00:00:00
This is where you owe the apology in my opinion because you were so hard on the reason I didn't like is because they were claiming to be Bitcoin. One thing about Bit We Bitmap. Bit map is like a Bitcoin. Bit map is the closest thing to the metaverse that exists. You sound pretty bearish. I just I you know what? I looked at it right before we started this episode and I I You didn't even give it the fair shake. Rank number one. Rank number one. Yeah, this is rank number one. This is just like onchain schizophrenia.


00:00:26
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very exciting episode of the Helman podcast. My name is Casey Rotomore. I am joined as always with Aaron Redwing. And today we are going to talk about the L2 Meta Protocol uh Bitcoin renaissance landscape, the huge proflegation and uh you know title wave of protocols on top of L2s on top of Bitcoin. Erin, how are you? I'm good. I mean, just like our previous episode that was way late for the hype bubble, we are also doing another episode that is way late to the hype


00:00:59
bubble. Yeah, we're doing basically the Bitcoin Renaissance episode, which like we should have done like a year ago. Yeah, but I mean with the benefit of all this hindsight that we've had. No, it's true. I mean, it's I think it would have been difficult to try to in earnest assess all of these projects a year ago when they were more hyped. Most of them were not out. It seems actually like a lot of them have released pretty recently. Uh have like you know uh BRC 2.0 that was August of


00:01:25
this year like last month. SAT 20 was like this year. Heavy hitters. The heavy hitters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so yeah, we have a lot to say about all of them. I did a lot of research for this. Yeah. I forced you to do a lot of research. I did no research. Yeah. I sat down. I'm the every man. Yeah. I sat down and I looked at uh all these lots of these projects. I want to apologize off the bat for misinformation. Uh there will be there will be much misinformation. Basically like there's just no way that I could get too


00:01:56
deep into the nitty-gritty of all of these, right? I mean there like people wanted us to look at. We had a Twitter thread. And we were like, what what should we um uh look at uh in terms of like Bitcoin L2s and Meta Protocols? And there were like 40 maybe like 30 different things that people wanted us to look at. And I looked at them, but obviously if I was researching 30 things, I couldn't do it in a lot of depth. I just did it enough to get sort of the flavor of each. Yeah. I I mean I think that's good


00:02:24
because then inevitably for each one you'll have someone angrily responding in the comments with like a long write up about why you are wrong. Yeah, that's right. And that's good for us. That's great. That's great for that's good for everyone. Y it gets the community engaged. It gets spreads information spreads information and misinformation. Yep. So I think that's fine. So yeah, apologies in advance for the misinformation. I didn't really go too much in depth. I just wanted to figure


00:02:48
out like what they were and like try to figure out what level of completeness they were and also try to figure out like what if anything had been released in terms of code. Yeah. Um when I try to figure out what these things do, the first thing that I'm looking for is I'm looking for some sort of just cogent description of the system to describe like what it is and how it does uh what it's what it claims to do. Then I'm trying to find code like I'm trying to find code on GitHub and be like okay


00:03:18
have they released the code and and then also then try to find some evidence of some running system like an explorer like trying to find some explorer that like shows these transactions like is this thing live. That's my favorite thing to do if someone DMs me and is like Aaron check out this really cool thing I'll always be like I want to see the code. You want to see the code? Yeah. And then usually that just stops them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But sometimes they'll respond and then it's


00:03:47
what am I going to do with the code? There's nothing I can do with the code. But if there is code that you can see, that's I think at least a good sign. Certainly. I'm often shocked by how little attention the GitHub of these projects will get. Like you will have some code on GitHub. It's not clear if it's complete and it's pretty clear that nobody's actually looking at it and running at it running it. Yeah. Um, ord for example has 3.9,000 stars on GitHub. A lot of these projects


00:04:14
have like 12 stars on GitHub. It seems like there's not actually much developer or code review activity happening. I guess for a lot of software products, it there's no code. There's no code. No. So, it is it is sort of a cultural thing that people in crypto or Bitcoin or whatever expect some level of open sourcing or being able to see what's going on. Yep. But it's not like if you were participating in any other software community that would be an expectation, right? Uh yeah. No, I mean the reason is that


00:04:45
these things are all predicated on being secure, decentralized, trustless, right? And if they're asking you to run some code or trust that some code exists or somebody else is running that that code, but you have no idea what it does or how it works. That kind of gets the center of those claims. But yeah. Yeah. I mean I'm but I think it is it is like the purpose of these projects is to sort of revolutionize things in some way right yeah so I think the yeah it's sort of they have to then kind of have this like


00:05:18
open-source decentralized trustless thing because that was the precedent set by the entire revolution of blockchain technology whereas you don't really care if Adobe Acrobat is revolutionizing things in some sort of decentralized your PDFs. Yeah. I don't necessarily need decentralized open- source PDF readers, right? You know, y So, I I don't know. I wonder if some of that just comes from maybe people coming from software product world elsewhere and so it doesn't occur to them that


00:05:51
that's something that people care about. I don't know. Yeah. Cuz you have to imagine the code exists somewhere. Sometimes you're I'm really not so sure. Some it's it's sometimes maybe it doesn't. It's oftentimes very hard to figure out. You know, you go to some project page, you read this like 50page white paper and then it's totally unclear what exists and what is just a fever dream. Yeah. Of the developers. Um Yeah. And a lot of the a lot of the projects on


