podcasts
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Collection for podcasts • 511 items • Updated • 2
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A | That's kind of how I feel about this whole broader, like, l two renaissance and what's possible in the bitcoin world. Like, I don't care if it sinks or swims, I'm pretty sure it's going to be very successful. But even if it's not, like, this is ideas worth pursuing, you know, like, we are freaking missionaries, not mer... |
B | Welcome to Banklist, where we explore the frontier of Internet money and Internet finance. This is Ryan. Sean Adams. I'm here with David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bitcoiners. Oh, oh. Is that what we're doing, David? |
C | Yeah, it's a bitcoin episode. |
B | This is a really simple premise for today's episode. We brought on somebody who could answer the question for us. For me, I had more of the questions, actually, than you, David, coming into this episode. Are bitcoin layer twos real? |
C | What do you mean by. What do you mean by that question? What does that mean? |
B | That's kind of what I was going to ask our guests and did ask our guests, but what I sort of mean is I was under the impression that bitcoin did not have the expressivity, did not have the virtual machine, was more like a calculator and not a computer at its base layer, and therefore had a very difficult, if impossible... |
C | With an asterisk? |
B | With an asterisk. And he explains why. So I thought it was a brilliant episode and it doesn't answer all of my questions, but opens the door to possibility that I didn't know fully existed. And so I've still some research to do on this. This is probably the first episode of several in the future where we explore this t... |
C | Yeah. This is basically how your. My relationships is. Like, who is this person? Oh, yeah, I met this person that one time. Yeah. We'll talk about a little bit of the intro, like how we met David in the show. Shout out Steven from Alfalfa. One thing I want to say before we go into this episode is that when we talk abou... |
B | Yeah, there were, there were some stumblings in this episode, but it's a pretty, like, we didn't have an agenda going in. We just wanted to pick David Searoy, who's our guest. We call him bitcoin David. Cause we have two davids in this episode. Pick his brain. I think hopefully the result is something that can further ... |
C | Dave. Bitcoin Dave. Bitcoin David presents a zero to one moment in bitcoin building that is potentially ahead to us. |
B | Super exciting. So guys, stay tuned for that. But before we get into this episode, we want to thank the sponsors that made it possible, including bankless nation. We are super excited to introduce you to David Seroy. Yes, we have a second David on the podcast today. This is the bitcoin David. |
C | Bitcoin Dave. |
B | I guess my co host maybe David. David Hoffman. I should refer to you as Ethereum David. So we got bitcoin David here, and he is a bitcoin wizard, I would say. What does that mean? He is definitely an armchair researcher in the bitcoin roll up ecosystem. He loves bitcoin and loves projects that are building on bitcoin. ... |
A | Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited. I can't believe you guys let a bitcoiner on here. |
B | Oh, we do that. |
C | We bring bitcoin. |
B | Just had. |
C | Nick Carter is our number one most true. Yeah. |
A | Who else? |
C | Who else who is after Vitalik? After Vitalik Buterin, then Nick Carter. |
B | David, who am I forgetting being in the spot? |
C | We've got got Eric Wall. Eric wall, like on four or five times. We had Lynn Alden on like five times. We just had Robert Breedlove on. That's why. Robert Breedlove, of course, bitcoin represents at least two to 3% of all bankless podcasts. |
B | When you put it like that, that's very small. |
A | We got to pump those numbers up. |
B | Yeah, it's undersized as far as mark. Yeah, well, that's what we're doing today. So bitcoin David, I understand, actually, you guys have met in person. |
C | Yes. |
B | So this isn't your first meeting. |
C | We were introduced by Steven Cesaro of the Alfalfa podcast fame, and David was introduced to me as bitcoin Dave. And that's how his name is stuck in my brain. And once again, entering this recording room, I was like, wait, David, are you called Bitcoin Dave, or is that just how Steven introduced you? And apparently tha... |
A | Yeah. |
C | Now it sucks. |
A | We actually played pickleball the next day. And. |
C | Yes, then we played pickleball David. |
A | David told me about a really cool idea. He said he wants to put pickleballs on. The blockchain is under direct. Yeah, it needs ethereum. |
C | Yeah, but which we're track. Track points. So no one can cheat with points. |
B | Well, but isn't that the broader question, like which blockchain? Because now bitcoin can support some tokens, I'm hopeful. Bitcoin Dave, you'll. You'll tell us a little bit about this because maybe I'll start the conversation. We're going to talk about the broader bitcoin ecosystem, but my base question in that tweet ... |
A | Yeah, well, I'm going to give a really clear answer here and say yes, but it depends. And really it kind of depends on, I'd say, three general things. First is like, what flavor of roll up are we talking about? Are we talking about like a fully validating ZK roll up, a sovereign roll up that has no proving system, or a... |
