Citadel Dispatch

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Arbedout is the creator of Sigbash, a novel new collaborative custody tool, and author of Something More Profound, a book focused on the political economy of network protocols. Highlighting his deep experience working with open protocols we dive into topics including secure custody, inheritance, nostr, and potential bitcoin protocol changes.

Arbedout on Nostr: https://primal.net/arbedout
Sigbash: https://www.sigbash.com
Something More Profound: https://somethingmoreprofound.com

EPISODE: 161
BLOCK: 899077
PRICE: 951 sats per dollar

(00:00:00) Ross Ulbricht Intro Clip

(00:04:04) Happy Bitcoin Friday

(00:06:49) Guest Introduction: Arbedout

(00:14:54) Exploring Sigbash: A New Multisig Solution

(00:49:36) Launching a Book: Something More Profound

(01:04:38) The Future of Nostr and Protocol Development

(01:08:48) Bitcoin's Current State and Future Prospects

(01:26:54) Soft Forks vs. Hard Forks

Video: https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsxzqjw7qxg7n925prmpldcflax4yy2wdjh226h76048nzyzxfjk0g8xjzpd

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[00:00:00] Ross Ulbricht:

Last fourteen years, and what a wild ride it's been.   When I launched Silk Road,   buying a whole Bitcoin would set you back less than a dollar.   Pocket change.   Can you imagine that?   Now they're worth over a hundred thousand dollars   each.   Back then, there was just one exchange you could buy them on unless you wanted   to scour message boards or go to local meetups.   Now it seems like every app I download has a built in wallet with one click buying options.   There are   dozens of new cryptocurrencies   and blockchains, each one   fascinating in its own right, and thousands more I'll never have time to learn about.  

There's   there's DeFi and Web three.   And now there's AI to help me navigate it all. It's nuts.   I   I effectively went into a time capsule   in 2013,   and now I'm coming out like Rip Van Winkle.   I mean, just a few months ago when I walked out of prison,   I'd never seen a drone.   I had never experienced   AI. I still haven't. Sorry.   VR.   The headsets. Yeah. Haven't done that yet.   I had never chatted with AI.   It   it's all hitting me at once.   Freedom.   The new technology. The fact that I have a future again.   It's a lot.   It's a lot.  

[00:01:51] Arbedout:

I mean,  

[00:01:53] Ross Ulbricht:

I was in prison, and now I get to   live through this incredible time with all of you.   What a blessing.   What a miracle.   What a gift.   So   when it comes to new tech, I feel like I'm way behind the curve.   But I'm starting to suspect that   maybe we're all feeling that way at least a little bit.   I mean, everything's moving so fast right now   and   it's kinda thrilling to imagine where it's all going.   But that question remains.   How do we take the next leap?   How do we go from 10   to a hundred?  

[00:02:43] ODELL:

Because of the speed,   because of the chaos,  

[00:02:47] Ross Ulbricht:

it's more important than ever   to stay true to our principles.   It's easy to lose sight of principle   when everything's happening all at once   and there's a thousand things pulling your attention in every direction.   Principles   should be simple   and few.   And today, I would like to mention three.   Freedom,   decentralization,   unity.   Yeah.   You got it.  

[00:04:05] ODELL:

Happy Bitcoin Friday, freaks.   It's your host, Odell,   here for another Citadel Dispatch,   the interactive   live show focused on actionable Bitcoin and Freedom Tech   discussion.   Today's intro   was Ross Ulbricht,   his first   appearance in person appearance   since being released from jail. He got a presidential pardon   after founding the Silk Road.   Incredibly profound moment.   That clip was three minutes   three minutes and twenty one seconds to be specific.   And we have longer twenty five minute,   keynote that he gave,   in Vegas at   the annual Bitcoin magazine conference yesterday.  

I encourage you all to go listen to the whole thing.   It's on Bitcoin Magazine's YouTube.   It's also on   posted on Noster. So you can go to primal.net/odell   if you wanna watch it there, but I encourage you all to watch it at some point.   It's just really wonderful to see him free, and it was important for us to highlight that.   While we're on that topic, I just wanna remind everyone,   that we have four open source developers currently,   facing jail time.   We have the two developers of Samurai,   and we have the two developers of Tornado Cash. We need to get them out of jail. We shouldn't be putting open source developers in jail   for self custody privacy focused software.  

If you wanna support their cause,   the legal cases are quite expensive. You can go to p2prights.org,   to donate   with Bitcoin to help support their rising legal bills.   On that note,   I also wanna thank all the freaks who continue to support the show.   Dispatch   is funded by Bitcoin donations. We have no ads or sponsors.   You can support the show by joining the live chat at silodispatch.com/stream   and sending zaps,   or you can support the show by sending zaps to the post that goes out after the show is over at primal.net/citadel.   Last but not least, you can support the show using podcasting two point o apps like fountain podcasts,   which you can download in your favorite app store.  

The top zap in   podcasting two point o for last week's episode was from Stimmy.   He said, good rip. Jones, pretty based for a suit. Appreciate the business on air and mixing in new topics too. He's up 10,000 sets. Thank you, Stimmy.   With all that said, I have a good friend, a long time friend. I think it's his first time on Cielo Dispatch,   but he's been quite the staple on rabbit hole recap for years. We have Arbed Out here.  

[00:07:03] Arbedout:

How's it going, Arbed Out? Thanks for joining us. Doing alright. Is it let me get the etiquette right here. Am I allowed to say sub freaks, or does Marty have that copyrighted?  

[00:07:12] ODELL:

You can you can say sub freaks. I think he took it from someone.   I don't know.  

[00:07:22] Arbedout:

He's not watching. Marty. What's up, Reese?  

[00:07:24] ODELL:

Marty doesn't have a leg to stand on on copyright and trademark because he originally named the show Tales from the Crypt,   which HBO   held,   the rights to and dismissed.   But, yeah, the there's   dispatch listeners are also freaks.   So you're completely within your right to say that.  

[00:07:46] Arbedout:

Anyway, how are you doing? I'm doing alright, man. How are you?  

[00:07:50] ODELL:

I'm doing great. I mean, we both skipped Vegas, so it's kind of funny that,   we   started started the show off with the Vegas clip, but, it felt important.  

[00:08:00] Arbedout:

Yeah. I not that I I love the Bitcoin conferences, but   between family obligations and   the way the conference crowd shakes out during I'm not gonna I don't know if I'm gonna call this a bull market, but during times like these,   it's much more edifying for me to stay at home and join you on the on the rep. I don't know how you feel about it.  

[00:08:22] ODELL:

Yeah. It's the the family   the family friendly,   the family friendly move. I don't know. I,   I'm trying to cut down on conference travel in general.   Yeah. It's hard to leave the family nowadays.  

[00:08:36] Arbedout:

And there's so many conferences.  

[00:08:38] ODELL:

There's way too many. I mean, so this past week, there was both There was three conferences this past week. There was Bitcoin Vegas, then there was Oslo Freedom Forum,   which I was sorry to miss,   which, by the way, freaks.   I also posted the full Freedom Tech and AI track from the Oslo Freedom Forum on Nasr.   That one's, like, five and a half hours, but there's a lot of great content in there, that you should consider listening to. And then I guess there was a Bitcoin Ireland conference that happened at the same time,   which seemed like it was relatively large, at least, I guess, for, like, an Irish conference.  

And then   coming up is Bitcoin Prague, which is a massive conference that I'm also skipping.   But, yeah, anyway, there's a lot of conferences now.   When we first met, there weren't many conferences, particularly Bitcoin conferences. There were decent amount of crypto conferences. Oh, yeah. You had to go to the blockchain conferences and hope there was some Bitcoin content.  

[00:09:38] Arbedout:

And they were Yeah. In.   You know what it makes me think of? There's that scene in fight club where the two of them are, they're going through the car lot, bang on the bang up the cars and saying, hey, there's a fight club over here. Did you start that? And, Tyler Jordan responds, no, I thought you did. And And that's when they realized things were getting way bigger than they than when they first started. It's like that Yeah. Like, Bitcoin frog, Bitcoin Ireland. What?  

[00:10:02] ODELL:

Yeah. That's our that's our life now.   Yeah. And I see a comment from a random end pub that the username isn't,   oh, I three I two I z.   Saying every time you hear stable coins, think CBDC.   Yeah. Corporate bank digital currencies.   Yeah.   I think in practice, that's   probably how we'll see CBDCs   rolled out, and people will, like, say, well, actually, it's not a central bank. But   they were probably one of the main focuses of this year's Bitcoin Vegas, which is definitely a trend to watch.   Arbud, you said we're not in a bull market. You don't think we're in a bull market?  

[00:10:48] Arbedout:

You know,   I'm terrible.   And the last time when you famously called me a bear and took a nap on my rug, I'm terrible at calling tops and bottoms and understanding what the price is. One thing the one thing I'm certain of is I am terrible at   knowing what a bull market is until after it's happened and say, oh, obviously, that was a bull market. So part of me thinks a lot of the scenes, the spectacles I saw in Bitcoin Vegas that I'm looking at on Twitter feel like top signals and maybe this was the bull market and it's already passed. Or maybe   maybe it's got more legs and it's gonna go 10 x and then who knows what. I   what I've learned over the years is that the safest thing both   reputationally and more importantly mentally   is to just focus on what really matters, which is 1 BTC equals 1 BTC.  

Who cares what the exchange rate would be at?  

[00:11:42] ODELL:

I I mean,   I was right that you were a bear, though, if I recall correctly.  

[00:11:49] Arbedout:

You were not wrong. Yeah. I remember messaging you right after and saying, we have to edit that clip. They were like I think  

[00:11:55] ODELL:

I think we waited. It was supposed to be released  

[00:11:59] Arbedout:

on this on this specific was it supposed to be released on Halloween? Was it Halloween twenty twenty one? You came in during the the holidays. It was it was cold. I remember that because we were drinking scotch to warm us up, and then we're drinking scotch for other reasons.   I maybe it was Halloween?  

[00:12:14] ODELL:

Well, anyway, it was a it was a we specifically were like that episode, we delayed for, like, two or three weeks.   And from the point I called you a bear to the point we pub and usually, we don't delay episodes.   And from the point I called you a bear to the point we published,   we had been we had been ripping. Like, it was just like, yeah, I was completely right that you were a bear. Yeah. But, so maybe maybe you're a bear again. I mean, I I think   it's kind of hilarious that we're over a hundred thousand dollars.   Yeah. Ross is free. There's a Bitcoin strategic reserve.  

