[HN Gopher] On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before ac...
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On anyone-can-spend Pay-to-Taproot outputs before activation
Author : b10c
Score : 31 points
Date : 2021-07-23 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (b10c.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (b10c.me)
| vmception wrote:
| That's really fascinating, Ive always found it interesting how
| some arts become lost in cryptocurrency. Like if you ever read a
| book on the topic you become aware of so many manual things you
| can do that wallets don't surface to you.
| ASTP001 wrote:
| Like what? Curious to hear about some interesting manual
| interactions you can do with the network that isn't exposed in
| typical wallets.
| vmception wrote:
| This Pay-to-Taproot output spendable by anyone is a decent
| example.
|
| Most multisignature behaviors still aren't exposed, its kind
| of weird. But looking for to taproot making multisignature
| addresses indistinguishable from other addresses.
|
| There's the general empty space that people shove all sorts
| of things into. From plain text metadata to encoded messages
| to derivatives trades.
| hanniabu wrote:
| From my experience that see it as a technical superiority
| thing. Where if you want to use that functionality you'd be
| smart enough to know how to use the cli and if you can't
| then you probably shouldn't be using it. And then are
| typically met with hostile attitudes saying that if you're
| that much of a noob and need a GUI then just go use a lite
| client or something. The white bitcoin core community is
| very ostracizing and unwelcoming.
|
| Even vitalik has mentioned that this attitude was one of
| the things that turned him away from bitcoin (along with
| refusal to evolve features) and launch ethereum.
| murrayn wrote:
| > The white bitcoin core community
|
| The what now?
| vmception wrote:
| I'm glad that's mostly gone from the crypto space, but
| its because the core maintainers of projects from the
| first half of the decade either disappear, leave publicly
| denouncing that attitude, or die.
|
| In the mean time, a lot of people still tinker at their
| own volition, read technical books, or now learn about
| blockchain structures in universities, leading to a
| continual new set of people using blockchains differently
| or at their fundamental level.
| willwashburn wrote:
| Is there any hard fork scheduled in the near future for Bitcoin,
| with more important upgrades?
| stickac wrote:
| The real artistry is to deploy updates without doing a hard
| fork. Taproot is one of these and it is very, very important.
| lawn wrote:
| The real artistry is convincing people that the complexity
| cost of soft forks are worth it.
| nullc wrote:
| Complexity costs come from backwards compatibility.
| Backwards compatibility is essential because otherwise the
| change potentially confiscates users funds.
|
| Assuming compatibility is required softforks generally
| _reduce_ complexity because they relax the requirement for
| synchronization between participants.
| aeternum wrote:
| Softforks reduce deployment complexity but increase
| overall complexity.
|
| A softfork is like internet access over phone-lines. If
| you pick up the line, participants that aren't on the
| latest code will often hear a bunch of garbage that they
| can't make sense of. Someone might even send them money
| but they won't be able to make sense of it or accept it
| since it's now encapsulated.
|
| From an overall network perspective, this may be a worse
| state of affairs vs. just making everyone upgrade (hard-
| fork).
| nullc wrote:
| You can't just "make everyone upgrade", not without a
| time machine-- because there are transactions which may
| have been written arbitrarily far in the past, already
| signed, potentially lock-timed, whos signers (or at least
| their keys) have sailed off into the sunset.
|
| If compatibility with their signatures is dropped those
| funds will be irreparably and irrecoverably destroyed.
|
| So, for example, BCash deployed an earlier version of our
| schnorr signature spec (from before the taproot part was
| finished) in a "hardfork" but preventing destroying funds
| meant that they had to keep the ECDSA support around (duo
| to presigned transactions, hardware security modules,
| etc.) -- so they didn't escape any complexity in that
| change, they introduced a disruptive flag-day which
| introduced its own extra complexity.
|
| > often hear a bunch of garbage that they can't make
| sense of
|
| The changes are compatible so you _know_ those extra
| fields are stuff "from the future" which you don't
| understand and know you can ignore.
|
| > but they won't be able to make sense of it or accept
|
| The recipient of funds always specifies their own rules,
| you'll never specify rules that you don't understand so
| there isn't any issue with not being able to accept it.
| px43 wrote:
| It's not artistry, it's overly complex hackery to satiate
| some weird technological obsession.
|
| Even with a soft fork, everyone still needs to update their
| nodes to maintain consensus. BIP100 signalling would have
| fixed everything and avoided so much drama.
| gruez wrote:
| > It's not artistry, it's overly complex hackery to satiate
| some weird technological obsession.
|
| Also known as... backwards compatibility.