B | Okay, so I want to get back to BitVM as maybe part of the final destination here, but could we zoom out for just a minute before we get into some of these more technical details? Where's this innovation coming from in bitcoin? Like, why has bitcoin just discovered that, oh, wow, we can launch roll ups and layer twos on... |
A | Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of moving puzzle pieces here, to be clear. Like. Like, a lot of this stuff was kind of discussed, like, early on in bitcoin talk forums. Like, there was a post from Greg Macwell, who's like, kind of this, like, og, just like, amazing bitcoin developer, where he. He talks about bringing, yo... |
B | So, David, just to get up to this point, and it sounds like there's been some eras of bitcoin development, right? So bitcoin had kind of its side chain era, let's say. And that never manifested into kind of like a true trustless bridge and something that, like, in theory, would call more like a roll up. And that was on... |
A | No, I mean, that's exactly right. I think one of the things that was the breaking point was a lot of the ordinals and inscription stuff, because inscriptions, they post arbitrary data on chain, and some people will call that spam, and it's not monetary use cases and all of that. But bottom line, they are fee paying cus... |
C | I want to present actually slightly a different characterization of the progress of ethereum scalability as it compares to the bitcoin story? Because we had the Ethereum layer one, but we knew it was always needing to scale beyond that. And so we started with state channels, which then grew into generalized state chann... |
B | David, it's kind of like an idea maze, like, kind of quest. Like, we hit some dead ends, and we're like, oh, like back up and like. |
C | But smaller dead ends, right? And like. And then we kept on progressing, each one built on the history of the other. And what I'm seeing in bitcoin is actually people going down the lightning idea maze, realizing that it's a pretty strong, pretty far log, tons of investment into lightning network, and realizing it's a ... |
A | I do want to somewhat defend the lightning community. Like, I don't think it's, it's, it's a dead end, but I think that it has, like, significant limitations that can't be overcome by just, like, just give it enough dev time. People are like, oh, the builders are building. It's like, no, like, and Vitalik pointed this ... |
B | David or bitcoin. David, I should say so. I'm wondering if the bitcoin community has felt this, because I'm not sure if you would represent yourself as a minority of folks. I know there's been the Nick Carter Udy wizards side of things, and there's almost been this forking in the social layer of bitcoin, of builders an... |
A | When I talked to a lot of bitcoin, I was like, and it kind of gets into this implicit discussion of bitcoin versus Ethereum. They're like, they're like, well, this is a monetary revolution, not a technology revolution. And that used to bother me so much because I'm like, yes, it's a monetary revolution, but damn it, th... |
B | So, David, I'm going to ask you, because we've certainly made the case for bankless money systems built on top of bitcoin. And it seemed to be a roadblock in the past. I'm wondering if you could, what would you say to the bitcoin community? I mean, you sell them, sell them, pitch them on roll ups. Why should the bitcoi... |
A | This whole vision that we have about like 21 million, 21 million is thrown out the window. If anybody cant have the optionality to self custody right now, theres only a certain allotment of block space every single ten minutes. If bitcoin gets any modicum of scale, those blocks are essentially going to be full and its ... |
B | And celsius of the world. |
A | Yeah, I mean, just anything, even putting your funds into a custodial lightning node, it gives this attack vector to implicitly break the 21 million. And that's what essentially people care about. And seeing the decentralized finance movement, like the DeFi movement in Ethereum, I think bitcoin is like massively undere... |
B | Okay, so in the beginning of this episode, I started with kind of like a question that brought us into the weeds really quick. And you started talking about BiTVM, right, which is the question of, like, can bitcoin really launch roll ups, completely decentralized, ethereum style roll ups? And you throw out kind of a fe... |
A | I mean, the main problem with bitcoin is that it has no concept of the outside world, right? Like if you are on a side chain, like the side chain can run a bitcoin node, it can interpret essentially what's happening on the, on bitcoin, but bitcoin cannot interpret it whats happening on these other side chains. So you c... |
B | Very helpful. That would be very helpful. As far as I understand, an optimistic roll up would not be possible on bitcoin because we dont have a smart contract that can enforce the fraud proof type of game. But maybe there's hope for some sort of a ZK rollup, is that what you're saying? |