00:06:21
We got a couple fever dreams in here. We got a couple fever dreams and those happen to be my favorites. Yeah. These kind of are just in no order. No particular order at all. Yeah. I was going to ask what are the categories of things that we're reviewing cuz there's L2s, there's meta protocols. I don't really know what that means. Yeah. So, okay. So, the categories of things there's meta there's meta protocols. Um, ordinals, inscriptions, and runes are meta protocols. Roughly,


00:06:46
what you would say a meta protocol is is that it is a a protocol that is we're talking about bit everything here is like on Bitcoin or Bitcoin related somehow. A Bitcoin meta protocol is a protocol where the protocol messages are in Bitcoin transactions. So they could be in witness data or oper. kind of immaterial, but you have a meta protocol indexer that gets blocks as they're produced by uh Bitcoin and looks in each transaction and sees if there is a um meta protocol message in that transaction and then it updates the


00:07:26
state of the meta protocol based on the data in the meta protocol messages which are in Bitcoin transactions. The key distinction is that all the data for the meta protocol is in Bitcoin transactions and anybody could run a node and read the uh messages in Bitcoin and uh process process the meta protocol rules and everybody can come up with the same state that they agree to like the the key is that the data is in the Bitcoin blockchain. It is in the transactions. This is as opposed to an L2 such as um I don't even know what a


00:08:07
good example of an L2. There are L2s on here. Yeah, Lightning is an L2 um where there's there's some off-chain state. So in the case of lightning you have these channel opens and closes which are onchain but during the lifetime of a channel you've got a lot of state which is just held between the c channel counter count counterparties which is the pending state of the channel like the the current balance of the channel that data is offchain there various L2s have various ways of like committing the data back to the


00:08:45
chain but the fact that it's not all on not all contained within the Bitcoin blockchain, that is what makes it an L2. That there's this additional data that there sort of usually there are transactions that are happening that a transaction can happen on the on an L2 and it doesn't mean that there necessarily immediately needs to be a transaction back to the Bitcoin L1. You sort of can have some transactions on the L2 that eventually get batched or combined in some way to go back to the


00:09:13
L1. So, does Lightning interact with Bitcoin in a similar way where Bitcoin is the I think I'm using this term correctly, data availability layer where it's like putting some sort of state relative to the lightning network on Bitcoin and then it's kind of that's the relationship. Um, I don't know if that makes sense. The the reason why I'm asking I wouldn't use I wouldn't use the term data availability because I don't think that that applies in the case of Lightning. Lightning doesn't have data


00:09:44
availability stuff. That kind of means something specific. That means like when you have these L2 transactions that you can you can get them you can you can that they that they will be available to process at some point. Um okay it's a more specific term. Yeah it's kind of a more specific term. Yeah, that doesn't exactly apply. The reason why I was sort of framing the question that way or what I'm trying to understand is when you know the the operturn wars is about arbitrary data


00:10:15
that's unrelated to Bitcoin itself in Bitcoin transactions, right? Y would you say that's a distinction between an L2 and a meta protocol? Because a lot, at least from my perspective, the meta protocols seem more concerned with tokens, right, that are unrelated to Bitcoin. they just happen to be sort of floating around and their data is then stored on Bitcoin. Yeah, L2s can be either. L2s will usually have some data that is stored on Bitcoin that that you'll have a bunch of transactions on the L2 and then some


00:10:45
sort of summary or compression of that data will get back to Bitcoin, right? And that's like a ZK rollup. It could be a ZK rollup. It could be an optimistic roll up as an example. Yeah. As an example. Yeah. Um, and but they can be about anything, you know, meta protocols and L2s. They can be full Ethereum virtual machine compatible smart contract platforms. They can have tokens. Meta protocols never are Bitcoin scaling solutions because they they don't scale Bitcoin because all the data


00:11:14
in the meta protocol is in the Bitcoin network. Like you can't but an L2 may be about scaling Bitcoin, the asset itself. So sometimes an L2 is about scaling Bitcoin, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's really about allowing like some Ethereum EVM, you know, compatible thing. Sure. Okay. Um, so yeah, why not do the first one? And and really this is in no particular order. Yeah, there's no order here, but we will do I'll do timestamps for each one so you can find your favorite.


00:11:42
Yeah. So BRC 2.0 by Best in Slot. Shout out to Bari. Um, BRC 2.0 know is BRC20 extended in actually really whoops extended in really a pretty straightforward way with Ethereum smart contracts. So first we start with inscriptions. Inscriptions are the Bitcoin NFT protocol that that that me and me and me and co-conspirators like Raph made. Um, BRC20 adds a token protocol on top of inscriptions by putting these token mint and transfer instructions inside of JSON inscriptions. It's like a post-it note.


00:12:23
It's like a post-it note. It's a post-it note. You make an inscription and it says, "I claim this much of this token." That's right. And everyone's like, "Okay." And then every someone's like, "I claim this amount." Yep. And then someone's like, "Well, I claimed this amount." And they're like, "Well, but it's already over. You can't claim any more of that." That's right. You know, and it's like, "Well, I'm


00:12:37
going to send over here." Yeah. And it's just post-it note, post-it note, post-it note, post. And then the post-it notes are never recycled. They just sort of scatter the ocean. They drown the turtles. They drown the turtles. Yeah. Right. Okay. That's that's the basic idea of BRC20 pre-upgrade. That's right. Yeah. So BRC 2.0 is now in addition to just inscribing like token mints and stuff, you can also inscribe Ethereum smart contracts in a inscription. They're lit. They


00:13:06
literally put Ethereum smart contracts in inscriptions in the JSON. They're JSON blobs that What does that mean? What do you mean? What does it mean? Like what is an Ethereum smart contract? What does it do? An Ethereum smart contract is basically just like a computer program. Okay. It's a computer program except instead of running on your singular computer, it runs on all the computers that are processing the BRC2 BRC 20 2.0 contracts. Can you give me an example of how that plays out for a token?