|
| >Even with a soft fork, everyone still needs to update
| their nodes to maintain consensus
|
| Not really. If you decide to not upgrade your node you're
| not going to get kicked off the network. Your node won't be
| enforcing the new rules (which is bad), but you're probably
| not going to lose money due to herd immunity and/or game
| theory. Specifically, your client will blindly accept
| taproot transactions (without checking for them) if they
| make it into a block. An evil miner could possibly use this
| to send you fraudulent transfers, however:
|
| 1. you need to somehow amass the hashpower necessary to
| generate such a block. this is non-trivial given the
| network difficulty
|
| 2. the block would be considered invalid by the rest of the
| network, so you'll be forfeiting the regular block reward
| of ~6.25 BTC
|
| 3. other miners won't build on top of this block, so it
| will take forever to get to 6 confirms
|
| 4. in addition to the above, your fork will get overtaken
| by the legitimate chain and will be ignored
|
| 5. if it turns out that your victim did upgrade his wallet
| software, you just spent a bunch of resources for nothing.
| user-the-name wrote:
| It's very important to maintain the illusion that the block
| size can't be changed.
|
| Or the mining reward.
| tylersmith wrote:
| No. There's an old wishlist of items but there is not plan to
| ever implement them or any other hard forking behaviors.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Good luck with quantum proof encryption
| chejazi wrote:
| Ah, a soft fork focused on SegWit transactions. Every time I try
| and follow along with the latest in Bitcoin I just don't get that
| excited. I think that's part of the point, though. "Hard money"
| and all.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Hard money doesn't exhibit 15000% annualized inflation in a
| one-month period. That Weimar Republic behavior.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad about that - it's made me tons
| of money on the short side. I'm just saying, it's bad money.
| guiomie wrote:
| I'm not sure to follow "15000% annualized inflation in a one-
| month period"... Could you expand?
| arcticbull wrote:
| A ~50% drop in purchasing power over a one-month period
| (from 65K to 29K) is an annualized inflation rate of
| ~15000%.
| guiomie wrote:
| Im still confused. Isnt this deceptive a little bit? Isnt
| a 50% drop in a month, only a 50% drop in a month. Which
| I agree has happened to BTC a few times. But what is the
| point to extrapolate to a year? Bitcoin has never dropped
| 50% consistently every month for a year.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| That's not inflation. Inflation as the name suggests is
| the expansion of monetary supply.
| arcticbull wrote:
| That definition of inflation is old and discredited.
| Austrian economics is roughly speaking tinfoil hat
| economics. The modern definition is a change in
| purchasing power of a unit of currency, not solely of its
| supply.
|
| The reason is simple: if you have the treasury mint a $1T
| coin and give it to me, then I throw it in a vault, and
| do not spend it then prices do not change. As such, the
| Austrian model is obviously incomplete as it does not
| take into account what happens to that supply.
|
| You can see this play out in the macro. Since 1980 the M2
| supply has increased 12X but prices are about 3X higher.
| rogueSkib wrote:
| Your thought experiment is assuming that $1T is
| permanently locked "in a vault", therefore it is not
| actually part of the monetary supply, since it can't be
| spent without violating your assumption.
| [deleted]
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| That's the point though, inflation depends a great deal
| on the velocity of money, as much or even more so than
| the total amount printed.
|
| Money in a vault has zero velocity, money being spent
| dozens of times a day has a very high velocity, most
| situations lie between, we need a meaningful way of
| discussing this that "monetary supply" does not capture.
| rogueSkib wrote:
| I think Lyn Alden does a good job separating velocity
| from inflation in this article:
| https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/ There
| is a common idea that high monetary velocity (GDP divided
| by broad money supply) is needed for inflation. However,
| the data show that this is not the case.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Not quite, it's not permanently locked, I have just
| decided not to spend it. Ditto money people squirrel away
| in mattresses or vaults. It is an analogy for a change in
| behavior of market participants over time which must by
| necessity be included in any complete model of an
| economic and monetary system. Broadly speaking,
| "velocity."
|
| This system remains at equilibrium because supply went
| up, and velocity went down leading to neutral price
| action.
|
| It analogizes this graph:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
| rogueSkib wrote:
| I think what you're ignoring here is that as any
| individual gains access to more liquid wealth, they
| become increasingly more likely to spend some of it.
|
| As your access to supply increases, your demand for more
| monetary units decreases. As your demand for monetary
| units falls below your demand for other goods and
| services you want in life, you spend some of it.
|
| This is how markets function, right? This is why bubbles
| pop for example, eventually holders of an asset reach a
| price where they want to take some off the table.
|
| "Everyone has a price."
