Topic: Say no to maximalism - page 4. (Read 2496 times)

I can't believe I'm just seeing this beautiful post just now, it's one of the best to say the reality of the situation and not biased in seeing Bitcoin as perfect.

Many of the shortcomings of Bitcoin were certainly taken advantage of in most altcoins and even the traditional Fiats/Gold has some peculiarities that Bitcoin does not have. This is just as Bitcoin has some penalties they do not have too. By virtue, we should appreciate all of them if they show us value and find a way to use them where necessary for our benefit.

I don't know how you define word "censorship", but Monero initially designed to be ASIC resistant. So IMO anyone who attempt to make ASIC for it should be aware of the risks. Besides, there's no way you can mine Bitcoin using with CPU or FPGA at profit, unless you managed to mine a block through solo block.


As reminder, LTC+DOGE merged mining exist where DOGE security depends on LTC.

Isn't that "censorship"? I understand the Monero team is trying to make the XMR blockchain equal or fairer to everyone. But restricting ASICs would go against crypto's true principles of freedom. With Bitcoin, you can still mine with a CPU or FPGA (albeit at a lower chance to turn a profit). Even if ASICs have taken over the market. Some developers proposed taking down Ordinals inscriptions to solve the "high fee problem". It didn't go anywhere because this was nothing more than an attempt to censor Bitcoin.

There's a reason why BTC is still #1. And that's because it sticks to the values of decentralization and censorship-resistance. Tell me one altcoin that is as good as Bitcoin. The only ones that come close to it are Litecoin and Dogecoin. Yet, they're not as battle-tested as Bitcoin is. As long as unreliable and centralized altcoins exist, don't expect Bitcoin maximalists to change their mind anytime soon.

when certain individuals celebrate code that adds bloat of upto 4mb to a single transaction, where most data does not even go through a validation set of rules to check its actually viable bitcoin transaction related data..

when certain individuals celebrate code that bumps the fee's too easily, where by it then excludes populations in their billions due to the fee's alone being multiple hours of nominal wage for such populations..

when certain individuals celebrate a centralised group of devs with their self controlled moderation and member banning of whom gets to propose new features, upgrades, expansions and scaling options..

when certain individuals celebrate any and all events, added headaches and hindrances that cause people to abandon bitcoin to then use other networks..

.. and then those same individuals want to pretend those that want whats best for bitcoin are the enemy of bitcoin.. it really shows those people whom promote other networks and the abandonment plans of bitcoin, are actually the real anti-bitcoin folk

yes there are other crypto's and payment systems and each have their own smaller niche purpose people are free to choose for own personal uses.. but to have individuals trying so hard to push an agenda of wanting to cripple bitcoin and make it undesirable and want people to not be loyal to bitcoin, just to recruit them over to other networks.. just shows how mentally insecure they are..
their favoured other systems should at the very minimal actually work without bugs and issues, without having to lie or sweep under the rug the flaws.. basically if a secondary favoured network was to popularise it would be able to do so naturally via actually meeting users needs securely and not need deceitful people trying to sway everyone to abandon a secure working network, by making the secure network less desirable

It is bad enough to think that a certain cryptocurrency is autonomous and complete in terms of integration into the various sectors and needs of the internet space and everyday life activities. Nothing is ever complete; every project solves a problem and leaves others for other innovations to solve too and your neutrality to making decisions on what is needed at any point in time helps you get the best.

Bitcoin has its unique features which makes people run to it which includes being a store of value and a hedge against inflation and appreciating in value when held for a longer period of time to the benefit of the investor and you can use your investments in bitcoin to secure your financial future. It also has a very high liquidity which makes it very easy to buy, sell and trade, but the same bitcoin requires high transaction fees to be sent around which makes it a very bad Idea for day to day activities of a company, sending bitcoins across to another person is also a slow process and may not happen in real time.

Ethereum has  its own application of smart contracts, allowing it to sustain creation of decentralized apps and platforms and has one of , if not the largest ecosystem of developers, DAPPS and NFTs, although it is very expensive to send around and is not a positive choice for little transactions and implementations.

Solana on the other hand happens to be one of the fastest in terms of transaction speed up to (65,000 transactions per second) and offers low fees, with a rapidly growing ecosystem that supports many Dapps, NFTs and other projects being integrated into it. It is also getting increasingly decentralized and can possibly do better in the future

Ton on the other hand has been integrated into telegram, the largest platform for gaming apps and micro projects development and offers fast transactions at reduced prices making it suitable for smaller scale and Immediate transactions . It also uses a multi-blockchain structure to enhance scalability, speed and efficiency in transactions. only issues being that it is purportedly centralized and native to telegram and its being new with low adaptation owing to the numerous uncertainties surrounding its development.