A | Well, BitVM potentially could enable both of those in a kind of quasi trust minimized way. And I'll get to that. But let me describe the roles first, that we're all on the same page. So in the Ethereum world, you guys have talked a lot about this modular thesis, how you have the data, the computation and the settlement... |
B | All right, so before we get to bitVm, could you just, like. So I'm not as familiar with the kind of the, the bitcoin, I'll call it generally layer two community, but, like, I don't know if these are legit layer twos or not. Right. And what, what you would say, and I will say first, like, we run across the same problem,... |
A | I mean, they're more like side chains. There's kind of multi sigs or they don't necessarily anchor to bitcoin. Do quasi call them layer twos? And I guess they are. But for me personally, it's like, no, I want this path towards fully trustless ZK roll ups. And the closest thing we possibly get there is some sort of inte... |
B | Okay, so aside from BitVM, are there any sort of layer twos? And the ethereum definition of a layer two is basically it has to be secured, settled by the base layer, or be on a trajectory towards being fully decentralized. Is there anything else besides Bitvm? |
A | Yeah, I mean, in terms of the level of trust that you guys would want, the only thing is lightning network. Lightning network, from a security assumption standpoint is very, very strong, but it just comes with so many other pitfalls. |
B | Okay, okay, so we've been talking so much like you've been alluding to this BitVM project. Like, what is it? Where did it come from? Like, why are you so excited about it? You don't work for the project. So I think you're looking at this from a bitcoiner that's very excited about this building renaissance, and you're j... |
A | Yeah, so BitVM is a way to verify any arbitrarily complex Turing complete contract on bitcoin. And the keyword there is verify, not necessarily execute. And so if you read the bit vm white paper, there are two key references in there. The first is optimistic rollups, and the second is taproot, which was the last bitcoi... |
B | I think it does. I think it does. I'm going to have to do some more research on this myself and ask some other folks. Let me ask you, the BitVM project, how close is it to Mainnet? Is this kind of, this is beyond the white paper, but is that even. |
C | The right question to ask? |
A | Yeah, I mean, I follow a lot of the telegram chats pretty closely. It seems like they're making progress. I don't want to hold them to anything, but I think we could be looking at this stuff within a year or less. |
C | Is mainnet the right phrasing for this or is there a more precise word? |
A | I'm not sure. I'm not sure. What would we call it? |
B | Well, there would have to be some chain that I can interact with that is some sort of virtual machine type chain, whether it's EVM or something else that ultimately settles to bitcoin or is that not what like you're describing here, David? |
A | So I mean, all of this computation for BITBM, it's happening off chain. It's happening just like on a server or a computer or anything. You don't need any sort of blockchain because again, you're optimistically assuming that this stuff is being done. So you're saying, look, here's, how do I want to say this? Here's all... |
B | David, does this sound a little bit like Niebuhr to you? I'm not sure what Nibra project that we've talked about. |
C | It's a proof aggregation layer. No, I don't think so. I think what I'm trying to get my head wrapped around is because with arbitrum and optimism, you and I are very used to alternative blockchain networks that are blockchains that settle down to Ethereum and it's another entire parallel system. And I don't think that'... |
A | Well, I guess I just want to maybe help this. I think Ryan's having trouble thinking that this is this off chain computation on a blockchain. And I'm thinking in the context of roll ups, a prover is not a blockchain. You have this blockchain, but then you're taking all that and you're putting in this hyper centralized ... |
B | Okay, so BitVM is more approver. It's not an entire chain, but like, you just use the prover to validate the entire chain. Right. |
C | Are layer twos on bitcoins blockchains? |
A | Yes. Yes. So what BitVM is really focuses on is the bridge to get you to this l two blockchain. So like there'd really be two different ways that I think people envision using BitVM. One is like that traditional roll up setup that we talked about where you have the l one contract, you have the l two blockchain, it comp... |
C | Okay, so it sounds like the emphasis that you're trying to place on is that this is a bridge primitive. But what is on the other side of that bridge? You know, bitcoins on one side of the bridge. What's on the other side of the bridge? What's on the other side of the bridge could be a whole like open field of innovatio... |
A | Yeah, exactly. And that's why I think, you know, I started off this conversation describing that. That idea of, like, the chasm. Right? Like, you're crossing the chasm, and where I mentioned that, like, bridge that we're building both, like, a technical bridge and, like, a metaphorical bridge. And if you. If you're wil... |