00:13:39
Well, yeah. So um you might write a Ethereum style like swap contract where some like automatic market maker like pulled AMM and that program that like computer program that implements that AMM. You compile it down to EVM bte code which is like just the bytes and then you put it into an encryption and then people can sort of invoke that program. they can run it with their arguments and say like, "Oh, I want to swap token A to token B and the BRC 2.0 virtual machine will like execute that that bite code.


00:14:17
We'll run that program and be like, okay, this person swapped this number of tokens for this number of tokens and like everybody will to be able to agree on the outcome of of running that program." Do they have to then put a new post-it note up with the outcome? Uh, you don't have to put a post-it note with the outcome. No. Okay. You put a post reference the previous post-it note. Yeah. But but you put a post-it note when you're like calling it. Like let's say you want to call it with like


00:14:42
you know some data. You have to make a new inscription that will call the uh the BRC 2.0 contract. Okay. Yeah. So how that make you feel? I like I think it's kind of funny. Like it's like Yeah, I'm kind of here for it. It's like layer on top of layer on top of layer. Uh it's like the most inefficient thing like imaginable. I mean, it's like Ethereum binary bud code serialized to hex and then put into JSON inscriptions. Like, it's pretty wild. Um, it's pretty it's kind of


00:15:15
straightforward. BRC 2.0 is I would say like kind of straightforward. It's like, okay, well, if you have inscriptions, you can then put, you know, uh, EVM smart contracts in the incriptions and you can have some rules for calling them, right? Yeah. So yeah, BRC20 it's just like Ethereum on Bitcoin via inscriptions. Yeah. I mean I think the challenging aspect at least from my understanding was that it's because there wasn't necessarily like a canonical indexer. Mhm. And it was very just sort of who what


00:15:46
post-it note do you believe at what time that just getting everything to agree with each other was the hard part. Well, that's kind of what it seemed like. I don't think that's hard. I think it's just like uh best in slot has their indexer and that's like the canonical indexer right their code whatever they want sure but I think that that just the process at least my understanding was like the process of even getting there yeah was kind of the difficult part I also don't know like well so what do


00:16:13
the old BRC20 indexers see like they can't they're not executing the ERC20 the the EVM compatible smart contracts on BRC 2.0 0. So is it just two separate systems that like exist in parallel to each other? Um that's my I have to imagine unis swaps on board cuz I think the previous indexer was unis swap. Yeah. And then best in slot built one that is open source I think. Yeah. I think I think best and slot stuff is so that was kind of the challenge was like getting to there because I I again


00:16:44
I don't know. I love you Benari. This is a you know I don't know if he's going to wa he'll watch this probably. That's why I'm mincing my words cuz I like Binari. But I assume best and slot basically had to kind of like just guess check with unis swap. Like I doubt unis swap was that cooperative, you know. Who knows? I mean unis swap I don't think unis swap just handed over the indexer to open source because I think they enjoyed their wild garden. Yeah, totally. You know so I think it was just best in


00:17:13
slot sort of being like okay is this how the indexer works and then like being like does that match up with what unisat says? And so it was just sort of this like brute forcing to try to get there. And then yeah, it seems like they achieved the goal which was to have an open source indexer. And then on top of that, they now have the post-it notes that let you do smart contracts. That's right. What are smart contracts useful for? I mean, AMMs. Yeah, AMMs are are basically they let you do trading on


00:17:40
chain. They let everybody pool their tokens into like this big pile and then anybody can show up and be like, "Oh, I want to trade some of my tokens for these tokens that are in the pile, right? That's that's basically what it does. So that your counterpart is on chain. Instead of being an individual that you have to coordinate with, there's just this big pile of tokens on chain that people can swap with. Why don't you do that for runes for some philosophical reason?" Uh, it's just like a mess. It's just


00:18:07
like a mess. And like I don't want to complicate the protocol. Uh I also am a little bit worried about uh uh what's it called? Mevil. Mevel. Yeah. Mevil. Yeah. Uh where you could, you know, like by sandwiching transactions. Basically, miners are the ultimate say of what transactions get into the blockchain and in what order. And so if I wrote an AMM, I'm like not the the if a m if an AMM became very po very popular and there was a lot of money involved, miners would then be incentivized to start paying attention


00:18:43
to that AV uh that AMM that onchain AMM and reordering transactions such that they can make extra profit. Like, oh, you want to buy 1 million uncommon goods? I'm going to buy a bunch of uncommon goods before you get there so I can then sell you the uncommon goods. So then you're buying it from me. And this would make mining less competitive because sophisticated miners who had put a lot of um money into this would be uh their revenue would be higher than miners who just plugged in the toaster.


