Lisa is the founder of Base58 and Bitcoin++ bitcoin developer education initiatives and a board member of OpenSats. We discuss her conference series and the current state of bitcoin development.
Lisa on Nostr: https://primal.net/niftynei
EPISODE: 153
BLOCK: 890602
PRICE: 1157 sats per dollar
Video: https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsyc2s5acdzycyllt7rxxyeddq0u0tzr96su6enurnpf552jjsu4tshfhc4v
support dispatch: https://citadeldispatch.com/donate
nostr live chat: https://citadeldispatch.com/stream
odell nostr account: https://primal.net/odell
dispatch nostr account: https://primal.net/citadel
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CitadelDispatch
podcast: https://serve.podhome.fm/CitadelDispatch
stream sats to the show: https://www.fountain.fm/
rock the badge: https://citadeldispatch.com/shop
join the chat: https://citadeldispatch.com/chat
learn more about me: https://odell.xyz
(00:02:15) Introduction and Show Overview
(00:04:00) Discussion on Bitcoin's Utility and Adoption
(00:09:17) Challenges and Opportunities in Bitcoin Wallets
(00:12:25) Current State of Bitcoin and Institutional Adoption
(00:17:23) Bitcoin++: Purpose and Impact
(00:23:01) Developer Burnout and Community Building
(00:28:01) Bitcoin++ Events and Global Reach
(00:39:01) Mempools and Mining Discussion
(00:52:04) Open Source Sustainability and Business Models
(01:06:23) Cashu and Fedimint: Exploring Ecash
(01:15:13) Advice for Aspiring Bitcoin Developers
(01:22:05) Privacy in Bitcoin and Upcoming Events
[00:00:00]
Jack Dorsey:
Safety or that convincing someone that Bitcoin is safe is the problem. I think it's what do I use this for? Like, it it's it goes back to, like, is it is it just digital gold? And I put this thing and I forget. Okay. Done. But, like, that's it's just not, it's not enough. Not enough for me. So showing use cases. And, like, you you get out of The US, you get out of this bubble, you get out of Europe, you get down to Central America, South America, Africa. I've spent a lot of time in those those continents, and, people are using Bitcoin to buy coffee, and they're using it to buy dinner, and they're using it to pay vendors. And those vendors are going to restaurants that accept that Bitcoin, and there's tiny little circular economies happening, and that gives me a lot of hope. And they're not talking about the price. They're not they're actually using it on a regular basis.
What's happening on Nostra with Zaps is the largest at scale implementation of Internet magic money that we've been talking about for decades, that's actually paying for content, and it's working at scale. It's small scale, but it's still at scale. So these are things that, like, we need to study more and learn from, and, like, those are the reasons why people get in, and those are the reasons people will will stay ultimately. So it's again, it's you you have to feel it, and, like, we haven't given enough opportunity to actually feel the magic.
[00:02:15] ODELL:
Happy Bitcoin Wednesday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another Ciel Dispatch, the interactive live show focused on actual Bitcoin and FreedomTech discussion. I am clicking over here. That intro was, the one and only Jack Dorsey talking about getting people to feel the magic of Bitcoin on the Presidio Bitcoin podcast. Felt like it was a good overlap since Dorsey was recently on the show, and then Steve Lee was on the show. And Steve is heavily involved in Presidio Bitcoin. We talked about it two episodes ago. If you're listening on the podcast feeds, you may have noticed I dropped an episode, with governor Lee of Tennessee.
It's a short and sweet one that was filmed live at Bitcoin Park. You should go check it out. It seems ZapStream is down again, which unfortunately seems to be a trend, with Nasr and not being reliable. But we are working on it slow and steady. Just gotta grind it out while everyone else thinks we are crazy. Anyway, with all that said, I have good friend, return guest on the show, fellow board member at OpenSats, founder of Bitcoin plus plus, Nifty, Lisa, whatever you'd like to call her. How's it going, Lisa?
[00:03:40] Lisa Neigut:
Hey, Nat. It's great. Thanks for having me back on.
[00:03:43] ODELL:
Yeah. Thanks for joining. As the freaks can tell, I I'm still obsessed with the live chat, so the live chat is coming in through YouTube, right now. So if you have any questions, comments, just drop them in the live chat for us. Lisa, where do you wanna get started? I know you have this, I guess the best place to get started if people haven't listened to our last episode that we did together, which I think was, like, about a year ago, is what is Bitcoin plus plus? Why is it a focus of yours? Why should people care?
[00:04:14] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. That's a great question. Do we wanna talk about the Dorsey clip first or, like I mean, we can get into the Bitcoin plus plus stuff. But Let's comment comment about the clip. What's what's your opinion? Yeah. I I think it's interesting that, like, you know so I mean, maybe this also kinda interest Bitcoin plus plus. Maybe I should do both. But, you know, I get to travel a lot for, like, conference stuff because I do comps, etcetera. And, one thing that's always interesting is, like, talking to people about how they got into Bitcoin, especially devs, because because I spend most of my time with Bitcoin developers. And the it's always interesting how people come into and stay in Bitcoin because they found it for some utility reason.
I'm thinking of a developer, like, really cracked devs I met in Chile. They were at Bitcoin plus plus in Brazil this February. Their team won. I don't think they got top prize, but they won one of the prizes for contributing to white noise, which is a really cool Noster project that Jeff has come is working on. And his family got into Bitcoin a while ago because it was how they could get Bitcoin from abroad into Chile. It was how they could get money into Chile easily, right, without having to get through banks, without having to lose money through, like, Western Union, etcetera. So it's really interesting. Like, you know, I think Jack's right in terms of people have to experience it. They have to really feel it and understand the value of it for themselves.
And then unless we get lots of people doing that and touching it and using it, and the best way to do that is as a medium of exchange. Right? Yeah. I think he's right about, you know, it might it might be Why is the best
[00:05:52] ODELL:
way as a medium of exchange?
[00:05:55] Lisa Neigut:
Because it it's that's the most tangible, I think, understanding of the value proposition because you can send it from one place to another without having to have an intermediary. Like, if you do it correctly, it's like, oh, I just sent value anywhere I wanted in the fucking world. Like, anywhere I wanted. Immediate like, immediately, basically. Especially today, like, let's go empty mempool. But, it's yeah. So it's it's it is revolutionary in terms of sending value immediately. But then like, okay, so I just started doing some physical therapy here in Austin for like, you know, programmer had neck and shoulder problems. And the lady is amazing. She's incredible. And she's, like, at the end of the session, she's like, oh, you can pay me on Venmo. And I'm like, you know, I'm always like, oh, but I can also pay you in Bitcoin if you want.
I get this dead look, and she's like, I don't even know what that is. And it's like, well, it's it's it's money. I can send it to you digitally. And she's just like, I'm like, no. Okay. Okay. Like, I can send it with Venmo. So yeah. I don't know.
[00:07:02] ODELL:
I mean, look. I agree with you. I was just I was curious of your opinion. I mean, I think it I mean, it's a completely different user journey, someone buying the BlackRock ETF versus receiving Bitcoin for the first time for, for either services, you know, like a therapy session or something, or, even just getting zaps from a shitpost. Right? Like, I think, like, the user journey of someone who posts a meme on Noster and receives their first Bitcoin, is completely different than someone that logs into Charles Schwab and buys the ETF. I just I wanna drill into that particular situation because it is amazing to me how much of our economy runs on Venmo right now. It's kind of the defacto standard.
What I do in that situation, and I know there's, like, a bunch of ride or dies that are gonna be critical of me for this next commentary. But what I do is I onboard them to Strike, because they're already on Venmo. Strike is like Bitcoin's Venmo. They're already KYC ed on Venmo. It's not like they're really making a a big trade off there, and they're able to easily sell it to their bank account at will, which kinda makes until we we kinda have, like, a chicken and egg problem. Like, until they can actually spend it on things that they want, it's not really real to them. It becomes real to them when they take the hundred dollars you paid them and they, you know, cash it in and pay rent with it or something. Then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, shit. Like, this is actually real money.
My maid, we have, like, a a housekeeper that comes once a week to to clean up the house extra, because we get backlogged especially with the kid. And she like, the way she knows the price of Bitcoin is, like, the price of her holdings in strike. Like, she doesn't think the price of Bitcoin's 80 6 thousand dollars or whatever. She thinks it's, like, $1,200 because it's what whatever the amount of Bitcoin she still has at strike is how she interacts with it. It's just interesting that that user experience about how they enter it for the first time.
[00:09:16] Lisa Neigut:
I mean, yeah. I like, honestly, I still don't think we've, like, nailed the and maybe I need to do another, like, round of, like, trying out different wallets on mobile because the mobile wallet is really the way like, I'm I'm a mobile first person. I rarely use my desktop for things. Right? Like, finding a a wallet that doesn't require KYC where I can just, like, say download this app. Let me send you some stats and have it work. I I miss Phoenix. Shout out to Phoenix. Phoenix was the shit I was about to say. I still have Phoenix on my phone. I, like, had to change my settings to Canada, though, to download it and then change it back to The US. So, like, I think and I can't ask. Like, you can't get people to do that to get it. So
[00:09:58] ODELL:
If they were on Android, they can do you can have them siloed an APK, but that's probably also too much friction. I like, I mean, Zeus is decent. Zeus is Zeus has the embedded node feature, that gives you, like, a Phoenix like similar experience. It's a little bit more trust minimized, which adds additional friction in terms of sync time and, like, has this it does path finding itself, so it's a little bit slower than Phoenix. But it it gets the job done to a degree. I've been obsessed with the Cashew ecosystem. There's Cashew.me by Cali, which is just a PWA.
[00:10:39] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. This is a thing, though. I don't I'm weird. I don't wanna send people to a website. I'm like, yeah. The
[00:10:44] ODELL:
my favorite iOS app right now is Macadamia. Okay. On the Nut theme. It's very clean. The only problem there is, like so then you onboard them to Mint. And what if they if they forget about it? Like, they get a seed backup, but if the Mint disappears, then they just lose all their Bitcoin. The tried and true moon moon wall with two use still gets the job done. Mempools are clear. I know. I know. I just, like
[00:11:10] Lisa Neigut:
moon is, like, to some extent, signing them up for pain currently. Maybe they're changing their architecture, but, like, well, at some future point, they're gonna hit pain and and, like, how can we see it? Will we eventually have a sustained IP market? I've I'm gonna say yes. I can't imagine.
[00:11:27] ODELL:
Opinion on the what's your opinion on the current empty mempools? People are panicking. They're freaking out. Bitcoin's dead.
[00:11:34] Lisa Neigut:
I'm, like, I'm such a, like maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm like, it's fine, guys. Like, chill out. Like, it's not I don't understand what the panic is. Why are we panicking about this? If you're really, like, worried about it, go open some lightning channels. Like, I don't know.
[00:11:49] ODELL:
I'm more concerned about the other side, to be honest. I think, like, this is just like a breath of fresh air that we still have more time to Yeah. Not have a high fee market.
[00:11:59] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. I mean, it's a great time to experiment and build stuff and, like, you know, figure out new ways of using block space. Maybe, like, maybe this is, like, you know, moving to, like, a quantum resistant signature scheme provided like, given the the size estimates of those signatures this problem. Like, guys, this is like a temporary problem. Like, maybe this maybe it's just like this is a temporary situation, and it doesn't I don't know. Like, I it doesn't bother me. And, like I mean, maybe it is a sign of a recession, at least in The United States. We're going through some stuff right now. You know? It's, it's been a lot of, like, weirdness happening in the gold markets, which has been fun to watch. So, like, I don't know. Housing looks like it's about to fall off a cliff.
[00:12:43] ODELL:
Like, you know, like, the Met pool's empty. Maybe this is just, like, recession recession vibes. Like Well, I mean, I think a lot of it is people moving to just the overwhelming majority of the market being on custodial stuff, whether that's ETFs or custodial wallets. But then the other piece has gotta be there's very few people that actually transact Bitcoin, and a lot of us that do or have been using Lightning. Like, I think as much as there's issues,
[00:13:12] Lisa Neigut:
you know, nothing no solution's perfect. But Maybe Bitcoin is successfully scaled and,
[00:13:17] ODELL:
scaled, and, like, no one likes to hear that. But, you know It's at least, like, partially scaled. Right? I mean, I send more Bitcoin payments than I ever have, and most of them aren't on chain.
[00:13:30] Lisa Neigut:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, like, those anecdotes like that are really cool and interesting. And, you know, I think there's a lot of people that move in this space and say Bitcoin is not lacking x y z or Bitcoin can't scale or whatever. And it's like, you look around and you're like, well, like, maybe that is true on a long enough and, like, wide enough adoption thing within the short term, like, just right now. Like, we have done the work over the last, like, eight years, whatever, to make Lightning into, like, a fully functional payment rails alternative. And, like, yeah. You can transact with Bitcoin off chain, like, today in a decentralized it's, like, peer to peer way, without much of a central like, without much of a centralized whatever. I don't know. Like, maybe we did it. Is it, like, am I too optimistic? Am I too We definitely didn't do it. No.
[00:14:22] ODELL:
It's gonna be, like, in a year or something. At some undetermined amount of time, people are gonna be panicking. Their fees are too high. It will it will probably happen, and we probably won't get our shit fully in order until they do because you kinda need the you kinda need the pressure. Yeah. I mean, there's another until
[00:14:42] Lisa Neigut:
it goes up too. Right? Like
[00:14:45] ODELL:
Yeah. That's true. I do worry that I mean, I I'd actually don't worry is the wrong word. But I do think that this cycle, we haven't really seen, like, this bull run. We haven't really seen retail enter, like, real Bitcoin in a real way. Like, it's there's there's Suits buying ETFs. There's degen's buying, like, micro strategy.
[00:15:10] Lisa Neigut:
Institutional adoption is happening right now. And this is the thing that I feel like people were talking about in 2018, '20 '19. Like, they were gonna make it happen. I remember, like, back to us getting set up. Like, there was all this talk of, like, institutional adoption is coming. We gotta get ready for it, and they were all, like, over half a decade too early. I feel like we finally hit the point where institutional adoption is happening at a scale that's never happened before, and no one's happy about it. Like, no one's rejoicing. Like, everyone like, I feel like no one is, like, reporting on, like you know, there's no, like, oh, institutional adoption is, like I mean, there's, like, a little bit, but it's not you know what I mean? Like, I feel like there's no, like, recognition that we've hit it. Like, this was a goal, and people, like, were trying to do it ages ago and talking about it, and we're finally more at that than we've ever been.
And it's, like, pretty quiet. Like, I feel like we don't celebrate our successes enough as a Bitcoin industry. You know, we've, like, we've managed to scale, like, the main main chain into, like, the most decentralized payment network known to mankind, which is Lightning. Institutional adoption is finally arriving. These like, through you know, the administration change has been a big part of that. I think Saylor has also been a huge driver behind showing people how that can be done. There's more, like, startups and, like, businesses launching IPO ing that, like, brag about having a Bitcoin balance sheet. Like, Meta Planet just launched however long ago. That's the, like, the Japanese basically micro strategy.
We're talking about getting a strategic Bitcoin reserve, like and yet no one seemed happy. Like, no one feel like, it like, all these, like, great things that we've talked about saying and wanting that we, like, excited about happening, and I just feel like I don't know. And looking at this comment about people getting bid access. Access. Like, more people are getting into home mining today than have been really cool. Like, in ever. And, like, I just like, I feel like people just, like, still aren't satisfied. And I'm like, is that just, like, price? Are we in the price stoldrums? Are people just sad we're not over a hundred k still? Like like, where is the celebratory energy? Or is this, like, oh, America's in a recession, and so there's just this, like, strange, like like, discomfort with things lately. We can't be happy because we're stressed, but, like I don't know. I think there's a lot of cool stuff happening in Bitcoin.
[00:17:24] ODELL:
Let's I let's fucking go. I agree. Okay. So, I mean, let's let's get back to the original question, which is what is Bitcoin plus plus and why do you focus so much time and energy on it when we're already winning so hard?
[00:17:38] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. Well, Bitcoin plus plus is like you know, our tagline is like frontier Bitcoin. It is the, like, largest Bitcoin technical conference series in Bitcoin. We do technical conferences for Bitcoiners. So I'm a dev. I love I grew grew up in dev going to technical conferences and wanted to make a really great one to bring all my friends in Bitcoin who are devs together to share what they're working on, you know, get cross pollination of ideas, have really good discussions about what are we building, why are we building it, what still is left to be built, what we have we accomplished as a dev community, kind of a cool way to showcase, like, what teams and people are working on stuff.
It started in Austin in 2022. We're about to have our fourth event here in Austin. It's gonna be I think is it is this gonna be the ninth ever Bitcoin plus plus almost in double digits of conferences in less than three and a half years? We're international. We just had our first Brazil event in February, which is great. We do different themes at every event. So maybe I'm, like, getting a little off topic. But
[00:18:45] ODELL:
You're good. Yeah.
[00:18:48] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. So Bitcoin plus plus is really, you know, my attempt to get people excited about what's happening in Bitcoin. And, sorry. I get distracted by these comments. What are you talking about? Everyone is I mean, I I talk
[00:19:03] ODELL:
since you brought up the comment, I mean, I kinda agree with East Side Tony that, what she's saying in the comments is that I mean, people are really like, especially on x, like, MicroStrategy is just All in all. A lot of excitement about MicroStrategy.
[00:19:19] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. But that's like okay. So but, I mean, like, look. Bitcoin is a big tent. Right? And I think what we hear about and what people focus on and a lot of the, like, energy in Bitcoin is around the, you know, the stock to flow, like like, or just even ETFs or what are they doing. Price stuff. But also, like, who owns it? It's like the who's who of Bitcoin owners. Right? Like, what is mister Saylor doing today? Like, you know, when is the government gonna buy my bags or someone else's bags, etcetera. And that's, like, fine, but that's a really different ecosystem and a really different audience than all the nerds that I want to stay interested and focused on Bitcoin. Because I'm thinking about Bitcoin from a maintenance and, like, as a software project. Right? And it there's, like, as we add new projects, like, the e cash stuff, as we add new stuff, like, you know, Feddy with I mean, Feddy is in there. They've got all the lightning. Like, there's tons of lightning implementations.