You know, governments are talking about   buying Bitcoin.   The price actually since last dispatch, which was last week,   is up Mhmm. Because I record the sats per dollar,   and it was actually 954   sats per dollar last last episode, and now it's $9.51.   And Twitter's calling top signals is actually kind of a bullish signal.   But all that said, I do agree that, ultimately, at the end of the day, people should just be staying humble and stacking sets and and thinking long term and and and not taking leverage and being very conservative always because, you know, who who the hell knows what Bitcoin price? And it is a weird   this cycle has been   I don't know. It's different. I don't know different how, but it's definitely   a different beast. I I don't think we should really be necessarily comparing it to past stuff.  



[00:13:46] Arbedout:

Right? Yeah. Agreed.  

[00:13:52] ODELL:

Anyway,   we when I first reached out to you, I mean, there's two there first of all, it's great catching up to you. I mean, you're a legend in the space, at least to those who are paying attention.   And you're a good friend, and it's great to catch up.   And now that I'm trying to reduce conference  

[00:14:14] Arbedout:

cycles, I'm trying to, you know, make the podcast more consistent. Well, at least dispatch more consistent because Rev Whole Recap, we've done every week for seven years. Yeah? I've gotta say you've done it the right way. If you wanna reduce conference travel, you just made Nashville the place that other people wanna come to. Yeah. That that's the next level.  

[00:14:32] ODELL:

That was the trick. The trick was,   get people to to visit me   and,   done.   Then I just have a half an hour or twenty minute   twenty minute commute instead of getting on a plane.   That was definitely the move.   But I wanted to talk about your project, Sigbash,   and then you also launched a book.   Yeah. So   so we'll talk about both. I think the best place to start is let's talk start with SigBash. What is what is SigBash? Why should people care? What are you trying to do there?  

[00:15:07] Arbedout:

So   just gonna drop in on that. Okay. Well, I hope we everyone on the on that's watching is familiar with the concept of multisig and what multisig is. If not, I'll Most people are.   Alright. So I don't have to explain   why you would want multisig.   The problem   right now with multisig that I see at least is that you've basically got two models for people who are gonna be in your multisig quorum. You've got friends and family, the uncle Jim model,   where if you want to set up a two of three, you have to find a couple of other friends or family members who you trust   and who are worthy key holders to be a part of your quorum.  

That's great for a lot of scenarios,   and it's not ideal for plenty of other scenarios. You don't wanna suddenly promote your friends and family into de facto,   not financial institutions, but find people who are   playing the role the traditional financial institutions play. Maybe they don't wanna play that role either.   Of course, there are plenty of companies that are willing to be key holders for you. I won't name them,   because   I don't wanna speak ill of them, but I think there's a gap in   the market between that friends and family model and the current financial institution model where   the available keyholders you have that are companies are all   regulated   KYC AML requiring companies that offer you access to the dollar system.  

That's great if you wanna maybe take a a loan against your Bitcoin in a multisig. I can absolutely see a use case for this. But there's probably   to my mind, there is a third use case where you don't want friends and family and you don't wanna dox yourself to a third party. You just want someone else you can trust, some key that you can break glass in case of emergency.   When I   I was thinking about that. Actually,   I'll give you the thought process. It was right after literally, I'm I'm gonna dox myself horribly here. It was right after my daughter was born.   And, I mean, I'm in the hospital room with my wife waiting for them to bring my daughter to us, for the evening.  

Your mind is reeling in that scenario. Either you're taking on this whole new level of responsibility, this whole new chapter of your life. And, of course,   my brain at least ran away screaming for fifteen minutes and started thinking about multisig and how I wanted to use multisig   and why I wasn't using it. I   had why my existing multisig was weren't quite working for me. And I said, someone should fix this problem.   Two months later, when I come up for error because you've got a newborn, I start working on what is now sig bash.   The basic idea is built on top of   it's not my original idea.  

It's Michael Flaxman's idea, what he called blinded xPubs.   I don't love the name of that because it implies blind sign in and blinded xPubs aren't quite that, but I'll explain the concept.   The idea behind blinded ex pub is you can take an XPUB, derive a random path from it,   derive a random path for   it, derive a child key using that random path.   And if you've got the randomness right, the holder of the XPub won't know anything about the child key until you present them the key for signing.   So I thought about that for a bit, and I thought and I thought. And I realized, well, if you bake that into a client server model where the master XPub was on the server and the master ex pub was on the server and the child duration happened   on the client in the user's browser, you could create a key   that the server never knew about at any point in time.  

Why is that interesting? Well,   multisig by design right now, traditionally CDSA multisig,   always, in every case, accidentally doxes you to your Multisig members   because you have to share your expo with them, which means,   everyone else in the forum knows everything about you. They know your they can find out your transaction history and your account balance trivially.   You probably don't want that for a lot of multiseq use cases. Once you realize that, it's pretty limiting multiseq. You have to have this whole other level of trust in the people that you're in the quorum with.   If you solve that problem, now you've got the ability to have a sort of break glass in case of emergency multisig   where you don't have to worry about KYC AML. You don't have to worry about trusting,   some third party.  

You can just   grab a key from them, put them in your quorum, and until you need them, they might not even know that you exist.   So that's the idea behind sig bash. If you go to sigbash.com,   you will see it's you can fill out a quick form, press a button, you'll get a magic ex pub that I don't know anything   about. You can drop down your multisig, and, hopefully, you never need to use it.   And if you never need to use it, I never know anything about you.   Once you get to the point where you use it, of course, you're sharing a PSVT with me, and then I know what you need.   I know your information, but, hopefully, it never comes to that. It gives you that peace of mind that   you can actually have some escape hatch in your multisuke quorum without actually having to involve another person.  



[00:20:03] ODELL:

Right.   So let's think about this in practice. So in practice,   most people when they use multisig, they're doing two of three multisig.   Mhmm.   If   I   if my nephew,   or my friend wants to include me in their multisig, I'm one of three keys, and they hold two keys.   If   if if they don't need me, they can always spend the money they can always spend the money without me because they have two keys.   If they lose one of their keys and they need me, they ask me to sign.   Now in that normal process   and there's there's companies that offer it like Unchained and Casa. But in that normal process,   by me having one key in the quorum,   I always know their balances. So I'm trying to help my buddy out, and I want to hold a key for him just in case something happens to his key or something happens to him. Mhmm. But I have this additional liability of I know exactly how much his savings are,   which and every transaction he makes   Yeah. Which is   super compromising information. And and particularly with friends, like, you really don't wanna know that information. And when it comes to companies,   even if those companies mean well, there can be data leaks. They can be compelled to hand over information.  

That information could then get compromised. And as we've known as as the freaks on dispatch know,   the Bitcoin blockchain is forever. It's gonna outlast all of us. So   a compromise that happens   could affect you down the line ten years from now, fifteen years from now, twenty years from now.   So the beauty of this model with SigBash   is   in a best case scenario,   I have two I have two keys. SIGBASH holds one key.   And if I never lose my two keys, which, let's be honest, in practice, you're not trying to lose keys,   then SIGBASH   knows anything about   my balance my transaction history, anything like that. Now at time of signing, if I if if for some reason I do lose a key and I need SigBash to sign,   then you would know   balance and transaction history, and it would also be backward looking. Like, if there was a bunch of transactions in the past, you would also know that. Right?  



[00:22:23] Arbedout:

Yeah. I can't say too much about future plans, but I can say that at the present, yeah, that's true.  

[00:22:29] ODELL:

Yeah.   Okay. So that's awesome. And to your point about   becoming a father, I will say that   when you're single or even if you're married and you don't have kids yet,   it's easy to be like, well, my threat model is   if I die, like, the Bitcoin dies with me. But as soon as the next generation comes around,   it's it's something that I think every parent, every Bitcoin parent is thinking about, which is   I wanna make sure   the reason I'm stacking Sats is is for my kids and their kids.   And I wanna make sure that they don't   that that they're able to access the Bitcoin if something happens to me.  

But, also, I wanna make sure   that,   they aren't actually an attack vector themselves and can't necessarily   you don't want them to be pressured or you don't want them to be able to necessarily access the funds while you're still alive. And so that's the beauty of multisig. That's why multisig is so is one that is is so powerful and so many people recommend it. I think multisig is great for organizations   because you don't want,   you know, the CEO or one person in an organization like Open Sats to be able to spend the entire treasury.   But it's also incredibly powerful when you're thinking about inheritance and you're thinking about robust security   where you wanna be protected from theft, but also you wanna be able to pass down   Bitcoin over the years.  

Is that a good summary?  

[00:24:06] Arbedout:

Absolutely.   One thing an unrelated anecdote maybe, actually related anecdote I'll add. One of the most clarifying experiences for me as a Bitcoin over the years was working at,   I'm gonna say Bitcoin twenty one twenty twenty one in the conference hall,   working the Unchained booth when I was their VP of engineering and having users come up. And I thought I'd be talking through, like, you know, different technical nuances and what is multisig and all that. The vast majority of the conversations I had were people with that concern, people who said, okay. I've I've been holding this Bitcoin, some of them for years and years, some of them had only gotten to it that cycle, saying, okay. I understand. I get it. I'm a believer.   How do I make sure I pass this on to the next generation?  



[00:24:47] ODELL:

That's the In a safe way.  

[00:24:50] Arbedout:

Yeah.   How do I how do I secure my ease? How do I make sure that when I'm gone,   the people that I care about get to have my stats? That they're not that it's not just a a donation to everyone.  

[00:25:06] ODELL:

So yeah. I mean,   as soon as you have a kid, it's like,   you know, it's the   anyone who and it's not even as soon as you have a kid.   It's like the three months leading up to birth.   I think it's just like when you go into, like, full panic mode. And not full panic mode, but you're like, shit. I have to get my my act together. I need to get my priorities in order. And if you're a Bitcoiner,   that includes   how am I securing my Bitcoin? What is my threat model? How do I do this in a responsible way?   It hits you like a bag of bricks.   So SigVash,   specifically   can we go through the process a little bit? So I go to the site. Sure.  

Go ahead. I go to the site.   It's cool. It asked me very simple questions, like, when would I like it to be signed? It could be when asked, after the state, after this block   height, after passkey authorization.   I assume that's not enforced on a protocol level. That's just something that you're enforcing on your side. Like, we're not gonna sign in that situation.  

[00:26:08] Arbedout:

Yeah.  

[00:26:10] ODELL:

There's stuff like signing of mining hash rate.  