00:19:13
And you want miners to just be able to plug in the toaster and be competitive. Don't you feel like this is a losing battle? Kind of. No, actually in a weird way. I mean, I I feel like I say that also feeling no because the miners don't seem to do anything in general. The other thing about it being a losing battle is I actually think that it matters a lot that I the dev of the some of the most popular protocols just don't add this smart contract functionality or AMM functionality. I actually think it


00:19:48
is an impediment to somebody else doing it. So, it does kind of matter. Like, I feel like that's kind of the the Luke Jr. spam argument in a way. How so? It's like just don't do it. I'm not but but I'm not putting pressure on anybody else to not do it. I'm not doing it. Sure. I'm controlling my own. I choose not to write AMMs. All you people out there, you can try to write AMMs. Nobody will [ __ ] use them because you're all [ __ ] incompetent and like it's Well, BRC20.0 also ran. They did. They


00:20:17
did. They did it. They did it. They did it. Yeah. So, uh, so yeah, I actually think it is not quite a losing battle. Like, I think it's significant that inscriptions are by far and a way the most popular NFT protocol on Bitcoin and there's not a whiff of smart contract functionality or MEV or whatever extractable at all. Sure. Yep. And with tokens, it just feels a little more like what else do you do? Yeah. Just hold them, you know, just total gonna see what happens. Total your your uncommon goods,


00:20:46
right? Yep. Um, okay. Yep. So, yeah, BRC 22.0, we have a kind of kind of positive review, it would sound. Yeah. Just it does. It does what it says on the tin. It's like, listen, you can put smart contracts into JSON and then put it in scriptions like Yes, you can. You can do it. Uh next is what I like to call uh markdown driven development which is where you basically have like sort of grifters who they want to create a protocol but they don't have any actual ability to like write code and


00:21:17
like release it and so you get these like specd driven protocols. Um BRC 20 was originally like this because uh DOMA just released it as like a markdown document as like a gitbook and then other people you know famously UNISAT was the uni U unisat was the first people to write an indexer and so they kind of controlled the the protocol de facto. Um the next one is like arich and the arson genesis rune or whatever. So basically it's like runes and inscriptions plus like weirdass gamification where you like if


00:21:52
you mint certain kinds of inscriptions you like get these like Rick tokens and then you like run the R six or whatever and they like mine for you. The website is totally broken. It appears to be vaporware. I think it's been abandoned. Yeah, it's been kind of abandoned. Yeah, fully trusted in all aspects. Like there is no code. You're just trusting like okay well look somebody wrote a markdown document. like maybe if I do what the markdown document tells me to do that it will you know I will be richly rewarded.


00:22:20
Yeah. I mean the people that were really into arich uh well I I do get like the the airdrop aspect was interesting right that everyone it did kind of start a whole wave of people doing that y of air dropping inscriptions pro of pre- runes remember that right yeah indeed um so I think that the most interesting thing that it did was have good design and uh and do the airdrop yep aspect then it seems like it just completely completely rugged. Completely ruged. Did also air drop the token. Yeah, the Ars Genesis rune. You can


00:22:56
trade it. It was like the like it did happen. It was like the eighth rune mine. Yeah. The first block. There just didn't nothing ever happened. No. Which of course. Y. Um but yeah, I do think it's ultimately when you say markdown driven development, like I would call that marketing sort of. Yeah. It's not quite marketing because I guess marketing implies a little bit more active outreach, but it's kind of just putting like a nicel looking shell. Well, the the on nothing. The thing the thing that it is is is the


00:23:27
markdown driven development almost always uses other protocols. um like they're like okay like if you want to mine arich then like do this kind of inscription and like do these things with your encryption and then you use an existing encryption tool or like an existing rune tool to like do these like protocols. Um I guess we can do another example of markdown driven development which is uh bit mapap. So that's my fave of the whole list. That's your fave. Bit map is is also markdown driven development. I think


00:23:59
people were like look just make block number.bitmap inscriptions and the first person to to to do that like the first one that appears on chain is the valid one that is also kind of markdown driven development. You publish the markdown document and then you tell people what kind of inscriptions to make to use this new meta meta protocol. Yeah. I mean I think the beauty of bit mapap is that the idea is so simple that you don't even really need the code. No, like the code is it doesn't really


00:24:29
matter. Yeah, I do. I agree. I mean, I also sort of have a soft spot for the bit map people. Yeah. Yeah. Also, like I remember when we were trying to make the front page nicer. I was like, well, like the bitmap transactions like they're ugly. They they're just ugly. They just XYZ. Map like seeing that [ __ ] on the front page of ordinals.com doesn't like add anything to ordinals.com. Like you know that there is going to be a bit mapap transaction every block. Like seeing it is not interesting. And the bitmap


00:24:56
people were like, "No, these are the most beautiful transactions you can possibly imagine. Like, how could you censor them?" The the bitmap thing feels kind of wholesome to me in a way. Like, it's obviously just like absolute [ __ ] like sped retards like just doing just having fun on the chain, you know, just pepeing out. Uh, and then people do make these like weird visualizations where you can have like it's kind of like storing like the model of NFTTS where you would just have a thing that you own but the


00:25:24
actual image or whatever was offchain and this was just a pointer. Yeah. Bit map sort of has a similar thing where there are websites where people are building out the bitmap metaverse. Yeah. They have no connection. Yeah. To what? Well, they do in that I think you have to connect your wallet and have the bit map inscription in there in order to build out the metaverse on that bit map. So, you know, imagine that you have um for those of you who don't know the wonders of bit map, it's basically you


00:25:57
make a number bit mapap inscription and that number correlates to a bitcoin block. Yep. And the block for the inscription to be valid, the bitmap incription to be valid, it must be in the block in or earlier than the block that has that number, right? And the first inscription with that number with that number bit map. Yeah. So my understanding is they've all been claimed at this point. The new bit maps that are being created are just with every single block. Yeah. Every single block seems to have


00:26:26
one bit map transaction. It's an active community and there doesn't seem to be any competition for it. If there's competition for the bit maps, you would see like multiple ones in a block as people try to get the latest blocks bit map, but you just don't see that like they're there's one per Yeah. Shout out to whoever's doing the one. Yeah, cuz it could be a community resource. Like they could be all coming together and say we're stronger together than we are fighting.


