Citadel Dispatch

Share on social media:

EPISODE: 48

BLOCK: 714168

PRICE: 2134 sats per dollar

TOPICS: bitcoin initiatives by Block and Spiral, LDK, BDK, bitcoin design community, spiral grants, BTrust, open source bitcoin mining, open source low cost hardware wallets, hellobitcoin, tbd, team bitcoin

@moneyball: https://twitter.com/moneyball

streamed live every tuesday:  

https://citadeldispatch.com

twitch: https://twitch.tv/citadeldispatch

bitcointv: https://bitcointv.com/video-channels/citadeldispatch/videos

podcast: https://anchor.fm/citadeldispatch

telegram: https://t.me/citadeldispatch
 

support the show: https://citadeldispatch.com/contribute

stream sats to the show: https://www.fountain.fm/

join the chat: http://citadel.chat/

[00:00:00] Unknown:

Let me ask you about crypto,   which, there's a there's a a a piece out. I think maybe CNBC even,   talked to, to money manage managers, and that is ripe in   75%   of those polled. That's ripe for a major correction or a major,   letting out of of a lot of air in that in that sector.   Does that sound like consensus,   something to go the the other way onto you or or not?  

[00:00:26] Unknown:

Well, yes. I believe it is. I think institutions   are moving in.   And right now,   crypto of any sort, they're starting with Bitcoin and Ether, crypto of any sort is a   de minimis amount or percentage of institutional   portfolios.   The reason institutions are moving in is,   to some extent, this is a new asset class with correlations   very different,   compared to other asset classes. In fact,   Yacine Almandra did a a study on this and found that the closest and we did it with Bitcoin.   The closest correlation,   among   or to other assets was real estate.   And so institutional managers have to look at new asset classes that are evolving that have low correlations. That's that's the key to diversification,   and it's the holy grail in terms of asset allocation. So we think that the move actually   by institutions   into,   Bitcoin, if we were to choose Bitcoin, and and that seems to be their first stop,   could add $500,000   to Bitcoin's price if they moved into the tune of roughly 5% over time. Kanti, you  

[00:01:46] Unknown:

could talk   Happy Bitcoin Tuesday, freaks. It's your boy, Matt Odell, here for another serial dispatch.   The interactive live show about Bitcoin distributed systems, privacy, and open source software.   Huge shout out to the ride or die freaks who continue to support the show,   keeping it ad free, sponsor free,   and just focused on actionable Bitcoin discussion.   The easiest way to support the show   is, through podcasting 2 point o apps.   My favorite 2 are Fountain Podcasts and Breeze Wallet.   Download one of those apps.   Search Citadel dispatch. Load it up with sats, and then you can stream sats directly,   to my lightning node. You can also support the show at sill dispatch.com   either through lightning or on chain, through a.  

And as always,   a big shout out to the freaks who continue to join us week in and week out in our live chat via Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube.   You guys make this show very special,   with your live comments and questions.   So thank you so much for that. I really do appreciate it.   Couple of pieces of homework before we get started here.   We have a new matrix chat,   focused on   dispatch.   You can find that at citadel.chat.   That is gonna be similar to a Discord or Slack experience if you are used to that, but instead, it is self hosted,   open source, and end to end encrypted. So definitely check that out. We already have a really good group of freaks there,   and we have one dedicated, to [email protected]   as well.  

And, also,   I hope all you freaks, enjoy your holidays,   with your your friends and your family.   Dispatch will be taking a holiday break,   until January 4th. So, the next 2 Tuesdays, we will be taking off January 4th.   I have a massive show lined up for us already that I'm pretty excited about.   Rabbit Hole Recap will not be taking a break because we never take breaks for Rabbit Hole Recap for 3 years in a row. So you can still find me every Thursday on Rabbit Hole Recap.   As always, all shows are available through the podcast feed after the fact,   and also on bitcoin tv.com,   if you prefer that.  

So with all that said, a very exciting,   guest,   today.   Someone I consider a good friend who does a lot of work,   for Bitcoin,   that some people might not appreciate fully.   This is serial dispatch 48.   We will be discussing,   the Bitcoin initiatives being done by Block, formerly known as Square, and Spiral, formerly known as Square Crypto.   And we got Steve Lee here.   Moneyball on Twitter. I don't know how he got the Moneyball Twitter handle. That's   a fire Twitter handle. How's it going, Steve?  

[00:05:14] Unknown:

Hey, Matt. Thanks thanks for having me. It's going great. How long have you had that Moneyball Twitter handle for?   I think,   what? Since  

[00:05:24] Unknown:

2007 or 2008? That's a pre that's a Primo handle.  

[00:05:28] Unknown:

Yeah. I've had I have Moneyball on on most services.   Wow. Impressive. Truly impressive. I like I like the book. So  

[00:05:36] Unknown:

Who doesn't?   So   you are   what's your official title at Spiral?  

[00:05:45] Unknown:

I don't really have an official title, but I'm I'm the lead for for Spiral.  

[00:05:49] Unknown:

You're you're the main guy.  

[00:05:51] Unknown:

Top dog. Well, we're we're a decentralized distributed team.   So so, yeah, I'm I I'm I'm the I'm the lead for for spiral.  

[00:06:01] Unknown:

So we have a great list. I mean, you guys are doing,   between spiral and between the greater initiatives at Block,   you guys are doing a ton of work, in the Bitcoin space. A lot of it is open source focused.   So where do we wanna get started?   Do you want I mean, we don't have it on the list, but do you wanna talk a little bit about the the name change to spiral first?  

[00:06:25] Unknown:

Yeah. We we we can start there.   So as folks probably know, and you already mentioned that the entire company changed its name from Square to Block,   for a bunch of good reasons.   And since   the brand Square,   is now,   you know, very directly and specifically the original Square Business point of sale terminals,   it's not really related to what Spiral does.   So the name Square Crypto really didn't make sense sense anymore. And really from the beginning,   we   were asked a lot of questions about the name Square Crypto   because we are such an independent   group from the company itself. Having Square in the name,   didn't seem right. And then especially from the Bitcoin   community and Bitcoin crowd   being named crypto,   people want us to, you know, rebrand to to Square Bitcoin or something.  

So yeah. So we it was a good opportunity for us to change our name. We wanted to keep something   very, very simple,   and clean. So we,   we went through a exercise and came up with the name spiral, which we're super happy with.  

[00:07:33] Unknown:

Yeah. I think it's a pretty awesome name, and your new website is awesome. Spiral.xyz.  

[00:07:39] Unknown:

Yeah. Thank you.   Anyone who's followed our Twitter account knows that the,   the blue spiral emoji is something we we always play with and and sort of part of our our, voice and brand. So it it it partially stems from that.  

[00:07:53] Unknown:

Well, congratulations on that. I'm sure that's been a long time coming and   a bit of an organizational headache,   rather than focusing on on the other projects you guys are working on.  

[00:08:04] Unknown:

Yeah. We also came out with a film. I don't know if you want the top of the film. Oh, the film was awesome. With Puppet Jack?   The Puppet Jack film. Yeah. We, Whose idea was that?   There's a guy, Ken, on our team. He's he's the the mastermind behind our our Twitter account, and he's the creative on our team.   So he came up with the idea.   You know, it's something like Lightning Network   and LDK, which we'll talk about, the Lightning Development Kit. Yeah. They're very technical,   very much in the weeds.   So we wanted to create something that that sort of communicated what we're up to, what the benefits are, but do it in a way that's a little more appealing to to a broader audience.   And,   hence hence the film. And so we we came up with a a puppet representing Jack,   and then tried to add add some, humor to it as well.  



[00:08:56] Unknown:

No. It was really great. I mean, I don't think,   anyone's gonna be able to,   you completely changed the game of advertising   development kits.  

[00:09:08] Unknown:

Right.   It yeah. It's it's it's hard to take something that's kinda dry and boring to most people and and make it entertaining. So hope hopefully, that sets a bar for   for the the broader Bitcoin space and and really software and tech in general.  

[00:09:23] Unknown:

So, I mean, this is a good launching point because the first thing we have on the list is LDK, which is was the main focus. I felt like it was the it was the main focus of the video, but also kind of the focus was, like, get to know the spiral team,   which I liked. I thought it was a nice touch because people tend to forget that there's humans behind these things.   So LDK. What is LDK? Why should we care?   Why is it important?  

[00:09:48] Unknown:

Yeah. LDK stands for Lightning Development Kit, and it's it's a it's   its users and its target is for other developers. We're just trying to make it easier for other developers to integrate Lightning Network services into their their,   wallets.   It differs from the other Lightning implementations and that it's,   yeah, it's it's not in and of itself a node or a wallet.   It's a software library   that allows other developers to customize and build their own their own lightning node.   A couple years ago, we   when we were deciding which project the full time team at Spiral   was gonna work on, we did a lot of homework. We reached out to dozens and dozens of of developers and wallets   and asked them what was either preventing them from adding Lightning Network or what challenges they'd faced,   while adding it.  

Also spoke with some projects that ended up implementing their own   implementation of the Lightning Network protocol,   which is which is very complicated.   So we came over the conclusion that if we really wanna see the space,   accelerate and grow and see lots of different,   experiments   for wallets and nodes and out there, We we needed to make it bet you know, easier and better for developers.   So   the we got started on on lightning development kit. We we started with the Rust lightning project that Matt Carollo had started.   So it it's implemented in a language called,   Rust.  