[00:26:13] Arbedout:

That's some people conditions, like lowest  

[00:26:16] ODELL:

Yeah. Only signing of that?  

[00:26:20] Arbedout:

Different so it turns out a lot of different people want multi sig   signing for specific conditions, like, hey. I'd like   an OTC contract that only executes when the price is this much, or I'm doing   sort of OTC hash rate derivatives, that type of thing. Most users won't be into that. I what I've learned is the best will say don't it's either   don't sign until after this date or don't sign until after this price because my   my I'm worried that, the other person in the multisig has paper hands and will sell below a certain price. I don't love that we're a price oracle here, but there were some users that have asked for it.  

[00:26:59] ODELL:

Right.   After this date is is cool for just a simple point of view, it's like   so, like, I give my air one key,   I hold one key,   and,   like, maybe I say, like, twenty years or ten years or whatever, if you don't   if   that one key isn't able to sign with you until I mean, you're enforcing on your side, but it's a simple it's a very simple thing for inheritance. It's, like, very, very clean.  

[00:27:29] Arbedout:

To me, that's the most I mean, there's a tendency I have as an engineer to just build all these different conditions and go down the rabbit hole. But most people would wanna say, you know, after this date, if I'm not if I'm not around, if I'm not not responding, assume the worst.  

[00:27:41] ODELL:

Yeah. I love the idea of just simple tools that users can use in different creative ways.   So then what is   so then I do that, and   I request a key. Yep.   The what is the business model? Like, when do you charge when it comes time to sign? And then how much are you charging? Like, how does that work?  

[00:28:05] Arbedout:

So right now, it's   completely free.   That's that's not gonna be the case,   in the future.   But   if my long term view of the business model is short term,   I wanna get feedback from people who are actually   using multisig,   Trying to understand their use cases. Now that we've enabled just point and click, you get NextPub,   what are you gonna do with that?   We're it's been about twelve months now, so I've gotten a decent amount of feedback. So where I see the business model going is the   the version on the website is gonna be   pretty much free. We might take a transaction fee on signing, but it would be just enough for spam protection.  

And Okay.   So the model I'm thinking of is what CloudFlare did back in the day. I'm not sure how many,   watchers are familiar with it. But the idea is most people will get a free plan.   And then when you actually outgrow the free plan, you want something more like an on premise solution, your own sig bash. You won't you won't want the shared infrastructure. You want   for the people who are using, say, coin based custody   or,   something beefier than,   the friends and family model, they're not gonna wanna share the restructure. They're gonna wanna host their own sig bash internally.   So sigbash.com   will be, hopefully, as long as I can handle it. It'll be free or as minimal as possible, just taking a small transaction fee.  

And it'll be   a way to advertise. You have this capability now. Would you like your own on premise or self hosted version?  

[00:29:42] ODELL:

Then what? Will I just, like, host that on the start nine, or is would it be more complicated than that? I would love to do it on a start nine. You probably  

[00:29:50] Arbedout:

the thing is you on the back end, when we sign,   PSBTs, it's not like those keys live in memory. You have your own air gap signer. So you're gonna need more than one machine.  

[00:30:01] ODELL:

Right.  

[00:30:02] Arbedout:

So  

[00:30:03] ODELL:

Fair enough. If somebody asks because then you just compromise the start like, if I have a start nine, like, sitting on my desk, and you just compromise that. Right? Yeah. Yeah.  

[00:30:13] Arbedout:

I   I'm willing to talk to people   over what their needs are, but if I if you give me the choice between, you know, somebody pays me and I build them something insecure, but it's self hosted, I don't really see the the value in that. I'd rather So are you thinking of that more, like is that more, like, artisanal? Like, are you, like, actually  

[00:30:31] ODELL:

going in and setting up the server and do like, is that a  

[00:30:36] Arbedout:

Yeah. I do a drop in for a day.   Yeah.   I I really don't like the idea of artisanal because one by one, it that ends up being insecure just accidentally. You know? You   you end up having a solution that works for everyone and also this one weird pick me thing that somebody paid you for once. That's a bad idea. I  

[00:30:55] ODELL:

see j c b asking in the chat. It's sig bash dot com. Yeah. Go for it. Asking for the domain. Play around with it. Yeah. I also see Anon.   By the way, Mab 21, highest zap of the day, 10,000 sats. Thank you, sir.   And Anan,   said he still doesn't know how to log into apps with an extension using an iPhone. And at this point, I'm afraid to ask, which is ironic because you just asked the question.   There is   a Safari signer for iPhone on Noster   called NoStash.   I think it's in test flight.   But if you just search NoStash, it should come up.   And then Brian just zapped us a hundred thousand sats and said fat zaps only. Thank you, Brian. Nice.  

I think dude. I mean,   maybe the freaks will hate me for this, but, like, I think you should charge   a small fee   on generating the key in the first place, and then you should charge   something on signing it. And just make it a nice sustainable   project. Like, why   There's something to be said about   about having, like, a monetary incentive and sustainable   I hear SaaS flow to  

[00:32:14] Arbedout:

support it. I hear what you're saying. And I'm of two minds of this. Let's talk through it. You can open Yeah. Business on air.   On the one hand, the steel menu argument, if you don't know what the product is, then you or the product is the argument. You should be suspicious of someone who's just giving away free keys and signing. Right? So just full disclosure, what I'm getting out of this right now is market feedback. I'm finding out from Bitcoiners. Yeah. And are they gonna use this now that you're getting these xPubs? No. Yeah. That makes sense to me right now. Yes.   If I really want this to be useful, then there are two things I have to be mindful of. One is that   if it feels wrong to me to   build a tool that users will rely on, to keep them safe at night and then say, okay. Well, the worst just happened.  

In in case of emergency, break glass. Now I'm going to   take my pound of flesh from you. It feels a little bit exploitative. I need to find a right pricing model where   any user who finds themselves in that in that scenario would say, okay. I'm comfortable paying this fee.   Upfront,   maybe that happens in the future.  

[00:33:22] ODELL:

I My issue my issue is not the if   you pay, you're the product. Yeah. Which, by the way, I think is a little bit of a psyop because there's more nuance to that because you can pay and still be the product, which is, like, what Yeah. Like, x is in YouTube. Like, you're paying and you're still being data harvested   So it's not like a cut and dry rule. The bigger issue for me is   my example earlier, which is   I give a key to my air, and I say he can't sign for ten years. That means I'm relying on you to still have the service in ten years. You need to be. And I I want you to be happy about it and sustainable. Like, I want you to still   like, that's a big task. Like, people don't realize. Like, people look and they're like, oh, like, this guy, like,   has been doing this thing for eight years. Like, great for him. Like, eight years is a long time. Fifteen years is a long time. And, like, to stay focused and to have it well maintained and to have it with good uptime.  

Yeah. It's not that's something I would pay for, and I would feel a little bit concerned that it wouldn't be around   if I wasn't paying for it is kind of my thought process.  

[00:34:34] Arbedout:

Okay. So I'm we're turning this into a user interview. You're obviously you're a great multisig user interview. Let me ask you. Would you be more comfortable on there.   Would you be more comfortable paying upfront or paying at signing time?  

[00:34:50] ODELL:

So Unchained used to have the model where you pay at signing time, and I think they got rid of it.   And what the what they did was it was a percentage   of what   you were signing  

[00:35:01] Arbedout:

Mhmm.  

[00:35:03] ODELL:

Which I think is fair because I think, you know,   presume like, it's not like   it's it's I'm paying you a portion of the money that you're saving me,   because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to access that money.   Like, in that situation, I've already lost my my one of my keys.   Mhmm. And you're actually providing it's almost like a recovery service.   The upfront also kinda makes sense to me. At least I mean, you have all the different conditions, but at least in the after this time has passed. Right? Because   maybe you charge more if it's   and if if I   if I say I   I'm gonna need you to sign after ten years versus after five years, maybe you charge maybe it graduates based on   that time period because then the service if someone comes in   if someone comes in and is like, I'm only gonna want you to sign after twenty years, that's a insane commitment. That's like a marriage level commitment.  

Yeah.   And, like, maybe you should be charging them more in that situation. And I think the user would be I think that's completely reasonable ask of the user.  

[00:36:15] Arbedout:

Okay.  

[00:36:16] ODELL:

And then on the Bitcoin side, in the Bitcoin sense of things,   Satsflow upfront is worth way more than Satsflow in twenty years. Like, what's the price of Bitcoin in twenty years? Yeah. So from from your perspective,   upfront payment, I think,   is more appreciated. So   there's I so I I can go in both directions. And I think maybe the answer is both directions. Maybe the answer is and then the last but not least is, like,   if you don't have upfront payment,   it's so   dedausible.   It's like, I just, like, go and just cancel and request keys from you.  

[00:36:58] Arbedout:

Yeah.   That's absolutely true.   I   here's the thing. I have information that you don't, which is that I've been using this feedback to build   the SIGBash v two.   And I'm Nice. We're luck I'm reluctant to announce new features while I'm still   working on v one.   But I will say  

[00:37:23] ODELL:

Breaking.  

[00:37:26] Arbedout:

Maybe there's a v two in the works. Maybe. Maybe. Do I save that for Marty? Is that for TFTC? Or do we come back and talk about this? No.  

[00:37:33] ODELL:

Screw Marty.   This is this is the real show.  

[00:37:37] Arbedout:

Right? This is   I do like the idea in general of   the user   paying upfront,   but   getting something out of it in return besides just assurance   assurances. Maybe some sort   of maybe you could view that payment as maybe sort of collateral on an insurance policy where if they need to sign, they get it back in the future. May I don't know.   It one of the hard things to   that I have to factor into this is just what you said. Sats are worth a lot more in the future. So if you give me a few sets now and you're asking me to sign in twenty years,   do I hang on to your sets and give them back to you and do   something with them in between? Is that   is   I don't know. I   lots of different users have lots of different opinions what I found. People are very reticent to pay   for things. Bitcoiners are very reticent to part with their stats. And if I'm gonna ask them to do that, I wanna make sure I'm giving them   enough value that I to make it worth their while.  



[00:38:44] ODELL:

What I have noticed is Bitcoiners are   not that hesitant to pay for   insurance or inheritance related stuff, though. Yeah. That's true. That's true.   Yeah. I don't know. I don't like the security deposit thing because then you're just adding another piece on your plate, which is, like, future SaaS   liabilities. Yeah.   And I think you could probably just re the the biggest issue with charging upfront is   this these setups require some creativity on the user part.   And what you really want them to be able to do is create a key,   play around with it Yeah. Load it into Sparrow, make a multisig, and then probably, if they really like it, then do it all over again. Yeah.  