00:26:54
I don't think that's what's happened. I think it's You don't know though. You don't know who's doing it. Antpool just does it. And um so Antpool has all the bit map. That's what I've heard. Ample is having all that. Let us know in the comments. Let us know. Like and subscribe. Let us know in the comments. No, but it's not they don't get every block, right? Yeah. But the bit map inscription shows up every block. Yep. So someone and you don't see the repeat.


00:27:11
You don't see Antpool doing theirs and then like the bit map inscription goes in the next block weirdly. I mean maybe you do actually. I haven't looked that hard. This is a whole derailing thing. But one thing about we love bit map. Bit map is like a Bitcoin. Bit map is the closest thing to the metaverse that exists. Yeah. Because like the whole problem with the metaverse is that like the whole idea of a metaverse is some sort of like web like shared space where everything interoperates. But then what does


00:27:38
Facebook go out and make? Like Facebook just makes a bunch of like walled garden VR apps, right? Bit map does have they there is this like decentralized land like aspect to the to BitMap which is the bitmap inscriptions. The problem is that it's not connected to anything with the metaverse really. Isn't there there's some 3D bit map visualizers that fly around your bit map. But it's it's like okay yeah you connect your wallet and if you have a certain bit map in your wallet I think then you


00:28:06
can update the metaverse pointer but it's like just only on that website. Y you know y so there is this sort of centralizing force much like meta. Yep. So, but Yep. God love him. God God bless him. God love him. Uh, next one is the tap protocol. This one was requested a lot. Yeah, this one I kind of don't get why people care about the tap protocol. It seems like could just be bots. Yeah, it could just be bots. It seems like it's basically like a BRC20 clone with some additional utility functions.


00:28:39
Like it seems like it has some onchain tra onchain trading and like more efficient sends utility functions. It does not appear to have any kind of smart contract functionality except for the ability to delegate authority to a public key where you basically say like these tokens like this public key is allowed to sign transactions that do anything they want with these tokens and this lets you delegate to for example ICP the internet computer. You can delegate your tap protocol tokens to the internet


00:29:11
computer. the internet computer like it's like these like [ __ ] threshold signatures. It's all this like complicated [ __ ] When you say the internet computer, do you mean that you can go I don't know the words for it. But you don't mean that you delegate it to some entity that then controls your tokens, do you? Or like I'm imagining it where it's like you bridge it to ICP. You don't exactly bridge it to ICP. And this is like listen, I did not spend a lot of time looking at this [ __ ] It's


00:29:42
basically like you go look these tokens this other entity can can sign transactions that like move those tokens and then that other entity could be a uh like a internet computer like ICP and so then the ICP like canister could run some smart contract some completely arbitrary smart contract and like move your tokens around. Okay. Yeah. It seems mostly like a graveyard. Like it doesn't seem like anybody really uses the tap protocol. Like it seems like just a kind of dead like a like a like a dead internet kind of thing.


00:30:13
Yeah. Yeah. Well, sucks to suck. Sucks to suck. Uh, next we have SAT 20. SAT 20 is just like it's like Did people request this? Yeah. Somebody requested all of these, you know? I That's why I wasn't sure cuz I was like I haven't heard of SAT 20 in a long time. Yeah, SAT 20 they have like a 42page white paper that it's like very unclear that anything exists. It's all in Chinese and English. It's all going to like really sketchy exchanges. Uh this is basically like CCPcoin, right?


00:30:44
But it's an attempt. So the thing is is that this is an attempt to do like some kind of light assets on a lightning network inspired network. I just don't think this exists. Like I basically I know the lightning network is complicated. I know the real lightning network is complicated. It took a long time to get going. I basically just don't believe that sat 20 exists. This is just basically like my level of belief in SAT 20 is that it's like a CCP scam. We should rank these. Why aren't we


00:31:09
ranking these? There's no ranking. There's no ability to rank these. Um, next is Alcanes. Mhm. Alcanes is basically It's sort of like a runes clone. It was unclear to me. I It some of their documentation makes it sound like it's compatible with Runes, but then the rest of it makes me think that it's not compatible with Runes. They use a custom VM that you can write web assembly smart contracts and deploy them to in a transaction that can that can exa executed in this VM. Uh and


00:31:45
they're called they're the contracts are deployed in witness envelopes and then you can call them using things that kind of look like runstones and op returns basically like BRC20 uh BRC 2.0 except they're using like a different VM. That's the only difference. So, why did they break off from BRC20? Because the Alcan's guys were really on the BRC20 thing. Oh, but I guess it's just runes instead of BRC20. Yeah, it's runes instead of Post-it notes. Runes instead of Post notes.