The code footprint of what needs to be maintained to keep and, like, infrastructure of nodes being run. It's a big decentralized system. Right? So we need, like, lots of people running nodes. We need more developers coming in, finding Bitcoin really interesting, and wanting to spend time working on projects here. So the like and, again, like, this is why Bitcoin plus plus exist is, like, back in 2022, it was all doom and gloom about, like, oh, all these top devs are being scared out because of the Craig Wright thing. Nothing cool is happening in Bitcoin. All the cool hot devs go to ETH, do smart contracts. It's like, okay. No. Let's make a place where we can show one, there's really cool smart devs doing interesting hard technical problems here. And so and I I think I still think, like, there's a lot of work that we could do to showcase more of the cool technical stuff happening in Bitcoin.
These conferences are one, but it's like, okay. There's probably more I could do about even talking about what gets shown at the events. So, like, each of our conferences is a theme, and one of the reasons that we do that is to try and shine a light on the cool interesting aspects of Bitcoin devs. Because we want new smart devs coming into the space, finding like minded people. That's like a big one. And getting nerd sniped, if I'm gonna be honest, to continue working and find a project that scratches whatever itch they've got for the event. So, yeah, that's like yeah. So that's Bitcoin plus plus. It's, like, really focused on the dev market. And the dev market wider than just, like, who's in Bitcoin today, which I mean, of course, like, all the finding all the amazing people that are devs, nerds that are working on Bitcoin, technically, keeping them happy, keeping them feeling connected to the community by bringing them together.
And then, also, how do we, like, get more cool, fun, very brilliant devs to come and work on Bitcoin as an open source project if you're not bringing them in and having them meet the community that way. So, yeah, that's the project, really. It's the the, like, broad goal.
[00:22:17] ODELL:
Well, I mean, as as Bitcoin grows, it makes sense to me that, you know, the bull case for Bitcoin is that every person on earth is a Bitcoiner. So as Bitcoin grows, it makes sense that the community will have, like, a bunch of sub communities. There's no just one overarching Bitcoin community. And we used to be more aligned and more just we were smaller. So we're we're smaller, so we agreed on a lot of things. Now you have all these different subsets. You have people that are just, like, obsessed with MSTR. You have suits that are, like, doing ETF stuff, and then you have people that are focused on self custody, people that are focused on mining, open source mining, then you have the developer community.
One thing I've noticed is because of that disconnect and particularly of how things get highlighted on social, like, where the tension is, I've noticed that there is some in almost increased burnout among developers that are doing a lot of the hard work behind the scenes, and then maybe they feel like they're not getting the recognition or they feel like, they they they feel like the priorities are are in the wrong place. How do you how do you think about developer burnout, and how do you think about kind of this idea of almost, I like to call it, like, replacement rate? Not that we want to necessarily replace developers, but, like, as they move on to other things, having talented people come in and kind of fill their roles. How do you think about those, like, twin challenges?
[00:23:52] Lisa Neigut:
I think that's definitely a difficult thing. One thing about developers, and I kinda learned this from working with Rusty Russell who had a long lust illustrious career in Linux open source before moving over to Bitcoin in the early teens. And one of the things that he kinda just noticed, especially the way he handles new people coming in to work on Core Lightning, for example, which is a very huge I would think probably one of the, honestly, best architected and maintained projects in Bitcoin outside of, like, Bitcoin Core. And one of the things about the way that he handles people coming in is, you know, when new developers show up to work on projects, they need support from existing projects in terms of helping them figure out what they're interested in working on. And where, like, every dev has something different that's gonna get them interested and excited.
And one of the best things that you can do with the project maintainer or even, like, in open source is encouraging them to keep digging at whatever interests them the most. And is that gonna be what someone else is currently maintaining? Maybe. Is that gonna be, like, something that we haven't thought of before? Maybe. And integrating, you know, kind of all those especially if it's, like, open source project where people are, giving their time and energy to, you know, contribute to something like an open source in their free time or whatever. Letting people, like, you know, get recognition for what they're working on, and, like, bringing and showcasing, like, the kinds of contributions that each person brings to the to the projects, is really kind of where things like Bitcoin plus plus, I think, start playing a role because you get to say, hey. Come talk about what you're interested in. You know, you're new to the space, but you're contributing to x y z. Come to Bitcoin plus plus. Talk about what you're working on. Get recognition for your contributions on a public platform in a way in, like, a in a real, you know, what do you call it, audience of your peers. Like, these are the other smart people, devs that are working in Bitcoin, and gives them, I think, like, a real opportunity to make a name for themselves. Because, like, Bitcoin as a dev, like, you know, if you're a dev working on open source Bitcoin, it's not like working at a startup where you're getting equity in a company that may you know, like, there's less lottery tickets that you're getting headed handed out. And is you know, people talk about Bitcoin as a price, like, hitting a curve and, like, really gonna take off in the next, you know, maybe five, ten, twenty years, whatever. But is that gonna compare to the upside on being able to get start up stock in a, like, new onboarding, like, AI company?
Probably not. Right? So one of the few things that we can give devs is recognition and a name and legacy and letting them know they're working on infrastructure that's gonna be around for a long time. And that's why I like to think that, you know, conferences and what we're doing at Bitcoin plus plus is such an important contribution.
[00:26:54] ODELL:
Do you do you not think that, well, at least for the subset of devs that are able to get open source grants, whether that's from OpenSats or HRF or Brink that are paid in Bitcoin, it's kind of like equity. Right? It's almost better than equity. You actually have liquidity.
[00:27:13] Lisa Neigut:
But, I mean, the amount of money that OpenSats has been giving out in grants has been noncompetitive with Right. Going to work with a start up. So, like, it start up, you're getting cash as well as equity usually. Right? So it's it's like I mean, I guess it depends. If it's a hot end, I start up. You can go work somewhere else and get paid better money and buy Bitcoin with it and probably be better off than working on open source. It has to be something you wanna do in a community you wanna contribute to. And how are you supposed to, like, find the community you wanna contribute to if you don't know where to, like, find them?
[00:27:47] ODELL:
Yeah. So do you think like, is that is that one of the core problems you're trying to I I don't I don't I don't wanna say solve, but mitigate is, like, this idea not this idea burn. I mean, the burnout is real. Correct?
[00:28:01] Lisa Neigut:
Burnout is real. But I think but I I I find that people who come to conferences tend to be I think it helps with burnout because it's fun and it's it's invigorating, and there's new ideas. And maybe you were feeling like the project like, why was I working on this project? No one cares. It's like, no. Here's all the cool people are excited about what you're working on, and maybe some people wanna help you. Like, you know, Bitcoin plus plus has, like, so many cool, I wanna say user stories or stories of devs that have come through and, like, completely changed their career path or trajectory because they came to an event and met people and started working on a project. Or a good example is, you know, Jeff Gardner has been working on this really awesome new protocol project for Nostr for building in a really awesome, basically, like, chat messaging app. And he went from being basically a sole contributor on this project to Bitcoin plus plus in Florianopolis in February.
I think he has a team of, like, five or six people now contributing regularly, and they're all, like That's awesome. From all over the world. Right? So
[00:29:06] ODELL:
I don't know. This project is like it's like signal, but on Noster.
[00:29:11] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. Yeah. Very similar. Exactly. I mean, I can't wait for him to launch it. I wanna move to something that's not Telegram or signal. Yeah. It'd be absolutely massive. It'd be huge. And it's cool to, like, be able to watch, like, real network effects happen in person through these events. And we do them all over the world because Bitcoin is global and distributed, and it's really great to be able to get doves, you know, that that that cross pollination across pawns, etcetera, is hard to do. If every Bitcoin dev conference happened in The United States, then we wouldn't really be building the right That we wouldn't really be doing, like, the dev community service as much as we are by having a, like, consistent interface of conferences that, you know, it's really fun because I can talk devs from places that maybe would never go to Brazil into coming to Brazil and meeting the Latin American community and all the amazing talent that places like Vintium and Liberida Satoshi are churning out down there, like, new devs with really Yeah. Amazing technical skills who wanna contribute in a big way, maybe are already contributing in a big way, and getting them plugged in and making contacts to devs from Europe and The United States, and and maybe even, like, Asia. Like, we had someone fly in from Taipei last year to our Buenos Aires conference.
So, yeah, I don't know. So
[00:30:38] ODELL:
so Florianopolis, Brazil, that was the most recent event. Right? It is. It was. Yeah. So, like, break it down for like, how around how many people were there? How many were already Bitcoin developers? How many weren't Bitcoin developers yet? How many were, foreigners? How many were actually local Brazilians? Like, just give me, like,
[00:30:58] Lisa Neigut:
high level. I'm kinda curious. No. These are great questions. We had, just about 200 people there. I am so bad at collecting data, which is probably part of the reason why I feel like, you know, people don't know as much about Bitcoin plus plus because I'm such a, like, don't track, don't don't ask, don't tell. But I would bet that maybe half of that was local Brazilians, and maybe another 20 to 30 were from the wider, Latin American ecosystem. So Argentina, Chile. Do we have any in from Mexico? Maybe. We had a good chunk of people that came from the Bitcoin design industry, which was really cool to see. So they had a bunch of designers.
I would say probably 60% were already into Bitcoin as developers, and the rest were new or had just come out of the Vinci Oom Bitcoin developer launchpad, which they just did for the first time last, basically, like, November, they started it. So it was you know, it's like a really good mix of people that are newer in their career, like, people that are experienced devs looking to get into new Bitcoin projects, a lot of open source devs that are working on projects that maybe you're looking for new contributors. So we had, like, a good presentation from Maestro, which is a, Buenos Aires based, open source project trying to build a peer to peer marketplace for exchange on Nasr.
Yeah. It's cool stuff. It's like,
[00:32:23] ODELL:
a So for contrast, that's awesome, by the way. I I that's, I think, a I mean, I mean, that that breakdown is is kinda fascinating to me. And it's good that I mean, I love how much, like, local local attention happens as a result of these events being international. So for context, you had one in Berlin that was Cashew focused. Was that this fall or last fall? It was is it October? So, is that Like the October that just passed. Right? Yeah. All the whole the my timelines are just so melded together at this point. I was bummed to miss that one. I think that was probably one of my biggest FOMO misses event wise in a while.
So compare and contrast the breakdown of that one compared to, Florianopolis. I'm, like, really wishing I had numbers because I'm, like, not No. Just give us estimates. High level item. I'm glad you don't track.
[00:33:23] Lisa Neigut:
I think it was probably we had about 200 people again. So most of our events are around 200. Right. I like that size. Intimate. Intimate. It's a it's a great conference. Like, everyone has such a good time too not to, like yeah. So we had about 200 people. I think it's, like, about the same. Like, probably about half are from Germany locally. There's an amazing I love doing Bitcoin conferences in Berlin. It feels like a really important place to continue having Bitcoin dev conferences because of how many developers are there that care about privacy and Bitcoin. Well, maybe not all as much into Bitcoin, but, there's just such a great cyberpunk.
What is there a lot of crypto stuff? There's a lot of crypto stuff over there. Right? I don't think there's as much crypto stuff. I think it's a lot of more, like I think there's just more interesting privacy projects that, like, come out of there. So I feel like and maybe I'm making this up. Like, I feel like a good number of tour devs that were, like, famously in and around Lynn. But it's more just cyberpunk decentralized, like, you know, stick it to the man. We're gonna Right. Do our own self hosting. Really end it like, maybe it's more just open source community in Berlin. Feels really strong, and that's one that I wanna continue to, like, have a presence in that community, so to speak. So we'll be back in Berlin this October again, second to fourth back in the same venue.
This year, we're talking about lightning and programmable payments instead of e eCash. But Kelly is gonna be there, and we're definitely gonna be having, hopefully, some eCash talks happening.
[00:34:55] ODELL:
And Berlin was where
[00:34:56] Lisa Neigut:
Berlin was where the original lightning conference happened back in the day. Right? Like, 2019 or whatever? Yeah. I'm trying to bring the lightning conference back. I've been joking this is gonna be the first lightning plus plus. We're gonna, like, do lightning conference two point o. I've been talking to the LDK team. It sounds like a bunch of them are gonna be there for it. Trying to talk to the LV people, I think, are gonna be there. I was talking to one of their teammates today about it. So, hopefully, they'll have a big presence. Working on trying to get, like, you know, devs from strategy, which is Michael Sailor's big, organization. They've got a lot of, like, non Bitcoin devs that work on their core business, just not the part of holding Bitcoin.
[00:35:37] ODELL:
So, you know, it's just like trying to get I mean, I would argue that holding Bitcoin is probably the core business now. But
[00:35:44] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. But the number of people that they employ for that particular part is very small percent, I think, of their total, headcount. And a lot of their headcount are developers. They just don't work on Bitcoin things. So,
[00:35:57] ODELL:
I think developer at strategy and not working on his Bitcoin things and just completely I I mean, you wanna talk about their salaries are probably good, but that would burn me out.
[00:36:07] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. And I think they've got a lot of, yeah. So they they think they've got a decent number of people of, like, headquarters over in Europe. So it's like, okay. You know what? Is the amazing thing I think about Bitcoin plus plus being so international. It's like, cool. How do we and, like, you know, traveling is expensive. So a nice thing about having Bitcoin plus plus all over the world is that, hopefully, there's one close enough to where these devs are anywhere in the world that you can go to a Bitcoin plus plus every year, and it's you won't break the bank to buy a flight to The US or whatever, have to worry about visas, etcetera. You can just show up. So Right. Yeah. Who want I mean, if I was
[00:36:45] ODELL:
I'm very grateful I'm American, and there's no other place I would raise my family. But if I was not American, particularly if I was working on, you know, any kind of freedom focused open source software, I probably would not wanna come to The US. I would probably just skip any events that were here. Before I forget and I'm not trying to get you in trouble because I hopefully, you can get a bunch of strategy developers to participate. There was some artist on the Internet, which, like, don't hold me to it, didn't verify my source, that said, like, all of MicroStrategy's offices internationally are, like, couple blocks away from wherever the intelligence agencies are. So, like, literally, they have, like, 20 countries or something. Wait. Sorry. I missed that. Could you say it, like, again? I like They have, like, offices in 20 countries, and it's always just, like, a couple blocks from wherever, like, their CIA is.
[00:37:37] Lisa Neigut:
Oh, that's interesting.
[00:37:39] ODELL:
Yeah. I think all the offices are public. So I don't know. Leave it to the office to I wonder
[00:37:44] Lisa Neigut:
thoughts. Maybe some of the maybe some of the strategy they're helping with is aren't they like a data analytics firm? Maybe they I think they've done a lot of government contracts. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then maybe interesting.
[00:37:54] ODELL:
That's a lot of money in it. Okay. So Berlin that mean yeah.
[00:38:00] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. We've got let me see. We've got our next our next event is the mempool one. So we're talking about mempools and That's Austin. Right? It's gonna be Austin. It's Austin May Seventh To Ninth.
[00:38:11] ODELL:
So mempools. What are we talking about about mempools? That how how to fill them? Transaction propagation? Like
[00:38:19] Lisa Neigut:
Well, I'm I'm getting together, you know, a a group of concerned Bitcoiners to talk about how we can fill them and pull again. We are hosting an emergency meeting. So all Bitcoiners that are, worried and concerned about mempools should come to Austin, May Seventh The Ninth, and we will have a strategy session, hosted by strategy, JK, to talk about, you know, what we could do with the mempool. No. So it's, been working with a lot of talking to a lot of people who are you know, there's been a lot of changes to how mempool stuff works. I think there's also been a lot of I think we see a lot of contention over policies in the mempool over the last year plus Yeah. Yeah.
Also, as a lightning girly, there's been a lot of talk in lightning land about how do we get transactions into blocks with certain guarantees. And InstaGibbs, who used to work on core lightning and is now working on, InstaGibbs, who's now working at spiral on, Bitcoin core stuff specifically around this problem. He got NerdSnipe tool working on lightning. It was like, how do we get transactions in the blocks with, you know, minimum amount of griefing? So I've done a lot of work over the last, I wanna say, almost three years on Bitcoin core. Package relay is coming through. Peter Willow's working on a new, mempool design called cluster mempools, which I don't think gets enough interest like, that's gonna be incredibly huge for block building, and I honestly don't think that there is enough.
There hasn't been enough, like, conversation about it, I think. So, anyways, I'm getting all these people together. I'm also inviting, like, Scott nine thousand is gonna be there. The solo solo Satoshi guys with the Bitac stuff are coming. We've got Rob Warren. He's done some really interesting writing. He needs to have a book out about minor incentives. You know, I'm hoping it's just, like, a really good opportunity for people that have been working in the space around mining incentives. How do we get transactions from the users into blocks? How do we do it in a way with, like, certain guarantees?
And maybe in a way that, like, yeah, it keeps the mempool full. Hundred beast is gonna be there. I don't think we've announced him yet talking about quantum resistance, which will be really interesting because, like, all of the signatures for those are huge. Right? So that definitely has implications on terms of, like, what kinds of transactions we can get into blocks if all of every block is if every transaction is huge. Anyway, so it's just like, okay. Here's all the changes that have happened in the mempool or coming. Here's all the, like, pool designs that people are working on. We're gonna have braid pool there. We're gonna have people talking about Stratham v two. We're gonna have Datum, which is Ocean's protocol. There, Jason's gonna come give a really good deep dive on it, I think.
