[ad_1]
Is it really surprising, given that cats have essentially dominated the internet for the past two decades, that cat memes have finally invaded the Bitcoin space as well in recent weeks? Cats are the most viral meme on the internet, so it's not at all shocking that Taproot wizards took a dig at it, bolstered by trolling Luke over his “food choices.”
The question needs to be asked though: are meme campaigns really the way we want to go about deciding and discussing consensus changes to a protocol as valuable as Bitcoin? I've seen many music videos, campaigns to go out into the world and “educate” people about OP_CAT, and the whole “Quest” system put out by Taproot Wizards… but the reality is that the vast majority of this content I What I saw was incredibly superficial.
Rijndael, “Artificer” at Taproot Wizards and one of the few, if not the only, people tinkering and playing with OP_CAT to create example use cases, demonstrated a convention script based on OP_CAT .
This script requires sending a specific amount of Bitcoin to a specific address, and by consensus there is no other way to spend these coins except with a transaction that meets these exact conditions. Look at the size of this script:
OP_TOALTSTACK OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT de890a8209d796493ee7bac9a58b62fbced10ccb7311e24f26c461c079ead08c OP_SWAP OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT 54617053696768617 368 OP_SHA256 OP_DUP OP_ROT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_SHA256 424950303334302f6368616c6c656e6765 OP_SHA256 OP_DUP OP_ROT 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d95 9f2 815b16f81798 OP_DUP OP_DUP OP_TOALTSTACK 2 OP_ROLL OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_CAT OP_SHA256 OP_FROMALTSTACK OP_SWAP OP_CAT OP_FROMALTSTACK OP_DUP 1 OP_CAT OP_ROT OP_EQUALVERIFY 2 OP_CAT 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07 029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 OP_CHECKSIG
This is what is needed to emulate CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY. The equivalent script using CTV would simply be:
CTV.
I'm asking what is the value of something like OP_CAT in emulating the case of basic clause patterns (things requiring an expense transaction to meet certain conditions defined in advance to be valid) like this? We know exactly how to handle systems applying a template to transactions spending locked output on a template commit, and have several proposals for them. CTV, TXHASH, OP_TX, and even APO can emulate these schemes by inserting a signature into the lock output of a transaction at the cost of an additional 64 bytes.
How useful is OP_CAT really for “experimenting” to meet the needs of a class of use cases whose design is mature enough that there are at least 4 engagement proposals that can handle these use cases? use with a tiny fraction of the cost of data? “Oh, we want to experiment with CAT because it’s flexible!” Want to use 30 OP calls to do something that can be done in one? Is this a reason to adopt a consensual change in favor of Bitcoin? The logic of this is beyond absurd.
Minimize risks
In a vacuum, OP_CAT is sold as “a simple concatenation of two strings”, and many memes try to phrase it as “how can this be dangerous?” This is an extremely misleading narrative surrounding the proposal, and it completely ignores how it interacts with other existing and future aspects of the scenario.
In particular, CSFS+CAT opens up a huge amount of possibilities in terms of what can be done with Bitcoin script, but not all of them are necessarily positive. CSFS allows you to verify a signature on an arbitrary data element during the execution of a script, and CAT allows you to “paste” different data elements together on the stack. These two things create a massive design space for what is possible with Bitcoin.
A concrete example would be the ability to impose amounts, or relationships between different amounts, of specific inputs and outputs in a transaction. CAT allows you to create a transaction hash from individual elements of the stack, and CSFS allows you to verify a signature against a public key in the lock script against arbitrary elements of that transaction as it happens. as it is built. This could ultimately allow the creation of open-ended UTXOs that anyone can spend, provided the spending transaction meets certain criteria, such as sending a specific amount of coins to a specific address. Combine this with the reality of OP_RETURN-based assets, and this begins to enter decentralized exchange (DEX) territory.
Some of the worst incentive distortion problems that have materialized on other blockchains ultimately come from the creation of DEXs on those chains. Having direct, non-interactive trading functionality on the blockchain is one of the worst forms of MEV, especially when there is the ability for miners to lock in their profits across multiple transactions within a single block , rather than having to actually bear the profits. risk a position on several blocks before closing it and making a profit.
Part of the movement behind Taproot Wizards is to “bring back innovation.” That is to say, the lessons learned in the land of shitcoin return to Bitcoin, although I strongly reject the idea that anything useful has been developed on other coins in the last decade Other than the basic concept of zero proof of knowledge, this increasingly strong mantra ignores a huge element of this dynamic, even if you disagree with my view: there are lessons to be learned about what NOT to do as well as what to do.
DEXs are one of the things NOT to do. Nothing has caused so much chaos, volatility in fee dynamics (which we need to mitigate over time for the sustainability of second layers), and just plain chaos of incentives regarding the base consensus layers of these protocols and their degree of centralization. The idea that we should rush to bring these types of problems to Bitcoin, or exacerbate them by introducing a way to trustlessly integrate the Bitcoin asset into it in a more dynamic and flexible way, is frankly insane. To me, this speaks to a lot of people who haven't learned anything from looking at what's happened on other blockchains over the last half-decade.
Chained forever by the cat
Looking at the above dynamic between CSFS + CAT, it's worth pointing out that Reardencode's recent LNHANCE proposal (CTV + CSFS + Internal Key) offers a path to give us Eltoo for Lightning in a way that is actually more efficient in terms of block space than using APO. If this argument, and backed by a proof of concept, ends up convincing Lightning developers who want LN symmetry to simplify Lightning channel management and implementation maintenance, we could very well end up getting CSFS in the process. If OP_CAT was active before this, there is no way to avoid the combination of the types of harmful side effects of both proposals.
This would be true for every soft fork proposal in the future if OP_CAT was ever enabled. It would be impossible to escape the side effects or permitted use cases by combining OP_CAT with the new upcoming proposals. On its own, OP_CAT is clunky, inefficient and rather useless. But in combination with other OPs, it starts to become stupidly flexible and powerful. This would be a dynamic we could never escape, and features that might prove critical to Bitcoin's scalability in the future could inevitably come with enormous downsides and risks simply due to the existence of OP_CAT.
Is this a reality we want to enter just because of a meme campaign? Because people want to tinker with wildly inefficient ways of doing things instead of looking at much more efficient, purpose-built proposals? I would say no.
Meme campaigns can be fun, I know. They foster a sense of community and involvement, it is an inherent and unavoidable part of the Internet and the many cultures that exist there. But this is not how we should decide the development process of Bitcoin. They can be fun, and they can even be viciously savage by stabbing straight to the heart of the topics people dance or procrastinate about. But they are atrocious at capturing nuance and complexity in many ways.
Trying to drive the consensus of a network like Bitcoin solely on the value of a meme, rather than on reasoned consideration of the propositions and their implications, is a disaster waiting to happen. The conservatism and caution of Bitcoin's development is what has kept it at the forefront of this space, as shitcoins have come and gone, imploding in the consequences of their carefree development attitude. Even though Bitcoin badly needs to break out of its current rut of stagnation and lack of progress, turning to uncritical memes and music videos is not the way to do it. This risks destroying what made the initial value of Bitcoin, its solid and conservative base.
[ad_2]
Source by [author_name]