An excessive amount of of this house, and issues being constructed round it, is centered round primarily mimicking the legacy monetary system. There’s not a lot being constructed attempting to blaze new grounds. Micropayments, whereas admittedly one thing I’ve been very vital of because of the person expertise of getting to consider tiny transactions all day, has seen nearly no actual experimentation or growth in attempting to resolve that UX downside at scale.
I wrestle to think about any utility that’s really progressive. Sure, issues like crowdfunding or micropayments in video games take away a central level of management that can be utilized to censor use instances of those functions, however they’re nonetheless reinventing the wheel. Quite a few tasks are centered on collateralizing fiat or stablecoin loans with Bitcoin, greenback cost rails on Bitcoin, and so on. These are essential functions to construct if Bitcoin is for use in commerce, that’s past a doubt, however they don’t seem to be issues which might be solely potential on Bitcoin.
In some instances this has implications for the general community and protocol if adopted by to its excessive. Within the case of Bitcoin collateralized greenback loans, for instance, it’s inescapable that these items interface with the legacy system. This offers these programs some extent of management over these functions, and (proportional to how a lot exercise on Bitcoin they make up) Bitcoin itself.
Consensus on Bitcoin isn’t ruled by voting, it’s ruled by participation. That’s,. these actors that really obtain bitcoin in financial exercise, and people who transact and generate income for miners. In case you aren’t doing certainly one of these two issues, your node has no affect on community consensus, particularly in the course of the occasion of a chainsplit or contentious fork. That’s simply the chilly actuality. Bitcoiners specializing in constructing functions that leverage or interface with the legacy system are simply giving the system we try to flee a bar wedged into Bitcoin the legacy system can use to leverage in opposition to it.
It’s silly, brief sighted, and a serious tactical error.
The trail ahead is to concentrate on sustainable functions that don’t require that interface, that may perform completely independently of the legacy system, whereas nonetheless producing income for miners and utility customers and operators. That is the one method ahead when it comes to encouraging Bitcoin adoption with out slowly ceding an increasing number of affect over the community and protocol to the precise varieties of gamers we got down to escape within the first place.
To actually thrive outdoors of the present system, we want markets for digital items, for providers, for actual merchandise, for brand new varieties of functions that legacy gamers gained’t or can’t clone and monopolize for Bitcoin.