Luke I was just talking to Luke Dasher earlier today. He's great. I'm really excited to have him coming. He's gonna talk about mempool policy. Yeah. Anyway, so it's like it's like okay. There's there's a lot to talk about here. And And you have a good mining
[00:41:14] ODELL:
intro too into that. Is this gonna be, like, basically the first mining
[00:41:18] Lisa Neigut:
Bitcoin plus plus to to go? Basically. And, also, where better to do it than in Texas? Like, aren't we one of the biggest I don't know stat. Again, me and my my stats. It's true. We're one of the biggest miners in The US. It's also the same week as the Texas Energy and Mining Summit, which is targeted, I think, a little bit different audience. It's more power provider. By us. Yeah. Okay. Us being Bitcoin Park. Right? Correct. Yeah. Okay.
[00:41:44] ODELL:
Well, because now we have Bitcoin Park Austin.
[00:41:48] Lisa Neigut:
Exactly. Yeah. So Bitcoin Park Austin. Super excited. Bitcoin Park is in Austin now. The Tennessee invasion is complete now. But, we're excited to have, like so there's gonna be a lot of people in town for that event, and then we're also gonna have, hopefully, all these devs, engineers, protocol designers, how do miners get paid, like, how are we getting transactions into the That's awesome. Yeah. So I'm, like, I'm super excited about it. I know I've been I've been to be chatting about it for a bit. Historically
[00:42:18] ODELL:
so our energy and mining summit, which we just did our annual we've annually do it in Nashville. And so that conversation that I put on, the feeds with governor Lee, Tennessee governor Lee was at the Nashville Energy Mining Summit in January. And historically, like, it's more like minor operation focused. Yeah. So this is actually, like, really, really very complimentary because the most of the mining conversations that'll be happening at Bitcoin plus plus will be a little bit more protocol, driven and developer driven and and how we handle that side. So it works really well together.
[00:43:01] Lisa Neigut:
I think so. Yeah. And I mean, I but there's a lot of things I mean, I think mining decentralization is one of the biggest topics in Bitcoin, biggest, like, centralization risks Yeah. How do you feel about that? Templates. I don't feel good about it right now. I'm, like, really excited about getting more people doing home mining, but, yeah, I don't know. I I think it's still some one of those things I need to, like, get caught up on what current pool designs are and, like, how stratum b two versus datum work. And, there's a lot of really terrible, like, edge cases. I mean, I think I was, like, was one of the first people to kinda start calling this out on the mailing list, like, four or five years ago where, like, yo, bro. Like, mempool itself is obsolete. Like, we don't we don't the mempool, like, you don't really need it anymore because you can send your transaction to 10 No. You did.
[00:43:48] ODELL:
You really, everyone was arguing about mempool policy, and then you were like, what if we just remove the mempools? Yeah. And you really just, like, blew up the whole conversation. And then it's thought provoking way.
[00:44:00] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. Exactly. And I'm like, bro, we don't even need the mempool. Just send it to me. Horrible idea, by the way. But Everyone keeps telling me this, and I'm like, look, it it's it's it's look. It's not like it wasn't an I think this is the thing I never did, like, a follow-up post to it. It wasn't a serious idea. It was like a thought experiment. It's like, dude, we we we legitimately can like, you could remove the mempool today and still get your transaction mined by sending it to all of 10 people. The only thing is we don't know how to find those 10 people. So if you build a registry where those 10 people are and you just send it, and those 10 people is, like, the top 10 mining pool mempools, you literally Yeah. And there's a bunch of out of band
[00:44:34] ODELL:
transaction relay that's happening already.
[00:44:37] Lisa Neigut:
It's good. And since then, it's only become, like, more of a thing because there's, like there's things that people who are transacting wanna do that they literally cannot do with existing protocol. A really good example of this is mempool transaction accelerator. People wanna rebid and pay more on a transaction that they've already sent, and there's nothing in the existing Bitcoin protocol that lets you do that in, like, a, how would I call it, like, unrestricted way. And so it's like, okay. Like, there is an action that users and consumers wanna take, and there's no way to do it. So if someone's offering, like, a private way of doing it, the only problem is that there's, like, really big downsides to private relays and out of the transaction fee payments. Well, the real one the real risk is, like, for people running lightning nodes like myself who your lightning node needs to know how much to pay to get a transaction into the next, like, 10 blocks. Right?
If the transaction data if the data of what is being paid to get into the next 10 blocks isn't public because it's being paid as an out of band fee, so it's no longer reflected in fees paid inside of the block, All of a sudden, your lightning node is, like, has a completely huge like, you've an suddenly you have this, like, risk of losing funds because you can't get transactions mined in a way because you don't have there is no longer a public price feed of block fee of block space auction data. And because you don't have that public basically, public basically, it takes public information about what it costs to get into a block and makes it private. And as soon as you have a private data feed, then you have to pay someone to get it, basically.
So it creates all these, like, negative incentives around centralization of of transaction, Relay. And that, like, oh, the only way that I can get this transaction into a block is either by paying someone to find out how much to pay for it or by putting it out there and then paying someone later to bump it up because they can't do it through the existing protocol. So I don't know. I think you made a really good argument for why mempools,
[00:46:39] ODELL:
exist
[00:46:40] Lisa Neigut:
or should exist. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
[00:46:44] ODELL:
I mean, to be fair to the mempool guys, people were already doing this, like, out of band transaction fee acceleration, in a very, very opaque way. And they are it's still centralized, but they're trying to do it in the most transparent way possible, so that people can still do proper fee estimation. But it's centralized. It's a % centralized and trusted.
[00:47:08] Lisa Neigut:
And you can't publish the data, like, in the same data feed as the block. Like, you can't there's no way to make that data in a transaction that's already been included, if that makes sense. Like, suddenly, there's two pieces of information you need. One is all the transactions in a block, which right now also contain all the information about how much they paid to get into the block. But now you also need a data feed or, like, some way to access information of what people are actually paying to get into blocks, and that becomes that is, like, extremely valuable information then. Right. Like, for example
[00:47:45] ODELL:
like for, like, an actual practical example, let's actually pretend, mempools are busy and blocks are full. You might check you know, your node might look at a block and they might think a transaction has been confirmed at two sets per byte. But in reality, through Mempools. Space, they actually paid 45 sets per byte. And there's no way for you to actually for your note to actually know that information and make a proper fee estimation. And that's where a lot of the problems lie.
[00:48:13] Lisa Neigut:
Well, it's not even problems. It's just centralization risk. Yeah. And it, like and it really, like, destroys ability of, like, people to have protocols like Lightning that are independent. Like, so your Lightning node in theory, the only data you need to watch is new blocks coming in. But if this, like, threatens the ability to have a Lightning node that you have high assurance that the only data you need is new block info because you no longer can rely on your ability to get transactions mined in a timely manner.
[00:48:43] ODELL:
Right. And it's problematic. Or even, like, figure out how much you're supposed to pay. Yeah. It's just problematic to, like, decentralization as well. Okay. I've decided that, this show is just me asking your opinion on random things. What is your opinion? What do you have an opinion on back to mining centralization? Do you have an opinion on stratum v two versus datum promotion?
[00:49:07] Lisa Neigut:
No. But I want to. And this is why I am so excited that Jason of the datum guy is coming, and we're gonna have some stratum people, which I know Clubhash is coming. I don't know if he's giving I don't know if I have any Stratham v two talks. Maybe we should reach out to and convince him to come talk about Stratham v two strategy. You can at least send someone. It would be I mean, it would be amazing. I think I have I have one first I have, like, two or three Stratum v two devs coming to talk about their projects. But maybe I should set up, like, a Stratum versus Datum just, like, conversation. Because when you talk to the Datum, their guys, they're like, we looked at Stratum v two, and there were all these problems in it. Again, I'm just, like, I haven't looked at it, so I'm really just, like, parodying back what they told me. And so they created their own protocol that they think solves a lot of the problems.
I don't know what those problems are, but I really wanna know. Right? Like, what did Stratum v two, like, get wrong? Why does Datum exist? I will say that I think Stratum I think Datum existing is really exciting and cool because one of the problems Stratum v two is having was getting people to pay attention to it or adopt it or add it. I feel like as soon as you add, like, a I think this is kinda just the way that that humans work. As soon as you add a competitor, all of a sudden you get more news and more, like, press and more coverage about it as an option.
And I think that I mean, I haven't been tracking. Maybe this is a good poll to, like, send out to people, who are coming and participating or just even mining companies in general, but being like, hey. Like, what is your, what do you call it? Like, I feel like awareness around Statham v two probably went up when Datham got launched. Mostly because it's like, all of a sudden you have, like, this, like you have a compare contrast situation. Right? Whereas before, it was just, like, Strata v two and what. Now it's like, oh, Strata v two or Datum, and you can, like, compare them, and it's, like, two different things. And I think anytime that happens with the protocol is actually, like, it feels really hard when you're in it because it's like, oh, no. I have a competitor. But all of a sudden, it gives people an opportunity to talk about trade offs.
And it's like, well, why aren't you supporting one or the other versus why aren't you doing this thing that no one's really heard of, etcetera. So, again, that's again, this is, like, totally outsider
[00:51:15] ODELL:
baseball offer. I think the biggest thing is that the ocean guys were just like, fuck it. We're doing it live. And they just kinda shipped, and they had a pool. You know, the the pool had support for it. It was first class support. Exactly. They were pushing it really hard. They offered fee incentives for people to choose it. It stopped being theoretical. Right? It like, a lot of and it tries to accomplish a lot of the same goals that Stratham v two tried to tries to accomplish, and they're kinda coming at it from technically a little bit different ways. But, it's good to see both projects. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, what you actually look at is the majority of hash is either going through Bitmain proxies or Foundry, and neither are using Stratum v two or Datum.
Right. So let's just throw as much shit as we can to see what sticks.
[00:52:04] Lisa Neigut:
But I think you bring up a really good point about how Ocean had distribution, so to speak, and that they run a mining pool. And so they could develop a protocol and immediately distribute it to users via their infrastructure of having a pool. Distribution of your software and your protocol is such a huge I think and this is, like I think your people are gonna start seeing this, like, in the vibe coding era. Like, distribution, like, ability to get people to pay attention and run your project or your protocol is really gonna become the limiting factor, I think, of adoption or, like, really changing how the world works. So, yeah, it's it's interesting.
[00:52:46] ODELL:
How do you think about so this is actually kind of an interesting case study because so DATM was, created and shipped by Ocean, which is a VC backed comp well, not I guess, Dorsey would be upset with me calling the VC, but it's a Dorsey backed for profit entity. They had investors. They did, like, a c round. Right? Like, speaking of the recent 6,000,000 or something like that. Right? Most of it was Jack. I mean, it's not public information, but from my intuition, most of it was Jack. And then Stratham v two was heavily led through open open source grants through Spiral, which is which is Block.
But it's but it was very much like an open source nonprofit project. So how do you think about, in terms of of efficiency or, go to market or success on in terms of for profit businesses that are building out open source stacks. Right? Datum's completely open source That's versus projects that don't necessarily have some additional profit motive attached to it. Do you have an opinion on that?
[00:54:01] Lisa Neigut:
Man, sustainability is really important. And I say that as someone who runs a conference series that, like, really, like, you know, it's mostly been volunteer work ish. Like, I mean, I get grants and stuff to help cover bills, whatever. But, like, running a project and not having a sustainable model for, like, how you're gonna keep people working on it and maintaining it and promoting it and doing all the work that requires to get that distribution to actually make your project, like, be relevant over the long term. Right? You need people running your software, basically. Sustainability is, like, a really hard thing in the open source world, and it's not just a Bitcoin industry problem. This is, like, global. Right? Like, anyone working on open source, it really come and it you know, it really comes from this really interesting place of, like, I want my work to be public. I want, like, my software to be free. I want anyone to be able to open up and use it and tinker it and learn from it.
Doing that work and publishing it, like, you you that is so different from how do we make this project sustainable? How where is the revenue coming from to continue, like, making this a longevity thing. Right? I mean, if you look at the Catholic church or, like, religion, I like, I kinda feel like open source software is, like, kind of in the, like, public good sector, right, which is, you know, government or religion. Catholic church convinced everyone to give them 10% of all the money they make, right, tithing, as a way to continue building beautiful works of cathedrals. Right? Like, what is it like, I feel like people talk about, like, are you working on, like, cathedrals, right, which is thousands of people spending years of their lives over the course of hundreds of years to build these immense stone structures that will last forever. Where does the money come from to make this happen? Well, it's everyone in the larger community giving 10% of the money that they make to that public work. Right? And that's kinda how government works to some extent. Like, we all give some portion of the money we're making to continue building the nation state, whatever that is, hand wave.
But, you know, and, like, maybe this is a good place to start plugging, like, what OpenSats is doing in donations and, like, I think that, like, even on the board of OpenSats, I think we struggle with, like, how do we decide where to give money to people? Like, is this project, like, a sustainable project, or is it an infrastructure one? I always lean on the more, like and I think, like, you know, board has different opinions. We all come from different places and different perspectives when we're evaluating where to spend the funds that we have. But it's always, like, you know, there's always gonna be those infrastructure projects that have zero chance of being sustainable.
Is data v two one of them? Maybe. Is that, like, maybe the best, like, long term thing? I don't know. But that does mean that, like, as a community and, like, stratum v two is just one example of, like, tons of projects in the space, like Bitcoin Core. Core Lightning is another good example. The Cashew projects, you know, that ecosystem. All of the guys that are working on this project and it's like, Nostril like, OpenSats is probably one of the biggest, funds that is, like, supporting dev building infrastructure in the Nostril ecosystem. Like, where does the money go to support open source? It's like, well, we don't have, like, a 10% tithing church.
And I mean, like, maybe OpenSAT should, like, start some sort of tithing program where you get, like, some sort of, like, badge or something if you're, like, dedicating, like, five, ten percent of your, like, nonprofit donations to OpenSets. But yeah. Like, yeah. I don't know. But I would like to see I mean, I do I'd like to see OpenSets supporting projects that aren't sustainable sustainable
[00:57:46] ODELL:
by themselves in the long run. Right. But, I mean, there's two things there. Right? Because some projects just can't be some projects just can't be monetized. Right? It's just it's just like matter of fact. Monetized. Like, you just like, there's
[00:58:01] Lisa Neigut:
and there's devs out there that are amazing at building things, and they're amazing at contributing, and they they can find bugs, and they can do maintenance at a level that is, like, god tier. Right? Like, just, like, out of this world incredible at their job. But they wanna work on their job. They don't wanna work on this. I mean, so I've I'm kind of, like, transition not transitioning, but over the last few years, like, I went from being, like, I'm a developer. I'm working on open source projects to I'm trying to run a conference series and keep it sustainable over the long term. Right? All of a sudden, it's like, dude, these are, like, completely different jobs than writing code, maintaining software, fixing bugs for people. Like, this switch to, like, oh, how do I make this sustainable, this project of, like, getting dubs together to talk about what they're building?
But that is, like that's not easy. Right? And it's, like, a completely different skill set. And I don't think it's fair to be, like, every single dev project out there needs to be able to have that skill set to bring money in. Like, it's just a completely different thing. I don't know.
[00:59:07] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, it's once again, I think it's two different things. Right? There's I think with Bitcoin now existing, it is it's still very difficult to monetize an open source project, but easier than ever to monetize an open source project in certain situations. And and as a result, they could have sustainable independent funding. But then for everything else, they're kind of just always relying on donations. And you kind of mix two things together there with tithing, which is, like, kind of donation based, but also you'll go to hell, I guess, if you don't give the money. And then, like, taxes, which is, like, gun to your head, which I I probably would be in a different category. Hell if you don't give the money. I mean, it could you know, one is a little more direct than the other. Yeah. Like I do like the idea of social signaling for donations. I will say that's one of the things I'm most excited about with Nasr, and that's not even OpenSats related. Like, ideally, like, the most beautiful situation would be
[01:00:08] Lisa Neigut:
people publish open source code and then people donate Sats to them directly and get social credit. Gonna happen though. But that's but that's It might happen. I don't think it's going to happen at the scale that we needed to happen to keep these projects running and, like, maintain it. Like, I know so many devs that don't wanna post on social media. Like, they just don't want and, like, posting and having an audience and getting the distribution again, it goes back to distribution. And in this case, it's distribution of the work that you're doing and telling like, it's almost like personal PR. Like, I don't want devs to have to turn into their own, like, personal relations experts in order to, like, keep working on their projects. Like, that's Well, I mean it work, like Look, it definitely won't work for everybody.
[01:00:50] ODELL:
I I think it's just one it's, like, an additional tool. And I think a a decent example, which is not a perfect example because they've also gotten significant, very large donations, is something like Signal, which is a nonprofit, which is donation funded, which does incorporate a social signal. Like, if you donate, they don't use Bitcoin. Unfortunately, they use credit card. But if you donate, you get, like, the little badge and the badge is different depending on how much you donate. So everyone that messages you knows that you're better than them. And I think they get, like, a decent amount of donations that way.
So I think there's something there. I mean, that would be the ideal like, in my dream, like, something like you wouldn't want a middleman like OpenSats. Like, the dream would just be that you get donations directly without permission.
[01:01:37] Lisa Neigut:
It's interest I mean, signal is such an interesting case of, like, why don't they just charge for their service. Right? Like, why are they even doing the donation thing at all? Like, I mean, I guess that makes them lose their nonprofit status or something. But Well, I think it's probably network effect. Right? It's like people just,
[01:01:53] ODELL:
like, there's some of us that would pay for it, but we need to be able to message people. And it's hard to get the people that we wanna message to actually buy.
[01:02:02] Lisa Neigut:
Right. Do like a thing. Telegram got me with their, like, upgrades on, what do you call it? Telegram got me with their, like, you can't do fun emoji reactions unless you pay us, like, $30 a year. And, like, honestly, it took me, like, two tries of trying to get the right emoji before I was like, alright. Fine. This is worth $30 a year to me. Interesting. I don't know. But that's like but that but that problem of, like, how do you get people to pay you money is such a different problem from I'm gonna, like, find all the bugs in this particular open source thing, or I'm gonna make sure that this is, like, maintained and shipping on the schedule, etcetera.