So you kinda have that issue,   which doesn't like, if if you just charge when signing happens,   a percentage of the amount. And the beautiful thing there is you're signing a Bitcoin transaction. So it's like, yeah. I'll sign your transaction. It just has to include this percentage fee to my Bitcoin address and the PSPT.   Mhmm.   And so it's, like, relatively clean.   You kinda solve you kinda solve for a lot of things. But I I think it's definitely something you should consider.   I mean, look. This is all all of this only matters if it's actually a used product and this is successful.   But I would say   that I have a little experience with this with   my,   I had a dead man switch service final message. I remember. That was really cool.  

And,   you know, even if you have a few users, you just feel this massive responsibility   that these people are expecting the service to be up for a while.   And so when we what we did was we charged on a time based base on a time based basis.   Mhmm. And then, like, there was just better options that appeared. And, like, I really think, like,   it just it wasn't gonna be we couldn't, like, ethically maintain it. So we had to give we gave, like, a two year   a two year warning period   of, like, we're gonna keep the service up. We didn't allow new people to join, and it's like a whole thing. So, like, if you're getting this is not something that and I don't   I'm not making   if anyone is going to run a free service for twenty years, you're the type of person that would do it.  

So I'm not, like, making a accusation here or whatever. But my point is is, like, don't just willy nilly   and I don't think you're will you you overthink everything, if anything. But   don't just, like, jump into it because then you're without   having a long term strategy. Like, you should have some kind of long term strategy of sustainability   and why you're gonna keep the service up and  

[00:41:35] Arbedout:

So   totally There's a lot of responsibility.   Should I answer this message in the chat first before I respond to that? Yeah. You can you can answer any message in the chat. Alright. So we've got it here. My permission. Asking what about the task code? All these transactions are a nightmare. No. I am not a tax attorney and I am not your tax attorney, but at least in my jurisdiction, the taxable event is when you cash out into fiat.   If you're just moving the coin from one address to another, that is not   a de facto,   a taxable event. You can certainly construct that in such a way where   you might have   to deal with Well,  

[00:42:10] ODELL:

the the taxable event would be paying you for the service.  

[00:42:14] Arbedout:

Got it. So for me,   got it.  

[00:42:17] ODELL:

And then for for you for you, it would just be regular income tax.   Yeah. And then for the user, they were if they pay a fee, they're supposed to pay cap gains tax on it. Right.   Savings   on the profit.   But I don't think that really like, that's just paying with Bitcoin on things.   That's just  

[00:42:35] Arbedout:

Yeah. It's the same problem with any other anyone else who accepts Bitcoin for payment.  

[00:42:40] ODELL:

Yeah. I don't I think people overthink that a little bit.  

[00:42:44] Arbedout:

What I to a quick response to what you said. What I've been toying around with is the idea that you could have   either   either Cygnet coins would be issued for free, or we would issue what I call exploding keys, where you get a key to toy around with, but   in thirty days, let's say, that key is no longer valid. So you set up I like that. Just to just to kick the tires.   And then anything beyond that, you pay for.  

[00:43:12] ODELL:

Yeah. I like that.   That way, you get the best of both worlds.   Yeah. I mean, maybe   maybe   the best model is up front, so you're not holding money hostage in the future. And maybe   depending on what options they choose, it changes what the price is, and you just have transparent upfront pricing.  

[00:43:30] Arbedout:

Yeah.  

[00:43:32] ODELL:

I will say in the previous unchained model   Mhmm. There was, like, there's weird situation where they pay with fee. There's weird situations where, like,   maybe you didn't lose access to the second key, but you're having trouble recovering it and all this different stuff. And then it puts the user in a weird position where they have to, like, think, like, am I gonna pay 1%   to make this transaction,   or   am I gonna wait two weeks or three weeks and try and figure it out? So it kinda adds, like, a little bit of   mental burden to it.  

I don't know. Upfront, maybe it's cleaner. But I don't know what sig batch v two is. Now I'm, like, curious.   And it seems like you're not gonna are you gonna give us any information? V two. Under promise, over deliver. That's my motto.  

[00:44:20] Arbedout:

So maybe sig bash v two doesn't exist. Maybe maybe I didn't say anything.  

[00:44:24] ODELL:

It sounds like it exists. Well, if if you're planning on doing a major overhaul, then just leave it free for now is what my opinion would be Got it. While you figure while you figure things out.   But I think this could be an incredibly useful service.   It's something that,   I would personally find very valuable,   and I'd be happy happy to pay for it.  

[00:44:49] Arbedout:

I'm glad to hear that. I've been focusing   I took a step back, and I wanted to focus on building something that not just Bitcoiners would use, but   that people who are interested in Bitcoin would use. Like, my mother has been interested in Bitcoin for a decade, and I can't call her a Bitcoin user, which is, at this   at this point, it's a little bit painful for me because of of all the people in the world. You know?   But it's and it's not due to lack of ability on her part. It's that there's a certain   percentage of the population who were never gonna get quite comfortable with the idea of x pubs or seed phrases.   How do we serve them   without   accidentally forcing them to, like, a wild of Satoshi situation into   something where they just Yeah. People who are just comfortable with point and clicking and scanning QR codes and face ID, how do we help them?  



[00:45:38] ODELL:

Well, I mean, the other thing I mean and we live in a brave new world now. I think a lot of people,   when it comes to inheritance, are just going to   which I,   you know, I I want to give them tools that don't make this the case, but a lot of people are just gonna go into, like, iBit or one of the ETFs   and just have, like, Charles Schwab handle inheritance.  

[00:46:03] Arbedout:

Oh, man. This this might I'll try not to turn this into a book talk.  

[00:46:08] ODELL:

Wild Satoshi   for suits.  

[00:46:10] Arbedout:

Yeah.   I   I think it's on us to give users the tools to avoid that scenario. Some people will,   just because it's second nature.   Some people will because of the task implications.   I hope that there is no one who goes the iBit Charles Schwab route because   they found Charles Schwab's   app to be easier to deal with.   You know,   my   my biggest concern is that users go the I have the custodial route or worse, the paper Bitcoin route because that's what I do is. Yeah.   If they go that route just because it's an easier set of buttons for them to click, we'd owe them more than that.  

[00:46:53] ODELL:

I agree. I mean, I think men I think the reality is many users are, though.   Yeah.   And,   we have to push back. I mean, we have to provide better tools is what we have to do. And I think SigVest   is is in the right direction on that front.   Thanks. Working on it. The other piece the other piece there on that topic and by the way, Super Fat Hour, ride or die free, except 21,000 sides. Thank you, sir. Nice.   Is I think I don't know how   how professionalized do you wanna make this service,   but   there's a lot of demand for,   you know, premium customer service kind of thing.  

Yeah. That that people would happily pay for.   Yeah. And we're seeing companies like Start nine, for instance. Right? It's like,   you can their their software is MIT licensed.   Completely false. You can take an old computer. You can flash   flash start nine on it. So it's like people are like, how do they make money? Well, there's a lot of people that for their home server.   And it's not just Bitcoin. It's like, I'm keeping my child's photos. Like, I want to I I want premium   first class customer service,   so that I know that I have have a person I can talk to,   that can guide me through it.  



[00:48:19] Arbedout:

That is the most appealing thing to me, where ideally, I'd like to build a scenario and build the software such that I don't know anything both for the user's,   safety and for my safety. I don't know anything about your balances. I don't know anything about your addresses. I don't know anything about anything. But if you have a problem,   you know who to call.  

[00:48:35] ODELL:

Yeah. So you have that the  

[00:48:38] Arbedout:

the underlying concept of multisig is it gives you peace of mind. It lets you sleep at night knowing you're not just dependent on one key. I think   premium customer support goes hand in hand with that.  

[00:48:49] ODELL:

Okay. Awesome. So, guys, sigbash.com.   Play around with it.   Give Arbed out your feedback. It sounds like it's very much a work in progress, and he's gonna come out with a v two based on your feedback. So what's the best?  

[00:49:03] Arbedout:

Alpha. Don't don't let Marty know.  

[00:49:06] ODELL:

We're live. This is unedited show. I can't I can't remove it after the fact. What,   what's the best way for them to give you feedback?  

[00:49:14] Arbedout:

You can reach out to me on Noster. I'm on primal.net/arbedout,   or if you're still on x, I am too. You can DM me. Twitter.com/arbedout.x.com.  

[00:49:26] ODELL:

Don't   you can't dead name x. Yeah. Zitter.   Yeah. I'll put those links I'll put those links in the show notes. Okay. Now I wanna transition. You released a book.   Yeah. You just, like, Ninja launched a book on us. I saw the post on Nasr. It was it's called Something More Profound. What is this book? What is it about?   Give us the rundown.  

[00:49:49] Arbedout:

Sure. It is about the political economy of network protocols.   And by political economy, I mean,   I'm using a definition I lifted from doctor Susan Strange who wrote States and Markets,   that stuck with me. She   defined political economy as   posing the question, who gets what and why for a given   territory.   So who gets what and why on the Internet?   Network protocols, the basic thesis is the protocols that underlie   the Internet, whether it's TCPIP or HTTP or SMTP or the overlay networks, Tor,   BitTorrent, and, yes, Bitcoin.   The rules that govern all that software   were decided by   developers   and vendors and administrators as a sort of ad hoc process that   was just meant to get the software up and running and working. And   somehow those rules have come to govern our day to day lives, and we as users don't really understand or appreciate how we got there or what impact they have on us. So I wanted to do a deep dive exploration on how we got there and what impact they have on us and what rights we have as users.  



[00:51:00] ODELL:

That's awesome.   And, I mean, you have a I don't know how deep you wanna go here, but you have a lot of experience   Yeah. In   the protocol world.  

[00:51:10] Arbedout:

Yeah.   I started as a baby network engineer back before even   back before BGP was actually widely used.   BGP is the border gateway protocol that governs the   current existing infrastructure of the Internet.   And I sort of jumped in not knowing what I was doing and just knowing I wanted to be more a part of this Internet thing.   And it took me about a decade to realize all the things that I thought were etched in stone in the foundations of the current Internet were very much in flux   and subject to what I think Donald Davies calls it the tussle.   This,   ongoing   fight let's well, yeah, a tussle. There's no other word for it. This push and pull interaction between users, developers, vendors, hardware vendors, software vendors, people like Google and Mozilla, you know, Firefox and Chrome, people like Microsoft and Apple, the operating system vendors, and Us users, all of us deciding   what do we want out of this Internet, what do we want to use it for.  

