720 --> 00:40:00,520 miner and in exchange for that inside this fake blockchain you 755 00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:03,600 give up your coin and and the minor can increase the bigger 756 00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:09,880 miner can increase their coin. Here, you've really lost me. 757 00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:12,480 Wait, you're making transactions on the internal? 758 00:40:13,280 --> 00:40:16,080 On the fake blockchain. On the fake what? 759 00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:20,120 How does anyone get If it's a fake blockchain, how does anyone 760 00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:21,920 get there? I I just lost. 761 00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:23,640 I just lost you. Yeah. 762 00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:26,720 So ultimately the actual money happens in the Coinbase 763 00:40:26,720 --> 00:40:28,760 transaction, right? And and you're making weak 764 00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:31,360 blocks with this Coinbase transaction that has hundreds of 765 00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:33,800 outputs. And every time a weak block is 766 00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:35,480 found, nothing happens in the real blockchain. 767 00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:39,520 But you can shuffle around how that weak block is organized 768 00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:43,360 and, and so you can while week blocks are being found, you can 769 00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,960 do a lightning atomic swap with somebody to say, OK, I will 770 00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:48,960 remove my output from the next week block. 771 00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:52,080 And in exchange for that, you get to have your output in the 772 00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:54,480 in the next week block. So in other words, you, you, the 773 00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:59,000 big mining miner has one Bitcoin in the output and now they have 774 00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:02,800 1.1 Bitcoin and you give up your 0.1 Bitcoin and they pay you on 775 00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:04,840 Lightning with real Bitcoin. Now there has to be some 776 00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:07,880 discount because they're taking a risk, but you can imagine 777 00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:10,000 figuring out the correct price for these kind of things. 778 00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:15,000 So, so you're basically trading being on chain right now versus 779 00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:18,360 having lightning liquidity right now or being on chain maybe one 780 00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:22,360 day in the future versus having lightning money right now? 781 00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:26,160 OK. Those those kind of techniques 782 00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:26,640 could be. Used. 783 00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:28,720 I'm not going to ask you to explain that again. 784 00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:33,320 I am going to listen back to this episode again later and see 785 00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:35,320 if I understand it because this sounds I. 786 00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:37,600 I don't know, I just don't get it yet, but that's fine. 787 00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:40,480 But you can already, we know how to swap between altcoins and 788 00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:43,320 Bitcoin, Yes, right. And this is essentially this, 789 00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:45,160 this chain inside the pool is an altcoin. 790 00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:48,960 It's just the altcoin will eventually materialize into 791 00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,040 Bitcoin as real blocks are found. 792 00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:54,520 OK, right. Oh, yeah, OK. 793 00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:56,960 I think I get it now. Oh yeah, I I sort of. 794 00:41:57,920 --> 00:41:59,920 But the question then is how complicated do you want to make? 795 00:41:59,920 --> 00:42:01,880 This blockchain, Yes, yes, yes. OK. 796 00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:08,120 I think, well, they say you all, they say you only really 797 00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:10,320 understand it. And I tend to believe that once 798 00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:13,560 you can explain it yourself. And I don't think I can do that 799 00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:16,680 right now, but I think I at least sort of intuitively now 800 00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:18,400 get this idea. Yeah. 801 00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:20,520 You're you're editing the Coinbase. 802 00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:24,480 You're editing, you're editing the future Coinbase and and sort 803 00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:27,080 of in that same vein, there is a proposal to use E cash. 804 00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:31,880 So the shoe style E cash to when when you're submitting mining 805 00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:35,200 shares or these weak blocks. I think this one is, is not 806 00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:37,440 related to P2 pool. It's actually for a normal pool 807 00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:41,320 again, but there instead of instead of just shares that are 808 00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:43,440 just, you know, a thing that the pool registers for you. 809 00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:45,840 You actually make E cash tokens that are tradeable. 810 00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:48,960 And then you can do all sorts of fancy things that you can 811 00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:52,600 because you you can now monetize your fee revenue or your mining 812 00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:55,320 revenue before real block is found and you are no longer 813 00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:57,040 depending on the pool to do that for you. 814 00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:02,000 So these are all ways to kind of take like if it covered in the 815 00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:04,520 episode, you can take the transaction selection from the 816 00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:08,080 pool, but you can also take some of the payout distribution work 817 00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:09,960 from the pool. And so you give these pools 818 00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,080 might be big, but they would have less and less actual 819 00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:15,200 functions to the point where they're just not an interesting 820 00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,640 target anymore. OK, so a. 821 00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:20,120 Lot of this is moon math and fancy future stuff. 822 00:43:20,120 --> 00:43:23,680 Yeah, this is still very theoretical for the most part, 823 00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:25,880 right? Like, I mean, yeah, these are. 824 00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:27,480 Proposals floating around mailing lists. 