I don't know. This is like, it's just
[01:02:40] ODELL:
different Yeah. Skill set. So we started this tangent with Datum versus Stratham v two. Like, Datum has this other model, which will is yet to be seen if it's gonna be successful in Ocean's particular case, but has been successful in open source historically, which is you release as as open source software, and then you're monetizing services that are completely different than the open source software, like Antpool or Foundry or whatever could go use Datum. Like, Ocean doesn't isn't actually making money directly on Datum. They're making money on the mining pool service.
[01:03:17] Lisa Neigut:
Right. DATM becomes a differentiator that speaks to their core values of decentralization and block building, though. Right? So they're, like, they've got, like, a values and, like, a particular perspective on what makes for a, like, ethical moral maybe moral is a better word for the the ocean perspective, mining. And so a lot of the choices of what they're shipping is downstream of their morals around how Bitcoin mining and policy should be done. Again, so excited they're coming to Bitcoin plus plus. Everyone should come and talk to them about what they're doing. No. Their team's great. I love those guys. They've got such a sick, like I don't know. It's just I I love people with particular, like, like, well thought through, I would call it, like, well justified positions that are maybe a little contrarian or outside the norm and things that they're, like, building for and shipping, and it's working for them.
So I'm really hoping we get some amazing conversations happening. Yeah.
[01:04:26] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, I just to me, that's one of the things that, like, I'm just really fascinated by is is is sustainable open source businesses. I mean, another another good example that I like is is StartNine, which is like, like, their full node package is completely open source. You can just install on your own hardware, never pay them a dime. But then they make money on, like, the prebuilt hardware because people want convenience. They they make money on premium services, like customer service and stuff. Right? Like, like, I think I think if someone is self hosting their family photos and, like, as as a new father myself, like, I would hate to lose my baby photos. Now maybe I'm technically competent enough to back up photos and make sure I'm good, But if I'm going to self host it and I'm not technically competent, what would you pay for that? Are you I think you'd probably pay a hundred dollars a year
[01:05:23] Lisa Neigut:
in subscription revenue for, like, white glove customer service and premium services and whatnot. But then it but then it becomes the services and not the software. Right? And so then you need a whole But they're still maintaining an open source software stack without any grant funding. Right? But then it's not right. But then it's not just one dev doing contributions in the corner by themselves. It's a team. And like, then you run into skills of, like, how do you run and manage a team and keep everyone working in the same direction and hiring. And like, it's all of a sudden it's not just like the it's not just the code. It's not just the dev. It's not just the work. It's all the other stuff that has to be done in order to do the work, where the work is building, maintaining, and keeping, like, open source software, like, you know, developed. Yeah. I know. Everyone has their favorite sailor quote, but my favorite sailor quote,
[01:06:12] ODELL:
was the interview I did with him in Nashville where he said, business is hard. It is It is hard. It it is definitely very difficult. It's not an easy thing. Looks easier from the from the sidelines. Okay. I have, one more opinion I wanna ask you. What's your opinion on, the Cashew project? How do you think about Cashew?
[01:06:39] Lisa Neigut:
Cashew is one of those things that I see people posting. I see Cali posting about occasionally. It always seems like there's cool stuff happening, but I don't I don't personally, like, use it very much. I still, like when I transact, I'm transacting on chain or with lightning. I don't have, like, a Cashew wallet that I actively use and send bounces to. Maybe that's because I haven't installed Macadamia yet. I don't know.
[01:07:04] ODELL:
It's just Macadamia.
[01:07:06] Lisa Neigut:
Macadamia.
[01:07:07] ODELL:
Or Macadamia, I guess. Macademia is like academia. Yeah. Macadamia.
[01:07:13] Lisa Neigut:
Macadamia. So I think that's a little bit on me. Like, I did do that whole conference on ECash stuff. I get really excited about ECash in terms of, you know, people talk about one of the things that I spent it's Cody Lowe got really Cody Lowe's this brilliant engineer. He's one of the first base 58 students I ever had who went on to do really amazing things at FETI and now works at Replit full time. And Yeah. He's a super star. Went Cody went through this thing where he was trying to make l four zero two work for AI agents. L four zero two, for those who aren't familiar with it, is the ability to pay a lightning invoice using HTTP codes to do payment requests. Right? And so, like, he had me we, like, have this, like, kind of fun thing where I, like, live code an l four zero two receptor for Core Lightning.
Just like I don't know. Just like live coding L 4 0 2. And, like, in the process of doing it, you realize how much overhead it is to pay Lightning invoices. And the way that real like, Bitcoin, Core Lightning, I should say, has this metering system with this thing called Runes, not related to the ordinal stuff, like its own auth authentication thing. And, basically, what you want is you want kinda want a way to, like, issue a token that has a budget on it. It's really hard to do with, like, the existing infrastructure in Corelightning. So it's an okay. Like, if I wanna have agents that are doing work that are paying for services out there. Right? Payment for services. Maybe this is how all the maybe this is how all the software engineer open source engineers are gonna get rich is running services. I think let me say that services word again. Like, it's back to running service anyways. But maybe they're, like, you know, running an API that you're getting paid for or whatever.
But all of your agents need a budget of cash, basically. They need cash budgets to be able to pay stuff. And l four zero two is great, but adding a budget to an l four zero two and all the, like, interchange that you get around invoices starts to become quite cumbersome. And, like, I saw it, like, working with Cody on this project, like, directly. It was like, oh, like, this doesn't really like, this is like, I don't wanna say it doesn't work, but it's like there's some, like, real problems with this. So you cash solve this because it is a budget.
It is a number. It's a barrier asset. It's way easier in my mind to issue and keep and have agents using as, like, little things they can send. I think, I need to go through, like, how these workflow works, but it's, like, just the number of round trips I think you have to do with Ecash is just a lot less than you have to do with Lightning. And so it sort of makes it reduces the friction from what I could see around that particular use case. I was like, okay. How are we gonna take a, agents, give them budgets denominated in the Internet currency, which, of course, is Bitcoin, and set them loose upon the world to trade and source services, etcetera.
Ecash seems like a really great way to do that. Other really great amazing thing about eCash is how easy it is to have a mint denominated in something other than Bitcoin. So you can issue you get it's, like, so easy to spin up a mint and issue eCash tokens that are denominated in something else. Kinda run into all the same oh, but you have all the same problems anywhere you're issuing assets that aren't Right. Bitcoin where, like, oh, what's the supply, etcetera, etcetera, what's set back by Handwave?
[01:10:33] ODELL:
I mean, it's the trade off is the mint issued. Is trust in the Mint is the trade off. But for when once you once you take that trade off, you're able to do an amazing amount of things in a super lightweight offline programmable way. It's fucking huge.
[01:10:50] Lisa Neigut:
Trade off. That huge trade off. Big trade off there. Yeah. Issue. I'm like I'm super cashew peeled.
[01:10:56] ODELL:
Make it ready to go. I've I've been feeding my son cashews recently just because I'm so excited about it.
[01:11:02] Lisa Neigut:
Cashew not fatty, though. Like, you think cashew, like
[01:11:07] ODELL:
Yeah. Fetti I mean, I'm I'm well, so to be clear, there's Fetti, the company, which, by the way, goes back to our previous conversation about, building a business that is also trying to maintain an open source project. And then there's Fediment, the open source project, and I think it's important to delineate. So then you have Fediment, the open source project, and you have Cashew, the open source project. And the big difference, high level, is that with Fediment, you basically have a multi sig mint, like a multisig custodian versus a single sig. And I think the Fediment project rides or dies on how difficult it is to launch one of those Fediments and launch that securely.
And it did come up on my radar recently that they have, like, this new method that uses Noster and Tor, and you can run it at home, and and it doesn't rely on DNS. Like, the previous setup relied on DNS. It was like people don't realize because, like, you think about it in your head, you're like, oh, well, it's multisig Cashew. No. It's like that that federated portion makes everything way, way more difficult, and you need to have consensus between the different federation members. So as a result, Casio just, like, is able to just ship really quick. It's way easier to run. It has way less moving pieces. But, yeah, I mean, I think, ideally, the dream would be to reduce that trust and have, some kind of federation there or, you know, Cassie's trying to get there from, like, different directions, but, like, the Titanic approach where, like, you have it in multiple mints and only one mint drugs you or something. But, yeah, either way, like, I don't really care.
Calio is trolls me that I say ecash. Recently, I've been more excite because I just hedge my bets between FEDIMENT and cashew. Recently, I've been more excited about cashew than FEDIMENT. But,
[01:13:02] Lisa Neigut:
all all more options excited about it. Are you excited about it because of the number of devs that are, like, building in it? Like, excited about it because of the protocol? You think it's, like, a better bet? Like, what's the where did your game come from, I guess, I should say?
[01:13:18] ODELL:
In my short lifetime, I've seen three open source projects that have massive viral organic developer interest, and it's been Bitcoin, Nasr, and Cashew. And, like, that's, like, that's a measure. It's like a, I guess maybe it's not fully I think it's pretty measurable KPI. Right? Is that, for all the faults of Noster, one thing you can't you have to give Noster credit for is that it has this very bottom up organics, grassroots developer interest and same with Cashew. And it's hard to ignore that. And as a result, what you get is you get many different tools, you get many different ideas, you get this melting pot of of talent kind of working on this thing that that, like, shit coins, crypto companies, like, would they would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and they can't manufacture it. Right? Like, with if I'm gonna use Nasr as the example again, like, something like Farcaster, which is like the Ethereum, Nostr competitor that has, like, tokens and pre minds and shit. Like, they can't get nearly the developer interest of Nostr even though they say their their daily active users is way higher, that they have all this money, all this other stuff. You just can't manufacture it.
[01:14:29] Lisa Neigut:
I'm laughing because one of my friends is probably the biggest open source Farcaster dev right now. Like, when my old BFF is, like, basically
[01:14:37] ODELL:
the Genmaster.
[01:14:39] Lisa Neigut:
He he's, you know, he's invested in in different
[01:14:43] ODELL:
But yeah. Fair enough.
[01:14:45] Lisa Neigut:
But yeah. I know. But you're right. Like, it it is, yeah, man. How do you get devs interested in projects? So this is kinda like the whole Bitcoin plus plus thing is, like, how do we get more devs to Bitcoin plus plus? Like, how do we get more people to come in person and participate in these projects? And things like eCash taking off is exciting because it means there are more devs in the ecosystem even if they're working on different kinds of protocols.
[01:15:13] ODELL:
Yeah. So one of my one of my most, people have, you know, different things they're proud of. One of the things I'm most proud of is, when I first met you mentioned Cody Lowe already. When I first met Cody Lowe, he said, that Citadel Dispatch inspired him to start working on Bitcoin and and and focus on Bitcoin, which is insane because the dude is just incredibly talented and, you know, I have massive imposter syndrome to inspire someone like that. But to that point, if there is a if there's a developer that not working in Bitcoin listening to this show or someone who's thinking about getting into development, what advice do you have to them? Maybe they're thinking about getting an open source grant. Maybe they're thinking about going to Bitcoin plus plus. What what's your what's your piece of advice? Talk to them right now.
[01:16:06] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. This is a great question. I don't know. Find something I think it's like the way I got into Bitcoin is I got nerd sniped. Right? I read Mastering Bitcoin. I found a bug. I started investigating, and that became the way that I fell down the rabbit hole. Right? Like, technically. Because it wasn't gonna be for the macro stuff. It was always gonna be because of the tech. So I think, like like, learning more about what's going on, like, educate yourself, read Mastering Bitcoin, subscribe to Bitcoin op tech. So, I don't know. Run do a base 58 class. We've got some online classes on Udemy, which I continue to hear are just, like, life changing for the people that do them.
Most of the people that I know that have done base 58 classes go on to do incredible things later. It's a little bit of a self show on
[01:16:51] ODELL:
this stuff that I'm doing. So
[01:16:54] Lisa Neigut:
that's So how do they sign up for base fifty eight classes? Your base 58 classes? Yeah. We're working on a new launching a new website, but it's base58.school. I'm not the only classes we have of yeah. The only classes that we have available right now are online Udemy ones, and they're kinda hard to find on the website, which hopefully will have that fixed soon.
[01:17:14] ODELL:
But and they're paid. Right? They're paid classes. Yeah. Value for value, man. Like Can you I think That's not value for value, but I respect the value for value. Like, you get money value is you you pay if you find value. Like, people get to listen to dispatch for free, and then if they find value, they they can send payment afterwards.
[01:17:34] Lisa Neigut:
Well, it's a very strict definition. I don't think that's, like what what you're talking about is donations after the fact. Right? Yeah. That's value for value. Getting payment for no. I thought value for value was, like, paying as you stream something. Like, you get something But it's fine. I pers I mean, you should charge for it. Can you pay in Bitcoin? Not currently. This is why we're working on the website update. It's Fair enough. It's launched on Udemy. No. I mean, I launched it on Udemy just to get it out, but I mean, do you think is only fans value for value?
[01:18:06] ODELL:
I mean, people pay for it, I'm assuming, because they get value out of it. But it's behind a paywall. Right? So that's I mean, that would be Gigi would be going crazy right now,
[01:18:16] Lisa Neigut:
calling that value for value. Guys have, like you you guys have, like, redefined the value for value thing to, like, define something else. Like, that's not my problem. Like It's definitely someone paying value for value. I agree. You're getting value for value. I agree. You're getting value for value. Good. And you pay money which causes value. So, like, how is that not? Isn't that, like, all commerce, though? Like, you pay money to get value back? Yeah. It's just capitalism. Yeah. We just rebranded capitalism. When we talk about sustainability and then people are like, where are you getting information about Bitcoin? And it's like, well, like, you want good stuff, you have to, like seems reasonable to ask for people to pay for stuff. I think it's completely reasonable. I'm that wasn't my
[01:18:58] ODELL:
that wasn't my reservation. It was just the definite I was just I was just arguing semantics. I think you should charge, and I think you should charge for Bitcoin plus plus too. And I think other people should charge, for good content, and and particularly education. Because education, like, there's a real you know, people better themselves, and they can actually then go and and and live better lives as a result. Okay. So base58.school. I'd I distracted this whole conversation. Base58.school. Bitcoin plus plus is coming up. How do they how do they sign up for Bitcoin plus plus?
[01:19:36] Lisa Neigut:
Btc++.dev. Click on the Austin conference. There's we're running five other conferences this year, so you can see them all on the website.
[01:19:45] ODELL:
Where else? Hit us. Give us a full show.
[01:19:48] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. So we're doing Austin in May. It's all about memples and mining stuff, which we talked about. We're gonna be in Riga right ahead of Bitcoin, Baltic Honey Badger talking about privacy and how privacy keeps us free. I'm really excited. I think they're gonna, like some tour people are gonna be there and trying to get Jeff from White Noise to come talk. Should be have, like I think Evolve might be coming. He does some of the best stuff on privacy, CoinJoin stuff. So it should be a really good conference on what does privacy in Bitcoin mean today. We'll be in assembled. It's the only one I don't have dates yet for, talking about z k p's and, like, some of the more, like, just gonna say it, like, shitcoinery l two stuff, but that'll be in September.
Kind of trying to shine a light on what people are trying to do using ZKPs and OPCAT.
[01:20:36] ODELL:
What's that? Coin.
[01:20:37] Lisa Neigut:
Istanbul. So I don't have dates or venue yet. In Berlin, Second To Fourth, we're gonna be talking about lightning and programmable payments. So, hopefully, first Lightning plus plus, and then in Taipei we'll be in Taipei, have our first East Asia conference in December, talking about sovereignty. So come hang out to be good. Also, like, if you wanna talk and you've got a project that fits any of these things, you can go to btcpp.dev/talk, and, have a form to fill out. We also have a volunteer form on the website. If you wanna volunteer, get a ticket, help us out with the event, grab some tickets. You can use the code plug to get 10% off any of the conferences that were happening this year. Yeah. Come hang out. Come learn about some Bitcoin stuff. Come find a conference for the events in Bitcoin?
Yes. You can pay for events in Bitcoin, and you get a discount. So yeah. That's because I like, I yeah. But I wrote the checkout. I was like, I wrote the checkout for Bitcoin plus plus. I didn't write the checkout for Udemy yet. So Yeah. That's fair.
[01:21:39] ODELL:
I, yeah, those are like I don't know. Those are like the types of tooling that we need is, like, Udemy for with Nasr and Bitcoin or whatever. I don't know. But I was just throwing shit out there. Before you before you leave, you mentioned the Riga event. I love that city. I love the conference, the the main conference that you're it's a good idea doing the overlap with existing stuff. I mean, people are already in town. But you mentioned that that one is focused on privacy, and Bitcoin. Do you have any thoughts on the current state of using Bitcoin privately or how that ecosystem looks right now?
[01:22:21] Lisa Neigut:
It's not something I spent time on in a while. I'm, like, obviously, a Lightning Maxi. So, you know, it's like if I wanna transact privacy privately, I use Lightning. It's still, in my opinion, best in class in terms of transacting, privately. Like, it was kind I mean, Lightning set out to fix a lot of the on chain privacy problems, and I think it has largely succeeded. People will tell you otherwise, but don't believe them. No. What else? Yeah. So, like, I you know, there's a lot of stuff with silent payments, which Josie's been working on. I think, OpenStats has been working with him to try that out for some of the stuff that we're doing. And, I don't know. I'm I get less excited about and, like, there's pay join, which is also, like both of these are, like, on chain things.
I think they're important projects, and they're cool. And, like, the interactive transaction construction stuff would, like, PayJoin is doing is all stuff that, like, I help pioneer on Lightning. So I don't know. Like, it's it's cool stuff. I just like, on chain is not as exciting to me, I think, as, like, Lightning still is. But, yeah, hopefully, we'll have a really good conference where we get to hear about all these projects and updates and what people are working on and, you know, hear from researchers like Yuval who are deeply embedded in the space about what's happening there. So, I don't know, it's kind of there.