But, you know, 2 2 years later, it's taken a lot of time to to build out a commercial quality   implementation.   We've also invested a significant amount of time on language bindings. It's another thing we learned from speaking with developers.   They   would be hesitant to integrate   a library that was written in a language that they themselves aren't using. So if you're building an iPhone, you might be using,   Swift language or React Native and and every different platform. You know, there's many different languages used by wallet developers.   So while the LDK is written in Rust,   we wanted to build out native APIs in Java and Swift and other languages to make it easier for developers.  



[00:12:04] Unknown:

Awesome.   To just to pull back a little bit, when you said other,   I guess, app developers were basically writing lightning implementations from scratch,   I mean, the 2 that come to mind to me were Breeze   and Simple Bitcoin Wallet. Is there another one that comes to mind to you?  

[00:12:23] Unknown:

Yeah. It was, like, Electrum is one example. Alright. Electrum Python  

[00:12:28] Unknown:

Python Lightning implementation that everyone forgets about. Yep. And, you know,  

[00:12:33] Unknown:

so I I can't speak for the Electrum project, but, you know, if if I were contributing to the Electrum project, I I definitely wouldn't,   have wanted to implement and maintain over time,   an yet yet another lightning implementation. So it'd be much easier to to be able to integrate,   a high quality open source one   that was customizable and flexible enough to meet to meet to to meet their needs. And and that's what we've heard from many other,   existing lightning wallets, especially on mobile phones.   To get the right user experience   on mobile is quite difficult,   often   resulting in trade offs. You can see this with Phoenix and Moon and Breeze and BlueWallet.  

And so They all have different trade offs. And they all have different trade offs, which is good. It's good and healthy.   You know, this isn't easy right now. There's many trade offs you can make. I think it's healthy for Bitcoin to have   lots of different wallets, lots of different recipes out there.   And just being transparent, letting people know what what am I trading off with respect to to privacy or security,   or other issues, you know, to to try to get the right user experience.   Right. So Yeah. Yeah. Go on. Alright. This is gonna be yeah. L LDK has been designed and architected to be very modular and a library that allows   those wallet developers to,   to make those types of trade offs without needing to go modify   or maintain   their own,   Lightning implementation.  



[00:14:08] Unknown:

So you take away at at its core, it's this idea that   they the app developers, the wallet developers don't really have to focus that hard on the actual lightning component.   They can focus on everything else around it.  

[00:14:22] Unknown:

That that's correct.   And, also, the LDK doesn't come bundled with its own   on chain wallet.   I believe all the other,   you know, major lightning implementations   do. So it's it's really intended for, like, an existing Bitcoin wallet or for   even if it's a wallet built from scratch,   a developer who who has in their own mind how they want to,   you know, do the key storage and what what block data sources they're gonna use, whether it's full blocks or compact you know, compact block filters or there lot there's lots of ways to get the sort of the source of truth.   We wanna allow the developers to to choose that and not sort of dictate that for them. Interesting.  



[00:15:05] Unknown:

So   would you say that LDK is mobile focused, or is it just mobile friendly but agnostic?  

[00:15:14] Unknown:

It's I I'd say it's it's mobile first. I mean, I think the the sweet spot for LDK is noncustodial   mobile. That's where I'd say it shines relative to other options,   but it can certainly be used. LDK can be used   server side and enterprise,   in custodial   environments as well. I I think where it might be attractive for the latter   situation is is anyone   looking to improve,   security or scalability and really wanting to go deeper scaling that. The the modular   modular   architecture and the customizability of LDK,   may may prove beneficial in that environment. But, definitely, mobile is where   LDK has been built to be high performance,   run-in   in, environments that don't have as as many resources as,   you know, server side and data centers.  



[00:16:09] Unknown:

Awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us tend to agree,   you know, that the next 1000000000 users that onboard   onto Bitcoin and start using Bitcoin will probably be doing it from a mobile first perspective.   So that makes a lot of sense to me.   And, also, there's just massive pain points with lightning on mobile right now.   So when you put the 2 of the 2 of those together,   making it easier for us to have more   fully function lightning wallets,   on mobile   and enabling developers to build those wallets is a is a very important task. So I I I do really appreciate you guys working on that.   So you mentioned it doesn't have,   an on chain component.  

I know we don't have this on the list. I don't know if you can speak to it that much, but I think   you have Steve Myers on your team that is working on Bitcoin development kit, BDK?  

[00:17:07] Unknown:

Yeah. Would love to speak about BDK.  

[00:17:09] Unknown:

Is that   can that be used, like, with LDK so you have, like, the on chain component plus   lightning component?  

[00:17:17] Unknown:

Yeah. That that's exactly right. So Steve Myers is one of our,   grantees. So just everyone knows, Spiral has a a full time development team of 4 developers, and and they're focused on LDK.   We also have a grant program where we're giving grants,   to over, you know, several dozen,   developers,   including Steve Myers,   but also several others who are contributing to   BDK, Bitcoin development kit, which as you just mentioned, it's it's really like a,   sibling project to LDK. It it complements LDK.   It's the on chain Bitcoin protocol equivalent of of LDK. So   they are independent projects.  

But having said that, I definitely imagine   them one day sort of merging and just there should just be a free open source   Bitcoin   SDK. And and and in my mind, it'll be these 2 projects,   combined. But even today, even though they're independent projects, they're intended to work together. And another spiral grantee, John Cantrell,   is building a reference wallet,   that's based on both BDK and LDK.   So I think in his,   in his reference wallet, he's using BIP 157, 158 compact block   filters, to get block data.   He's   getting that through,   the BDK,   and BDK also provides, you know, like, fee estimation and coin selection and all the things   all the components you need   for,   an on chain wallet.  

And then he's using that in conjunction with LDK to to, to enable lightning.  

[00:18:54] Unknown:

Awesome.   And and,   John is is being funded by Spiral as well. Right? He's part of the grant program? He is. Yep.   You guys,   I don't think you have, like, a list of your grant recipients anywhere.   We we we do on our, on our website. So spiral dot xyz. Oh, it's up there now? Yeah. For a while, like, I feel like you were just, like, tweeting it out.   Yeah. It was, like, hard to follow.  

[00:19:19] Unknown:

We yeah. So every everyone can check out spiral.xyz   to to see, you know, who we've given grants to,   what they're up to.   And then with the rebrand to spiral a couple weeks ago, we we published a post, which you can find on our website as well, which really looks back, reflects on the past couple of years, what we've   what we've accomplished, what we've done,   and then pointing to the future. We're gonna do basically more of the same.   We're we're happy to keep supporting   Bitcoin in in, as many ways as possible.  

[00:19:51] Unknown:

That's awesome. And just to be clear, I mean, it was hard to follow in a good way. It was just I felt like every week, you guys were releasing another grant,   really hit the ground running.   The amount of of work that is that is being funded out of your your project is is pretty remarkable.  

[00:20:08] Unknown:

Yeah. Thank thank you.   Yeah. And getting back to BDK and LDK, I mean, again, it's our it's our hope that,   I mean, imagine if you were building,   you know, a mobile app for iPhone and there was no   development kit. Or you had to go and as a developer, you're just trying to build, like, a gaming app or a communications app or something like that, and you had to go modify iOS or the SDK yourself.   That's not really a great environment for   seeing a massive explosion of creativity and and new applications. So our hope is that with these development kits, we really improve   the Bitcoin developer user experience by,   you know, a sub substantial amount. And,   hopefully, over the next several years, we see a lot more,   you know, even more creative  

[00:20:56] Unknown:

creativity than we've seen so far. Yeah. I mean, I it seems ultimately the goal that that most big corners want and, in my opinion, should want is   is to have as many options available,   to to use Bitcoin,   with varying trade offs. And it it has seemed   in the past that the major hurdle to that is this, friction of of actually building solid stable   Bitcoin apps   and Bitcoin wallets and, having proper,   foundation for that. I mean, just gotta reduce the friction tremendously. So, hopefully, we'll see   many more good wallets in the future.  

[00:21:36] Unknown:

And   and just we haven't mentioned yet, but,   I mean, a lot of people want wonder what's what's the status of LDK? Like, can it be used? Is it ready now?   It is ready now.   BlueWallet, which is a wallet many of your listeners probably are familiar with. 100%.   It's you know, BlueWallet has supported Lightning Network for quite a while now, but it's but it's been,   because at least by default, custodial lightning. They wanted to move to noncustodial   on mobile, and, they did an evaluation   and and chose   LDK   as a toolkit for for all the reasons that we we created LDK. So we're really happy that they chose LDK.   And it's,   I I think they have, like, a alpha version that's been available for for several months now.  

So it's exciting. And we're also seeing a lot of traction,   from other,   from other big services. Hope hopefully, in the next few months,   we'll,   we'll see some some other   services that your listeners either use or are very familiar with that that'll enable lightning using using LDK.  

[00:22:39] Unknown:

So their goal is to release   That's not a general release yet. Right? Like, if you go to the App Store or something like that,   you won't get the LDK version of BlueWallet yet.  