The above and many more unmentioned points should educate us of the different important roles each cryptocurrency might play and when to utilize them or others to your own advantage. Personally, when I want to invest, I turn to bitcoin, but when I wish to send little funds around, I convert bitcoin to USDT and use BNB(beep20) to limit transaction fees and deliver payment in less than a minute. Some level of flexibility is required of us even in thinking and execution of concerns in order to be more balanced and effective in our activities

But it's still viable to have not only BTC with you because diversification is key for a good portfolio.

So in other words, it succeeded despite not trying to solve any problems consumers had. Lots of products get created that way, but I wouldn't recommend doing that on purpose.


Why would you create a product that not meant to be used by anybody? Why does an end-user of a currency care how easy it was to mine, or even whether it was mined at all?


Lots of altcoins aren't mined at all. I get that a lot are, and that you are absolutely right about a lot of them or even most of them, but that's not how it has to be, necessarily. It makes no difference to the end-user of a currency in terms of transactions, although I suppose it makes a difference if you are investing in the coin.

FWIW, Monero is one of few altcoin which continuously put some effort to stop ASIC. I remember XMR had few hard-fork which discourage creation of ASIC, although such method is rather crude.

Guess what: Litecoin was created, because of mining. Old Bitcoin users mined their coins on their CPUs and GPUs, and they noticed, that by mining with double SHA-256, they can get less and less coins. The difficulty adjustment worked exactly as intended. But: many people still wanted to mine.

And what altcoin developers did? Well, they switched from double SHA-256, into something else, called Scrypt. Why? Because at that time, it was not profitable to create an ASIC for a completely different hash function. And the same thing happened with Monero, and other altcoins: they picked some different hash functions, to make sure, that they will not compete with double SHA-256 miners (because they lost that competition, otherwise, they would all just mine Bitcoin).

So, it is not "just a perspective of a miner". Many altcoins have only one purpose: to be mineable, without upgrading your hardware. So, instead of switching from CPUs or GPUs into ASICs, some people just made some altcoins, to serve the only purpose: mine ALT, sell it for BTC, and create some field for experimentation.

And then, in the short term, some users can even win. They can bring some of their BTCs into exchanges, sell them for ALTs, and get some new features. However, in the long term, they lose, because all of those miners are just producing ALTs, and selling them to those users, because they can get more BTCs in the process, than they could, if they would mine BTC directly.

Also, if you don't believe me, that "mining is the only purpose for a lot of altcoins", then check, how many times they changed their mining algorithms. Bitcoin uses double SHA-256 from the very beginning, and it is not going to change, as long as it is not broken. However, many altcoins do some hard-forks, and they switch from one mining algo to another, if they can no longer mine with their network difficulty. It is easier for them to change the code, than to upgrade their hardware.

Which also means, that altcoins' difficulty is somewhat "fake". Because they don't promise, that "if the difficulty will rise, then you will get less coins". Instead, what they deliver is "as long as we can mine coins with our hardware, we keep it as it is, but if you rise it by too much, then we will switch the algo again, and again".

I guess my perspective has been that of a mainstream digital currency users, whereas yours is that of a miner.

In the current model, you have altcoin miners, which are selling their altcoins, just to get some BTCs. Because it is more profitable to mine some altcoins, and sell them, than to mine BTC directly. Which means, that first, you get some altcoins (weak blocks on layer two), and then you convert them to BTCs (stronger blocks on layer one). In between, your altcoin can lose or gain value, it can be unstable, there could be some timing attacks, some speculation attacks, and a lot of other attacks.

So, why not have a proper layer two, instead of having weak altcoins, and selling them, just to get some BTCs? As you can see, those who sold their LTCs, XMRs, or other coins in the past, and converted them into BTCs, they gained more, than those, who simply kept their altcoins. And of course, there are cycles, there are times, when people buy a lot of altcoins, and there are times, when they sell a lot of them. But as long as BTC domination is jumping around 50%, it is the same situation, as having 100% domination, and 42 million coins, but locked in different networks.

There are many parties, which accept a single BTC confirmation as "rock solid". Also, many sites will show you, that some transaction is "pending", if it will have zero confirmations, and will be recorded in their mempool. As long as your amount is "coinbase covered", you are good to go. Which means, if the coinbase amount is for example 3 BTC, and you are sending 1 BTC, then you won't reorg this "3 BTC block", and replace it with something else, because it will cost you more than 1 BTC, to successfully execute a double-spending attack.

Obviously, "coinbase coverage" also works in altcoins. Which means, that if the altcoin reward is 50 ALTs, and you are sending 1000 ALTs, then you should wait something around 20 blocks (1000/50=20). To get exact numbers, you can of course compute Poisson distribution, but using "coinbase coverage" is just easier: for amounts smaller than the coinbase, a single confirmation is usually sufficient, and for amounts bigger than the coinbase, this rule will usually give you bigger amount of confirmations, than you need.