[01:23:43] ODELL:
Fair enough. Well, I'm gonna have Dan Gould. I think he's the maintainer of pay join dev kit on dispatch next Friday. Yeah. Seventeen hundred UTC freaks. You should consider joining us live. Nifty gave me the best tangent ever. Alright. I don't know whatever it's called. Nifty, thank you for joining us. Do you have any final thoughts for the freaks?
[01:24:06] Lisa Neigut:
On the big one plus plus, use code, pleb. 10% off. See you there. Love it. Btc++.dev.
[01:24:15] ODELL:
Thank you, Nifty. Thank you, Freaks. Yeah. Stamblestack Sats. Peace.
Safety or that convincing someone that Bitcoin is safe is the problem. I think it's what do I use this for? Like, it it's it goes back to, like, is it is it just digital gold? And I put this thing and I forget. Okay. Done. But, like, that's it's just not, it's not enough. Not enough for me. So showing use cases. And, like, you you get out of The US, you get out of this bubble, you get out of Europe, you get down to Central America, South America, Africa. I've spent a lot of time in those those continents, and, people are using Bitcoin to buy coffee, and they're using it to buy dinner, and they're using it to pay vendors. And those vendors are going to restaurants that accept that Bitcoin, and there's tiny little circular economies happening, and that gives me a lot of hope. And they're not talking about the price. They're not they're actually using it on a regular basis.
What's happening on Nostra with Zaps is the largest at scale implementation of Internet magic money that we've been talking about for decades, that's actually paying for content, and it's working at scale. It's small scale, but it's still at scale. So these are things that, like, we need to study more and learn from, and, like, those are the reasons why people get in, and those are the reasons people will will stay ultimately. So it's again, it's you you have to feel it, and, like, we haven't given enough opportunity to actually feel the magic.
[00:02:15] ODELL:
Happy Bitcoin Wednesday, freaks. It's your host, Odell, here for another Ciel Dispatch, the interactive live show focused on actual Bitcoin and FreedomTech discussion. I am clicking over here. That intro was, the one and only Jack Dorsey talking about getting people to feel the magic of Bitcoin on the Presidio Bitcoin podcast. Felt like it was a good overlap since Dorsey was recently on the show, and then Steve Lee was on the show. And Steve is heavily involved in Presidio Bitcoin. We talked about it two episodes ago. If you're listening on the podcast feeds, you may have noticed I dropped an episode, with governor Lee of Tennessee.
It's a short and sweet one that was filmed live at Bitcoin Park. You should go check it out. It seems ZapStream is down again, which unfortunately seems to be a trend, with Nasr and not being reliable. But we are working on it slow and steady. Just gotta grind it out while everyone else thinks we are crazy. Anyway, with all that said, I have good friend, return guest on the show, fellow board member at OpenSats, founder of Bitcoin plus plus, Nifty, Lisa, whatever you'd like to call her. How's it going, Lisa?
[00:03:40] Lisa Neigut:
Hey, Nat. It's great. Thanks for having me back on.
[00:03:43] ODELL:
Yeah. Thanks for joining. As the freaks can tell, I I'm still obsessed with the live chat, so the live chat is coming in through YouTube, right now. So if you have any questions, comments, just drop them in the live chat for us. Lisa, where do you wanna get started? I know you have this, I guess the best place to get started if people haven't listened to our last episode that we did together, which I think was, like, about a year ago, is what is Bitcoin plus plus? Why is it a focus of yours? Why should people care?
[00:04:14] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. That's a great question. Do we wanna talk about the Dorsey clip first or, like I mean, we can get into the Bitcoin plus plus stuff. But Let's comment comment about the clip. What's what's your opinion? Yeah. I I think it's interesting that, like, you know so I mean, maybe this also kinda interest Bitcoin plus plus. Maybe I should do both. But, you know, I get to travel a lot for, like, conference stuff because I do comps, etcetera. And, one thing that's always interesting is, like, talking to people about how they got into Bitcoin, especially devs, because because I spend most of my time with Bitcoin developers. And the it's always interesting how people come into and stay in Bitcoin because they found it for some utility reason.
I'm thinking of a developer, like, really cracked devs I met in Chile. They were at Bitcoin plus plus in Brazil this February. Their team won. I don't think they got top prize, but they won one of the prizes for contributing to white noise, which is a really cool Noster project that Jeff has come is working on. And his family got into Bitcoin a while ago because it was how they could get Bitcoin from abroad into Chile. It was how they could get money into Chile easily, right, without having to get through banks, without having to lose money through, like, Western Union, etcetera. So it's really interesting. Like, you know, I think Jack's right in terms of people have to experience it. They have to really feel it and understand the value of it for themselves.
And then unless we get lots of people doing that and touching it and using it, and the best way to do that is as a medium of exchange. Right? Yeah. I think he's right about, you know, it might it might be Why is the best
[00:05:52] ODELL:
way as a medium of exchange?
[00:05:55] Lisa Neigut:
Because it it's that's the most tangible, I think, understanding of the value proposition because you can send it from one place to another without having to have an intermediary. Like, if you do it correctly, it's like, oh, I just sent value anywhere I wanted in the fucking world. Like, anywhere I wanted. Immediate like, immediately, basically. Especially today, like, let's go empty mempool. But, it's yeah. So it's it's it is revolutionary in terms of sending value immediately. But then like, okay, so I just started doing some physical therapy here in Austin for like, you know, programmer had neck and shoulder problems. And the lady is amazing. She's incredible. And she's, like, at the end of the session, she's like, oh, you can pay me on Venmo. And I'm like, you know, I'm always like, oh, but I can also pay you in Bitcoin if you want.
I get this dead look, and she's like, I don't even know what that is. And it's like, well, it's it's it's money. I can send it to you digitally. And she's just like, I'm like, no. Okay. Okay. Like, I can send it with Venmo. So yeah. I don't know.
[00:07:02] ODELL:
I mean, look. I agree with you. I was just I was curious of your opinion. I mean, I think it I mean, it's a completely different user journey, someone buying the BlackRock ETF versus receiving Bitcoin for the first time for, for either services, you know, like a therapy session or something, or, even just getting zaps from a shitpost. Right? Like, I think, like, the user journey of someone who posts a meme on Noster and receives their first Bitcoin, is completely different than someone that logs into Charles Schwab and buys the ETF. I just I wanna drill into that particular situation because it is amazing to me how much of our economy runs on Venmo right now. It's kind of the defacto standard.
What I do in that situation, and I know there's, like, a bunch of ride or dies that are gonna be critical of me for this next commentary. But what I do is I onboard them to Strike, because they're already on Venmo. Strike is like Bitcoin's Venmo. They're already KYC ed on Venmo. It's not like they're really making a a big trade off there, and they're able to easily sell it to their bank account at will, which kinda makes until we we kinda have, like, a chicken and egg problem. Like, until they can actually spend it on things that they want, it's not really real to them. It becomes real to them when they take the hundred dollars you paid them and they, you know, cash it in and pay rent with it or something. Then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, shit. Like, this is actually real money.
My maid, we have, like, a a housekeeper that comes once a week to to clean up the house extra, because we get backlogged especially with the kid. And she like, the way she knows the price of Bitcoin is, like, the price of her holdings in strike. Like, she doesn't think the price of Bitcoin's 80 6 thousand dollars or whatever. She thinks it's, like, $1,200 because it's what whatever the amount of Bitcoin she still has at strike is how she interacts with it. It's just interesting that that user experience about how they enter it for the first time.
[00:09:16] Lisa Neigut:
I mean, yeah. I like, honestly, I still don't think we've, like, nailed the and maybe I need to do another, like, round of, like, trying out different wallets on mobile because the mobile wallet is really the way like, I'm I'm a mobile first person. I rarely use my desktop for things. Right? Like, finding a a wallet that doesn't require KYC where I can just, like, say download this app. Let me send you some stats and have it work. I I miss Phoenix. Shout out to Phoenix. Phoenix was the shit I was about to say. I still have Phoenix on my phone. I, like, had to change my settings to Canada, though, to download it and then change it back to The US. So, like, I think and I can't ask. Like, you can't get people to do that to get it. So
[00:09:58] ODELL:
If they were on Android, they can do you can have them siloed an APK, but that's probably also too much friction. I like, I mean, Zeus is decent. Zeus is Zeus has the embedded node feature, that gives you, like, a Phoenix like similar experience. It's a little bit more trust minimized, which adds additional friction in terms of sync time and, like, has this it does path finding itself, so it's a little bit slower than Phoenix. But it it gets the job done to a degree. I've been obsessed with the Cashew ecosystem. There's Cashew.me by Cali, which is just a PWA.
[00:10:39] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. This is a thing, though. I don't I'm weird. I don't wanna send people to a website. I'm like, yeah. The
[00:10:44] ODELL:
my favorite iOS app right now is Macadamia. Okay. On the Nut theme. It's very clean. The only problem there is, like so then you onboard them to Mint. And what if they if they forget about it? Like, they get a seed backup, but if the Mint disappears, then they just lose all their Bitcoin. The tried and true moon moon wall with two use still gets the job done. Mempools are clear. I know. I know. I just, like
[00:11:10] Lisa Neigut:
moon is, like, to some extent, signing them up for pain currently. Maybe they're changing their architecture, but, like, well, at some future point, they're gonna hit pain and and, like, how can we see it? Will we eventually have a sustained IP market? I've I'm gonna say yes. I can't imagine.
[00:11:27] ODELL:
Opinion on the what's your opinion on the current empty mempools? People are panicking. They're freaking out. Bitcoin's dead.
[00:11:34] Lisa Neigut:
I'm, like, I'm such a, like maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm like, it's fine, guys. Like, chill out. Like, it's not I don't understand what the panic is. Why are we panicking about this? If you're really, like, worried about it, go open some lightning channels. Like, I don't know.
[00:11:49] ODELL:
I'm more concerned about the other side, to be honest. I think, like, this is just like a breath of fresh air that we still have more time to Yeah. Not have a high fee market.
[00:11:59] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. I mean, it's a great time to experiment and build stuff and, like, you know, figure out new ways of using block space. Maybe, like, maybe this is, like, you know, moving to, like, a quantum resistant signature scheme provided like, given the the size estimates of those signatures this problem. Like, guys, this is like a temporary problem. Like, maybe this maybe it's just like this is a temporary situation, and it doesn't I don't know. Like, I it doesn't bother me. And, like I mean, maybe it is a sign of a recession, at least in The United States. We're going through some stuff right now. You know? It's, it's been a lot of, like, weirdness happening in the gold markets, which has been fun to watch. So, like, I don't know. Housing looks like it's about to fall off a cliff.
[00:12:43] ODELL:
Like, you know, like, the Met pool's empty. Maybe this is just, like, recession recession vibes. Like Well, I mean, I think a lot of it is people moving to just the overwhelming majority of the market being on custodial stuff, whether that's ETFs or custodial wallets. But then the other piece has gotta be there's very few people that actually transact Bitcoin, and a lot of us that do or have been using Lightning. Like, I think as much as there's issues,
[00:13:12] Lisa Neigut:
you know, nothing no solution's perfect. But Maybe Bitcoin is successfully scaled and,
[00:13:17] ODELL:
scaled, and, like, no one likes to hear that. But, you know It's at least, like, partially scaled. Right? I mean, I send more Bitcoin payments than I ever have, and most of them aren't on chain.
[00:13:30] Lisa Neigut:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, like, those anecdotes like that are really cool and interesting. And, you know, I think there's a lot of people that move in this space and say Bitcoin is not lacking x y z or Bitcoin can't scale or whatever. And it's like, you look around and you're like, well, like, maybe that is true on a long enough and, like, wide enough adoption thing within the short term, like, just right now. Like, we have done the work over the last, like, eight years, whatever, to make Lightning into, like, a fully functional payment rails alternative. And, like, yeah. You can transact with Bitcoin off chain, like, today in a decentralized it's, like, peer to peer way, without much of a central like, without much of a centralized whatever. I don't know. Like, maybe we did it. Is it, like, am I too optimistic? Am I too We definitely didn't do it. No.
[00:14:22] ODELL:
It's gonna be, like, in a year or something. At some undetermined amount of time, people are gonna be panicking. Their fees are too high. It will it will probably happen, and we probably won't get our shit fully in order until they do because you kinda need the you kinda need the pressure. Yeah. I mean, there's another until
[00:14:42] Lisa Neigut:
it goes up too. Right? Like
[00:14:45] ODELL:
Yeah. That's true. I do worry that I mean, I I'd actually don't worry is the wrong word. But I do think that this cycle, we haven't really seen, like, this bull run. We haven't really seen retail enter, like, real Bitcoin in a real way. Like, it's there's there's Suits buying ETFs. There's degen's buying, like, micro strategy.
[00:15:10] Lisa Neigut:
Institutional adoption is happening right now. And this is the thing that I feel like people were talking about in 2018, '20 '19. Like, they were gonna make it happen. I remember, like, back to us getting set up. Like, there was all this talk of, like, institutional adoption is coming. We gotta get ready for it, and they were all, like, over half a decade too early. I feel like we finally hit the point where institutional adoption is happening at a scale that's never happened before, and no one's happy about it. Like, no one's rejoicing. Like, everyone like, I feel like no one is, like, reporting on, like you know, there's no, like, oh, institutional adoption is, like I mean, there's, like, a little bit, but it's not you know what I mean? Like, I feel like there's no, like, recognition that we've hit it. Like, this was a goal, and people, like, were trying to do it ages ago and talking about it, and we're finally more at that than we've ever been.
And it's, like, pretty quiet. Like, I feel like we don't celebrate our successes enough as a Bitcoin industry. You know, we've, like, we've managed to scale, like, the main main chain into, like, the most decentralized payment network known to mankind, which is Lightning. Institutional adoption is finally arriving. These like, through you know, the administration change has been a big part of that. I think Saylor has also been a huge driver behind showing people how that can be done. There's more, like, startups and, like, businesses launching IPO ing that, like, brag about having a Bitcoin balance sheet. Like, Meta Planet just launched however long ago. That's the, like, the Japanese basically micro strategy.
We're talking about getting a strategic Bitcoin reserve, like and yet no one seemed happy. Like, no one feel like, it like, all these, like, great things that we've talked about saying and wanting that we, like, excited about happening, and I just feel like I don't know. And looking at this comment about people getting bid access. Access. Like, more people are getting into home mining today than have been really cool. Like, in ever. And, like, I just like, I feel like people just, like, still aren't satisfied. And I'm like, is that just, like, price? Are we in the price stoldrums? Are people just sad we're not over a hundred k still? Like like, where is the celebratory energy? Or is this, like, oh, America's in a recession, and so there's just this, like, strange, like like, discomfort with things lately. We can't be happy because we're stressed, but, like I don't know. I think there's a lot of cool stuff happening in Bitcoin.
[00:17:24] ODELL:
Let's I let's fucking go. I agree. Okay. So, I mean, let's let's get back to the original question, which is what is Bitcoin plus plus and why do you focus so much time and energy on it when we're already winning so hard?
[00:17:38] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. Well, Bitcoin plus plus is like you know, our tagline is like frontier Bitcoin. It is the, like, largest Bitcoin technical conference series in Bitcoin. We do technical conferences for Bitcoiners. So I'm a dev. I love I grew grew up in dev going to technical conferences and wanted to make a really great one to bring all my friends in Bitcoin who are devs together to share what they're working on, you know, get cross pollination of ideas, have really good discussions about what are we building, why are we building it, what still is left to be built, what we have we accomplished as a dev community, kind of a cool way to showcase, like, what teams and people are working on stuff.
It started in Austin in 2022. We're about to have our fourth event here in Austin. It's gonna be I think is it is this gonna be the ninth ever Bitcoin plus plus almost in double digits of conferences in less than three and a half years? We're international. We just had our first Brazil event in February, which is great. We do different themes at every event. So maybe I'm, like, getting a little off topic. But
[00:18:45] ODELL:
You're good. Yeah.
[00:18:48] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. So Bitcoin plus plus is really, you know, my attempt to get people excited about what's happening in Bitcoin. And, sorry. I get distracted by these comments. What are you talking about? Everyone is I mean, I I talk
[00:19:03] ODELL:
since you brought up the comment, I mean, I kinda agree with East Side Tony that, what she's saying in the comments is that I mean, people are really like, especially on x, like, MicroStrategy is just All in all. A lot of excitement about MicroStrategy.
[00:19:19] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. But that's like okay. So but, I mean, like, look. Bitcoin is a big tent. Right? And I think what we hear about and what people focus on and a lot of the, like, energy in Bitcoin is around the, you know, the stock to flow, like like, or just even ETFs or what are they doing. Price stuff. But also, like, who owns it? It's like the who's who of Bitcoin owners. Right? Like, what is mister Saylor doing today? Like, you know, when is the government gonna buy my bags or someone else's bags, etcetera. And that's, like, fine, but that's a really different ecosystem and a really different audience than all the nerds that I want to stay interested and focused on Bitcoin. Because I'm thinking about Bitcoin from a maintenance and, like, as a software project. Right? And it there's, like, as we add new projects, like, the e cash stuff, as we add new stuff, like, you know, Feddy with I mean, Feddy is in there. They've got all the lightning. Like, there's tons of lightning implementations.
The code footprint of what needs to be maintained to keep and, like, infrastructure of nodes being run. It's a big decentralized system. Right? So we need, like, lots of people running nodes. We need more developers coming in, finding Bitcoin really interesting, and wanting to spend time working on projects here. So the like and, again, like, this is why Bitcoin plus plus exist is, like, back in 2022, it was all doom and gloom about, like, oh, all these top devs are being scared out because of the Craig Wright thing. Nothing cool is happening in Bitcoin. All the cool hot devs go to ETH, do smart contracts. It's like, okay. No. Let's make a place where we can show one, there's really cool smart devs doing interesting hard technical problems here. And so and I I think I still think, like, there's a lot of work that we could do to showcase more of the cool technical stuff happening in Bitcoin.