[00:22:49] Unknown:

That's that's correct.   I still think there's a there's a few things that are, a bit unrelated to LDK that they're shoring up for the next release. I'm not sure exactly what,   what their schedule looks like, but,  

[00:23:02] Unknown:

but but, hopefully, early early next year. That makes a lot of sense to me because I did notice,   in the LDK   spiral video,   that Puppet Jack was spending with BlueWallet, and I was wondering why that choice was made. So  

[00:23:16] Unknown:

now I know. Yeah. The BlueWallet team, you know, tweeted out   the you know, a demo of using LDK at, I think, in August or so of this year. So  

[00:23:26] Unknown:

I mean, it's pretty funny. Like, all the people who say Bitcoin is moves too slow and nothing new happens.   And, I've, like, devoted my life to try and keep track of it, and you still miss things.   Yeah. Absolutely. Shit.  

[00:23:39] Unknown:

I I never understand people saying Bitcoin's, like, dead or boring or slow.   I spend full time on it and can barely,   barely keep up. Exactly.  

[00:23:50] Unknown:

So where do you wanna go next here?   I've got before we move on, so the whole thing is built on top of Rust Lightning?  

[00:23:59] Unknown:

That's correct. And then on on the the library is built in in in Rust,   and then there's the language bindings I mentioned. So there's there's, like, a Java layer,   a Swift layer, and and we're building out support for other languages too.  

[00:24:14] Unknown:

So right now,   there's there's 6 lightning   6 major lightning implementations.   You have l and d, you have c lightning,   you have a Claire,   you have a Morden,   you have   Electrum's Python lightning,   And   do you have   oh, you have Breeze's go I think it's a go based implementation.   Is there another one that I'm forgetting? There's one that I'm forgetting.  

[00:24:50] Unknown:

Well,   Moon has done a lot of   customized work too. The the the node the portions of the node that run the phone, I think, are are pretty much all their own implementation.  

[00:25:03] Unknown:

Right right now,   I mean, I don't have, like, hard numbers in front of me, but right now,   the estimates are, like, around, like, 70% of the Lightning Network is running LND.   Do you expect that number to go down? Do you expect there to be,   you know, multiple implementations with over 20%   of liquidity on the network? Or is or do you think it's gonna be, like, more of a winner takes all kinda thing?  

[00:25:29] Unknown:

I think it's really early to,   like,   speculate on winner take takes all. There's there's so many trade offs,   with different like we said earlier, in terms of getting the right user experience,   security, privacy,   and then, of course, between enterprise   and and mobile.   I can imagine the future, like Internet,   like, IoT   devices, payment terminals,  

[00:25:55] Unknown:

all kinds of devices where lightning gets added. So I I think there there'll be room for multiple implementations for for for quite a while.  

[00:26:03] Unknown:

I   do I do expect,   I mean, now I mean, LDK has 0% market share right now because nothing nothing is live.   I think Matt Carl and a few other people have test test nodes that are on main net. Right.   But in terms of actual services with users, nothing's live yet. So right now, it's 0%. So I certainly expect LDA to to increase,  

[00:26:24] Unknown:

in 20 It's a bold prediction, Steve.  

[00:26:28] Unknown:

Yeah.  

[00:26:29] Unknown:

Yeah. So we'll it'll it'll be, should be more than 0% next year. But you do you think it's it's it's important that we have many many implementations   with, like, a decent adoption?  

[00:26:41] Unknown:

I at at least for the next several years, just because there's,   there's so much room for experimentation and there's no wait offs, I I can't imagine any one implementation,   satisfying all of that. So So the last thing we wanna do right now   in such early days of Lightning Network is to restrict what's possible or what's experimented with.   You know? So may we we can chat again in, like, 3 or 4 years   to see how things have have evolved.   And then maybe maybe long term,   it it it sort of boils down to 2 or 3,   implementations.  



[00:27:17] Unknown:

Fair enough. That seems   that makes sense to me.   We're still very much in the experiment   experimentation   phase   trying to see what works.   So where do you wanna go next? You wanna discuss b trust?  

[00:27:32] Unknown:

We could. We we could kinda round out   spiral stuff if you like, direct spiral stuff if you want.   Maybe speak a little bit to the design community. Let's hit it. I think you had a recent show on that, so we don't have to repeat that. But   but I'm I'm happy to speak a little bit about,  

[00:27:48] Unknown:

Yeah. Let's talk about it. The Bitcoin design community, you guys spearheaded this.  

[00:27:52] Unknown:

Yeah. I'm really proud of what what that community has done.   It's genesis.   When when we started   spiral or Square Crypto at the time, we wanted to we wanted to impact design in the space because we felt it it had little,   investment.   And we initially set out to hire a full time designer on the spiral team.   And so we interviewed many, many dozens   of   talented designers and really never found someone who checked all the boxes. But I I I think, you know, after, like, 8 months of of meeting over 50 people,   we looked   know, reflected on that, and   I think we had we're we're looking for a unicorn candidate. And Right. What we realized is that we've met amazing   designers   with different skill sets, all of whom shared one thing, which is that they all were passionate about Bitcoin.  

Another thing they shared is that they were kinda operating   on their own island   in terms of   how to engage and get involved with Bitcoin and communicating with others, which is very foreign to most designers. Like, creative people love to   interact with other creatives, and and, that's a pretty common part of their process. So,   so we switched our our strategy, and we're like, hey. Why don't we just   why don't we initiate and help kick start   the Bitcoin design community? You know, a free open community.   This is not a   spiral or block,   centric   or initiative. It's it's for the Bitcoin community. It's a public good. And so we kicked it off, about a year and a half ago.  

And I'm really, really happy with how how it's evolved.   It it is completely independent of I shouldn't say completely. I mean, we we fund several people working on it, but, like, you know, it it runs independent of myself or Spiral   or or or Block.   And I I'm I'm pretty confident that it is now evolved. It has enough,   accomplishments and momentum that it'll be sustainable even if,   spiral just just went away. So I'm really happy with that. They've produced,   a design guide,   which is live and available.   They published version 1 of the design guide last June,   and now they're adding   lightning network in a big way to the design guide. And this this really   you know, you can bundle those design guide in with BDK and LDK as just being a a really great resource for any builder   looking to build   a great Bitcoin and lightning application.  

The design guide, you know, it obviously doesn't dictate what people do with the design, but it's just intended to be guidelines, best practices,   walk through some of the trade offs that, you'll need to to think about, and just be a a helpful resource. And I I've really noticed in the past 6 months that more and more people are becoming aware of it   and and using it and and trusting it. And so, hopefully, that that   that keeps going.   And another project the design community has done is a wallet improvement project   where members of the of the design community are   selecting a different wallet in in the space,   evaluating it,   and just documenting   areas of improvement. And even   not just documenting or or pointing out problems, but trying to come up with solutions. So they're they're coming up with designs in Figma.  

They're going to the project's GitHub and opening up   issues or PRs to to help improve that wallet. And and the it's been a it's been a great relationship with the wallet projects too because they've they've found they've been very welcoming to this and embraced it.   And we already see a bunch of wallets have made improvements,   that have emerged,   based on that feedback.  

[00:31:44] Unknown:

So in a lot of ways, I mean, it's it's kind of in the same spirit as BDK and LDK just on the design side.  

[00:31:50] Unknown:

Yep. Yep. Which is All 3 of these share you know, let's improve   let's make it easier to build awesome Bitcoin applications.  

[00:31:59] Unknown:

Which I mean is is pretty cool coming from the perspective of block where, like, a lot of people   it's still weird calling it block, by the way. Perspective of formally Square,   where where   you're basically, like, building the foundation for other,   you know, open source projects to come and compete with you.   Yep.   Yep. Gotta love it.   So, I mean, the Bitcoin design community, I've seen massive,   massive impact by them already.   When I talk to different wallet teams and stuff, the it's almost,   expected that they're gonna tell me that they already have gotten help, and,   we're very happy with the help they've received from,   that community.  

I believe there's   they have a Slack, like, a public Slack. Like, what if if a freak wants to help with the Bitcoin design community, how do how do they   how do they do that?  

[00:32:58] Unknown:

Well, the yeah. The best places are just go to bitcoin.design,   that website. And from there, you can find everything. You can find the the Slack that you mentioned. You can see the   guide,   that I that I spoke to,   as well as just resources on on how to contribute, how to get involved.   And in fact, there's over 2,200   creatives have joined that Slack. So it's just been a Damn. Phenomenal response.   And   many,   many dozen are are actively involved.   There's a regular community call every 3 weeks   along with a, an associated newsletter. So if you're if you're a little bit short on time but interested, I think reading that newsletter every 3 weeks and joining the community call, which has recently been hosted on Twitter Spaces, that's a good way to to learn more and and be involved. And then, yeah, if you're a builder, if you have a wallet or an application and would like review, there's also a,   a design review,   recurring meeting that that's every 3 weeks, and I just think it's a phenomenal resource.  

I I worked at Google for almost a decade   and worked at other tech companies, and it's the same kind of   design review process that you'd see   at a company like that yet in a   open source,   style and fashion, and it it's welcome for for anyone who who would like some feedback from from this talented community.  

[00:34:23] Unknown:

Awesome.   Yeah. I mean, I feel like especially among, like, the Bitcoin enthusiast crowd and the the more hardcore Bitcoiners, like, we tend to discount,   the impact of good design. But if we're talking about,   onboarding the next 1000000000 Bitcoiners,   it doesn't just stop at BDK or LDK   or more wallets that are more powerful. Like,   UX   and design is a is a major   is a major aspect of that.   When you have new users trying to onboard onto these onto these wallets,   like, you shouldn't you shouldn't need, like, an hour long 45 minute guide on how to use something,   for a new user to to get comfortable. They should be able to,   you know, open the app, open the wallet, and the design, the UX kind of guide them through through best practices and how to use it in a relatively easy fashion.  