Using more than one coin is not that different, than using more than one layer. If you have some altcoin, you mine it, you sell it, and then you get some BTCs out of that, then it is not that much different, than having a proper second layer, instead of using two coins on the first layer.

The main difference, is if you have layers, then you can have a strong peg, for example 1:1 peg. However, if all coins are on their first layer, then there are different exchange rates, there are different network conditions, and you risk more, when converting between BTCs and ALTs, than if they are all connected, through some kind of layers.

For example: if you use LN, then you lock your BTCs, you get 1:1000 constant exchange rate, and everything is converted from satoshis to millisatoshis, and then you can convert it back, using 1000:1 constant exchange rate, to get all of those locked satoshis back. However, if you do the same with BTC and ALT, then it is no longer 1:1, 1:1000, or some other constant rate. It is volatile. And those networks are different, there are different risks, different network rules, timing attacks, and so on. And by rejecting maximalism, and second layers, every coin uses just their first layer, and it is much harder to make a risk-free trade (because even if your ALT fees are smaller, then the price of your ALT can change in the meantime, and it may turn out, that BTC fee was higher, but the price change was smaller, so the final outcome was better).

Bitcoin is the king of crypto, so it goes to show that bitcoin leads the crypto market while altcoins follow the path of bitcoin. I tend not to be a maximalist but it’s obvious that bitcoin tops it all more than altcoins and the rest of shitcoins. If you have been here in the market for quite long, you will understand that bitcoin has an edge over the rest. And it’s undeniable, as everyone is going to side bitcoin no matter how few altcoins are still profitable.

I think in this case fairness becomes an important situation.
The concept of bitcoin maximalism is to assume that bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that is the future of global finance. From this concept, I actually think there is nothing wrong, although for the future of global finance, it may have to be straightened out a little because of several aspects, but it is okay to do this and consider bitcoin an important currency.

I do this but it doesn't mean that when I am in bitcoin, I have to hate or consider altcoin a mistake because after all this can be a unity in the end where bitcoin and altcoin still need each other even though it is implied. It's just that when talking about choices, I will be firm in bitcoin rather than altcoin, it doesn't mean I hate them but it is the choice I take because I think bitcoin is more worth it.

Some people don't want to think otherwise, but you are totally right. It's a game of possibilities, and they all should be used to get a better result.

Not all altcoins use Bitcoin as an L1. In fact, almost none of them do. So I am not sure what you are getting at here.


Most would agree that accepting a Bitcoin transaction after only (say) a single confirm is dangerous. You are asking for invalid blocks to be given to you and being ripped off. No serious entity would use Bitcoin this way.


Again, I really don't understand what you are talking about here. The blockchain architecture provides a means of memorializing a transaction. Bitcoin uses the blockchain architecture, as does many altcoins. I haven't talked about how much of my portfolio I want to keep in what instrument and why, and that has nothing to do with this conversation. I am not judging Bitcoin's efficacy at all here, except above where I mentioned that it is in fact a very reliable transaction store. I really think you missed the point of this conversation somewhere along the way here.

The same is true with the current model, where you have Bitcoin and altcoins. Maybe you wonder, why testnet3 blocks require 100 confirmations on some exchange, while BTC block is accepted after a single confirmation? The same is true in other cases. And if you have altcoins, then nobody invented anything better than "just wait for N more confirmations". Talk with some exchange creators, see their deposit/withdraw conditions, and see, how BTC is accepted after a single confirmation, while many alts have to wait for tens or hundreds of confirmations instead.

If that would be the case, then people would never use the term "mempool congestion" and "zero-confirmation transaction". Those things would simply not exist, and people would not spend so much time, talking about full-RBF, if it would be the case.

Oh, so who is maximalist now? Because what is the difference between BTC maximalism and ALT maximalism? If you want to keep 100% of your funds in some ALT, instead of BTC, then it is just another maximalism, the only difference is the coin, used as the golden standard, but all other things stays the same.

A lot of your post is based around that basic idea, so I'll just cut out this part and respond.

The problem with that scheme--and every L2 solution--is that it ultimately doesn't work, since it invites timing attacks between when the block is verified on the first network and the second network. In short, no matter what, your system is still only as secure as the first-layer network, so adding another layer won't make any difference--and the added system complexity will actually detract from the overall security of the system.

In the world of financial transactions, the name of the game is for your transaction to be all or nothing: it is either memorialized in a permanent way, or it isn't. Introducing the notion of "almost memorialized" makes the system effectively useless.

Hence you should just use one layer or another, but not both.

It depends, how do you want to define it. Do I think that Bitcoin is the only valid project? No. Do I think that it is good to create separate monetary bases, and abuse 21 million coins limit? No.