These conferences are one, but it's like, okay. There's probably more I could do about even talking about what gets shown at the events. So, like, each of our conferences is a theme, and one of the reasons that we do that is to try and shine a light on the cool interesting aspects of Bitcoin devs. Because we want new smart devs coming into the space, finding like minded people. That's like a big one. And getting nerd sniped, if I'm gonna be honest, to continue working and find a project that scratches whatever itch they've got for the event. So, yeah, that's like yeah. So that's Bitcoin plus plus. It's, like, really focused on the dev market. And the dev market wider than just, like, who's in Bitcoin today, which I mean, of course, like, all the finding all the amazing people that are devs, nerds that are working on Bitcoin, technically, keeping them happy, keeping them feeling connected to the community by bringing them together.
And then, also, how do we, like, get more cool, fun, very brilliant devs to come and work on Bitcoin as an open source project if you're not bringing them in and having them meet the community that way. So, yeah, that's the project, really. It's the the, like, broad goal.
[00:22:17] ODELL:
Well, I mean, as as Bitcoin grows, it makes sense to me that, you know, the bull case for Bitcoin is that every person on earth is a Bitcoiner. So as Bitcoin grows, it makes sense that the community will have, like, a bunch of sub communities. There's no just one overarching Bitcoin community. And we used to be more aligned and more just we were smaller. So we're we're smaller, so we agreed on a lot of things. Now you have all these different subsets. You have people that are just, like, obsessed with MSTR. You have suits that are, like, doing ETF stuff, and then you have people that are focused on self custody, people that are focused on mining, open source mining, then you have the developer community.
One thing I've noticed is because of that disconnect and particularly of how things get highlighted on social, like, where the tension is, I've noticed that there is some in almost increased burnout among developers that are doing a lot of the hard work behind the scenes, and then maybe they feel like they're not getting the recognition or they feel like, they they they feel like the priorities are are in the wrong place. How do you how do you think about developer burnout, and how do you think about kind of this idea of almost, I like to call it, like, replacement rate? Not that we want to necessarily replace developers, but, like, as they move on to other things, having talented people come in and kind of fill their roles. How do you think about those, like, twin challenges?
[00:23:52] Lisa Neigut:
I think that's definitely a difficult thing. One thing about developers, and I kinda learned this from working with Rusty Russell who had a long lust illustrious career in Linux open source before moving over to Bitcoin in the early teens. And one of the things that he kinda just noticed, especially the way he handles new people coming in to work on Core Lightning, for example, which is a very huge I would think probably one of the, honestly, best architected and maintained projects in Bitcoin outside of, like, Bitcoin Core. And one of the things about the way that he handles people coming in is, you know, when new developers show up to work on projects, they need support from existing projects in terms of helping them figure out what they're interested in working on. And where, like, every dev has something different that's gonna get them interested and excited.
And one of the best things that you can do with the project maintainer or even, like, in open source is encouraging them to keep digging at whatever interests them the most. And is that gonna be what someone else is currently maintaining? Maybe. Is that gonna be, like, something that we haven't thought of before? Maybe. And integrating, you know, kind of all those especially if it's, like, open source project where people are, giving their time and energy to, you know, contribute to something like an open source in their free time or whatever. Letting people, like, you know, get recognition for what they're working on, and, like, bringing and showcasing, like, the kinds of contributions that each person brings to the to the projects, is really kind of where things like Bitcoin plus plus, I think, start playing a role because you get to say, hey. Come talk about what you're interested in. You know, you're new to the space, but you're contributing to x y z. Come to Bitcoin plus plus. Talk about what you're working on. Get recognition for your contributions on a public platform in a way in, like, a in a real, you know, what do you call it, audience of your peers. Like, these are the other smart people, devs that are working in Bitcoin, and gives them, I think, like, a real opportunity to make a name for themselves. Because, like, Bitcoin as a dev, like, you know, if you're a dev working on open source Bitcoin, it's not like working at a startup where you're getting equity in a company that may you know, like, there's less lottery tickets that you're getting headed handed out. And is you know, people talk about Bitcoin as a price, like, hitting a curve and, like, really gonna take off in the next, you know, maybe five, ten, twenty years, whatever. But is that gonna compare to the upside on being able to get start up stock in a, like, new onboarding, like, AI company?
Probably not. Right? So one of the few things that we can give devs is recognition and a name and legacy and letting them know they're working on infrastructure that's gonna be around for a long time. And that's why I like to think that, you know, conferences and what we're doing at Bitcoin plus plus is such an important contribution.
[00:26:54] ODELL:
Do you do you not think that, well, at least for the subset of devs that are able to get open source grants, whether that's from OpenSats or HRF or Brink that are paid in Bitcoin, it's kind of like equity. Right? It's almost better than equity. You actually have liquidity.
[00:27:13] Lisa Neigut:
But, I mean, the amount of money that OpenSats has been giving out in grants has been noncompetitive with Right. Going to work with a start up. So, like, it start up, you're getting cash as well as equity usually. Right? So it's it's like I mean, I guess it depends. If it's a hot end, I start up. You can go work somewhere else and get paid better money and buy Bitcoin with it and probably be better off than working on open source. It has to be something you wanna do in a community you wanna contribute to. And how are you supposed to, like, find the community you wanna contribute to if you don't know where to, like, find them?
[00:27:47] ODELL:
Yeah. So do you think like, is that is that one of the core problems you're trying to I I don't I don't I don't wanna say solve, but mitigate is, like, this idea not this idea burn. I mean, the burnout is real. Correct?
[00:28:01] Lisa Neigut:
Burnout is real. But I think but I I I find that people who come to conferences tend to be I think it helps with burnout because it's fun and it's it's invigorating, and there's new ideas. And maybe you were feeling like the project like, why was I working on this project? No one cares. It's like, no. Here's all the cool people are excited about what you're working on, and maybe some people wanna help you. Like, you know, Bitcoin plus plus has, like, so many cool, I wanna say user stories or stories of devs that have come through and, like, completely changed their career path or trajectory because they came to an event and met people and started working on a project. Or a good example is, you know, Jeff Gardner has been working on this really awesome new protocol project for Nostr for building in a really awesome, basically, like, chat messaging app. And he went from being basically a sole contributor on this project to Bitcoin plus plus in Florianopolis in February.
I think he has a team of, like, five or six people now contributing regularly, and they're all, like That's awesome. From all over the world. Right? So
[00:29:06] ODELL:
I don't know. This project is like it's like signal, but on Noster.
[00:29:11] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. Yeah. Very similar. Exactly. I mean, I can't wait for him to launch it. I wanna move to something that's not Telegram or signal. Yeah. It'd be absolutely massive. It'd be huge. And it's cool to, like, be able to watch, like, real network effects happen in person through these events. And we do them all over the world because Bitcoin is global and distributed, and it's really great to be able to get doves, you know, that that that cross pollination across pawns, etcetera, is hard to do. If every Bitcoin dev conference happened in The United States, then we wouldn't really be building the right That we wouldn't really be doing, like, the dev community service as much as we are by having a, like, consistent interface of conferences that, you know, it's really fun because I can talk devs from places that maybe would never go to Brazil into coming to Brazil and meeting the Latin American community and all the amazing talent that places like Vintium and Liberida Satoshi are churning out down there, like, new devs with really Yeah. Amazing technical skills who wanna contribute in a big way, maybe are already contributing in a big way, and getting them plugged in and making contacts to devs from Europe and The United States, and and maybe even, like, Asia. Like, we had someone fly in from Taipei last year to our Buenos Aires conference.
So, yeah, I don't know. So
[00:30:38] ODELL:
so Florianopolis, Brazil, that was the most recent event. Right? It is. It was. Yeah. So, like, break it down for like, how around how many people were there? How many were already Bitcoin developers? How many weren't Bitcoin developers yet? How many were, foreigners? How many were actually local Brazilians? Like, just give me, like,
[00:30:58] Lisa Neigut:
high level. I'm kinda curious. No. These are great questions. We had, just about 200 people there. I am so bad at collecting data, which is probably part of the reason why I feel like, you know, people don't know as much about Bitcoin plus plus because I'm such a, like, don't track, don't don't ask, don't tell. But I would bet that maybe half of that was local Brazilians, and maybe another 20 to 30 were from the wider, Latin American ecosystem. So Argentina, Chile. Do we have any in from Mexico? Maybe. We had a good chunk of people that came from the Bitcoin design industry, which was really cool to see. So they had a bunch of designers.
I would say probably 60% were already into Bitcoin as developers, and the rest were new or had just come out of the Vinci Oom Bitcoin developer launchpad, which they just did for the first time last, basically, like, November, they started it. So it was you know, it's like a really good mix of people that are newer in their career, like, people that are experienced devs looking to get into new Bitcoin projects, a lot of open source devs that are working on projects that maybe you're looking for new contributors. So we had, like, a good presentation from Maestro, which is a, Buenos Aires based, open source project trying to build a peer to peer marketplace for exchange on Nasr.
Yeah. It's cool stuff. It's like,
[00:32:23] ODELL:
a So for contrast, that's awesome, by the way. I I that's, I think, a I mean, I mean, that that breakdown is is kinda fascinating to me. And it's good that I mean, I love how much, like, local local attention happens as a result of these events being international. So for context, you had one in Berlin that was Cashew focused. Was that this fall or last fall? It was is it October? So, is that Like the October that just passed. Right? Yeah. All the whole the my timelines are just so melded together at this point. I was bummed to miss that one. I think that was probably one of my biggest FOMO misses event wise in a while.
So compare and contrast the breakdown of that one compared to, Florianopolis. I'm, like, really wishing I had numbers because I'm, like, not No. Just give us estimates. High level item. I'm glad you don't track.
[00:33:23] Lisa Neigut:
I think it was probably we had about 200 people again. So most of our events are around 200. Right. I like that size. Intimate. Intimate. It's a it's a great conference. Like, everyone has such a good time too not to, like yeah. So we had about 200 people. I think it's, like, about the same. Like, probably about half are from Germany locally. There's an amazing I love doing Bitcoin conferences in Berlin. It feels like a really important place to continue having Bitcoin dev conferences because of how many developers are there that care about privacy and Bitcoin. Well, maybe not all as much into Bitcoin, but, there's just such a great cyberpunk.
What is there a lot of crypto stuff? There's a lot of crypto stuff over there. Right? I don't think there's as much crypto stuff. I think it's a lot of more, like I think there's just more interesting privacy projects that, like, come out of there. So I feel like and maybe I'm making this up. Like, I feel like a good number of tour devs that were, like, famously in and around Lynn. But it's more just cyberpunk decentralized, like, you know, stick it to the man. We're gonna Right. Do our own self hosting. Really end it like, maybe it's more just open source community in Berlin. Feels really strong, and that's one that I wanna continue to, like, have a presence in that community, so to speak. So we'll be back in Berlin this October again, second to fourth back in the same venue.
This year, we're talking about lightning and programmable payments instead of e eCash. But Kelly is gonna be there, and we're definitely gonna be having, hopefully, some eCash talks happening.
[00:34:55] ODELL:
And Berlin was where
[00:34:56] Lisa Neigut:
Berlin was where the original lightning conference happened back in the day. Right? Like, 2019 or whatever? Yeah. I'm trying to bring the lightning conference back. I've been joking this is gonna be the first lightning plus plus. We're gonna, like, do lightning conference two point o. I've been talking to the LDK team. It sounds like a bunch of them are gonna be there for it. Trying to talk to the LV people, I think, are gonna be there. I was talking to one of their teammates today about it. So, hopefully, they'll have a big presence. Working on trying to get, like, you know, devs from strategy, which is Michael Sailor's big, organization. They've got a lot of, like, non Bitcoin devs that work on their core business, just not the part of holding Bitcoin.
[00:35:37] ODELL:
So, you know, it's just like trying to get I mean, I would argue that holding Bitcoin is probably the core business now. But
[00:35:44] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. But the number of people that they employ for that particular part is very small percent, I think, of their total, headcount. And a lot of their headcount are developers. They just don't work on Bitcoin things. So,
[00:35:57] ODELL:
I think developer at strategy and not working on his Bitcoin things and just completely I I mean, you wanna talk about their salaries are probably good, but that would burn me out.
[00:36:07] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. And I think they've got a lot of, yeah. So they they think they've got a decent number of people of, like, headquarters over in Europe. So it's like, okay. You know what? Is the amazing thing I think about Bitcoin plus plus being so international. It's like, cool. How do we and, like, you know, traveling is expensive. So a nice thing about having Bitcoin plus plus all over the world is that, hopefully, there's one close enough to where these devs are anywhere in the world that you can go to a Bitcoin plus plus every year, and it's you won't break the bank to buy a flight to The US or whatever, have to worry about visas, etcetera. You can just show up. So Right. Yeah. Who want I mean, if I was
[00:36:45] ODELL:
I'm very grateful I'm American, and there's no other place I would raise my family. But if I was not American, particularly if I was working on, you know, any kind of freedom focused open source software, I probably would not wanna come to The US. I would probably just skip any events that were here. Before I forget and I'm not trying to get you in trouble because I hopefully, you can get a bunch of strategy developers to participate. There was some artist on the Internet, which, like, don't hold me to it, didn't verify my source, that said, like, all of MicroStrategy's offices internationally are, like, couple blocks away from wherever the intelligence agencies are. So, like, literally, they have, like, 20 countries or something. Wait. Sorry. I missed that. Could you say it, like, again? I like They have, like, offices in 20 countries, and it's always just, like, a couple blocks from wherever, like, their CIA is.
[00:37:37] Lisa Neigut:
Oh, that's interesting.
[00:37:39] ODELL:
Yeah. I think all the offices are public. So I don't know. Leave it to the office to I wonder
[00:37:44] Lisa Neigut:
thoughts. Maybe some of the maybe some of the strategy they're helping with is aren't they like a data analytics firm? Maybe they I think they've done a lot of government contracts. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then maybe interesting.
[00:37:54] ODELL:
That's a lot of money in it. Okay. So Berlin that mean yeah.
[00:38:00] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. We've got let me see. We've got our next our next event is the mempool one. So we're talking about mempools and That's Austin. Right? It's gonna be Austin. It's Austin May Seventh To Ninth.
[00:38:11] ODELL:
So mempools. What are we talking about about mempools? That how how to fill them? Transaction propagation? Like
[00:38:19] Lisa Neigut:
Well, I'm I'm getting together, you know, a a group of concerned Bitcoiners to talk about how we can fill them and pull again. We are hosting an emergency meeting. So all Bitcoiners that are, worried and concerned about mempools should come to Austin, May Seventh The Ninth, and we will have a strategy session, hosted by strategy, JK, to talk about, you know, what we could do with the mempool. No. So it's, been working with a lot of talking to a lot of people who are you know, there's been a lot of changes to how mempool stuff works. I think there's also been a lot of I think we see a lot of contention over policies in the mempool over the last year plus Yeah. Yeah.
Also, as a lightning girly, there's been a lot of talk in lightning land about how do we get transactions into blocks with certain guarantees. And InstaGibbs, who used to work on core lightning and is now working on, InstaGibbs, who's now working at spiral on, Bitcoin core stuff specifically around this problem. He got NerdSnipe tool working on lightning. It was like, how do we get transactions in the blocks with, you know, minimum amount of griefing? So I've done a lot of work over the last, I wanna say, almost three years on Bitcoin core. Package relay is coming through. Peter Willow's working on a new, mempool design called cluster mempools, which I don't think gets enough interest like, that's gonna be incredibly huge for block building, and I honestly don't think that there is enough.
There hasn't been enough, like, conversation about it, I think. So, anyways, I'm getting all these people together. I'm also inviting, like, Scott nine thousand is gonna be there. The solo solo Satoshi guys with the Bitac stuff are coming. We've got Rob Warren. He's done some really interesting writing. He needs to have a book out about minor incentives. You know, I'm hoping it's just, like, a really good opportunity for people that have been working in the space around mining incentives. How do we get transactions from the users into blocks? How do we do it in a way with, like, certain guarantees?
And maybe in a way that, like, yeah, it keeps the mempool full. Hundred beast is gonna be there. I don't think we've announced him yet talking about quantum resistance, which will be really interesting because, like, all of the signatures for those are huge. Right? So that definitely has implications on terms of, like, what kinds of transactions we can get into blocks if all of every block is if every transaction is huge. Anyway, so it's just like, okay. Here's all the changes that have happened in the mempool or coming. Here's all the, like, pool designs that people are working on. We're gonna have braid pool there. We're gonna have people talking about Stratham v two. We're gonna have Datum, which is Ocean's protocol. There, Jason's gonna come give a really good deep dive on it, I think.
Luke I was just talking to Luke Dasher earlier today. He's great. I'm really excited to have him coming. He's gonna talk about mempool policy. Yeah. Anyway, so it's like it's like okay. There's there's a lot to talk about here. And And you have a good mining
[00:41:14] ODELL:
intro too into that. Is this gonna be, like, basically the first mining
[00:41:18] Lisa Neigut:
Bitcoin plus plus to to go? Basically. And, also, where better to do it than in Texas? Like, aren't we one of the biggest I don't know stat. Again, me and my my stats. It's true. We're one of the biggest miners in The US. It's also the same week as the Texas Energy and Mining Summit, which is targeted, I think, a little bit different audience. It's more power provider. By us. Yeah. Okay. Us being Bitcoin Park. Right? Correct. Yeah. Okay.
[00:41:44] ODELL:
Well, because now we have Bitcoin Park Austin.
[00:41:48] Lisa Neigut:
Exactly. Yeah. So Bitcoin Park Austin. Super excited. Bitcoin Park is in Austin now. The Tennessee invasion is complete now. But, we're excited to have, like so there's gonna be a lot of people in town for that event, and then we're also gonna have, hopefully, all these devs, engineers, protocol designers, how do miners get paid, like, how are we getting transactions into the That's awesome. Yeah. So I'm, like, I'm super excited about it. I know I've been I've been to be chatting about it for a bit. Historically
[00:42:18] ODELL:
so our energy and mining summit, which we just did our annual we've annually do it in Nashville. And so that conversation that I put on, the feeds with governor Lee, Tennessee governor Lee was at the Nashville Energy Mining Summit in January. And historically, like, it's more like minor operation focused. Yeah. So this is actually, like, really, really very complimentary because the most of the mining conversations that'll be happening at Bitcoin plus plus will be a little bit more protocol, driven and developer driven and and how we handle that side. So it works really well together.
