There is something about the stereotype of naive dreamers and idealists or cold hard realists and cynics. Stereotypes are not just going to become baseless, there is a core of truth for them, otherwise they would not have spread viral as an idea in the first place. But they, as well as the worldview they are advocating, are also exaggerated beyond that core.
Bitcoin is currently stuck in a game of war between the naive idealists and the unclear cynics.
On the one hand, the idealists claim that we already won. We don’t have to do anything, Bitcoin is magically guaranteed success. It will already take over the world, everyone will own it, it is the best value of value ever. That’s all it needs to win and succeed. No improvements are needed.
On the other hand, the cynics claim that we have lost or will. Shortly after a total revision that changes Bitcoin drastically, there is no way Bitcoin can succeed in the world. It gets caught and useless. “Who knows where to start?” is the answer to asking what improvements are needed.
Both of these extremes that dominate the public dialogue, sweeping attention away from two important things, the reality of what can already be done with what we have and how essential this reality can be expanded with even very small and simple improvements.
As things stand right now, Bitcoin would have some degree of censorship and privacy for a large part of the world depend on depotmen. The best thing we can do in that regard is lots of small and local Chaumian Ecash coins, but running an Ecash Mint requires running a lightning node.
The lightning is complicated and screw up and loses the latest canal state can lose all your money. The design allows your counterpart to steal all your funds if you try to use an old channel state after updating it. CTV + CSFs would give us LN symmetry, a type of lightning channel that gives a new way for channels to work. Instead of using an old state that allows the other party to take all your money, LN-symmetry channels would allow them to just “cut through” all intermediaries and spend your old state in the latest on -CHAIN, which ensures that everyone gets the correct amount.
The one small change (and it is by no means all CTV + CSFs enable) would radically change the landscape for who would be able and willing to run a local Ecash mint. The risk of losing everyone’s money through incompetence would almost disappear.
This one little new functionality would greatly improve Bitcoin’s odds of staying private and censorship. Does it self -indulging to the whole world? No. Does it drastically improve Bitcoin’s value, despite the fact that the maximal requirements improvement is not needed or possible? Absolutely.
Bitcoiners have to stop focusing exclusively on extreme and poles when it comes to the possibility of this room, which is a wide open field mostly unexplored between them. If we really want to know our odds of success, the limits of what we actually Can and cannot do with Bitcoin, then we need to explore this field.
This article is one Take. Opinions expressed are completely the author’s and does not necessarily reflect BTC Inc or Bitcoin magazine.