Bitcoin is not the only valid project, but altcoins should not create their own coins, out of thin air. In case of Bitcoin, when it was launched in 2009, there were no other altcoins, so there were no reasons, to attach to other monetary bases, like dollars, because they were strictly incompatible with "digital cash". However, since 2009, you don't have to make new coinbase transactions outside of Bitcoin blockchain. All you really need, is to make regular, non-coinbase transactions, and extend existing use cases, without inflating the supply.

Imagine how better could Litecoin be, if you would have just some P2Pool-like 2.5 minute blocks (or 30 second blocks with 20 times lower difficulty, as in the original protocol), and if every Litecoin transaction could be batched and notarized on Bitcoin, long after being confirmed on Litecoin.

And imagine how better could Monero be, if you could have just some single UTXO for Monero, with some assigned amount, and you would have just one-input-one-output, moved from time to time, with nobody knowing exactly, who owns what inside Monero, while staying perfectly auditable in BTC. You could have just a single signature, moving the whole coin forward, and hiding from the outside world, all details about amounts and public keys, which would be hidden inside.

Many altcoins were created in the way they are, because people didn't know, how to write a better code. The only reason, why people switched from SHA-256 into something else, is because they didn't implement Merged Mining properly: if they would, then 51% attacking their coins would be as hard as 51% attacking BTC. The same with Monero: it has "fake multisig", because people didn't think about pubkey-based commitment at that time.

Note that being a Bitcoin maximalist doesn't mean, that if we would launch the network today, we wouldn't change it. You can see it, when you look at recently launched networks: all soft-forks are activated from the Genesis Block, without unnecessary glorification of legacy ways of doing things. If not limited by backward-compatibility, we would start new test networks with P2TR-only addresses, with all OP_CHECKSIGs working on Schnorr signatures, without SIGHASH_SINGLE bug, without duplicated transaction IDs, with witness stack in all transaction inputs, and so on.

If we will ever be forced to do the hard fork, then the new network will be started with all of those fixes. However, because we have around 600 GB of history, and 15 years of transaction data, we cannot just throw it away. However, as things will be simplified over time, and we will have for example purely UTXO-based model, like utreexo, then maybe we will reach a point in the future, where all nodes will be started in a new way, without handling a lot of legacy code.

First, try to say no to "abusing 21 million coins limit". If we will get there, then we can think about maximalism in the first place. In the past, when people launched new altcoins, they were told "Why are you doing that? You can do this on Bitcoin, too!". Now, I can see people saying the opposite, like "Launch an altcoin, because it is not going to be merged into Bitcoin". And this is bad in the long-term, because then users cannot have feature A and feature B. They have to sell one coin, and buy another, to get more features, instead of just using existing coins in new ways.

Having no maximalism is like being forced to buy vouchers for each and every store, where you want to go shopping. The end result is that instead of having dollars, BTCs, or some single and established coin, and buying things, you have a lot of useless vouchers, and you have to trade them on a daily basis to buy anything (and each trade costs you more money, than you would spend, if you would have all your savings in a single coin, used in different ways).

Another reason to have a single coin is speculation-related: in the long-term, many altcoins died, or lost their value over time. If they would be just wrapped BTCs, then you would have 1:1 peg, and they would never be "dead". You can check, what was LTC/BTC in the past. Or XMR/BTC in the past. Imagine having LTCs as wrapped BTCs from 2013, and having 0.03 BTC per LTC now. Or imagine having XMRs as wrapped BTCs from 2017, and having 0.03 BTC per XMR now. Sounds like a great deal, right? But no, you said "no to maximalism", and instead you have far worse exchange rates, and you have to sell your BTCs, to get some XMRs, and make some private transactions.

If you don't want maximalism, then what is your alternative? Hard-forking every time, when you want to make some big changes? Or maybe burning all BTCs, to get brand new BTCv2s, with new features? Or maybe selling all old coins, to get new altcoins, with new features? In the last case, it seems like the market price does not encourage people to do that, in the long term.

For me I think it is good when one truly knows he is in the right part by having the real knowledge then at this point such person can be consider to be a maximalist. For one to choose to be a maximalist I think there should be a thorough check up on the things they believe if it is something that needs to be stick to and not being blinded with ignorance. I consider real maximalist as those who know the real thing, who choosed to be maximalist because they are aware of the main knowledge of the thing they believe in. Any maximalist that is not in the right sense of things but choose to hold things firm due to lack of understanding at this point such person should be considered as one that is being sentimental and swimming in ignorant.

People who claim to be maximalist with the real understanding of the thing they stand for are not maximalist but being ignorant.  A maximalist will always be maximalist not being dogmatic because they have the real knowledge and understanding of what they stand for or claim to know.

I'll try to keep my reply here general, and not specific to the project I work on, and say that... I think things are going to get a lot better for memecoins as there are a lot of us working on these issues, and working very hard to clean up the poor reputation non-Bitcoin digital currencies have.