00:32:11
An improvement. I mean, they're all kind of the same level of like runes is a marginal improvement on BRC20. Like, yeah, it's better for the UTXO set. As far as the Dgens go, I don't know why they would really care one way or another. Um, it just it is what it is. Uh, I don't think that there's any like just from looking at the level of adoption of BRC 2.0 and Alcanes, it doesn't seem like these things there's much demand or much legs. Like it seems like there's like a mini hype


00:32:38
cycle and then it just kind of dies out. It doesn't seem like it's like Ethereum that has like sustained demand over time. Someone told me that there's a lot of devs that really like Alcanes, which does kind of make sense to me because I feel like if Runes is a slight improvement on BRC20, but you're not going to do the stuff that maybe the more Moonmathy astronaut dev types would be interested in that they would then do Alcanes. Yep. Right. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, like that makes sense to me.


00:33:09
It does look like psychology speaking. It does look that like development is like marginally nicer. You can write your Alcan smart contracts in Rust which is nice as opposed to solidity or EVM which is just like a [ __ ] show. Um so yeah that's Alcanes. It is what it is. Um next we have DMT digital matter theory. I'm ranked number one. Ranked number one. Yeah. This is rank number one. This is just like onchain schizophrenia. Like can you explain like I I know you you know maybe onchain schizophrenia covers


00:33:42
it but like the graphic you were showing me with the 69s highlighted like what is going on? You can basically say like look I'm going to issue a token and one unit of that token is going to exist every time there's a 69 inside of a block hash in a Bitcoin block. Yeah. So something like that. It's literally like the the DMT gitbook. It has like these screenshots of the ordinals explorer and then like the transaction hashes in a block and every time there's a 42 it's highlighted.


00:34:15
Are you sure it's not 420? Yeah, there's 420 and 69. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, it's not 42. I mean 42 is also a number but 420 and 69 are the obvious ones. Um, so it's basically like schizophrenia driven development. Again, it's like as far as I can tell it's markdown driven development. As far as I can tell it's like you have a big markdown dock and like maybe there's code, maybe there's not. Um, so yeah. I mean, but I love the idea of like what's the utility? Well, every time


00:34:40
that there's 69, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a new token that's made. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're probably going to unveil some sort of structure deep within the cryptographic universe through this sort of pattern recognition. Do you know what I mean? Yes, man. I think if you tried to visualize these sort of things where you just these numbers are eternal archetypes, right? And so if you're making an attempt to try to build structure around that, yeah, they might find that it it's sort of in


00:35:08
the shape of like a golden ratio spiral or they they may sort of figure out this multi-dimensional kind of structure. I I think they're on to something. Okay? You know, and that's the utility. I think we really need to get the cobalists involved. That's you know what I mean? Like that's this is the place hardcore cobbalists like out of the synagogue or whatever. get them writing some Rust, you know, deploying some smart contracts. Maybe they'll have like a banger, you know, that's I think I think of all of these


00:35:36
this is like this one's asking the right questions, right? You know what I mean? Like whenever whenever how little code and thought can we put into this, you know, how little can we just make it based on like pattern matching? But, you know, when we talk about smart contracts and it's it's like, okay, well, we need smart contracts so that you can swap one token for another really fast, it's not so appealing to me, right? But when you say, well, we need smart contracts so that we can recognize how


00:36:03
many times 69 has been put into the hash of a block header every single block, that's more interesting, right? That that's getting at something that's it's more applicable to my work, right? you know. Yeah. So, just personally that kind of speaks to me more, right? Um, good luck to them. Yeah, good luck to them. Yeah. Um, next we have the Arch Network. You wanted to talk about the Arch Network. It's just everywhere. Why is it everywhere? Like, can you explain? I think they just spend a lot of money.


00:36:30
Okay. They spend a lot of money. Yep. I think they uh they put themselves everywhere. Yeah. I But I just don't really know what they do. Yeah. Nobody does. I mean, I don't know. It's some sort of like Bitcoin L2. It's like very complicated. Uh, is it Citria? No, it's not Citria. Uh, yeah, but it's complicated L2 with like questionable utility and like questionable adoption. You sound pretty bearish. I just I you know what? I looked at it right before we started this episode and


00:36:59
I I You didn't even give it. No, I looked at it. I looked at it for like five minutes and now I literally don't remember anything that I read. I was like, "Okay, this is seems complicated." And like What would you compare it? Oh, yeah. It's EV. It's It's Salana based. It gives you Salana smart contracts. Okay. So instead of Ethereum smart contracts, you get Salana smart. You get smart contracts, which I actually think maybe that's like cooking with gas. You know, people like


00:37:18
Salana. People do like Salana. Yeah. But don't they just like Salana cuz it's fast? I mean, hypothetically, this would be fast. You would like every like 10 minutes. You like it's like Salana and then it bridges back to Bitcoin every 10 minutes. You can like transfer your Bitcoin to the Arch Network like Salana. Listen. I don't know. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, good luck to them. Good luck to them. Um, next we have Arcade. So, Arcade is a Bitcoin. It It takes ARC, which is a Bitcoin scaling


00:37:48
protocol, much like the Lightning Network. It's sort of like this. In the Lightning Network, you have channels and then you can send money back and forth forth across this channel. Um, in ARC, you have UTXOs that are shared. You have a bunch of people in the UTXO, like you, me, and like a hundred other people are in this one UTXO. And then we can like send money back and forth to anybody in this UTXO. And then the like person who runs the this this arc can then have an update and like update everybody's