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I mean, you're being a little silly by comparing a short-term
| market gyration to "annualized inflation". The Yen is down 38
| basis points against the dollar today. Nobody would describe
| that as "exhibiting 135% annualized inflation".
| arcticbull wrote:
| True, but there's a big difference between dropping 38
| basis points and losing 57% of its purchasing power.
|
| [edit] more importantly, the yen may have dropped 38 basis
| points against the dollar, however that doesn't necessarily
| represent a drop in domestic purchasing power at all. Just
| foreign purchasing power. This change makes imports into
| Japan more expensive and exports of Japanese products
| denominated in dollars more affordable to foreign buyers.
| You're measuring apples vs oranges in that comparison.
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| Doesn't get more apples and oranges than comparing fiat
| currencies with hard money
| arcticbull wrote:
| Well that just sounds like a religious argument, no? Is
| there some basis on which you are making this assertion?
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Peak-to-trough, the Pound Sterling lost about 25% of its
| value against the Deutsche Mark during Black Wednesday.
| It lost about 30% over Brexit. The Aussie dollar fell
| about 35% against USD during the 2008 financial crisis.
| The Euro fell approximately 40% against the Swiss franc
| over the 2011 sovereign debt crisis.
|
| So yes, "real currencies" can and do fluctuate
| significantly in terms of exchange rates. It simply makes
| no sense to contextualize exchange rate fluctuations as
| "annualized inflation".
| arcticbull wrote:
| To be clear, inflation isn't exchange rates. That's a
| change in how much you can buy in a foreign country with
| your currency - and how much of your goods they can buy
| with a unit of their currency, not how much you can buy
| at home.
|
| Bitcoin's purchasing power fell equivalently the world
| over and so inflation is a more useful benchmark to
| compare the loss in purchasing power than foreign
| exchange is.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| In most of those cases, you'd see similar declines if you
| benchmarked against a trade-weighted basket of G10
| currencies.
| samatman wrote:
| No one has ever tried to take a ledger from the unit of
| account representing no value to representing value on a
| global scale. Every historical money has come from a cultural
| context where the token was valuable, beautiful, or
| frequently both.
|
| When people point out Bitcoin's volatility, I wonder how else
| this could be accomplished on a decentralized and voluntary
| basis.
|
| Which isn't to say that BTC will achieve that, of course. But
| unless it does, how could it possibly have a stable value in
| between? It's either worth $0 or ~$1-10mm per Bitcoin, and
| the market is having a vigorous argument about which.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Some market participants are. Certainly the wildcat banks
| and Paolo Ardoino are having an argument with reality.
| gruez wrote:
| >Hard money doesn't exhibit 15000% annualized inflation in a
| one-month period
|
| I'm curious, what's your definition of "hard money"? It's
| clear that your idea of "hard money" is very different than
| the parent's.
| jtms wrote:
| Bitcoin is deflationary by definition, not inflationary. Once
| the last coin is mined that's it - that's all there will ever
| be. I think you might have inflation and deflation backwards.
| Inflation can result from a large supply of currency being
| injected into a monetary system (ie: "bailouts"). This
| injection dilutes the value of all existing units of
| currency. This can cause prices to rise (though not always).
| In other words: the value of the good or service is
| relatively static, but the value of the money decreases due
| to the supply being larger. What happened in the Weimar
| Republic (hyperinflation) has nothing to do with Bitcoin
| price swings... they turned the money printers on max and
| diluted themselves into oblivion trying to prop up the
| economic machinery. This is quite the opposite of what is
| happening in BTC land. BTC price swings are just speculation
| (aka gambling with extra steps).
| hanniabu wrote:
| Decreasing emission is not deflation, it's still inflation
| but just less of it
| mrow84 wrote:
| It is deflationary, in terms of your chosen unit of
| exchange/account, when combined with an increase in
| demand, hypothetical or otherwise, that is above the rate
| of emission.
| arcticbull wrote:
| You're describing money supply, not inflation. Inflation is
| a change in purchasing power of a unit of currency, not the
| supply of the currency. The supply may influence its
| purchasing power but there's a lot more to it, obviously.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Words have different meaning in different contexts. In
| blockchain, inflation refers to the emission of newly
| minted coin.
| arcticbull wrote:
| In economics inflation is a change in purchasing power of
| a currency. Words have meaning. This is what inflation
| means to everyone without laser eyes ;) and the word
| appears to have been redefined to spur unsubstantiated
| fear to pump bitcoin. So I suggest we all begin using the
| right word for the job and correcting folks who are using
| it wrong.
| hanniabu wrote:
| "The term is used differently in this context"
|
| "No the context I'm used to is the only possible answer"
|
| This combined with your mention of fear and pumping, it
| seems you have a heavy bias against cryptocurrencies so
| it's not worthwhile to continue this discussion with you.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Oh I understand the crypto communities use, I'm saying
| they intentionally or unintentionally chose a meaning
| aligned with their interests and not with reality. I will
| continue to call out their bad faith actions because if
| cryptocurrencies are to form any meaningful role in a
| future economic order it has to be from a position of,
| well, reality.