[00:35:20] Unknown:

Totally agree.  

[00:35:24] Unknown:

So I don't know what else I have on this list that is spiral specific.   Do you wanna we we already spoke about the grants a little bit.   Is there anything  

[00:35:34] Unknown:

Yeah. One more shout out maybe for for grants? Yeah. I mean, you can give as many shout outs as you want. I mean, like I said, you guys are funding so many people. I can't even keep track of it. So Yeah. Well, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go through all of them because that would be that would be an hour show in and of itself. But one more I wanted to mention is summer of Bitcoin,   which is which I thought was just the it started   this past year, and I just thought it was a phenomenal initiative.   One of the biggest bottlenecks in open source Bitcoin development   is is just finding   talented people who are are interested and trained to to contribute.  

You know, funding and getting dollars is certainly one aspect, but it doesn't end there because you actually need to find   the, you know, peep people to, to match those dollars with. And so some of Bitcoin's an initiative   that,   started by   started in India,   and they they   opened up an application process, I think, to something like 5   universities in India,   got an incredible   response. So this is for,   a summer internship.   And I think they they had over 4,000   applications   just for a handful of universities. So really incredible.   So that was a huge process just to to narrow down. I think they had 50   52 or 53   interns this past summer, and they match those interns   not at companies, but with open source Bitcoin projects. So LDK, BDK, Bitcoin Core, LND,   and many other open source Bitcoin projects. And each intern, you know, you know, merged a PR or did some kind of project, and they got paid,   a a stipend in in in Bitcoin. So just a great start to that because, historically, there's been   almost nonexistent,   open source Bitcoin development from   people in India. And it's a country so rich in in in in, you know, talented engineers.  

So it was great to see some traction there,   in in India. But the summer of Bitcoin program has global ambition. So they're they're coming back for for a,   you know, 2nd 2nd year this this coming year,   opening up their internship program to people all around the world. So Spiral's proud proud supporters of that. We're we're funding the the person who's running the show,   and,   funding the stipends.   Chaincode has been phenomenal with this too. They've lent,   I think, not just money, but also a lot of their time helping,   helping that get up off the ground. So really happy with some of Bitcoin. People should check it out.  

For those   listening who are are developers or potential   mentors,   the program would love to to match up mentors with with mentees.   And if you're listening and you would like to apply,   you can, go to the summer Bitcoin  

[00:38:34] Unknown:

website to check it out. And what is that website?  

[00:38:38] Unknown:

It is summer of bit summer of bitcoin dot org.  

[00:38:42] Unknown:

Awesome.   Before I forget, we have SB Design in the comments mentioning that the Bitcoin design community is doing a meet and greet on Thursday.   There's a there's a link to an issue on their GitHub,   that has the description there. I'm sure you can get to it by going bit to bitcoin dot design,   if you're interested.   We also have Ben, the Carmen, in com in the comments mentioning that they got 2 great contributors,   through the summer Bitcoin initiative at shared bids. I also know,   that Wiz,   one of the lead maintainers of mempool.space,   which I have   streaming during every   dispatch. Also,   got some interns through that program. So it's just a really fantastic initiative,   that really helped a lot of projects,   throughout the industry.  

I also before we continue,   we have we have MG MG Blaze on the comments asking,   asking you, Steve, what   you know, you said you worked at at Google for 10 years.   How how has that been different than than your than your role at Spiral?  

[00:40:01] Unknown:

Let's see. I mean, there's lots of differences. Maybe I'll start with, like, similarities. I I do feel like   yeah. So I was at Google from 2006   to 2015.   And during that time, it still especially in in the first four years I was there, still very much a company that was engineering driven, engineering led.   I had a product I I worked in product product management.   And   so   the I worked in Google Maps on mobile phones. I was the the lead product manager for that.   I had to work with engineers   across the world, lots of different,   locations,   and,   you know, to to   affect   the the road map or the user experience or improving the product,   I had to build relationships with those developers,   you know, among many other people. And that consensus building that process, I think that carries over to to Bitcoin and open source. It's even more extreme   in in Bitcoin and and the centralized nature.  

But the skills that I developed doing that at Google did did transfer over and help.   Let's see. And,   yeah, how are they different? Well, I mean, I'm really lucky   to be working on Spiral.   Jack Dorsey and Block,   you know, fund Spiral,   but it's completely hands off.   All all Jack asks of us is that we just help Bitcoin succeed.   And   Jack and no one at Block gives gives us, any direction or   tells us no.   So we're we're, yeah, it's really it's really amazing. So we're very fortunate.   Yeah. So even I mean, at Google, I had a lot of latter kids as well, but not not not to this not to this extreme.  

[00:42:00] Unknown:

Awesome.   I had no idea   I I I had no idea that you were one of your main projects was Google Maps over there.  

[00:42:10] Unknown:

Yeah. I was the lead lead product manager for Google Maps on mobile phones,   for 4  

[00:42:17] Unknown:

years. Really, really great app you guys built over there that I,   unfortunately, cannot use,   due to,   privacy issues.   But,   that that was definitely one of the hard ones to cut out in my privacy journey. So I also worked on  

[00:42:37] Unknown:

I was the lead BM for the location platform,   Wi Fi and cell tower and and GPS, which has all kinds of interesting privacy,  

[00:42:44] Unknown:

considerations. Wow. Thank thanks for that, Steve. Really.   So   while we're on the privacy topic,   Trinity mentioned earlier and he just noticed that we mentioned privacy again.   So he and he is a true ride or die freak. He's always in the comments.   Is there anything specifically   privacy focused that you guys are working on with respect to BDK and LDK?  

[00:43:14] Unknown:

I mean, privacy is very important to us.   You know, even outside of BDK, LDK, we we fund,   we have a grant to Chris Vulture   working on coins as well.   And and Lightning Network in and of itself,   if, if successful and adopted,   I think it will improve,   privacy for for Bitcoiners.   And so   but there's nothing   actually, that's not that's not true. So one one thing that, it's not necessarily specific to LDK, but it's a it's a priority for the project   is to   do routing and path finding for lightning   on   the client device, so on a mobile device, which is which is which is a hard hard challenge because it's a lot of data   that has to be downloaded to the to the phone.  

And if it's been a while since you've opened your wallet app,   it can create   latency issues. That that's the tension there and and the the technical challenge.   So Aric on on our team is actively working on a project right now for to reduce the amount of information that needs to be downloaded to the phone.   And Blockstream has done some work on this as well. So, hopefully, we we can we can get that   to a sweet spot where it's still a good user experience.   You don't have a, you know, a a   a bad lag when opening the app, and yet the your your payment routing could be done on the phone, which definitely enhances  

[00:44:38] Unknown:

your privacy. So, like, the alternative being if if you're not doing it that way, then you have a server handling that path finding. Right? And the server knows exactly   how you're paying and where you're paying and whatnot.  

[00:44:50] Unknown:

Yep. It would learn everything.   There's also trampoline,   payments, which I I I think, like, the folks at async and and others are are working on.   It it's kind of a hybrid between the 2. So that that's another option that's being being developed.   So so, again, like most of these trade offs, when when if you're trying to do noncustodial   as   self sovereign as possible on mobile, it's really hard to deliver a great user experience. So there's lots of, lots   of belts and knobs and and Right.   To, you know, to try to tune that. So I think we need to have dozens of experiments, including privacy to, to see what what's right. And it it'll improve over time too. We we might need to make some certain   concessions   over the next few years to have adequate user experience for certain users.  

But maybe in in, 3, 4, 5 years,   we'll we'll make it, so you don't have to make certain sacrifices.  

[00:45:45] Unknown:

Awesome. And I would just add that, you know,   I have a ton of respect,   for the work that Chris Belcher is doing and,   you know, you guys you guys supporting him in in his coin   swap work, really,   personally, was very massive to me. It was it was a big deal to me to see a   a project out of a, you know, a large publicly traded financial company,   funding directly financial privacy works. So  

[00:46:16] Unknown:

I really I really did appreciate that. Oh, thank you. I mean, it's a good example of,   our our corporate   funder not not,   having,   much say in what we've heard. So,   I I agree. I was really proud proud of that grant in particular   and, looking forward to to to the future of that. Another thing, back to LDK and privacy, another thing that will be really important   for next year   within the broader Lightning ecosystem and LDK specifically is just integration of of Taproot in into Lightning.   And there's a number of different touch points,   and it's pretty pretty,   involved, but   that'll undoubtedly improve privacy as well.  



[00:47:01] Unknown:

Where, like, where do you see that   specifically   impacting the end user? And  

[00:47:10] Unknown:

let's see. So for for privacy, I mean, I think most end users won't even won't even be aware of it, but they just happen to have a better privacy. You know, number 1,   when closing lightning channels,   by you know, when using Taproot, it'll look like,   at least on a cooperative close, it'll look like any other payment, like a single signature   and not be identifiable like it currently is.  

[00:47:35] Unknown:

Where, like, obviously, it looks like a 2 of 2 multisig.  