It it   the inception of the Internet, and I cover this in the book, you can go to somethingmoreprofound.com   and download it for free.   I'm a first time author, so all of the   conversations I had with publishers were sort of kind of tragic.   So I figured, you know, why not just release it for free, download it, and if you like it, great. And if not,   well, don't download it.   And I what I cover in the book is in the beginning, in the sixties and the seventies, the Internet came about as a means for scientists to share resources over the Internet to run their experiments.   They built these protocols so that they could connect their computers together and have more computing power to do things like   run weather simulations.  

Or   there's a popular story about how the Internet was involved,   was   first ambition to   help the United States military withstand a nuclear strike,   by spreading out command and control capability. That's not quite true.   It's more it was more about   researchers being able to connect disparate resources to do things they couldn't in one lab alone. We went from that to academics using Usenet to communicate and share ideas,   and then people started using Usenet to pirate software.   There was that phase of the Internet. Then we used it. Then we sort of went to   email and being able to send electronic messages back and forth.  

Then the next phase of the Internet was the World Wide Web and surfing the web and that idea. And now we're at our current phase of the Internet where we're doing this. Somehow, we're streaming to each other online   and sharing our most personal thoughts on social media.  

[00:53:56] ODELL:

Pretty crazy.  

[00:53:57] Arbedout:

Yeah. And it was all as   all those different areas,   can't as we work through our way through those different areas,   protocols   were adapted, modified,   pushed, and pulled by developers and users and vendors to accommodate these new use cases.   The web browsers we started within the early nineties when I first started my career looked nothing like the web browser I'm using right now to  

[00:54:22] ODELL:

talk to you in this stream.   We've come a long way. I mean Yeah. So first of all,   I love that you released it for free. I feel like it really adds to the,   the narrative of the book even though I haven't read it, but my understanding of the narrative of the book.   And it's true value for value. But you should have some kind of, once again, business on air. Like, there should be, like, a donate button on the website   so people if they find value, value for value, provide.  

[00:54:54] Arbedout:

If you're watching Bitcoin donation. And you like the book and you want to donate, I would ask you to donate to free the four open source developers that we talked about at the top of the model. I my mortgage is paid. My kid is fed. We've got four people in jail, guys. Use your money wisely.  

[00:55:11] ODELL:

You're a legend among men. P2prights.org.   I, so I'm I mean, on that note,   since you're a protocol gray beard,   without a beard,   what   I love that you're using Nostr. What is your opinion on, like, the current state of Nostr and  

[00:55:31] Arbedout:

where we're going? Like, how do you think about it? I love Nostr. Nostr is it's not quite right to call it a,   networking protocol, a new networking protocol because it's   well, first, that's the power in it. It's   the network protocol is uses is WebSockets. It that's why we're able to all access it through existing web browsers. That's actually a great idea. It's piggyback on top of the existing web infrastructure.   What it brings on top of it is a shared encoding system. All of us understand that events have to look a certain way and so   and they have to be tagged a certain way. So different developers can build different tools that all consume the same content.  

And it also has a entirely new public key infrastructure. We all have our end pubs instead of having to get SSL certificate certificates, which is,   what the normal web relies on. I think that's incredibly powerful. I think we've just scratched the surface of it.   I think,   to me, the   we're in the very early days of Nostra.   Where we're at right now is a great version of to me,   the initial,   boost in Nostra adoption came from,   and correct me if I'm wrong, you're an early Nostra guy as well. So   Yeah. What I saw was there was originally the   Bitcoin hackers Mastodon instance, way before when Twitter was still a thing. People were still start getting,   were unhappy with Twitter, and Mastodon started being the first sort of alternative. And then we all realized, wait a minute. This is just all the different problems that it's a federated fiefdom instead of a single a single king rule in us we've got. Yeah. It's like MBK instead of Elon. Yeah. And MBK is great. Don't get me wrong. I but   he also did not want to be in that position of being the de facto, not Elon.  



[00:57:16] ODELL:

Yeah.   And nothing was signed. Like, you had to completely trust him. It was Yeah.  

[00:57:21] Arbedout:

Yeah. Complete false start. Yeah. And he would I mean, to his credit, he was using the best available open source tool at the time, Mastodon.   Nostra was not necessarily a response to that. Fijoff, to my knowledge, did not say, oh, you know what? We should build something better. But a lot of the users who were dissatisfied with Twitter and had already gone through that master on steps,   jumped on to Noster as the next step.   So   what that means is the original one, we're still in this late phase now, this first epic of Noster where   it's we're seeing it as, like, a alternative to Twitter, Mastodon,   social media, microblogging thing. I think it's so much more powerful than that. I think everyone having their own end pubs and signing their own messages and using that as a source of identity is   what we had hoped PGP would be back in the nineties with the idea of the web of trust.  

We we just managed to bootstrap it organically   with Nostra.   I think But so  

[00:58:17] ODELL:

on that note, I mean so this is a conversation I have with a lot of people where they're like,   I'm really excited   about the other stuff.   You know, Nostra stands for notes and other stuff transmitted by relays, but not necessarily the social aspect. Would you not agree   that the reason we've seen limited success with Nasr where we didn't really see the uptick on PGP even after years and years of tooling   is that we have the shitposts. Like, I I feel like the shitposts are the bootstrapping   mechanism  

[00:58:51] Arbedout:

The shitposts.  

[00:58:52] ODELL:

The social graph. Yeah.   Because how are we gonna exchange end pubs if you don't have like, this isn't is that the key difference?   I mean, there's other key differences. But, like, why is why will Nasr succeed?   Or why does Nasr have the potential of succeeding? Because I do not think it's inevitable   where PGP has failed.  

[00:59:14] Arbedout:

I think   my answer to that is we're yeah. Bootstrapping   I don't wanna say bootstrapping trust, but bootstrapping an alternative to the PKI, the public key infrastructure.   Getting clusters of end pubs together and finding ways for us to discover end pubs and this idea of, oh, well,   I'd at least know I Matt gave me his end pub either on the stream now or on a business card, and I'm noticing that is following a bunch of other people.   And I recognize their names. I'm not gonna dig into their end pubs, but I if Matt trusts them, they're in my web of trust. And I can at least   and spreading out from there,   we build this core web of end pubs, and then we start building more and more use cases because a lot of these people are gonna be only tangentially   interested in the shitposts.  

They're gonna wanna do other things. I think   the problem with shitposts is they're not their shit. It's that their post. It's it's text. Text is No. Not necessarily the   most widely accessible medium for people. People want,   Internet users these days want images. They want video. It's all about TikTok and Instagram.   I think building and I've seen Nostogram, of course. But building   the   next   generation of tools that rely on Nostra is gonna be, I think,   it's gonna go beyond social micro micro media stuff and sharing media between users who understand. Are you familiar  

[01:00:36] ODELL:

are you familiar with Blossom?  

[01:00:39] Arbedout:

I am not, actually. I've heard that once, but you're not the first person to ask me that, though. So now So Blossom  

[01:00:46] ODELL:

Blossom was integrated   into a bunch of clients.   Primal has it. Nostra has it.   I think Amethyst has it now.   And it's a it's a very simple spec. Just like Gnostr is a very simple spec,   Blossom is basically is is nostrifying   media.   Mhmm. So the the spec is   the spec is basically   a video,   a a video or a image   is hashed   just like   the text posts are hashed. Mhmm.   And then it's uploaded to a centralized server just like we host media currently.   But as a result, because it's hashed and then it's signed by the end pub,   you know you have integrity   and you know who who originally posted it. You know, who who posted it and you have integrity checks because you know the file hasn't been changed. And then you can easily mirror it. Right? So,   if you're using Nasjira, for instance, you can upload to the Primal Blossom server even though you're using you're not using Primal. And then you can automatically mirror it to the to the,   the nostr dot build   Blossom server, which is a different media host. And then technically, anyone can save those   save those events   and save save the video. So, like, every time I upload to dispatch, for instance, it's hashed and it's signed by my key.  

Anyone anywhere in the world can keep a copy of that. And   if someone like AID, you can always, in the future,   check that that file hasn't been changed, and you can mirror it everywhere. And so you don't have to, like, really it kind of   solves similar problems that IPFS   attempted to solve. Mhmm.   But does it in a much simpler way? Because it's not actually handling distribution.   It's it's just handling   integrity and authenticity   on whether or not the original file existed.  

[01:02:52] Arbedout:

Maybe that's all we need.   I think   just thinking out loud here, but from what you described,   I'm guessing the way that that ends up evolving if it takes off is that you'll have centralized sites that don't that aren't relays,   that don't subscribe to it. They're republishing that content.   And as long as we've got,   in our web browsers, the extensions that allow us to verify the end pub and the hash content,   maybe that's delivering most of the value proposition of Nostra to people who are never gonna be on a relay.  

[01:03:22] ODELL:

Yeah. And, I mean, you don't even have to like, for instance, like, promo right now, you press upload video.   Like, the user doesn't even realize it's happening.   Nice. Right? It's like that's one of the cool parts. Like, same with just regular text posts. Right? It's like, with PGP, it was always very clunky.  

[01:03:39] Arbedout:

Yeah.  

[01:03:40] ODELL:

But most users of Monster don't realize that, you know, there's a hash of the message and then signed. Or maybe they do at this point in the adoption cycle, but they won't. And same with the media. So I I think,   the combination could be quite powerful.  

[01:03:57] Arbedout:

Yeah. I agree. Now I have to really check out Blossom once we get off this. I'm sort of aching to I'm not gonna I know people can see me, so I'm not gonna open it in a new tab and start banging on it.  

[01:04:06] ODELL:

Maybe. And, obviously,   obviously, I save photos and videos, but it's a simple spec. Like, you can just use it for any type of data. You can do it for PDFs.   You know, you can do it for research papers.   You can you can do it for all sorts of things   that you want   to distribute widely,   be relatively censorship   resistant, and not,   and not have to worry about deep fakes and all the AI stuff that is   going to fall on all of us like a wall of bricks Yeah. That I think people don't realize.  

[01:04:39] Arbedout:

I was thinking about   that when you, when you were describing it, like, there's the there's two sort of approaches to that problem. One is the world coin approach, where we're gonna scan everybody's eyeballs and that's how we'll guarantee authenticity.   But if you trust   someone's end pub,   if you're willing to say, okay, this end pub is this person, suddenly you've solved the whole class of deep fake AI problems.  