00:38:15
balances into a new UTXO. And there's ways that we can like withdraw from our shared UTXO on chain or have a have a transaction offchain that like updates the state of this UTXO. And then Arcade adds assets on top of ARC. Um, by assets you mean tokens. Tokens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. tokens. Um, I'm giving this very strong uh NGMI vibes. Possibly my worst NGMI vibes of anything. Wow. Um, maybe because I'm like I don't think Lightning has like questionable product market fit right now. Like this like


00:38:49
very rigorous, very complicated Bitcoin scaling protocol. And Lightning has a lot of adoption, a lot of a lot of users, but like a limited amount of use. like it's not doesn't seem like it's a huge huge huge it's not getting huge adoption. People aren't like clamoring for Bitcoin payments. I think people aren't Yeah. People are not paying in Bitcoin. I mean I I like Lightning whenever um we go out to eat or a group of us go out to eat and one person picks up the tab and I give my


00:39:20
split share to them. That's the most cyber punk we've ever been is like uh starting out to eat then we pay each other with like Wal of Satoshi and like uh Phoenix on our I've done a little bit more cyberpunk because I I do my home poker games and then people pay in lightning that's a little bit you know cuz that's like home gambling or whatever. So I that's that's basically the extent to which I use lightning and I'm happy with that. I'm glad that I have that instead


00:39:43
of I would still probably just send a Bitcoin payment personally because I'm a Bitcoin person. Yeah. But obviously it's faster, nicer, it's a better experience to use Phoenix or whatever. The main thing that's nicer about Lightning is you make the transaction then you don't have to think about it, right? You don't have to Bitcoin transaction. You literally have to be like, well, I need to check in like a day if I actually receive this, right? And then I need to bother the person to


00:40:06
like bump the fee if it like didn't go through. Yeah. There's a babysitting vibe to a main chain Bitcoin transaction where Lightning feels very I mean I think honestly the user feel does matter and it feels much more like something like Salana. Not that anyone's paying their friends back in Salana, but you know what I mean. It's just that sort of similar kind of feeling. So I do like that about the Lightning Network. It it is though when I think about it beyond that kind of oh well I'm going to pay


00:40:36
you back in Bitcoin because you're my friend who's also into Bitcoin and so we like doing this kind of thing. It's hard for me to I don't know conceptualize the we'd be living in a very different world if there was like strong demand for lightning. Sure. I hope we get there. I I think but we're not there. Yeah, we're not there yet. I think we get there slowly with a combination of higher onchain fees where you really do want to avoid paying fees for your transaction because it's like I think I


00:41:05
think you probably need fees to be like 5 to 10 bucks per transaction consistently. Yeah. Something in that range. And then you do want like demand for Bitcoin payments which I think does come slowly. I think as Bitcoin, the savings and investment asset matures, I do think that there will be co-committant demand for the ability to make payments in Bitcoin. I just think it's very slow. Yeah. Yeah. So then if you take something like ARC and you're like, "Hey Casey, like are you interested in something that's


00:41:37
like kind of like the lightning network?" And then I'm like, "Well, is it like less complicated?" And you're like, "No, it's equally complicated." And then I'm like, "Well, does it have like clearly better trade-offs?" And it's like, no, it has a just a different set of trade-offs that are like equally bad. I'm like, yeah, NGMI, like Lightning was first. Like, it's got to be like way better. That's a better name. Uh, maybe. Yeah.


00:41:59
No, no, Lightning is better. Lightning is a better name. Lightning is better cuz it's like Yeah, it's fast. And then if you're like, well, what if we put a bunch of like random tokens? What if we made up new tokens and we did it on this complicated thing? I'd be like, eh, it doesn't really like it makes it even worse. Makes it even worse. Yeah. So, arcade, I'm sorry, guys, but very NGMI vibes for me. Yeah. I mean, that's not I that's not the most NGMI of the list so far for me


00:42:23
because I think RSI and Ars is RSI is not NGMI because NGMI is a future prediction. Archic has already not Yeah, RSI's already dead. Tap is already dead. Tap is like whatever, man. SAT 20 if they've got the Chinese there, they always have a chance. Yeah, it always has a chance. Yeah. Uh, and then yeah, the rest are sort of doing their thing. Yeah, Arcade I guess is more like future and the future is is not looking leak. It's not good. All right. Well, sorry guys. Yep. Um, then you've got BitVM and then


00:42:56
like BitVM 2. Um, this is a way of doing an optimistic rollup on Bitcoin with onchain challenges. Basically, the idea is that instead of doing a computation on Bitcoin, you commit to the outcome of doing that computation and you let somebody else challenge you. You can sort of like say like you, how do I how do I say this? You have some computation. The computation took like a billion steps. You can't execute the computation on Bitcoin, but somebody else can challenge you that you did the computation correctly. Offchain, they do


00:43:35
the billion steps of the computation and then they go, "Hey, this 250,000th step was like wrong." And then there's this onchain challenge process where you drill down to just that step and the person who did the computation has to then reveal the place that they did it wrong and then you get to take all their money. So, it's an optimistic rollup basically. Kind of dramatic. Yeah, it is kind of dramatic. I don't like optimistic roll-ups very much because the security model is just very


00:44:04
unappealing to me that like I'm going to put my money into this system and then it's not like I actually have a guarantee that the system will operate correctly. It's that if it operates incorrectly, somebody can steal all the money. Right. That's what That's what I mean. It's dramatic. It almost is like um It's like I imagine that I entrust my money to some sort of um chivalous knight, you know, who seems like he's the greatest dueler in the land. He's very strong. And I'm like, well, my money is


00:44:34
safer with him than with me because he's a knight and he's trained to fight. Y but then there's another knight that can challenge him and then that knight can then take all of my money and it's like, well, maybe I should have just kept my money in my hut, right, this whole time because this knight is out here ready to be challenged at any time. Yeah, that's generally I think a fair of the the peastoriented sort of uh I view all Bitcoin scaling through this like weird peasant model.