[00:47:39] Unknown:

Exactly.   And then   a transition   from HTLCs   to PTLCs   is another,   way to improve privacy.   There's been a few papers written about privacy   some privacy weaknesses and lightning, and and I think PTLCs can shore up at least 1 or 2 of those.   And then something that,   is less privacy related and more security related,   I would like to see multisync supported   in in lightning net network So that, for example, you could have a 2 of 2 of 3 wallet   or any k event, but, like, for example, 2 of 3,   and and have the lightning script support that. And and currently, it's only sing single signature. So I think something we'll get to a little bit later in the show is,   future 2 of 3 type of wallets that that I'm excited about,   and not only supporting that at the on chain Bitcoin protocol level, but also at Lightning Network. Yeah. I mean, that's gonna be  

[00:48:40] Unknown:

I mean, that's our it would already be a massive benefit to people, but especially in the future. I mean, if if we do have people that are onboarding directly onto lightning.   But, like, I did have I had a conversation   with Eric Siri on on dispatch earlier who's working on,   he's working on a a Chaumion e cache,   federated Chaumion e cash implementation,   for lightning wallet.   And one of the big   bottlenecks for him is that the actual lightning component   is hard to multisig out,   and he doesn't wanna build that on his own. So, hopefully,   we can have that. And, like, right now in the wild, we have the Bitcoin Beach Wallet,   which is trying to do, like, this almost, like, multisig,   custodial wallet where the keys are held by   a   trusted members of the community.  

But   they can't do that with the lightning portion even though the majority of payments are lightning. So they're just running a single sig   custodial lightning wallet with the majority of the funds held in multisig on chain, and they're just basically writing it off. Like, if that wallet gets compromised or exit scammed or something, like, you only lose the lightning portion. You don't lose, the on chain portion.  

[00:50:02] Unknown:

Got it. Yeah. There's there's no no doubt it's,   there's gonna be a lot of demand for it.   I've yet to even initiate any kind of conversations with protocol dev, so I I don't know how much discussion there's that we've been at that level. But,   if Lao Lou or or Rusty   are   are are listening,   I'll I'll be I'll be chatting with them soon.  

[00:50:24] Unknown:

Awesome.   So so far, we've talked about LDK. We've talked about BDK.   We've talked about,   various spiral grants. We've talked about the Bitcoin design community. What do you wanna talk about next?  

[00:50:37] Unknown:

About, b trust.  

[00:50:39] Unknown:

B trust. Let's go. What's b trust?  

[00:50:42] Unknown:

Yeah. So,   earlier this year, Jack Dorsey,   announced   a new Bitcoin   endowment,   that he and Jay z are funding and supporting called BTrust,   that's intended to be   an endowment for a a new entity   that's focused on Bitcoin,   focused on free open source,   software development.   And Jack would be really a blind trust. So he'd be completely hands off,   with this. And and and   500 Bitcoin's a lot a lot of a lot of money, so it's a very very   sizable   gift.   And,   you know,   I   I I I don't I don't get the sense that the Bitcoin community really   appreciates yet or is even aware of it, let alone appreciates how impactful this can be over the next 5 to 10 years.  

The the,   process for for how to go about this,   is to start with selecting   a board,   and   and then be able to transition   and sort of transition   the Bitcoin and empower that board to go ahead and select a lead and build that a team   to,   to do great things.   So we we put out a call for, applications for board members   and got completely overwhelmed last spring with over 7,000   applications.  

[00:52:11] Unknown:

Wow.  

[00:52:12] Unknown:

Yeah. It was it was,   yeah, it it was a lot. So,   So you threw out all the applications, and then you decided to start it right. Well, that's it. I mean, one way you can go is, like, well, I've you know, I've heard of a few of these names. Let's just go with them. But we we wanted   we wanted to take a a responsible approach where we   really did go through,   you know, all these applications and and have a really thorough process. So   there's no way that,   myself or one person could do this on their own. So, fortunately,   we found an awesome volunteer team.  

Carolee and Jonas from Chaincode.   Nice. We're probably familiar with them.   Jacob, who is at Lightning Labs,   Haley, who's on my team, and, Lawrence, who's on the Cash App team. So the the 6 of us,   have been working on this for the past, I don't know, 5, 6 months,   to,   you know, there were multiple filters and levels through this application process. And, ultimately, we did,   a couple video interviews with 30 or so candidates   and narrowed it down to about half a dozen   that just recently met with, with Jack.   And we're we're,   and we've and yeah. And we've so the the board has now been selected. They've been notified,   and we'll we'll announce soon,   who the board members are. But How soon, Steve?  

Hopefully hopefully, within hopefully, before the end of the year. That that that's the that's the the hope. But, I I, yeah, I can't say I can't say enough about the applicants in in this process. I was just,   really blown away by the the the the quality of applicants   and their   understand depth of understanding and love and care of Bitcoin.   People That's awesome. All over Africa and India and just Middle East, all over the world. So   that was a really positive experience.   Yeah. So the hope is that beginning in January of the New Year, they they,   they can get get started, and   and,  

[00:54:22] Unknown:

and good things will will come. And and correct me if I'm wrong, but Beatrice is primarily focused on Africa. Right?  

[00:54:29] Unknown:

The,   Africa and India is what has been   communicated.   You know, I   think, it's a little bit TBD   and and up to the board to to figure that out.   You could argue,   that maybe, you know, Africa in of itself   is a big enough opportunity and challenge   to, to just focus on on one continent.   You could argue to to do both. You could argue   to expand to to other important   emerging and developing markets like South America and Central America and Southeast Asia, etcetera. So I think I think the the board will have   to evaluate that and figure out the the the best plan.  

[00:55:17] Unknown:

But, I mean, in general, if you're funding open source projects   that are focused on the developing world, I mean,   even if their focus is on a specific geographical location, I imagine they'll have applications everywhere.  

[00:55:31] Unknown:

This is the Internet. That would be that would be I mean, just just like even the stuff that Spiral does, or changes. You know, you know, hope hopefully, it helps everyone around the world.   Yeah. I would expect   what you you just said to be true.   At the same time,   I would also hope and expect that there's there's,   there are things that are done specifically to enable   the   the cultivation and and growth and development of of of people in in Africa and India working on Bitcoin   and and also just better understanding   local market needs   and challenges that don't exist maybe in Right. Or, you know, western,   other western countries.  



[00:56:14] Unknown:

Right. And, I mean, we don't wanna   not trying to put all Africans and all Indians in the same boat. There's obviously different nuances,  

[00:56:24] Unknown:

depending on localities and situation. There's a exactly. There's 54 countries in Africa. So even even just focusing on Africa, it's incredibly diverse with a lot of challenges. And so,   yeah, so so the board will be have a lot of work cut out for them, but I think it's a really exciting opportunity for for for them.  

[00:56:43] Unknown:

I mean, one of the coolest parts of BTrust to me,   is is this idea that the endowment is in Bitcoin.   So, like, who even knows   I mean, when when they made the announcement,   I think   they made the what was it? It was, like, February of last year or January of last year?  

[00:57:06] Unknown:

Yeah. I think the price of Bitcoin is about the same as it was on the No. No. No. No. It was, like, 24 k or something. 25 k  

[00:57:15] Unknown:

at the time.   So   the endowments already doubled in in in purchasing power.  

[00:57:25] Unknown:

Well, it could be And who knows? So the coin market cap right now is saying that Bitcoin is $789,000,000,000  

[00:57:31] Unknown:

per coin. So Oh, shit. So that endowment's huge now.  

[00:57:35] Unknown:

We might as well just end the show right now. We we can all retire.  

[00:57:39] Unknown:

I'm sure Twitter's freaking out about that. And, we just have our dispatch blinders on right now. We don't even when I first started the show, I would show the live price, but now we just   show what matters. So you have a live view of the mempool.   So, I mean, I don't really care where the price is right now. We can we can check after,   but that it's pretty cool when you start to think about it. Like, so you take,   so it was it was Jack and Jay z. They each put in 250 Bitcoin   at whatever price it was at the time,   which I'm telling you, I'm pretty sure it was, like, 25 k or 30 k.  

And then   BTrust is gonna be pulling   from that,   is gonna be pulling from that endowment but keeping it in   Bitcoin. So,   presumably,   like, we could end up in a situation, like, if if we're correct and and Bitcoin does increase in price with adoption   and as I,   eloquently state sometimes that it's designed to pump forever,   we can end up in a situation where this endowment   basically never runs out. That it's just a it's a forever endowment,   which is pretty insane to start to try and wrap your head around.  

[00:58:53] Unknown:

Yeah. Exactly. So a a a big,   question the board will have to answer is how to manage that treasury,   whether to keep all of it in Bitcoin or convert some to, like, a stable coin or something. Oh, I didn't realize that.   Well, the I mean, these are the I'm just these are possibilities. They they they'll need to determine that.  

[00:59:15] Unknown:

But they're allowed to do that. The board can do whatever they want. They can just fire somebody all if they want. Yeah.  

[00:59:22] Unknown:

Jack is very much a believer in impact you know,   putting Right. Putting, the right people in place and then really entrusting them. So the the board's gonna have incredible,   you know, you know, responsibility   for this. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be up to them.   I mean, I   like, it's my own expectation that that most or all would be kept in Bitcoin like you're saying. Yeah. That's what I understand. Absolutely has the potential to, you know, appreciate a lot.   And, but, yeah, they'll have also have to determine, like, what what the annual budgets are, how quickly to draw down on that endowment. You could certainly manage it so that it it definitely is perpetual and never never runs out.   Is that the right call or not? Maybe, maybe not.  