[01:05:02] ODELL:

So where do you just to put a pin in this Nasr conversate or, like, how do you think about   are we at a good spot? I go,   you know, up and down in terms of   optimistic and frustrated,   on Nasr development? Like, do you think we're in a good spot in terms   of development, tooling, adoption?   Should we be concerned?  

[01:05:26] Arbedout:

Should we I think, Gnostr Yeah. By its design, it's and this is one of the frustrating things. It's   it solves a core problem   with the traditional web experience.   Right now, people are sort of okay with that experience with relying on centralized servers for public keys,   as and as social tickets and being censored on social media. There's gonna have to be some sort of traumatic event for   people for another wave of adoption, I think, for people to join us and say, oh, here is why   why this is worth using.   It's frustrating to wait to realize that or maybe not realize. Maybe I'm just maybe it's just my opinion.  

But I think   technologies like this end up being adopted. You see adoption of things like Tor   when states crack down on traditional Internet communication.   You're gonna see rises in use of it of   Nostra when you start seeing things like age verification being implemented on websites, when you start seeing   when We're starting to see the early days of that. Yeah. I've definitely there have been rumors this hasn't happened yet, but they've been talking about basically KYC for x. You You're gonna have to update your driver's license if you wanna be To to protect the children. Right. Of course. Is it not national security?  

[01:06:42] ODELL:

It's is it is it It's fun it's funny because, like,   as a as a father,   social media is one of my biggest concerns,   with my kids. It's like I don't   I'm I'm really conscious about screens. I'm conscious   about the addiction elements. I'm conscious about the privacy concerns and the surveillance concerns.   But I just as a freedom   as as a freedom lover, like, I think that's a parent's responsibility.   And I could quickly see   I mean, it's the age old meme. Right? It's like, how do we package this? Do we package this as national security or protecting the children? But I I think that's probably the most likely vector we see,   increased KYC through the Internet, which is the only way we can prevent people 13 from using Facebook, for instance,   is if we KYC everybody.  

Yeah. Because otherwise, a a kid can get through it.  

[01:07:46] Arbedout:

Yeah. And It's a weird weird place.   Yeah. And if that happens, I imagine there'll be a whole slew of people who say, I'm absolutely not gonna give Mark Zuckerberg   my passport and my bank account details, and I'll get the KYC information he wants. I'm not gonna have Sam Altman scan my scan my eyeballs.   What can I do instead?   I think Yep.   I think the tooling   right now is in place for Nostra to start helping those people.   But when that wave comes, I imagine we'll see what we saw with Bitcoin in, like, 2011, '20 '13 when WikiLeaks kicked the hornet's nest. There's gonna be a flood of people who realize they need an alternative,   and then they're gonna hit some choke point that we haven't envisioned yet.  

I think what was the bugbear in 2013? It was transaction malleability and Segwit. It'll be something maybe maybe it's, key rotation. Who knows?   And then we'll have to that's the tussle. They'll show up, and we'll have to meet that challenge, and we'll go back and forth. And   in ten years, the suits will arrive to start selling us Nostra bonds.  

[01:08:49] ODELL:

I mean, with that topic, let's let's pivot over to Bitcoin.   Sure.   Protocol gray beard, long time Bitcoiner.   Oh, shit.   I,   the yeah. The people listening we have way more listeners on the podcast feed.   So they're all just gonna assume that you have just a massive gray beard. I keep saying it over and over again.   The   where do you how do you think about where are we at Bitcoin? Like, are you positive? Are you negative?   Are, you know, are we in a good spot? Could we be in a better spot five years ago if you were thinking about today?   How we doing?  



[01:09:29] Arbedout:

I think we're doing great.   Could we be in a better spot? Sure. I'm not   sure that,   there's much we can do about it as Bitcoin besides   trying to make it as easy as possible and as normal as possible for people to run their own nodes and to hold their own coins.   I think there's a lot of distractions,   whether it be   things like   not that I'm against or oppose things like bit bonds or the strategic Bitcoin reserve   or   inscriptions or ordinals   or OP return or whatever people are talking about on social media these days.   But   I think that's sort of incidental   to what we should be focusing on, which is making sure as many people as possible can hold their own coins and run their own nodes. That's the entire value proposition.  

As more and more use of companies in Bitcoin, I think it's incumbent on us to make it   easier and easier for them to   manage their nodes and   to hold their own funds. I think start nine is a great step in that direction. I you showed me on a nodal.   The first node that I that I got from someone else was a Before then, I was running my own node on my laptop. And I graduated from that to a and my next upgrade was a start nine, which I'm not gonna show you in my room right now. It's right next to me.   Each iteration of node that I've had has been easier and easier to run to the point where the start nine is   I'm pretty sure   I wouldn't say completely point and click, but it is astounding how few buttons I had to click to get up and running with the node.  



[01:11:00] ODELL:

Yeah. They're about to make it I mean, I'm not allowed to talk about it, but it's gonna get even easier pretty soon.  

[01:11:06] Arbedout:

That's great.   I think   in terms of wallets, what I've seen lately out of, say, what Nunchuk is doing and how they set up, music too is really exciting to me.   Sparrow has come leaps in that from the last time you and I talked to where Sparrow was, where it is now is astounding to me.   I think we're in a great position in terms of how easy it is to run your own self sovereign wallet and run your own self sovereign node.   My biggest concerns,   I would say,   are that we don't have that   we, the node runners, are being   outpaced   by the people who are just in it for number go up.  

It's not a sin for them to be in it for number go up, but we need to   as much as possible,   when people are when people come for the money, we wanna make sure that they stay for the freedom tech. If you're in it for Bitcoin at 6 figures, that's great. A start night node is a small investment in this thing that you're in this journey you're going to take.   I'm not sure that there's anything that   that's on my wish list from a   protocol point of view.   You know what? I'm catching myself.   There there are things that I might want.   I would   there's not anything I would wanna I look. I do a monthly thing at PubKey here in New York City.  

I'm very   religious about being impartial there. I'm gonna bring that same energy here. I'm not gonna tell people that I want a certain change made to Bitcoin because then people will say, oh, so and so on the Internet said, and now that's my opinion. I think it's more important. Is your monthly  

[01:12:49] ODELL:

is your monthly thing, like,   is it, like, bid devs ask? Or We I mean, obviously, there's New York bid devs. Right? Yeah. That's a this is separate.  

[01:12:58] Arbedout:

Yeah. We don't compete with bit devs at all. We'd and I love bit devs, but for a lot of people, it comes off as being, like, the Latin mass where you go and you don't quite understand what they're saying, but you're there as part of the incident. Yeah. This is You just sit there and everything goes over your head. Yeah. We purposely will bring on a guest for talk about whatever topic that people are talking on social media, and we will talk through and we'll go through the audience and do QA and make sure everyone understands and we're on the same page. Okay. So it's the middle ground. It's a it's like, in person dispatch.  

[01:13:27] ODELL:

Yeah. Because I try and make dispatch, like, the middle ground between bit devs and,   a little bit more accessible. I love bit devs. Don't get me wrong. I think that's where we met.   Oh, no. We met before that. Yeah.   Well, I was still pretending to live in Austin.   We met during consensus.   Consensus   when it was in New York, maybe 2019   2018.  

[01:13:52] Arbedout:

Why are you doxing me, bro?  

[01:13:55] ODELL:

I don't   know. What what am I doxing?   I I I I live in New York.   You just said you do a monthly thing at PubKey. I do it from New Jersey.  

[01:14:05] Arbedout:

Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. That's right now. New Jersey.  

[01:14:09] ODELL:

I,   okay. I mean, on the note of Bitcoin I mean, I think look.   I think percentage wise, the people that care about Bitcoin as Freedom Money is definitely   trending down.  

[01:14:23] Arbedout:

Mhmm.  

[01:14:24] ODELL:

But I think   from absolute numbers, we have more people that care about Bitcoin and use Bitcoin as freedom money than we've ever had before. Like, it's not even close. Like, that absolute number is trending up. And the beauty   of Bitcoin to me has always been,   like, effective. It's it's hard to comprehend, but it's like minority veto power. It's like you just you   it it it empowers the minority   to make sure that there's no change. It's very hard for even   a a large majority to change Bitcoin at the protocol level. That's, like, the core value prop. Right? So as long as we have, like, this   ride or die base,   it's it's hard to   enact negative changes in a big way,   which is what we have going for us.  



[01:15:12] Arbedout:

Yeah. I agree with that. And that's why you see a lot of   again, this is the the term that I quote in the book is the tussle. Why you see a lot of the conversations we're having right now about OP returns and things like what Bitlayer is doing with setting up this agreement where they're gonna send nonstandard transactions to the minders.   It's very hard for us to change consensus, so people will sort of try to find ways around that and other people,   say,   oh, that's not what I signed up for. That's actually we're finding out the difference right now, I feel, between   policy   and consensus   and convention, where   policy is what your node,   sort of agrees to do. Consensus is what your node has to do, and convention is what we all just sort of assumed was gonna happen.  

Because consensus is so hard to change, we're now focusing on fighting about policy and convention.  

[01:16:01] ODELL:

Yeah. I mean   so when we were when we were first when we first met, one of the first conversations we had when we first met in undisclosed location at undisclosed time, one of the first conversations we had was   about   protocol improvements that could improve privacy.  

[01:16:18] Arbedout:

Mhmm.  

[01:16:22] ODELL:

Like, that's I mean, do you think we'll have any significant protocol changes ever in anything?  

[01:16:29] Arbedout:

For anything?   I think it gets harder in  

[01:16:34] ODELL:

I mean, I'm speaking sorry. Continue. I'm I'm speaking it's not absolutes, but just like anything's like, I feel like we're kind of   near ossification.   But, I mean, ossification is a strong word. But  

[01:16:46] Arbedout:

So let's talk about ossification,   because I cover this in the book.   The Okay. The first time ossification,   the term appeared in the literature,   was   in the mid nineties.   I think 1995 was the first paper,   when Internet Protocol researchers realized, wait a minute. So many people are using the TCPIP that is actually pretty difficult for us to change it. Not because   everyone can't agree on a change, but because what would it mean to change when you've got all these boxes and all this middleware that is sort of assuming things about the behavior of TCP, what would it mean to push through a change?   Are you gonna break several you can't ship software and say, hey. Right. This will break a whole bunch of things and then expect people to run it because plenty of important people will say, you know what? I'm not gonna run the thing that breaks things for all my users.  