|
| I've followed the space very closely for 6ish years now,
| and I've made a lot of money on crypto both long and
| short, and I engage with a lot of folks both online and
| in real life who are both pro- and anti- crypto.
|
| However, fundamentally, I'm with Jackson Palmer.
|
| https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1415353991106420741
| jtms wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Money_supply
| vmception wrote:
| I'm looking forward to third party assets being tradable on
| the Bitcoin network again.
|
| My contribution to the gradient of behaviors on that network
| was one where the Bitcoin asset was only used to cover
| transaction fees for the actual money being traded.
|
| The whole "merchant adoption" thing was always a squirrel to
| me. When merchants will accept stable value assets more
| readily, or use those stable value assets for settlement,
| just like the US regulator greenlighted a few months ago.
| gruez wrote:
| > I'm looking forward to third party assets being tradable
| on the Bitcoin network again.
|
| Again? Did some sort of protocol fork break colored coins
| or the omni network?
| vmception wrote:
| How do you want me to answer that? Older things are still
| compatible on bitcoin network in the older address
| format. But that mostly means choosing between meta-
| assets or multisig, or choosing a meta asset or segwit.
| They also are not transmittable over lightning network
| reliably yet, this is mostly a factor of no protocol and
| gui being finished but two people can make their own
| protocol.
|
| I'm looking forward to this all being standardized and
| wallets surfacing it after they agree on the protocols.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Genuine curiosity: why would you trade third-party assets
| on the Bitcoin network when you could do it infinitely more
| efficiently on any of the competing chains? It's by _far_
| the least efficient blockchain ergo the least efficient way
| to trade third-party assets.
|
| [edit] Direct fees are lower than they used to be, and the
| energy cost is about now up to about $100-120 per
| transaction. While that's being socialized across block
| reward for now, when that ends, it will have to be born
| directly by customers or see the network become less
| secure.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > While that's being socialized across block reward for
| now, when that ends, it will have to be born directly by
| customers
|
| That's true, total transaction revenue will need to go
| up. That doesn't mean per-transaction revenue needs to go
| up though.
|
| Put another way, transaction volume needs to scale before
| inflation gets too low.
| wmf wrote:
| _transaction volume needs to scale before inflation gets
| too low_
|
| Good thing they decided to never scale transaction
| volume.
| vmception wrote:
| I'd like the option as thats where they were traded
| before the transaction space was limited. Counterparty,
| OMNI... doing that stuff over Lightning Network. Other
| Layer 2s. The growth of this stuff is limited by
| bitcoin's current state. It just makes interoperability
| with the broader Defi space more practical.
|
| Regarding energy, if thats your battle then work on that
| aspect, there are some influencers aiming to convince
| miners to create a more energy efficient version of
| transaction propagation, settled on the Bitcoin network.
| vecio wrote:
| The miner can include some non-standard transactions makes
| Bitcoin not so perfect, and once that non-standard transactions
| included in a block, other miners won't validate its script at
| all, that make it worse.
| nullc wrote:
| I can't quite follow what you're thinking.
|
| The bitcoin transaction format has numerous points of
| intentional forward compatibility: Fields, flags, bits, etc.
| which intentionally have no effect at this time but which could
| be further restricted in the future in order to create
| functionality. Examples include future transaction version
| numbers and future script version numbers.
|
| Use of these forward compatibility features is "non-standard"
| which means that unmodified software will not relay, mine, or
| display-while-unconfirmed transactions which use them. But if
| they happen to show up inside blocks, they'll be accepted.
|
| This protects these fields for future use. Otherwise, some
| software would start randomly setting them (e.g. due to
| programming mistakes or confusion) and then these systems would
| catch fire when later the fields were given a defined meaning.
|
| This article is about output with version 1 instead of version
| 0. Currently v1 is defined to have no effect. At block 709632
| (in November roughly) that will change and v1 will have a
| meaning defined by BIP-341 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blo
| b/master/bip-0341.mediawi...).
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Nodes don't relay non standard transactions to be mined, but
| blocks with non standard transactions are relayed and accepted
| by all nodes. These rules together make soft forks possible.
| gruez wrote:
| >other miners won't validate its script at all, that make it
| worse.
|
| What do you mean by "validate" here? All nodes check for
| validity, in the sense that the transaction is properly
| authorized.
| wmf wrote:
| _once that non-standard transactions included in a block, other
| miners won 't validate its script at all_
|
| I don't think this is correct. Miners (are supposed to)
| validate all transactions in all blocks.
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