But it but it should certainly be very long lasting,   in any case.  

[01:00:13] Unknown:

Like, I I feel like   like, when my grandkids are are reading about, like, the newest,   b trust initiative, like, if they have less than a 100 Bitcoin in their treasury at that point, then they fuck something up, but that's just fine. Yeah. I I I like that. That that's a good, that's a good measuring stick for  

[01:00:31] Unknown:

for for Betrust in the board.  

[01:00:34] Unknown:

Okay. So   what should we discuss next, Steve?   Let's see. Should we talk about the mining initiative at Block? Yeah. Let's talk about this mining initiative. This this is the the the open source design for an ASIC?  

[01:00:50] Unknown:

Yeah. Yeah. I   so   everyone should be aware. Again, I I I I'm on the spiral team,   very much team Bitcoin outward facing. So I'm I'm not on,   the mining team at Block.   But I do I have worked been working closely with them. I'm really passionate about what they're doing, so I'm happy to share share a little bit of what they're up to beyond what, Jack tweeted a month or so ago.   So,   yeah, so Block is getting into   Bitcoin mining in a in a pretty   substantial way, which I'm I'm excited about.   And,   but the, you know, one observation is is that the ASIC chips themselves,   there's very few   suppliers.  

They're geographically concentrated,   and they operate   in a way that doesn't necessarily lend itself to optimizing   for an open   ecosystem   and really sort of growing,   growing the the number of of partners and different companies in the space that can come up with cool new designs for mining rigs.   So with that opportunity,   the the the team at Block is interested and is exploring,   doing a custom basic,   chip   themselves,   as well as   a mining rig design,   and doing it in as open a way as possible   to enable other companies,   to build their own mining rigs as well.  



[01:02:29] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, I think this is a fantastic initiative. I mean, I I   I think you somehow understated the current issue   of of ASIC manufacturers. I mean, there's 2 main ASIC manufacturers right now, and that's Bitmain and Microbt.   Microbt makes the What's Miners. Bitmain makes the Antminers.   They're both out of Asia.   The   the the the project lead, the founder of Microbt   is actually the, like, one of the ex main guys of Bitmain.   So in a lot of ways, they're kind of one company that was split into 2.   And it would be great to see more competition there.   I I my understanding too was, like, this idea   that it was almost more of a   the focus was gonna be more on, like, a consumer focus level, like,   a a model for an ASIC that, like, all our ASICs nowadays are, like, basically designed,   to be put in in a warehouse. They're, like, made for industrial applications.  

Obviously, on dispatch, we've gone through many times about how to how to use them for home mining, and it can be done.   But at their core, they're, like, they're basically designed to be placed in server racks at a warehouse.   Am   I wrong that   that,   the initiative by the block is,   the initiative by block, I guess there's no the by block,   is, focused more on, like like, more of a retail kind of environment? Or am I asking Both right, right, and wrong. So definitely includes that,  

[01:04:13] Unknown:

which I think is super exciting, but not exclusively   that. So at this point, it's early enough,   and   that that that it's being explored both for, like, industrial   farm mining   as well as individual home mining.   Also looking at what can be done, what can be optimized for sustainable energy.   In particular, intermittent sustainable energy   has, you know, certain   unique challenges, both the economic model,   but also   the, the equipment itself. If it's gonna be turned on and off frequently,   it needs to be designed to, to support a lot more cycles than maybe   some of the existing equipment.  



[01:04:59] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, I'm already hearing about the existing equipment. Like, you don't wanna turn it off and on much. Like, your the the lifetime of your miner is gonna go down substantially.  

[01:05:08] Unknown:

Right. So   definitely design consideration   from, the the team at Block will be will be that.   And the and the firmware and the software as well, being able to to,   boot up   be able to re you know, reboot very quickly,   will be will be important. You know, the folks at at brains have done already done good work in that area,   so which which is fantastic.   So, anyway, that that that'll be an important consideration. But I but I think, yeah, the the the op the environment we're operating right now, it we've spoken to a number of companies who want who see an opportunity in the market   to design a mining rig, the actual, like, industrial design   and the,   the systems design itself, They they see an opportunity in the market to optimize and customize that, but they're unable to source ASIC chips  

[01:06:01] Unknown:

Right. Roughly.  

[01:06:02] Unknown:

So so the I we we think there's a huge opportunity. If you can just sell ASIC chips to partners   in the ecosystem,   we're gonna see a great expansion of mining into to new segments and meeting new needs that are not met right now by 1 or 2 suppliers. Well, like, a key aspect of their business model is to keep everything proprietary.  

[01:06:23] Unknown:

Like, you mentioned   that I keep their chip designs very close to their chest. Like, nothing's open.   The firmware is all closed source. Like, you mentioned,   brains with 2 eyes by Slush,   who've had many of their team members on dispatch in the past.   They have their own open source firmware that you can then flash on to Bitmain,   ASICs.   But out of the box, it's all closed.  

[01:06:48] Unknown:

So And and if you chat with the guys at Brain, do you you'll you know, they'll talk about how challenging it can be to,   to build that firmware because it's such a closed system. So Yeah. They almost have to hack their way onto it, basically.   I think they do quite a bit you know, they have to do reverse engineering. So the the the plan from block is to be the opposite of that. Be very open,   be as open as possible. So   the any kind of   mining rig designs   that come from block, the hope and expectation is that they'll be open source so others can leverage those designs and use that. The the any chip,   that's produced by,   Block, the data sheets are intended to be to be open.  



[01:07:35] Unknown:

But is Block gonna actually be selling miners, or are they basically just putting the specs out there for other people to build them?  

[01:07:43] Unknown:

I mean, at this point, you know, there's nothing definitive. So Right. Right. All about exploration. But, definitely,   looking at both is is of interest.   Produce you know, producing a chip and selling the chip,   also producing a mining rig and selling that mining rig.   You could imagine,   maybe decides,   that they can produce a really great product for   for intermittent,   renewable energy,   mining, whether it be solar or wind. And so they   they they might build a a rig around that and sell to that market while still selling the chip and any kind of open source   and provide any kind of open source system designs to other other partners who   build mining rigs for other other markets or even the same markets and and compete. So anything's on the table there.  



[01:08:35] Unknown:

It's still early days very much.  

[01:08:38] Unknown:

It's still early days. One one thing that I should mention that   a lot a lot of folks probably have no idea this this, is the case, but   Block actually has   this is not, like, completely out of the blue that Block would do hardware.   And I think most people are familiar. Square has always made hardware, in the pay pay payment From the very beginning. From the very beginning. So hardware is in the DNA of the company.   But even ASICs, for 6 years now,   Square has built,   designed, and built custom ASICs for their payment terminals. So so the company already has ASIC engineers and all the experience that comes Really? Like, the chips the chips in the Square payment terminals are  

[01:09:18] Unknown:

I mean, in the I guess those are still Square payment terminals, are made by block?  

[01:09:24] Unknown:

Yeah. Some some of the chips are. Yep. Wow. I didn't realize that.   Yeah. So there the the company already has, you know, engineering chops and expertise in that area, working with foundries and just all of that. So it's it's not like   it's not like a software company in Silicon Valley just deciding to   to do chips.   Having said that, there's a tremendous amount of knowledge needed,   to do Bitcoin mining rigs. And, so, you know, the the team's gonna have to learn a lot. The team is very interested in in partnering with others.   So that if we we've already been speaking to a a bunch of companies,   in the space, but, if there's others who   who are excited about the opportunity around a more open ecosystem for for mining hardware and and and and software,   then   we we would love to speak to them.  



[01:10:14] Unknown:

I wonder if we have, like, freaks that don't even remember that that they're they're predated,   that they never had any experience with the little headphone jack,   Square credit card readers where you just, like, plug I mean, there's probably some freaks that don't even know what a headphone jack is nowadays.   Yeah. Exactly. That's funny. But it's pretty amazing it's pretty amazing how those square those square terminals are everywhere now.   So many businesses are using those square terminals.  

[01:10:47] Unknown:

Last thing I'd mentioned on mining,   stratum v 2 is is a next generation mining protocol. Yes.   Yeah. It's something that that Brains has done a lot of work on in Slush Pool.   Matt Corallo and the Spiral team worked worked with them to help define it. Matt had previously worked on a a protocol called Better Hash. That was like his he proposed it first, I think, before stratum v 2 was even a thing.   Yeah. I I I believe that's the the right chronology.   And so stratum b 2, I think, has   most or all of what Matt was hoping to to see in Betterhash. And,   one thing Spiral's done, we we have a a grant to a developer that goes by FI 3,   and he has been working for almost,   almost a year now on an a neutral   open source implementation of Stratum b 2 that,   that can be used by any mining pool, any miner in the space. And   and so the the anything that the block team's doing with respect to to mining rigs and chips will will definitely have Stratum b 2 in mind and be optimizing for that. I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, right now,  

[01:12:00] Unknown:

if you buy   a ASIC   out of the box, whether that's Bitmain or MicroBT,   you cannot use Stratum V2.   If you get a Bitmain miner that supports   brains firmware,   open source firmware,   then you can flash brains onto it, and then you can use Stratum v 2 with slush, but no other pools. So it's definitely very much early days there. If we can get more adoption, that would be fantastic.  