I think the important thing to   remember or realize from that history is that ossification is not an end state. It's a process. Ossification is we're there right now. It's happening. It's the process of it's not becoming ossified. There's no end goal where you finally make no changes. It's the where changes end up being pushed out to the edges where they're using a user to make.   Consensus   when we talk about obfuscations in Bitcoin, we're talking about how hard it is to make consensus changes.   I think what we're seeing is that it's becoming harder and harder to make consensus changes. There are longer and longer gaps   between soft works,   and   it's harder and harder to   get stakeholders to agree on what the next soft work is. It's   interesting in to me in that   there was never   originally, there was never this baked in idea of there being a next soft fork. There was always in debate and bit nine the idea that you could have multiple soft forks in flight, that people would have different things that they would wanna activate at different times. But in practice,   as a community, we always wanna fight about one thing, and we don't have, like, energy to fight about two different things. So it's always gonna be the next soft fork. There'll always be the next thing. That's ended up being an interesting gating factor because once you have the next soft fork, the there's a second question of what should the next soft fork be. Are you the type of person who are you the type of person who, makes your bed first thing in the morning? Because if you are, I bet your next soft fork is gonna be the great success cleanup. You wanna make sure things are nice and tidy. Are you the type of person who, like, wakes up, gets going, and immediately starts playing video games, and you want the next big, fast, and shiny thing, and you wanna shift to yesterday and you're annoyed that it hasn't?  

As we have more and more personalities and more and more different sets of incentives, the idea of what the next software should be,   it becomes harder and harder to come to consensus on.   I don't think we've seen the last change. I think one of the things I covered was   in the wake of the Snowden revelations in 2013, whenever Snowden,   revealed that the NSA and the GA HQ had been spying on everyone   on the web for years and years using HTTP.   There was a sudden consensus. Wait a minute. We should all switch to HTTPS.   HTTPS had been around for decades, but we'd all sort of said, oh, it's hard and it's expensive and   we don't really need it unless we're doing credit cards and passwords, unless you have a global passive adversary who's sweeping up all of your data.  

Once   once, Eversenr came out with those regulations,   the mass migration to an entirely new protocol, a mass consensus change happened relatively quickly. It took a decade to get to 95%, but 50% was pretty quick.   I'm bringing that example up because if there were some threat, like, if tomorrow,   there were something announced that we actually had,   viable   quantum computers that were actually capable of running Shor's algorithm and actually threatened ECDSA. I don't think that's happening anytime soon for the record, but that's since that's everyone's top of mind thing, if there were an actual real credible thing, I think we as a community would say, okay. Well, we know what the next software is. Guess what we're shipping?  

[01:20:52] ODELL:

Right.  

[01:20:52] Arbedout:

In the absence of a threat, it becomes,   well, what would you like? What would you want?   And   the options right now that I'm aware of, we saw we covered this in the last month's, it's called coin based, by the way, our monthly meetup at PubKey. I I really should have plugged that now.   The last coin based, we talked about   the different software discussions at Up Next,   and there were three. There's the great consensus cleanup.   There's the great script restoration, and then there's CTBCSFS.   I don't think that anyone   disagrees that the great consensus cleanup would be nice, but none of the threats that it mitigates are seen as being particularly present.  

So Right.   The next thing is create script restoration.   And after that is CTVCSFS.   And that comes down to that discussion comes down to, well,   what sort of what flavor of covenants do you want, which turns into what do you want out of covenants? And I think that's where we're stuck on as community. I think there's the general mind here right now is what we're fighting about for the next soft work is something covenant related.  

[01:22:01] ODELL:

But And there's just, like, a lot of different then that gets subdivided within that. Right? So it's   it makes it even harder to find any kind of real consensus.  

[01:22:10] Arbedout:

Yeah. Yeah. Because covenants enable so many things. So now it becomes, well, what do you want out of covenants? What do you want to give to users? Why aren't users actually are is there demand for this? Is this just are we just going in circles?   I I don't have an opinion one way or the other on a particular covenant proposal. I do think covenants are neat.  

[01:22:34] ODELL:

So, I mean, why   why should you why should we care about covenants?  

[01:22:39] Arbedout:

Why should you care about covenants? Okay.   That's a great question.   Covenants enable several things.   One,   there are two reasons I'll try to distill for everyone   watching right now why you might wanna care about covenants. The first is that they, in theory,   enable lots of new and interesting second layer layer two constructions.   They make they allow us to make layer two   the layer two experience for users much more user friendly and less interactive and provide stronger security guarantees.   Going into more detail than that would be a whole separate rip. Right. Fair enough.   The other reason is that it allows you to bind coins with, certain conditions. So instead of saying, hey, like, CignaBash, please don't sign this coin until this day. You can actually bake into the protocol and say, this coin isn't getting spent. Well, we can do that already. We have time locks, but you can bind other conditions. Like,   this this coin isn't being spent unless this transaction meets these requirements.  



[01:23:38] ODELL:

Without the trust of a centralized party like SegWit?  

[01:23:42] Arbedout:

Yeah.  

[01:23:44] ODELL:

And the on the previous part about layer two stuff, I think it's important for new people to realize that we wouldn't have had Lightning without SegWit.   Right. Like, so there is some precedent here that there was a soft fork that was done,   to make that make Lightning possible in the first place. And now   I think most people   it would blow their mind if we like, they just take lightning for granted. Like, of course, we have lightning.   Yeah.   On this topic,   you know, the hard part   of soft forks   is activation.   Mhmm.  

And the really   crazy thing to wrap your head around is the idea of consensus,   because you don't really know if we have consensus until after   after you activate it.   You'd there's no way to objectively know that, actually, an overwhelming majority of the network is motivated and supportive of a change.   You're kinda just measuring tea leaves. There's no   there there's there's there's no easy way   or concrete way to actually measure consensus.   And so,   historically,   the Bitcoin   stakeholder base,   people that care and use Bitcoin and rely on Bitcoin,   not people that like stake coins,   has been smaller and   a little bit and more aligned. Right? Like,   the user base is broadened. Right? Like, now not not, you know now Larry Fink owns Bitcoin.  

Right?   We're in a completely different world. Now, you know,   the,   Pakistan wants to have a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Where the the   the views of of the broader stakeholder base are way, way, way broader than ever before.   And   because it was more focused and more   there was more commonality, that Venn diagram of users was more overlapped.   We've never had a soft fork activated   that was contentious.   This is true. And so   if we   my concern   is that   if   and, you know, there's some people in the community that will argue semantics about my phrasing here. So I'm trying to be very deliberate about how I say it.   My concern is that we activate a soft fork   that doesn't have   consensus.  

We think it has consensus. That's why we're activating it. But it doesn't have consensus.   The response for the people that aren't   supportive of that soft fork is actually causes a hard fork after the fact.   Because the only way you can stop a soft fork   or   I've been told that it's not a hard fork. It's a chain split.   It's a chain split. You would have a chain split in that situation, which is,   for all intents and purposes, is,   a hard fork. You would have a chain split as a response to that. And so my question to you is   very controversial question.  

Yeah. But Is   is the path forward actually   delivered hard forks?   Because the problem with the delivered hard fork is you don't have backwards compatibility   on node software.   Mhmm. But the beauty of a deliberate hard fork is that actually it's really clean.   Right? Because if you have Bitcoin,   then you have Bitcoin equivalent amount of Bitcoin on both chains. There's not many   knock on, like, unforeseen   side effects that could happen. You kinda know what the results will be. Then the question is, you know, which chain becomes dominant? Because I don't think one side I don't think both sides survive. Right? I think   the lesson of chain splits is that   one side will have, you know, 99%   of value.  

Well, over time. Right? Like, if you look at BCash versus Bitcoin, it's, like, ninety nine to, like, point point one.  

[01:27:48] Arbedout:

Yeah.  

[01:27:50] ODELL:

I think What are your thoughts on that?  

[01:27:52] Arbedout:

I think hard fork should be the absolute last resort, but they shouldn't be something to be scared of.   If we find ourselves stymied on the next soft fork for   an interminable amount of time,   and   we realize something and I don't see this yet about covenants at the moment.   We realize that there's some feature that we don't just want or would be nice, but it's something we actually need   to survive or whatever we define survival as,   then I don't think a hard fork is something to be scared of if the alternative is dying. I don't see that threat right now. I again, I hate to use the quantum stuff as the bugbear, but that's the threat that everyone is in everyone's mind. Right.   So let's say it's that. If it came down   to we have to do a hard fork to save Bitcoin from   to,   fork in post quantum signatures   or we watch Bitcoin die,   I think we'd probably see that play out.  

The difficult thing about a chain split is you have to   it comes down to what economic weight is behind which nodes on which chain. If you have Yeah.   A bunch of early Huddlers and the exchanges on one chain and everyone else is on the other chain,   even though the first chain has roughly small number of people, if it's got enough hash power and enough nodes actually transacting economic weight behind it,   it might end up being the it might end up winning. It might end up being the more valuable shan.   That's   by design.  

Not sure that it's optimal.   Avoiding epistemic questions like this is   sort of top of mind for anyone who wants to avoid a hard fork. You want everyone to get on the same page and say, hey. We're doing this soft fork, and here are the reasons why.  

[01:29:39] ODELL:

But,   I mean,   once again, like   so,   a product of my success in the space is that there's a lot of conspiracy theories about me. So I wanna just be very clear.   And none of the conspiracy theories lack validity, but, of course, anyone who's   a target of conspiracy theories would say that.   I more   I I sit in the place of I lean towards   no change   on the protocol level unless it's absolutely necessary, like, overwhelming majority.   I'm, you know, I'm not gonna use my,   quote, unquote, influence, which I don't think I have as much as the haters would think I have,   to push through a change. I actually am looking at it from the opposite perspective. So   to me, what is more dangerous   is a malicious soft fork in a lot of ways or a not maybe not malicious, but, like, a forced soft like, a soft fork that is pushed   against the majority   than a hard fork. Like, a hard fork to me is way cleaner   because  

[01:30:50] Arbedout:

because you forced the choice. I see.  

[01:30:53] ODELL:

Because   the response the response to a soft fork you don't like is effectively forcing a chain split. The the responders have to do the hard fork, not the people changing it. Mhmm.  

[01:31:05] Arbedout:

Right? Yeah. Am I thinking about it wrong? Or No. I I agree with that.   Well, let's let's make this not theoretical. What's the malicious soft fork that we're doing? Because we have to Okay. So let's  

[01:31:19] ODELL:

let's say that the powers that be   will really want CTV.   Okay. Right?   Because I think Quantum's a little bit, you know, whatever, out there a bit. Yeah.   They want CTV. And so they contact   80% of the miners, and they just soft fork CTV in.   The only response if we don't want CTV is to chain split it.  