B | Yeah, I guess more my question was, why don't they just attach a chain to it? Then they're doing the work of creating the bridge. This is essentially what arbitrum or optimism have done, is they've done the kind of the bridge piece, but then they've also just slapped a chain on it, too. Is that out of scope for BitVM? |
A | I think for the BitVM team, it's probably out of scope, but there are a lot of people who are very excited about using BitVM for that exact use case where they want to use it as a bridge to their chain. And there are some people that are doing the traditional roll up path, and there are the people that are using it for... |
C | Yes. Okay. The. The bridge. The metaphorical bridge you're talking about is landing way harder for me now. It's like, once you get over this, this the literal. Once you build a literal bridge, you get into the land of just like, hey, what's on the other side of that bridge? What's on that destination is like a startup ... |
A | Yeah, and there, there are, to be clear, there are teams building all the stuff that you're talking about. Like there are built teams like building these other environments and these different like design trade offs. But like once we get over that, that, that bridge, then we get into all the fun stuff that you guys are... |
C | Okay, so David, you presented this as if people are willing to accept the end of one trust assumption, then we can eventually get to this world of expressivity on bitcoin. Um, do you think the bitcoin set of people is that, that's a, that's a pill to swallow? How big is that pill to swallow? Will people swallow that pi... |
A | Yeah, I do. I think it's going to be absolutely massive. |
C | I think you think, you think people are going to, largely as a whole, like the laser eyed maxis aside, bitcoin is going to accept this nf one trust assumption. |
A | Yeah, I mean, I think it's good enough to get us there again to cross that chasm. And then you can get the fully ZK verified, cross composable chains with the beautiful UX and the forked Ethereum smart contracts. I think that's going to be good enough. And I think that there are beginning to be use cases that even the ... |
C | So the world that you're describing, kind of. I've always thought that building on bitcoin is like building in a wasteland, just because the whole entire construction of bitcoin is just, like, optimizing for simplicity. You know, it's a philosophy of subtraction rather than addition. Make bitcoin simpler, make it harde... |
B | You. |
C | At that some point, you just can't miss, like, da on bitcoin, somebody's got to go build that, right? Like, I don't know, optimistic roll up or zk. Roll up on bitcoin, somebody just go. Goes and builds that, right? I. So a bitcoin builders renaissance. We've already seen the culture started to shift this way. What are ... |
B | Give us the next five episodes. Bitcoin episode. |
A | Yeah, well, I'm a bit biased here. I wrote an article on Bitcoin magazine where I talked about bitcoin backed stable coins and I referenced liquidy. That is when I even. I talk to my most, like, you know, hardcore bitcoin Maximus friends. I'm like, I'm like, oh, like, you call yourself a bitcoiner, like. Like, you're n... |
B | Yeah. Is there anything else? I've heard of restaking protocols on bitcoins, one's called Babylon that's crossed my desk before. Obviously there's everything that's going on with ordinals and BRC twenties and that kind of thing. Anything else that we should keep our eyes open to? |
A | I mean, yeah, pretty much just take off your guys prior podcasts and things that you're excited about and say we can bring them on bitcoin, I think account abstraction wallets I'm very excited about. I'm also really excited about the prospect. I mentioned this in the tweet. This is pretty far future facing, but if you ... |
B | David, this has been a fascinating conversation. This is exactly what I hoped for when I opened up that tweet, and I didn't expect you to reply. And I just want to thank you for replying. I mean, from my perspective, bitcoin is maybe starting to get interesting again. I sort of left it off as a store of value, and it's... |
A | I mean, you could probably count it on one hand, but no, I mean, in all seriousness, it's a small but growing movement. The problem is there are some projects out there that are trying to hijack this narrative that really are not the true builders. It's for sure grifting. It's for sure scams. And I think people need to... |
B | Well, I love that that level of conviction is going to get you into the small but growing tribe quite far and totally applaud it. I mean, this is very much, you know, bankless aligned, I would say very, very excited to have more bankless money systems built on top of bitcoin. So, David, I'm going to ask people, includi... |
A | Yeah, thanks, guys. I do want to give a quick shout out to people like John Light, Robin Linus, Alexi Orkin. These are the true builders and people. If they follow me and see their names, those are real deal people. |
B | There you go. Of course, Satoshi, who started it? All right, bitcoin Dave or them. Yeah, the Twitter handle is David Croy, so d a v I D, underscore. See, Roy, gotta end with this. Of course, crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. Frontiers, not for everyone, but we're glad you're with ... |
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