825 00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:30,480 Some prototypes have been written, but I think it's a 826 00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:33,480 promising direction that needs more attention than strategic 827 00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:38,480 Bitcoin reserves. Aiming to that, yeah, this this, 828 00:43:39,240 --> 00:43:42,840 this would be really important if this if if something like 829 00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:48,040 Peter Pool can be realized again or revived or yeah, that's that 830 00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:50,720 would be one of the best improvements to Bitcoin that I 831 00:43:50,720 --> 00:43:54,920 can think of for sure. But so right now this is still 832 00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:56,800 in the theoretical phase for the most part. 833 00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,560 I mean, I guess Peter Poole might still be out there, sort 834 00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,880 of kind of. No, I think the last release was 835 00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:04,640 in 2017, right after Segwayed, and since then there's been no 836 00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:07,160 code development. OK, and what about these end 837 00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:09,680 friends? Like a ton of them are like life 838 00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:11,080 and mining. Block Well, the things we've 839 00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,680 just the things we've just been describing are sort of a mix 840 00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:18,680 between these three proposals that I'm confusing and that also 841 00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:23,840 are copying from each other. So P the P2 pool revival might 842 00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:26,480 actually have things from braid pool in it, etcetera. 843 00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:28,760 So it's, it's a bit of a, you know, we'll, we'll see what the 844 00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:30,080 eventual name of this thing will be. 845 00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:33,520 But I'm, yeah, I'm seeing things brewing there. 846 00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:37,480 The the combination of the, the hard, the hardware, the new 847 00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:39,640 pools that are trying different models and then these 848 00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:44,040 decentralized pool ideas. Yeah, I was looking is I think 849 00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:45,680 there's a chance that we'll make it. 850 00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:49,000 We just don't know how much time there is, right? 851 00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,080 We don't know if we can keep experimenting with this stuff 852 00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:53,880 for like the another 20 years or whether in two months the whole 853 00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:56,640 thing comes to an end. And if it's in two months, then 854 00:44:56,640 --> 00:45:01,440 we were too late. Yeah, yeah. 855 00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:06,320 Well, I mean, arguably even if censorship would start to 856 00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:11,560 happen, doesn't mean that immediately Bitcoin is killed, 857 00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:13,720 right? Like you can technically still 858 00:45:13,720 --> 00:45:15,400 keep working on these solutions and. 859 00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:18,440 Yeah, I mean, one thing about censorship is that it is an 860 00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,320 active attack. So the censorship needs to keep 861 00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:23,240 happening. As soon as it stops happening, 862 00:45:23,240 --> 00:45:24,840 it's like a floodgate that opens. 863 00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:31,040 So in that sense, it's sort of reversible damage, yeah, but 864 00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,080 it's still. It it would be really bad. 865 00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:34,640 It would they put us in a very different. 866 00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:37,640 World, I would say it's, you know, well like you said, we 867 00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:39,600 don't know but I know we don't know if this is going to happen 868 00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:43,000 in two months or 20 years, but. On an optimistic note, there are 869 00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:45,360 lots of other cryptocurrencies out there that are much easier 870 00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:47,600 to censor. Like I'm not even going to name 871 00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:51,040 names much easier to censor, and yet they are not being censored. 872 00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,440 So there's, you know, there's the possibility of being 873 00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:56,840 censored and there is a willingness to do the censoring. 874 00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:00,280 And I think the latter isn't there at the moment because 875 00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:03,080 exchanges are just a much easier place to say, hey, why don't you 876 00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:06,560 freeze those coins? Yeah, but also there's kind of 877 00:46:06,560 --> 00:46:10,640 no point in censoring some smaller coin if people can just 878 00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:11,920 keep using the bigger coin, right? 879 00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:13,720 Like you either do to censorship, right? 880 00:46:13,720 --> 00:46:15,440 Or. Yeah, but by some smaller coin 881 00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:18,120 you mean Tether? Oh, I wasn't going. 882 00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:20,560 To name names, but like that, that's one of those things that. 883 00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:26,560 Could yeah, it's it's tether has been surprisingly I. 884 00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:29,400 Mean it. It does freeze coins. 885 00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,320 So in this in a sense there is some such happening, but not at 886 00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:34,320 the kind of scale that. That is true that. 887 00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:36,720 Would happen on an exchange for example, where you really have 888 00:46:36,720 --> 00:46:39,120 to KYC every transaction before you can even make it. 889 00:46:39,720 --> 00:46:43,120 Yeah, OK. Was that it? 890 00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:46,000 I think we've covered most of the things that were on the list 891 00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,320 and we've covered a lot. Great. 892 00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:53,680 So the future of mining is still kind of hopeful potentially. 893 00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:55,680 I think sure, that's what we're going for. 894 00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:57,560 That's that's what we're going with, not. 895 00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:01,000 That yet and thank you for listening to Bitcoin. 896 00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:01,920 Explain.