[01:12:28] Unknown:

Absolutely.   Yeah. So there's, you know, I think there's a number of opportunities to improve decentralization   within mining.   1, at the chip level,   2, just geographically,   you know, it would be fantastic   if, Block and and maybe others who are getting into the   into the mining space like Blockstream is as well. But just more and more, like you said, more competition, but also more,   supply chains that are resilient,   not dependent on one particular country or region   will really help decentralization,   and the adoption of strategy too will help as   well.  



[01:13:06] Unknown:

No. I mean, I think it's a noble cause,   and and it's sorely needed. I do wonder,   I mean, mining is a massively competitive space. I do wonder,   how those dynamics end up working out if there's nothing proprietary there between chips.   It it should be interesting.  

[01:13:28] Unknown:

Yeah. I think well,   you know, it's to be determined what what the exact business model is. But Yeah. I mean, because currently, there's not that many chip manufacturers, I think there's actually Right. Attractive   attractive revenue and potential   for the chip, you know, the chips themselves.  

[01:13:46] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, if you can undercut prices I mean and, also, there's an ideological bent to a to a certain extent if you can get it close enough.  

[01:13:54] Unknown:

Yeah. I I if if if we're correct in this view that an open system will an ecosystem will will be much better   than a closed system,   I think, you know, the,   the   those participating   in this open ecosystem will be   will can all win and and will will,   can all can all profit.  

[01:14:18] Unknown:

Awesome.   We have said Trinity in the comments and, like, feel free to tell us both to fuck off.   But he he's asking, is Spiral working with Square to integrate,   Bitcoin lightning into Square,   point of sale terminals?  

[01:14:34] Unknown:

I've so   nothing I can comment on specifically, but,   yes. There's yes. In the sense that we're definitely talking with teams at   Block   to integrate Lightning in any software we're working, working on, BDK, LDK.   But having said that,   I have had many conversations this year with folks at Coinbase and Kraken and Blockchain dotcom and   many, many companies in the space, small you know, smaller projects as well, open source projects,   about adopting our software. So   with companies who would be considered competitors   to to Cash App and Block.  

We're we're just optimizing for the adoption of of Bitcoin. So,   yeah, we're we're talking to a numb number of different companies and projects to to adopt,   BDK l d and and LDK.  

[01:15:32] Unknown:

Awesome.   Appreciate you, answering that question to that extent. I was not going to ask it unless the Trinity brought it up   because I have a lot of respect for you, and I knew it was putting you on the spot.   So I think we should move on to this next topic, which is a topic that, personally, I am extremely excited about,   which is,   this   this hardware wallet initiative.  

[01:16:01] Unknown:

Absolutely. You wanna go in further freaks?   Yeah. So I think it was June.   I think it was at the Bitcoin conference, in Miami that,   Block announced or Square at the time announced a hardware wallet project,   which I I'm equally super excited about.   One one thing to to make clear is that,   it's not just a hardware wallet, but but really but it's a combination of hardware and software.   And the   the software aspect actually has me personally   more excited.   I I, you know, I think think there's definitely room to,   innovate and and improve the hardware.   But the the type of software wallet that that team is is looking at has me really excited. They're they're exploring,   doing a 2 of 3   multiseg wallet,   sort of out of out of the box. And I I think a 2 of 3 offers really interesting   user experience and security   properties,   that, a single sig or or other variations don't don't have. There's also the potential to build   a wallet that can be both a savings,   you know,   a savings and a spending wallet all in one and,   you know, apply different   US security trade offs to whether it's spending or or Right. Or savings.  



[01:17:27] Unknown:

So let's break this down for a second. So right now, if you use Cash   App, which is   a product of Block,   It is a fully custodial wallet.   My   understanding of this hardware wallet initiative is that you have a situation where instead   of Square instead of Cash App holding the keys,   Cash App holds one key or whatever wallet this ends up being, but block holds one key.   One key is on the mobile device locally, and then one key is this really cheap hardware wallet that interfaces with the mobile phone.   So,   presumably,   if if something happens and Block doesn't want you to send your transaction,   you can use the hardware wallet to send.  

But as long   as block is,   fine with you sending the transaction, You can keep the hardware wallet in your drawer or something,   and,   your your mobile phone signs on one side and   and, the server signs on the other side using whatever normal fraud detection you have. Is that is that the basic understanding of this project?  

[01:18:39] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, let me first say that   it's or I'm not on the team, so I don't speak for the team. Right. And secondly,   it's still super early, so there's really there's no commitment to any particular  

[01:18:51] Unknown:

Of course. UX.  

[01:18:53] Unknown:

But having said that, here here's at least from my own view, personal view and hope for the the project,   is what you just described,   where you have the 3 keys Fucking awesome. On the phone, 1 on the hardware wallet, 1 in the cloud.   It's noncustodial,   in the sense that even if the cloud and and   the cloud server goes away, you still have your hardware wallet and and and your phone's key.   And this spending experience can be   just as simple and easy   as using Cash App or Venmo or any kind of other type of payment app on your phone.   And and the customer,   you know, wouldn't even have to think about keys or 2 of 3 or multisay. They don't have to know anything about that because you're signing with the key in the phone and the one in the cloud, and that's all kind of hidden under the covers.  

To protect   the customer from   having their entire wallet drained in case their phone becomes compromised,   one could put   a a spending velocity limit   in in in the cloud, such such that it would only sign a transaction   for certain certain amounts. And there might be other policies. Something that cache already has, like, fraud detection,  

[01:20:06] Unknown:

algo, or whatever.  

[01:20:08] Unknown:

Yep. And then if, you know, if the customer wants to spend a larger amount,   that's an opportunity to,   access their their hardware wallet in which they'd be it would be unlimited,   and, again, you know, sell software, and you wouldn't you wouldn't be dependent on any any server or or third party service.   But it allows the the the customer to you know, they can secure their their hardware wallet in a way that's not as accessible   perhaps as your phone.  

[01:20:38] Unknown:

But for daily spending or or or frequent spending, you wouldn't need to access it. And they don't even have to know that as a hardware wallet. That could just be, this is your secret device. Like, keep it safe.   And in a worst case scenario,   you're gonna need this to spend your funds.  

[01:20:56] Unknown:

Correct. Yep. And what It's gonna be super cheap. On the on the software side,   you know, I think the team's definitely exploring   using Taproot   for for 2 or 3. And, also,   I think the team really cares about,   growing this to to lots of users. So Lightning Network and as a as a approach to scaling is is,   is on the table and being explored.   And this gets back to an earlier conversation about what Spiral and LDK team and what the broader Lightning   ecosystem needs to be looking at is multisig.   Building 2 or 3 into Lightning Network so that it could be possible in this wallet or anyone else looking to do a similar type type of wallet,   as well as integrating   Taproot into into Lightning Network.  



[01:21:47] Unknown:

That's awesome. I mean, I love the   I love the trade off balance with this kind of setup.   Absolutely. I mean, a key aspect here, right, is that is that that actual hardware device   is gonna be   is gonna be super cheap,   air gapped. I mean, I don't know if it's been announced   specifically, but my guess would be something and you don't have to comment on this. My guess specifically would be something,   the NFC based so that you could just tap it to the phone. You don't need a battery on it,   accessible to the whole world.   Most of the developing world already has a mobile phone, so they would just need, you know, a $10 device, a $5 device,   and   they would have relatively strong security guarantees in a very easy UX.  



[01:22:38] Unknown:

Yeah.   Actually, folks that are interested in this, they they're they have a Substack.   I think it's Square self custody dot substack.com.   And, they've they've published a couple newsletters, and I think they plan to to regularly publish newsletters.   In their most recent one, they they did say that,   they they referenced NFC as being the the interface the the most likely interface that they'll they'll use to communicate. So which is definitely an   interesting choice. I think it's a I think it's a good   choice, but, you know, in contrast to using Bluetooth or USB or QR codes or other other mechanisms.   I believe it's the case that they, you know, very much want to,   accommodate a world in a in a customer who is mobile first or mobile only,   and not assume   not assume a laptop or desktop computer system.  



[01:23:33] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, the major trade off here from my perspective   is the lack of a dedicated screen on the hardware device,   to actually verify   what you're signing   on the on on the hardware device itself. But I think the trade off basically comes down to cost. So presumably, you could do the same exact setup   with a device similar to, like, a seed signer that has a camera on it and a screen, and you could do it all through QR codes.   But the advantage of an NFC based device is no battery,   extremely low cost. Like, you can drill down that cost tremendously.   So as with everything with Bitcoin, it'd be nice if there's options there.  



[01:24:17] Unknown:

Well, definitely, one of the more controversial things being considered is, as you mentioned, no no display.   And back in June in the original tweet announcement,   it was noted that that was being considered.   You know, the advantages with no display,   like, as you just mentioned,   you can hit a lower price point,   and a lower price point has a lot of advantages. You can reach a lot more people around the world.   You can have much simpler device,   and and,   but   there needs to be an evaluation, and and   and, hopefully, there's a lot of feedback from the broader community on the security   trade offs.  