[01:31:45] Arbedout:

Okay.   Well, then it becomes we're not fighting against CTV, we're fighting against the de facto minor cartel taking over.   Yeah.   So it would be hard forking if the miners were rebelling.   I don't think that's anything to be scared of. Let me put it that way. And hang on. With that note, give me a second to pause because I need to plug in. We're running out of battery here.  

[01:32:09] ODELL:

You're good.   Freaks, if you're enjoying the show,   share with friends and family.   Cielo Dispatch is available in all your favorite podcast apps. You can just   search CIL dispatch, click that nice subscribe button. It does help.   Leave a good review or a bad review. I didn't re reviews. I'm not gonna tell you to leave a good review.   It does help. Okay. It looks like ArvDOT's back. I used it to show the show.   You're good.  

[01:32:50] Arbedout:

Let me let me think about this. I'm   on the fly. Okay. So if we're   if we've gone to the minors to   fork in CTV and we're going around the node runners, how do we deal with that? Is that   are we hardworking them out of the equation?  

[01:33:08] ODELL:

Yeah. I mean, you would have to force a chain split.  

[01:33:11] Arbedout:

Right.  

[01:33:13] ODELL:

We've never seen   once again, I don't think we've because Segwit was, like, kind of controversial,   but all the all the people that were against it went to BCash.   Right. Like, there was no there was a separate hard fork that happened pre SegWit activation.  

[01:33:29] Arbedout:

Yeah. The August 1,   the BCH. Yeah.  

[01:33:39] ODELL:

So we've never had that situation,   and it kind of like, okay. Let's, like, let's say you didn't like   Taproot.   Mhmm. Right? So you you didn't update your note.   Well,   at this point, like, if you haven't updated your node to a Taproot spec node, like, you're not   validating or seeing a lot of transactions.   Right. Like, you just don't even know they exist. Like, is is that opt in? Like, that almost doesn't feel opt in.   But,   fortunately, we have you know, we had overwhelming   support for Taproot. There wasn't really,   opposition towards that. So it's, like,   entering this new era   from a from a point of view of someone who wants, you know, just a really stable   money that I protocol that I can rely on,   there I think there's a decent argument   that deliberately   saying, you know, in two years, there's gonna be this hard fork,   and you you can choose which way you wanna go   is is, in a lot of ways, could be cleaner,   if if we can't actually   get to a point, which I think is kind of in less than, like, an overwhelmingly, like, death Bitcoin situation. It's gonna be hard to get to, like, a 95%   consensus on the software again. It's impossible to measure.  



[01:35:09] Arbedout:

Yeah.   It might be cleaner. I don't think it's gonna be possible. I think setting a flag day for everyone to   drop dead date is going to lead to a bunch of nodes dropping offline,   and a bunch of other people just deciding they don't wanna take part just because they're   they don't want to   they want to abstain. They don't wanna go one way or the other.  

[01:35:31] ODELL:

But then that chain dies.   Yeah.   Anon just zapped us 21,000 sats. Thank you, sir. I don't know. I   it's a it's an interesting it's an interesting   thought process. Like, I just don't I I don't know.   Like,   I think people don't realize, like, anyone can hard fork if you want to. Yeah. Like, I we can just do a hard fork today. No one would go along with us. Yeah.   In a lot of ways, a soft fork can be especially if pushed from a certain  

[01:36:06] Arbedout:

group of people, could be more insidious. No? More forcer? Well Yeah. Let's go back to your Taproot example. You say it's not if,   I didn't go along with Taproot upgrade, let's say. I didn't agree with it. I haven't upgraded my node. I'm running an old version. And I'm not gonna see my node's not gonna see or validate a bunch of, valid transactions. It's just gonna see them as any anyone can spend.   But I'm still able to send my coins to non Taproot addresses. I'm still able to see your coins from Taproot addresses.   Is that how non opt in is that? Is it   I've chosen not to take not to upgrade, so I'm not   taking part in I'm not validating tab root transactions.  

Right. I can't   do I can't,   engage in transactions with those addresses or with people who are Taproot only, but I'm still part of the network. I I have some Damn profitably mine. Yeah. That's true.   At that point, I'm not seeing any of the those nice juicy Taproot  

[01:37:05] ODELL:

fees.   Yeah.  

[01:37:07] Arbedout:

But I'm still holding my own,   keys. I still have my own coins. I'm still able to do something with them. I guess the I have a limited subset of options, though. I I can basically   eventually, if it goes on long enough, let's say, ten years down the line, my only I'm I'm gonna be in the same,   boat as the page two pub key people are who had who set up, wallets back in 2013. My really only option is to switch to a new wallet or cash out.  

[01:37:34] ODELL:

Yeah.   I don't know. It's just   something I've been thinking about lately.   Like, I feel like   yeah. I don't know.   I mean, I deleted my ex account, so, like, I lost, like, all this   history. But I as ballsy.   No. What's worse than that is, like, the history   Yeah. Of all the Oh, yeah.   All the posts and conversations and discussions, particularly around the twenty seventeen fork wars. I don't know. I didn't think about that. But I think I mean, I've been very consistent about it in that   I don't think hard forks are something to be afraid of. Like, I think,   because ultimately, at the end of the day, you have agency on whether which chain you decide to go on, and you have equivalent Bitcoin on both sides.  

And   they'll be   if if it's   if it's a strongly pushed hard fork, you would have   volatility, short term volatility.   But that's also, you know, the same type of risk if, like, Michael Sailor just started, like, dumping his Bitcoin. Like, we'd have significant   volatility   if a large holder decided to start selling Bitcoin. Like,   it is what it is. Long term, it should play itself out, and you should be better off for it.   If you if you talk about where Bitcoin was before the Bitcoin Cash hard fork versus where it is today,   I'm in a way better situation as a Bitcoin holder.  

Like,   is and you you could do nothing. Like, you didn't even have to sell Bcash, and you're in a way better position.   Sure. If you sold b cash, you're in even better position.   You got, like, a 20% depending on when you sold, you got, like, a 20% boost on your stash, but,   I don't know.  

[01:39:24] Arbedout:

So so my instinct   definitely leans towards try to avoid a hard fork if you can. But I agree.   Talking through it with you now,   the worst thing for any asset is uncertainty.   We don't Yeah.   If you have the ability to hard fork at some point, you want to see how that would play out.  

[01:39:45] ODELL:

Yeah.  

[01:39:46] Arbedout:

And, ideally, you'd wanna control that   scenario. You'd wanna have some agency. Otherwise, you'd have a hard fork thrust upon you.   Better that we deal with it than our children. Right?  

[01:39:59] ODELL:

Well, that's why I'm saying, like, you do, like, two, three years. There could be, like, four or five versions   of   protocol software, whether that's core or another implementation   that is out there and is being reviewed and has eyes on it before it happens.   Like, there's a it feels like a lot more transparent and a lot more agency   than potentially rushing into a soft fork that doesn't have consensus   that just hits us over the side of the head with a chain split   that wasn't wasn't expected. Because if it was expected, it would have been a hard fork to begin with.   Right? The change split would, you know, kind of just   would would would be a immune response, right, at that point. And then everyone's scrambling. It's like, what exchanges support what? It's like a whole different scenario.  

It's like a m v k's   m v k's in the live chat saying that he's been sending us DMs because he couldn't get the live chat to work. See,  

[01:41:02] Arbedout:

he's gonna frankly tell me that,   you're advocating for a hard fork. You need to  

[01:41:08] ODELL:

No. I think he's more he he's still commenting on sig bash. He's like,   he wants he wants   like, it's like, would invest. Do you see the comments?   He really likes sig bash. I mean, I was when I was thinking about self hosted sig bash, I was thinking about cold card HSM mode.  

[01:41:30] Arbedout:

I   love my cold card. My cold card is my weapon of choice.   One of the things I'm worried about is   whether or not,   you know what? I I can't talk about VT stuff right now, but I will I will say   if I had to choose if I had to choose a world between SIGABAS having a hundred thousand users and cold card having one more user, it would always be cold card. I'd love you, MBK.  

[01:41:56] ODELL:

There we go.   Yeah. I mean, my family relies on this product, so I'm very grateful for him. Yeah.   There's a couple people, you know, like, outside of protocol dev that my life would be considerably worse off if their products didn't exist.   CoinKite, you know, MVK and Peter over at CoinKite is one of them. Sparrow, like, if I didn't if Greg Ra didn't exist and we didn't have Sparrow, it'd be absolutely brutal. Kaludis and Zeus. Like, if I didn't have Zeus, like, where would I be right now? Right.   But, yeah, I would put CoinKite in that.   Anyway,   Arbout,   we're at an hour and forty minutes. This has been a great chat. I think we've talked about a lot of different things. I people should   you know, me and Arbout are not trying to tell you what to think. Just, you know, think about these things. Think about   consensus and path forward and,   go to sigbatch.com.  

Play with it. Give him feedback.   Go to somethingmoreprofound.com.   Read his book.   If you enjoy his book, donate to p two p rights,  

[01:43:03] Arbedout:

p2prights.org.  

[01:43:05] ODELL:

Arbed Out. Do you have any final thoughts, for the audience before we wrap?  

[01:43:11] Arbedout:

I don't know if it's a bull market or not. But if it is, I can   I can give you memories of my very first bull market where   when I I remember   clearly walking out of BitDevs one night and hearing every person on the street who wasn't at that BitDevs, just random people talking about the price of Bitcoin and not being able to breathe? Stay frosty.   Keep your head. Just stay humble in StackSats. Enjoy the ride.  

[01:43:36] ODELL:

I love it, sir. Much love.   I appreciate you. I look forward to seeing you again in person sometime soon. I still have brought great shame to my family as an ex New Yorker because I have not been to PubKey yet. I will make it there. I promise.   Oh, god. Please. Yeah. We'll host you.   I look I see NVK's comments now that he figured out how to use the chat.   He's very excited about v two. I'm also excited about sig bash v two. Looking forward to hearing more about it. Is the last word on this dispatch gonna be screw Marty? Is MBK quote screw Marty? Alright. There's your tagline.   There you go.  

I love you, Marty. Marty is a brother.   But, yeah, I all the good announcements should happen on civil dispatch.   Anyway, thank you for joining us, and I'll echo your sentiment.   Stay frosty and stay humble Stack Sats. Much love. Alright. Peace.   Cheers.