[00:43:01] Lisa Neigut:
I think so. Yeah. And I mean, I but there's a lot of things I mean, I think mining decentralization is one of the biggest topics in Bitcoin, biggest, like, centralization risks Yeah. How do you feel about that? Templates. I don't feel good about it right now. I'm, like, really excited about getting more people doing home mining, but, yeah, I don't know. I I think it's still some one of those things I need to, like, get caught up on what current pool designs are and, like, how stratum b two versus datum work. And, there's a lot of really terrible, like, edge cases. I mean, I think I was, like, was one of the first people to kinda start calling this out on the mailing list, like, four or five years ago where, like, yo, bro. Like, mempool itself is obsolete. Like, we don't we don't the mempool, like, you don't really need it anymore because you can send your transaction to 10 No. You did.
[00:43:48] ODELL:
You really, everyone was arguing about mempool policy, and then you were like, what if we just remove the mempools? Yeah. And you really just, like, blew up the whole conversation. And then it's thought provoking way.
[00:44:00] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. Exactly. And I'm like, bro, we don't even need the mempool. Just send it to me. Horrible idea, by the way. But Everyone keeps telling me this, and I'm like, look, it it's it's it's look. It's not like it wasn't an I think this is the thing I never did, like, a follow-up post to it. It wasn't a serious idea. It was like a thought experiment. It's like, dude, we we we legitimately can like, you could remove the mempool today and still get your transaction mined by sending it to all of 10 people. The only thing is we don't know how to find those 10 people. So if you build a registry where those 10 people are and you just send it, and those 10 people is, like, the top 10 mining pool mempools, you literally Yeah. And there's a bunch of out of band
[00:44:34] ODELL:
transaction relay that's happening already.
[00:44:37] Lisa Neigut:
It's good. And since then, it's only become, like, more of a thing because there's, like there's things that people who are transacting wanna do that they literally cannot do with existing protocol. A really good example of this is mempool transaction accelerator. People wanna rebid and pay more on a transaction that they've already sent, and there's nothing in the existing Bitcoin protocol that lets you do that in, like, a, how would I call it, like, unrestricted way. And so it's like, okay. Like, there is an action that users and consumers wanna take, and there's no way to do it. So if someone's offering, like, a private way of doing it, the only problem is that there's, like, really big downsides to private relays and out of the transaction fee payments. Well, the real one the real risk is, like, for people running lightning nodes like myself who your lightning node needs to know how much to pay to get a transaction into the next, like, 10 blocks. Right?
If the transaction data if the data of what is being paid to get into the next 10 blocks isn't public because it's being paid as an out of band fee, so it's no longer reflected in fees paid inside of the block, All of a sudden, your lightning node is, like, has a completely huge like, you've an suddenly you have this, like, risk of losing funds because you can't get transactions mined in a way because you don't have there is no longer a public price feed of block fee of block space auction data. And because you don't have that public basically, public basically, it takes public information about what it costs to get into a block and makes it private. And as soon as you have a private data feed, then you have to pay someone to get it, basically.
So it creates all these, like, negative incentives around centralization of of transaction, Relay. And that, like, oh, the only way that I can get this transaction into a block is either by paying someone to find out how much to pay for it or by putting it out there and then paying someone later to bump it up because they can't do it through the existing protocol. So I don't know. I think you made a really good argument for why mempools,
[00:46:39] ODELL:
exist
[00:46:40] Lisa Neigut:
or should exist. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
[00:46:44] ODELL:
I mean, to be fair to the mempool guys, people were already doing this, like, out of band transaction fee acceleration, in a very, very opaque way. And they are it's still centralized, but they're trying to do it in the most transparent way possible, so that people can still do proper fee estimation. But it's centralized. It's a % centralized and trusted.
[00:47:08] Lisa Neigut:
And you can't publish the data, like, in the same data feed as the block. Like, you can't there's no way to make that data in a transaction that's already been included, if that makes sense. Like, suddenly, there's two pieces of information you need. One is all the transactions in a block, which right now also contain all the information about how much they paid to get into the block. But now you also need a data feed or, like, some way to access information of what people are actually paying to get into blocks, and that becomes that is, like, extremely valuable information then. Right. Like, for example
[00:47:45] ODELL:
like for, like, an actual practical example, let's actually pretend, mempools are busy and blocks are full. You might check you know, your node might look at a block and they might think a transaction has been confirmed at two sets per byte. But in reality, through Mempools. Space, they actually paid 45 sets per byte. And there's no way for you to actually for your note to actually know that information and make a proper fee estimation. And that's where a lot of the problems lie.
[00:48:13] Lisa Neigut:
Well, it's not even problems. It's just centralization risk. Yeah. And it, like and it really, like, destroys ability of, like, people to have protocols like Lightning that are independent. Like, so your Lightning node in theory, the only data you need to watch is new blocks coming in. But if this, like, threatens the ability to have a Lightning node that you have high assurance that the only data you need is new block info because you no longer can rely on your ability to get transactions mined in a timely manner.
[00:48:43] ODELL:
Right. And it's problematic. Or even, like, figure out how much you're supposed to pay. Yeah. It's just problematic to, like, decentralization as well. Okay. I've decided that, this show is just me asking your opinion on random things. What is your opinion? What do you have an opinion on back to mining centralization? Do you have an opinion on stratum v two versus datum promotion?
[00:49:07] Lisa Neigut:
No. But I want to. And this is why I am so excited that Jason of the datum guy is coming, and we're gonna have some stratum people, which I know Clubhash is coming. I don't know if he's giving I don't know if I have any Stratham v two talks. Maybe we should reach out to and convince him to come talk about Stratham v two strategy. You can at least send someone. It would be I mean, it would be amazing. I think I have I have one first I have, like, two or three Stratum v two devs coming to talk about their projects. But maybe I should set up, like, a Stratum versus Datum just, like, conversation. Because when you talk to the Datum, their guys, they're like, we looked at Stratum v two, and there were all these problems in it. Again, I'm just, like, I haven't looked at it, so I'm really just, like, parodying back what they told me. And so they created their own protocol that they think solves a lot of the problems.
I don't know what those problems are, but I really wanna know. Right? Like, what did Stratum v two, like, get wrong? Why does Datum exist? I will say that I think Stratum I think Datum existing is really exciting and cool because one of the problems Stratum v two is having was getting people to pay attention to it or adopt it or add it. I feel like as soon as you add, like, a I think this is kinda just the way that that humans work. As soon as you add a competitor, all of a sudden you get more news and more, like, press and more coverage about it as an option.
And I think that I mean, I haven't been tracking. Maybe this is a good poll to, like, send out to people, who are coming and participating or just even mining companies in general, but being like, hey. Like, what is your, what do you call it? Like, I feel like awareness around Statham v two probably went up when Datham got launched. Mostly because it's like, all of a sudden you have, like, this, like you have a compare contrast situation. Right? Whereas before, it was just, like, Strata v two and what. Now it's like, oh, Strata v two or Datum, and you can, like, compare them, and it's, like, two different things. And I think anytime that happens with the protocol is actually, like, it feels really hard when you're in it because it's like, oh, no. I have a competitor. But all of a sudden, it gives people an opportunity to talk about trade offs.
And it's like, well, why aren't you supporting one or the other versus why aren't you doing this thing that no one's really heard of, etcetera. So, again, that's again, this is, like, totally outsider
[00:51:15] ODELL:
baseball offer. I think the biggest thing is that the ocean guys were just like, fuck it. We're doing it live. And they just kinda shipped, and they had a pool. You know, the the pool had support for it. It was first class support. Exactly. They were pushing it really hard. They offered fee incentives for people to choose it. It stopped being theoretical. Right? It like, a lot of and it tries to accomplish a lot of the same goals that Stratham v two tried to tries to accomplish, and they're kinda coming at it from technically a little bit different ways. But, it's good to see both projects. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, what you actually look at is the majority of hash is either going through Bitmain proxies or Foundry, and neither are using Stratum v two or Datum.
Right. So let's just throw as much shit as we can to see what sticks.
[00:52:04] Lisa Neigut:
But I think you bring up a really good point about how Ocean had distribution, so to speak, and that they run a mining pool. And so they could develop a protocol and immediately distribute it to users via their infrastructure of having a pool. Distribution of your software and your protocol is such a huge I think and this is, like I think your people are gonna start seeing this, like, in the vibe coding era. Like, distribution, like, ability to get people to pay attention and run your project or your protocol is really gonna become the limiting factor, I think, of adoption or, like, really changing how the world works. So, yeah, it's it's interesting.
[00:52:46] ODELL:
How do you think about so this is actually kind of an interesting case study because so DATM was, created and shipped by Ocean, which is a VC backed comp well, not I guess, Dorsey would be upset with me calling the VC, but it's a Dorsey backed for profit entity. They had investors. They did, like, a c round. Right? Like, speaking of the recent 6,000,000 or something like that. Right? Most of it was Jack. I mean, it's not public information, but from my intuition, most of it was Jack. And then Stratham v two was heavily led through open open source grants through Spiral, which is which is Block.
But it's but it was very much like an open source nonprofit project. So how do you think about, in terms of of efficiency or, go to market or success on in terms of for profit businesses that are building out open source stacks. Right? Datum's completely open source That's versus projects that don't necessarily have some additional profit motive attached to it. Do you have an opinion on that?
[00:54:01] Lisa Neigut:
Man, sustainability is really important. And I say that as someone who runs a conference series that, like, really, like, you know, it's mostly been volunteer work ish. Like, I mean, I get grants and stuff to help cover bills, whatever. But, like, running a project and not having a sustainable model for, like, how you're gonna keep people working on it and maintaining it and promoting it and doing all the work that requires to get that distribution to actually make your project, like, be relevant over the long term. Right? You need people running your software, basically. Sustainability is, like, a really hard thing in the open source world, and it's not just a Bitcoin industry problem. This is, like, global. Right? Like, anyone working on open source, it really come and it you know, it really comes from this really interesting place of, like, I want my work to be public. I want, like, my software to be free. I want anyone to be able to open up and use it and tinker it and learn from it.
Doing that work and publishing it, like, you you that is so different from how do we make this project sustainable? How where is the revenue coming from to continue, like, making this a longevity thing. Right? I mean, if you look at the Catholic church or, like, religion, I like, I kinda feel like open source software is, like, kind of in the, like, public good sector, right, which is, you know, government or religion. Catholic church convinced everyone to give them 10% of all the money they make, right, tithing, as a way to continue building beautiful works of cathedrals. Right? Like, what is it like, I feel like people talk about, like, are you working on, like, cathedrals, right, which is thousands of people spending years of their lives over the course of hundreds of years to build these immense stone structures that will last forever. Where does the money come from to make this happen? Well, it's everyone in the larger community giving 10% of the money that they make to that public work. Right? And that's kinda how government works to some extent. Like, we all give some portion of the money we're making to continue building the nation state, whatever that is, hand wave.
But, you know, and, like, maybe this is a good place to start plugging, like, what OpenSats is doing in donations and, like, I think that, like, even on the board of OpenSats, I think we struggle with, like, how do we decide where to give money to people? Like, is this project, like, a sustainable project, or is it an infrastructure one? I always lean on the more, like and I think, like, you know, board has different opinions. We all come from different places and different perspectives when we're evaluating where to spend the funds that we have. But it's always, like, you know, there's always gonna be those infrastructure projects that have zero chance of being sustainable.
Is data v two one of them? Maybe. Is that, like, maybe the best, like, long term thing? I don't know. But that does mean that, like, as a community and, like, stratum v two is just one example of, like, tons of projects in the space, like Bitcoin Core. Core Lightning is another good example. The Cashew projects, you know, that ecosystem. All of the guys that are working on this project and it's like, Nostril like, OpenSats is probably one of the biggest, funds that is, like, supporting dev building infrastructure in the Nostril ecosystem. Like, where does the money go to support open source? It's like, well, we don't have, like, a 10% tithing church.
And I mean, like, maybe OpenSAT should, like, start some sort of tithing program where you get, like, some sort of, like, badge or something if you're, like, dedicating, like, five, ten percent of your, like, nonprofit donations to OpenSets. But yeah. Like, yeah. I don't know. But I would like to see I mean, I do I'd like to see OpenSets supporting projects that aren't sustainable sustainable
[00:57:46] ODELL:
by themselves in the long run. Right. But, I mean, there's two things there. Right? Because some projects just can't be some projects just can't be monetized. Right? It's just it's just like matter of fact. Monetized. Like, you just like, there's
[00:58:01] Lisa Neigut:
and there's devs out there that are amazing at building things, and they're amazing at contributing, and they they can find bugs, and they can do maintenance at a level that is, like, god tier. Right? Like, just, like, out of this world incredible at their job. But they wanna work on their job. They don't wanna work on this. I mean, so I've I'm kind of, like, transition not transitioning, but over the last few years, like, I went from being, like, I'm a developer. I'm working on open source projects to I'm trying to run a conference series and keep it sustainable over the long term. Right? All of a sudden, it's like, dude, these are, like, completely different jobs than writing code, maintaining software, fixing bugs for people. Like, this switch to, like, oh, how do I make this sustainable, this project of, like, getting dubs together to talk about what they're building?
But that is, like that's not easy. Right? And it's, like, a completely different skill set. And I don't think it's fair to be, like, every single dev project out there needs to be able to have that skill set to bring money in. Like, it's just a completely different thing. I don't know.
[00:59:07] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, it's once again, I think it's two different things. Right? There's I think with Bitcoin now existing, it is it's still very difficult to monetize an open source project, but easier than ever to monetize an open source project in certain situations. And and as a result, they could have sustainable independent funding. But then for everything else, they're kind of just always relying on donations. And you kind of mix two things together there with tithing, which is, like, kind of donation based, but also you'll go to hell, I guess, if you don't give the money. And then, like, taxes, which is, like, gun to your head, which I I probably would be in a different category. Hell if you don't give the money. I mean, it could you know, one is a little more direct than the other. Yeah. Like I do like the idea of social signaling for donations. I will say that's one of the things I'm most excited about with Nasr, and that's not even OpenSats related. Like, ideally, like, the most beautiful situation would be
[01:00:08] Lisa Neigut:
people publish open source code and then people donate Sats to them directly and get social credit. Gonna happen though. But that's but that's It might happen. I don't think it's going to happen at the scale that we needed to happen to keep these projects running and, like, maintain it. Like, I know so many devs that don't wanna post on social media. Like, they just don't want and, like, posting and having an audience and getting the distribution again, it goes back to distribution. And in this case, it's distribution of the work that you're doing and telling like, it's almost like personal PR. Like, I don't want devs to have to turn into their own, like, personal relations experts in order to, like, keep working on their projects. Like, that's Well, I mean it work, like Look, it definitely won't work for everybody.
[01:00:50] ODELL:
I I think it's just one it's, like, an additional tool. And I think a a decent example, which is not a perfect example because they've also gotten significant, very large donations, is something like Signal, which is a nonprofit, which is donation funded, which does incorporate a social signal. Like, if you donate, they don't use Bitcoin. Unfortunately, they use credit card. But if you donate, you get, like, the little badge and the badge is different depending on how much you donate. So everyone that messages you knows that you're better than them. And I think they get, like, a decent amount of donations that way.
So I think there's something there. I mean, that would be the ideal like, in my dream, like, something like you wouldn't want a middleman like OpenSats. Like, the dream would just be that you get donations directly without permission.
[01:01:37] Lisa Neigut:
It's interest I mean, signal is such an interesting case of, like, why don't they just charge for their service. Right? Like, why are they even doing the donation thing at all? Like, I mean, I guess that makes them lose their nonprofit status or something. But Well, I think it's probably network effect. Right? It's like people just,
[01:01:53] ODELL:
like, there's some of us that would pay for it, but we need to be able to message people. And it's hard to get the people that we wanna message to actually buy.
[01:02:02] Lisa Neigut:
Right. Do like a thing. Telegram got me with their, like, upgrades on, what do you call it? Telegram got me with their, like, you can't do fun emoji reactions unless you pay us, like, $30 a year. And, like, honestly, it took me, like, two tries of trying to get the right emoji before I was like, alright. Fine. This is worth $30 a year to me. Interesting. I don't know. But that's like but that but that problem of, like, how do you get people to pay you money is such a different problem from I'm gonna, like, find all the bugs in this particular open source thing, or I'm gonna make sure that this is, like, maintained and shipping on the schedule, etcetera.
I don't know. This is like, it's just
[01:02:40] ODELL:
different Yeah. Skill set. So we started this tangent with Datum versus Stratham v two. Like, Datum has this other model, which will is yet to be seen if it's gonna be successful in Ocean's particular case, but has been successful in open source historically, which is you release as as open source software, and then you're monetizing services that are completely different than the open source software, like Antpool or Foundry or whatever could go use Datum. Like, Ocean doesn't isn't actually making money directly on Datum. They're making money on the mining pool service.
[01:03:17] Lisa Neigut:
Right. DATM becomes a differentiator that speaks to their core values of decentralization and block building, though. Right? So they're, like, they've got, like, a values and, like, a particular perspective on what makes for a, like, ethical moral maybe moral is a better word for the the ocean perspective, mining. And so a lot of the choices of what they're shipping is downstream of their morals around how Bitcoin mining and policy should be done. Again, so excited they're coming to Bitcoin plus plus. Everyone should come and talk to them about what they're doing. No. Their team's great. I love those guys. They've got such a sick, like I don't know. It's just I I love people with particular, like, like, well thought through, I would call it, like, well justified positions that are maybe a little contrarian or outside the norm and things that they're, like, building for and shipping, and it's working for them.