My hope is that   if one assumes a multisig 2 of 3,   as well as perhaps some other design aspects that   it will be,   a credible approach and a and a and and meet a security bar for the types of uses for for the product, but that's,   that still needs to be it still needs to be evaluated.  

[01:25:18] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it comes back to what we're discussing earlier   that it'd be great if if Bitcoiners have many different options with different trade offs. I mean, another major trade off with this kind of model,   is that, obviously, who's ever running the server,   whether that's Block or someone else,   has full purview into your transactions.   So it's it's not sovereign in a privacy way.   But if you compare that to a,   you know, a a hosted custodial wallet where you have you have no privacy and you have no control over your funds at the same time,   it is a massive improvement there. And there's gonna be all different options for Bitcoiners. And as they move up through,   their Bitcoin journey, they they might upgrade to more more private options, and it's all just a path.  



[01:26:10] Unknown:

Yep.  

[01:26:12] Unknown:

You know, we don't have this on the list, but are   do you have any interest in discussing TBD at all, the decentralized exchange proposal?  

[01:26:22] Unknown:

I I mean, I I can talk about it a little bit. I I   I think it might be good to have a a a separate show where you have Mike or someone from the TBD team on. But,  

[01:26:35] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, I I guess I can tease it to the freaks. Marty and I are gonna have a discussion with Mike, sometime in January.  

[01:26:43] Unknown:

Yeah. I'll I'm happy to help, help facilitate that.  

[01:26:47] Unknown:

Yeah. Okay. So so we'll leave it at that. But, TBD to the freaks, they they probably have already heard about on rabbit hole recap,   if if they're listening to that show, but it's the same I mean, I don't I don't think there's, like, any, like, unique,  

[01:27:01] Unknown:

points I could speak to that are   different than what's already been publicly shared. Like, the, you know, the white paper is published, and   and, I think it's at a high level being communicated about what what they plan to do. And beyond that, I don't I don't really have a whole lot to add.  

[01:27:16] Unknown:

Fair enough.   Another project I'm very excited about.   And then we have Hello Bitcoin on the list. You wanna discuss that a little bit?  

[01:27:26] Unknown:

Yeah. So,   one of my best friends, Matt Belez,   started Hello Bitcoin,   And the the goal with Hello Bitcoin, if you're not familiar with it, is is just create   both content and a community   that's, very warm and welcoming to beginners. And so it's introductory material to Bitcoin. So it's Bitcoin focused. It's all open source.   And   so far, there's been 3 videos produced   that I think are on the order of   6:6 to 10 minutes long, relatively short.   Con Connor from my team,   is the is the in in the first couple of videos and does a great job. He's great in them.   Yeah. He he just he, you know, he really cares about Bitcoin. You can tell it, and he just speaks well to it.  



[01:28:14] Unknown:

And we have guys have chat they they have a channel on, bitcointv.comfreaks   as well. Hello Bitcoin does. And their website is hello it's hello Bitcoin, but it's   the the   the dot is between the o and the I. So it's hello bitco.in.  

[01:28:33] Unknown:

Yeah. And I I mean, my hope   that I I really think those videos are are great, but if you look at the number of views, it it needs to be a 100 x that. So we we we need to find as a community, I think,   everyone listening, hopefully, take a look at those. And I think these can become go to resources when you're introducing   friends and family members and people new to Bitcoin. It can be really good.   There's also a desire on Hello Bitcoin to   to grow the community aspect.   I think there's an opportunity to create a a warm, friendly environment that still   that that retains Bitcoin ethos and discipline,   but is maybe a different flavor than what we see on Twitter.  

I I I do think,   you know, on Twitter, I feel like it's a daily battle.   And I, you know, I   I enjoy it, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. So I think there's a lot of people   who would wanna, you know, have an environment where they're comfortable to ask basic questions.   They're genuinely trying to learn. They're not trying to, like, sell shill an altcoin or something like that. And, there needs to be   an environment and forum for that. So hello Bitcoin is is a is a possibility there.   Haley on my team, I think, is gonna start getting more involved with Hello Bitcoin and and grow the community aspect. So I'm I'm excited to see what what can go,   what can what can happen there.  



[01:30:00] Unknown:

Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it's really great content, and it's a great initiative. It's something that,   you know, I've been very focused on myself, which is trying to make Bitcoin more accessible,   particularly to beginners,   but also to just people that are   going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, and they just wanna improve their their understanding   and their usage.   So, I mean, I have a lot of respect for them. They're doing a really great job,   and happy to support them with the channel at bitcointv.com.   And and   Go ahead. We have we have we have Bitkite in the in the comments who's running,   the Nashville Big Corners meetup.  

Just meetups in general, like local community meetups, I think, do a lot here,   and just getting them around the world and and making that process easier for people to run meetups,   that are that are Bitcoin focused and and focus on, in my my opinion, the important things rather than, you know, trading and get rich quick schemes.   So   I I think we're slowly moving in that direction, and I think it goes hand in hand with our earlier conversations   around LDK, BDK, and Bitcoin Design Community where you have   actual tools that are easier to use from the ground up so you don't need as much,   education.  

But, no matter what, we're still gonna need an education component because Bitcoin is so radically different, than than the traditional systems that people are used to. Right?  

[01:31:31] Unknown:

Yeah. Absolutely.   Another thing I wanted to point out about how hello Bitcoin is it's another example of where the Bitcoin design community   has contributed and and made an impact.   If you if you look at the the 3rd video from Hello Bitcoin, there's some,   there's some visuals and motion graphics, and that that was done by volunteers within the design community, which I thought was awesome.   The Hello Bitcoin 4th video, which will be on   on   energy usage,   which is always a fun topic to cover.   It's gonna be coming out soon.   Aiming to to publish it before Christmas. We'll see if that can be met, but that also has a tremendous amount of,   help from from the design community.  



[01:32:16] Unknown:

Awesome. You kinda love how that it just all comes together. You know? We're   it's like very much a flywheel where all these different projects are helping each other out and and   and making everything more robust in the process.  

[01:32:31] Unknown:

Yeah. I think I mean, there could be a a whole another show on just that topic. I I there's so many instances I've seen of team you know, just instances of team Bitcoin and people coming together,   sort of loose affiliations, but we're all in we all share this common bond of wanting to see Bitcoin adoption and Bitcoin succeed.   And it just lowers the barriers to working, collaborate with other people on a project. Like like, historically, you know, you get hired by a company, and you only work with people who are employees,   at that company. And it it would be, like, foreign and weird to work with employees at other companies. And that's just not the case here at all. You don't it doesn't matter who you work for,   or or where you're from. Anyone can can,   can join forces, and and there's just you know? So maybe in another show, we could talk about that because there's many projects I've I've either been involved with or have observed where they they happen so quickly and can get off the ground so quickly with people who have never met in in in real life   and,   and really haven't worked with each other before.  

But it's just it's   I feel like team Bitcoins are you've there's there's, the pillars in place to make it so there's there's a little friction to get projects started.  

[01:33:46] Unknown:

100%, Steve. I,   I feel that too. It's a very special,   it's a very special community and place we find ourselves in. And   I don't really think I need to tell you this, but you are always welcome on,   any of my shows.   I love having conversations with you, and I really do appreciate the work all the work you're doing. I like having conversations with you online and offline.   So, yeah, you're always welcome. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.   So, I mean, I we're you're a busy man. We're nearing the end of our of our time here.   Do you have anything else you wanna cover? Any final thoughts, before we wrap this up?  



[01:34:28] Unknown:

Yeah. Just wanted to mention that   that we are hiring,   for for,   the the mining project   at at block is hiring.   The, the wallet project is as well. And my my team is too. So my my team's   looking to hire 3 more engineers to work on on LDK.   So anyone listening,   interested in in a position in any of those teams,   or know someone?   I I think for the for mining and for the wallet, just I think the best place to go would be check out the the block website for jobs.   For spiral specifically,   you can reach out to me. I'm Moneyball on Twitter,   or you can apply you can go to our website, and there there's information about how to apply. But I think the email is, apply at Square Crypto dot org. Still have to change the the domain name there, but for now, it's   that's actually on on my to do list.  

But it's ready. Yeah. Apply at Square Crypto dot org.  

[01:35:31] Unknown:

Awesome. Thank you, Steve.   Huge shout out to the freaks who joined us. Thank you for joining us. And, Steve, thank you so much for your work. Thank you for your time. Really do appreciate it.   And I look forward to, seeing you in person again sometime soon. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Bye, everyone. Cheers.  

[01:36:15] Unknown:

Think about things.  

[01:37:14] Unknown:

Because I don't understand you.   Oh, you are yet to learn how to speak.   About things? Believe me.   I will always be there so   you can tell me anything and I'll listen.   While we are together,   there is anywhere   that I would rather be.   Three birds of a pepper,   I just hope you enjoy our company.   It's been some   anything in a listen.   I might   even know what to say.  

[01:39:57] Unknown:

Love you, freaks. Hope you enjoy that conversation as much as I did.   Thank you again for all your support with the show. If you prefer to support the show through merch,   go to seal dispatch.com/stack.   I hope you all enjoy your holiday. As a reminder, I am going to be taking a break for Christmas,   over the next 2 weeks. We will be back on January 4th with the fire dispatch   and another Bitcoin Tuesday.   Rabbit hole recap will be on Thursday, and we will not be taking any breaks for rabbit hole recap as is tradition over the last 3 years.   Stay humble. Stack stats.