So I'm really hoping we get some amazing conversations happening. Yeah.
[01:04:26] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, I just to me, that's one of the things that, like, I'm just really fascinated by is is is sustainable open source businesses. I mean, another another good example that I like is is StartNine, which is like, like, their full node package is completely open source. You can just install on your own hardware, never pay them a dime. But then they make money on, like, the prebuilt hardware because people want convenience. They they make money on premium services, like customer service and stuff. Right? Like, like, I think I think if someone is self hosting their family photos and, like, as as a new father myself, like, I would hate to lose my baby photos. Now maybe I'm technically competent enough to back up photos and make sure I'm good, But if I'm going to self host it and I'm not technically competent, what would you pay for that? Are you I think you'd probably pay a hundred dollars a year
[01:05:23] Lisa Neigut:
in subscription revenue for, like, white glove customer service and premium services and whatnot. But then it but then it becomes the services and not the software. Right? And so then you need a whole But they're still maintaining an open source software stack without any grant funding. Right? But then it's not right. But then it's not just one dev doing contributions in the corner by themselves. It's a team. And like, then you run into skills of, like, how do you run and manage a team and keep everyone working in the same direction and hiring. And like, it's all of a sudden it's not just like the it's not just the code. It's not just the dev. It's not just the work. It's all the other stuff that has to be done in order to do the work, where the work is building, maintaining, and keeping, like, open source software, like, you know, developed. Yeah. I know. Everyone has their favorite sailor quote, but my favorite sailor quote,
[01:06:12] ODELL:
was the interview I did with him in Nashville where he said, business is hard. It is It is hard. It it is definitely very difficult. It's not an easy thing. Looks easier from the from the sidelines. Okay. I have, one more opinion I wanna ask you. What's your opinion on, the Cashew project? How do you think about Cashew?
[01:06:39] Lisa Neigut:
Cashew is one of those things that I see people posting. I see Cali posting about occasionally. It always seems like there's cool stuff happening, but I don't I don't personally, like, use it very much. I still, like when I transact, I'm transacting on chain or with lightning. I don't have, like, a Cashew wallet that I actively use and send bounces to. Maybe that's because I haven't installed Macadamia yet. I don't know.
[01:07:04] ODELL:
It's just Macadamia.
[01:07:06] Lisa Neigut:
Macadamia.
[01:07:07] ODELL:
Or Macadamia, I guess. Macademia is like academia. Yeah. Macadamia.
[01:07:13] Lisa Neigut:
Macadamia. So I think that's a little bit on me. Like, I did do that whole conference on ECash stuff. I get really excited about ECash in terms of, you know, people talk about one of the things that I spent it's Cody Lowe got really Cody Lowe's this brilliant engineer. He's one of the first base 58 students I ever had who went on to do really amazing things at FETI and now works at Replit full time. And Yeah. He's a super star. Went Cody went through this thing where he was trying to make l four zero two work for AI agents. L four zero two, for those who aren't familiar with it, is the ability to pay a lightning invoice using HTTP codes to do payment requests. Right? And so, like, he had me we, like, have this, like, kind of fun thing where I, like, live code an l four zero two receptor for Core Lightning.
Just like I don't know. Just like live coding L 4 0 2. And, like, in the process of doing it, you realize how much overhead it is to pay Lightning invoices. And the way that real like, Bitcoin, Core Lightning, I should say, has this metering system with this thing called Runes, not related to the ordinal stuff, like its own auth authentication thing. And, basically, what you want is you want kinda want a way to, like, issue a token that has a budget on it. It's really hard to do with, like, the existing infrastructure in Corelightning. So it's an okay. Like, if I wanna have agents that are doing work that are paying for services out there. Right? Payment for services. Maybe this is how all the maybe this is how all the software engineer open source engineers are gonna get rich is running services. I think let me say that services word again. Like, it's back to running service anyways. But maybe they're, like, you know, running an API that you're getting paid for or whatever.
But all of your agents need a budget of cash, basically. They need cash budgets to be able to pay stuff. And l four zero two is great, but adding a budget to an l four zero two and all the, like, interchange that you get around invoices starts to become quite cumbersome. And, like, I saw it, like, working with Cody on this project, like, directly. It was like, oh, like, this doesn't really like, this is like, I don't wanna say it doesn't work, but it's like there's some, like, real problems with this. So you cash solve this because it is a budget.
It is a number. It's a barrier asset. It's way easier in my mind to issue and keep and have agents using as, like, little things they can send. I think, I need to go through, like, how these workflow works, but it's, like, just the number of round trips I think you have to do with Ecash is just a lot less than you have to do with Lightning. And so it sort of makes it reduces the friction from what I could see around that particular use case. I was like, okay. How are we gonna take a, agents, give them budgets denominated in the Internet currency, which, of course, is Bitcoin, and set them loose upon the world to trade and source services, etcetera.
Ecash seems like a really great way to do that. Other really great amazing thing about eCash is how easy it is to have a mint denominated in something other than Bitcoin. So you can issue you get it's, like, so easy to spin up a mint and issue eCash tokens that are denominated in something else. Kinda run into all the same oh, but you have all the same problems anywhere you're issuing assets that aren't Right. Bitcoin where, like, oh, what's the supply, etcetera, etcetera, what's set back by Handwave?
[01:10:33] ODELL:
I mean, it's the trade off is the mint issued. Is trust in the Mint is the trade off. But for when once you once you take that trade off, you're able to do an amazing amount of things in a super lightweight offline programmable way. It's fucking huge.
[01:10:50] Lisa Neigut:
Trade off. That huge trade off. Big trade off there. Yeah. Issue. I'm like I'm super cashew peeled.
[01:10:56] ODELL:
Make it ready to go. I've I've been feeding my son cashews recently just because I'm so excited about it.
[01:11:02] Lisa Neigut:
Cashew not fatty, though. Like, you think cashew, like
[01:11:07] ODELL:
Yeah. Fetti I mean, I'm I'm well, so to be clear, there's Fetti, the company, which, by the way, goes back to our previous conversation about, building a business that is also trying to maintain an open source project. And then there's Fediment, the open source project, and I think it's important to delineate. So then you have Fediment, the open source project, and you have Cashew, the open source project. And the big difference, high level, is that with Fediment, you basically have a multi sig mint, like a multisig custodian versus a single sig. And I think the Fediment project rides or dies on how difficult it is to launch one of those Fediments and launch that securely.
And it did come up on my radar recently that they have, like, this new method that uses Noster and Tor, and you can run it at home, and and it doesn't rely on DNS. Like, the previous setup relied on DNS. It was like people don't realize because, like, you think about it in your head, you're like, oh, well, it's multisig Cashew. No. It's like that that federated portion makes everything way, way more difficult, and you need to have consensus between the different federation members. So as a result, Casio just, like, is able to just ship really quick. It's way easier to run. It has way less moving pieces. But, yeah, I mean, I think, ideally, the dream would be to reduce that trust and have, some kind of federation there or, you know, Cassie's trying to get there from, like, different directions, but, like, the Titanic approach where, like, you have it in multiple mints and only one mint drugs you or something. But, yeah, either way, like, I don't really care.
Calio is trolls me that I say ecash. Recently, I've been more excite because I just hedge my bets between FEDIMENT and cashew. Recently, I've been more excited about cashew than FEDIMENT. But,
[01:13:02] Lisa Neigut:
all all more options excited about it. Are you excited about it because of the number of devs that are, like, building in it? Like, excited about it because of the protocol? You think it's, like, a better bet? Like, what's the where did your game come from, I guess, I should say?
[01:13:18] ODELL:
In my short lifetime, I've seen three open source projects that have massive viral organic developer interest, and it's been Bitcoin, Nasr, and Cashew. And, like, that's, like, that's a measure. It's like a, I guess maybe it's not fully I think it's pretty measurable KPI. Right? Is that, for all the faults of Noster, one thing you can't you have to give Noster credit for is that it has this very bottom up organics, grassroots developer interest and same with Cashew. And it's hard to ignore that. And as a result, what you get is you get many different tools, you get many different ideas, you get this melting pot of of talent kind of working on this thing that that, like, shit coins, crypto companies, like, would they would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and they can't manufacture it. Right? Like, with if I'm gonna use Nasr as the example again, like, something like Farcaster, which is like the Ethereum, Nostr competitor that has, like, tokens and pre minds and shit. Like, they can't get nearly the developer interest of Nostr even though they say their their daily active users is way higher, that they have all this money, all this other stuff. You just can't manufacture it.
[01:14:29] Lisa Neigut:
I'm laughing because one of my friends is probably the biggest open source Farcaster dev right now. Like, when my old BFF is, like, basically
[01:14:37] ODELL:
the Genmaster.
[01:14:39] Lisa Neigut:
He he's, you know, he's invested in in different
[01:14:43] ODELL:
But yeah. Fair enough.
[01:14:45] Lisa Neigut:
But yeah. I know. But you're right. Like, it it is, yeah, man. How do you get devs interested in projects? So this is kinda like the whole Bitcoin plus plus thing is, like, how do we get more devs to Bitcoin plus plus? Like, how do we get more people to come in person and participate in these projects? And things like eCash taking off is exciting because it means there are more devs in the ecosystem even if they're working on different kinds of protocols.
[01:15:13] ODELL:
Yeah. So one of my one of my most, people have, you know, different things they're proud of. One of the things I'm most proud of is, when I first met you mentioned Cody Lowe already. When I first met Cody Lowe, he said, that Citadel Dispatch inspired him to start working on Bitcoin and and and focus on Bitcoin, which is insane because the dude is just incredibly talented and, you know, I have massive imposter syndrome to inspire someone like that. But to that point, if there is a if there's a developer that not working in Bitcoin listening to this show or someone who's thinking about getting into development, what advice do you have to them? Maybe they're thinking about getting an open source grant. Maybe they're thinking about going to Bitcoin plus plus. What what's your what's your piece of advice? Talk to them right now.
[01:16:06] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. This is a great question. I don't know. Find something I think it's like the way I got into Bitcoin is I got nerd sniped. Right? I read Mastering Bitcoin. I found a bug. I started investigating, and that became the way that I fell down the rabbit hole. Right? Like, technically. Because it wasn't gonna be for the macro stuff. It was always gonna be because of the tech. So I think, like like, learning more about what's going on, like, educate yourself, read Mastering Bitcoin, subscribe to Bitcoin op tech. So, I don't know. Run do a base 58 class. We've got some online classes on Udemy, which I continue to hear are just, like, life changing for the people that do them.
Most of the people that I know that have done base 58 classes go on to do incredible things later. It's a little bit of a self show on
[01:16:51] ODELL:
this stuff that I'm doing. So
[01:16:54] Lisa Neigut:
that's So how do they sign up for base fifty eight classes? Your base 58 classes? Yeah. We're working on a new launching a new website, but it's base58.school. I'm not the only classes we have of yeah. The only classes that we have available right now are online Udemy ones, and they're kinda hard to find on the website, which hopefully will have that fixed soon.
[01:17:14] ODELL:
But and they're paid. Right? They're paid classes. Yeah. Value for value, man. Like Can you I think That's not value for value, but I respect the value for value. Like, you get money value is you you pay if you find value. Like, people get to listen to dispatch for free, and then if they find value, they they can send payment afterwards.
[01:17:34] Lisa Neigut:
Well, it's a very strict definition. I don't think that's, like what what you're talking about is donations after the fact. Right? Yeah. That's value for value. Getting payment for no. I thought value for value was, like, paying as you stream something. Like, you get something But it's fine. I pers I mean, you should charge for it. Can you pay in Bitcoin? Not currently. This is why we're working on the website update. It's Fair enough. It's launched on Udemy. No. I mean, I launched it on Udemy just to get it out, but I mean, do you think is only fans value for value?
[01:18:06] ODELL:
I mean, people pay for it, I'm assuming, because they get value out of it. But it's behind a paywall. Right? So that's I mean, that would be Gigi would be going crazy right now,
[01:18:16] Lisa Neigut:
calling that value for value. Guys have, like you you guys have, like, redefined the value for value thing to, like, define something else. Like, that's not my problem. Like It's definitely someone paying value for value. I agree. You're getting value for value. I agree. You're getting value for value. Good. And you pay money which causes value. So, like, how is that not? Isn't that, like, all commerce, though? Like, you pay money to get value back? Yeah. It's just capitalism. Yeah. We just rebranded capitalism. When we talk about sustainability and then people are like, where are you getting information about Bitcoin? And it's like, well, like, you want good stuff, you have to, like seems reasonable to ask for people to pay for stuff. I think it's completely reasonable. I'm that wasn't my
[01:18:58] ODELL:
that wasn't my reservation. It was just the definite I was just I was just arguing semantics. I think you should charge, and I think you should charge for Bitcoin plus plus too. And I think other people should charge, for good content, and and particularly education. Because education, like, there's a real you know, people better themselves, and they can actually then go and and and live better lives as a result. Okay. So base58.school. I'd I distracted this whole conversation. Base58.school. Bitcoin plus plus is coming up. How do they how do they sign up for Bitcoin plus plus?
[01:19:36] Lisa Neigut:
Btc++.dev. Click on the Austin conference. There's we're running five other conferences this year, so you can see them all on the website.
[01:19:45] ODELL:
Where else? Hit us. Give us a full show.
[01:19:48] Lisa Neigut:
Yeah. So we're doing Austin in May. It's all about memples and mining stuff, which we talked about. We're gonna be in Riga right ahead of Bitcoin, Baltic Honey Badger talking about privacy and how privacy keeps us free. I'm really excited. I think they're gonna, like some tour people are gonna be there and trying to get Jeff from White Noise to come talk. Should be have, like I think Evolve might be coming. He does some of the best stuff on privacy, CoinJoin stuff. So it should be a really good conference on what does privacy in Bitcoin mean today. We'll be in assembled. It's the only one I don't have dates yet for, talking about z k p's and, like, some of the more, like, just gonna say it, like, shitcoinery l two stuff, but that'll be in September.
Kind of trying to shine a light on what people are trying to do using ZKPs and OPCAT.
[01:20:36] ODELL:
What's that? Coin.
[01:20:37] Lisa Neigut:
Istanbul. So I don't have dates or venue yet. In Berlin, Second To Fourth, we're gonna be talking about lightning and programmable payments. So, hopefully, first Lightning plus plus, and then in Taipei we'll be in Taipei, have our first East Asia conference in December, talking about sovereignty. So come hang out to be good. Also, like, if you wanna talk and you've got a project that fits any of these things, you can go to btcpp.dev/talk, and, have a form to fill out. We also have a volunteer form on the website. If you wanna volunteer, get a ticket, help us out with the event, grab some tickets. You can use the code plug to get 10% off any of the conferences that were happening this year. Yeah. Come hang out. Come learn about some Bitcoin stuff. Come find a conference for the events in Bitcoin?
Yes. You can pay for events in Bitcoin, and you get a discount. So yeah. That's because I like, I yeah. But I wrote the checkout. I was like, I wrote the checkout for Bitcoin plus plus. I didn't write the checkout for Udemy yet. So Yeah. That's fair.
[01:21:39] ODELL:
I, yeah, those are like I don't know. Those are like the types of tooling that we need is, like, Udemy for with Nasr and Bitcoin or whatever. I don't know. But I was just throwing shit out there. Before you before you leave, you mentioned the Riga event. I love that city. I love the conference, the the main conference that you're it's a good idea doing the overlap with existing stuff. I mean, people are already in town. But you mentioned that that one is focused on privacy, and Bitcoin. Do you have any thoughts on the current state of using Bitcoin privately or how that ecosystem looks right now?
[01:22:21] Lisa Neigut:
It's not something I spent time on in a while. I'm, like, obviously, a Lightning Maxi. So, you know, it's like if I wanna transact privacy privately, I use Lightning. It's still, in my opinion, best in class in terms of transacting, privately. Like, it was kind I mean, Lightning set out to fix a lot of the on chain privacy problems, and I think it has largely succeeded. People will tell you otherwise, but don't believe them. No. What else? Yeah. So, like, I you know, there's a lot of stuff with silent payments, which Josie's been working on. I think, OpenStats has been working with him to try that out for some of the stuff that we're doing. And, I don't know. I'm I get less excited about and, like, there's pay join, which is also, like both of these are, like, on chain things.
I think they're important projects, and they're cool. And, like, the interactive transaction construction stuff would, like, PayJoin is doing is all stuff that, like, I help pioneer on Lightning. So I don't know. Like, it's it's cool stuff. I just like, on chain is not as exciting to me, I think, as, like, Lightning still is. But, yeah, hopefully, we'll have a really good conference where we get to hear about all these projects and updates and what people are working on and, you know, hear from researchers like Yuval who are deeply embedded in the space about what's happening there. So, I don't know, it's kind of there.
[01:23:43] ODELL:
Fair enough. Well, I'm gonna have Dan Gould. I think he's the maintainer of pay join dev kit on dispatch next Friday. Yeah. Seventeen hundred UTC freaks. You should consider joining us live. Nifty gave me the best tangent ever. Alright. I don't know whatever it's called. Nifty, thank you for joining us. Do you have any final thoughts for the freaks?
[01:24:06] Lisa Neigut:
On the big one plus plus, use code, pleb. 10% off. See you there. Love it. Btc++.dev.
[01:24:15] ODELL:
Thank you, Nifty. Thank you, Freaks. Yeah. Stamblestack Sats. Peace.
Introduction and Show Overview
Discussion on Bitcoin's Utility and Adoption
Challenges and Opportunities in Bitcoin Wallets
Current State of Bitcoin and Institutional Adoption
Bitcoin++: Purpose and Impact
Developer Burnout and Community Building
Bitcoin++ Events and Global Reach
Mempools and Mining Discussion
Open Source Sustainability and Business Models
Cashu and Fedimint: Exploring Ecash
Advice for Aspiring Bitcoin Developers
Privacy in Bitcoin and Upcoming Events