00:45:02
I think that's not inaccurate, you know. Um so yeah, also I kind of get the feeling that BitVM is like far away. I would say that BitVM and God I don't know, man. Like call me out in the comments for being wrong, but it doesn't seem like you can use it right now. And it's interesting like the more rigorous projects they have a disadvantage because they take longer to develop. So for example I would say Arcade BitVM are just much more rigorous for example and doing something much harder than BRC


00:45:32
2.0 right? But BRC 2 2.0 is like out. It's like kind of not vaporware. You can make your shitty contracts. You can like put them on chain. BitVM is like, man, who knows, you know, how long it's going to take and it's it's much more complicated and like, you know, who knows, you know, I'm glad that we recorded this episode now, even though we're late to the hype cycle because BRC20.0 just came out, right? You know, yep. And I would have been a lot more negative on it before it came out. Now


00:45:58
that it's out, it's it's as you said, it's like, well, it did do something. Yep. As opposed to I don't know. I guess BitVM was BitVM was quite a while back now, though. I kind of remember I think I was in Amsterdam in 2023. Yeah. When that white paper dropped. So that was two years ago now. Yeah. I mean whatever. No one has any obligation to do anything but it's Yeah. Nothing. I just remember when it came out everyone is very like this changes everything and I don't think it's


00:46:24
changed anything. Yeah. I think at least so far. I think it's a very interesting sort of encapsulation of of of the dis the disconnect between the hype of a new idea and the difficulty of putting all the pieces together. So, BitVM is a is a breakthrough. It is a very clever way of enabling an optimistic rollup on Bitcoin. Bitcoin is very doesn't have a lot of primitives for you to use. So, building these kind of thing is very very hard. Um the problem is is that the idea is way way way far away from an instantiation of of


00:47:02
an idea, right? And the idea, you know, for these things, there's going to be a lot of trade-offs. It's like, well, what does the actual user experience look like? Like how complicated are the wallets? Um what are the actual like scaling limitations? You know, um kind of similar to lightning, right? where lightning is a great idea and a great idea on paper but it comes with all these limitations that had to be discovered over time as the protocol was developed right one one thing I think


00:47:28
that one way that people were over optimistic about lightning is I think they were over optimistic about the complexity of implementation lightning implementations turn out to be very very complex all these different things you want them to do um different like oh look there's this like complicated attack and now we have to guard against this complicated attack. Those kinds of things. Um things like having uh inbound liquidity things that's not in like needing inbound liquidity to receive a


00:47:55
payment. If you read the Lightning Network paper, some people realize that, but a lot of people got excited about the Lightning Network paper without thinking about that aspect of it. Like, oh, what do you mean I can't receive funds because I don't have enough like space, incoming space in my wallet? Like that's crazy talk. Um, BitVM2, VidVM and Vidv2 are kind of like that in that it is a very clever idea. It's very smart, but that still means there's a huge amount of implementation and development


00:48:23
away from it actually being a reality. Godspeed. Godspeed. Yep. Uh, best of luck to them. Uh, then we have middle midl. I just wrote vaporware proof ofstake network on Bitcoin. That's all I have for middle. I don't remember anything else about it. Mid. All middle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, next we have Citria. Citria is an Ethereum style ZK rollup on Bitcoin. It's like with some like delegated proof ofstake system and you do Ethereum CK roll-ups on Bitcoin. Hasn't reached mainet.


00:48:54
So, we don't know. We don't know. Yeah. And and I'm like just not I I kind of don't think that I don't know if there's demand for this [ __ ] you know? Like this is what I'm saying. I don't know if like having bit like you can you have wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum. You have wrapped Bitcoin on Salana. I think the security of rap Bitcoin is like atrocious. The security model is like atrocious. You're just trusting some people to like not spend your Bitcoin. But like the security


00:49:21
model of some shitty ass Ethereum style proof ofstake ZK rollup on Bitcoin is also going to be [ __ ] atrocious. It's like billions of lines of unreed code. Like so I don't actually know if there is demand for any of this thing. I think it's like inscriptions caught lightning in a bottle with like a very good like product market fit like you know [ __ ] NFTTS on Bitcoin and all the [ __ ] data is on Bitcoin. It's all the data is [ __ ] scarce and you got this like [ __ ] Gonzo like sat


00:49:50
tracking thing but you can understand it. It's not that hard to understand. Sure. Right. Right. Like but that's I don't mean to interrupt you but it's like that is I think the big difference between inscriptions and a lot of these things is a lot of the people who are interested in these things could not explain them or what outcome they have that they desire. Yeah. They just think blockchain technology blockchain technology defi I'm an investor in blockchain technology. Yeah. Right.


00:50:17
You know whereas it's like you can kind of just get what an inscription is pretty simply. Yeah. you know, and that's that's kind of the beauty of it. And it's like you know what you're getting, you know what you're buying or not buying. But with this, it's like the vapor wear and the marketing of it is basically all of it. Like I don't think anyone is is interested in these things because they want to use them. I think they're interested in them because they want to be first to them and


00:50:42
somehow profit off of that. Very much so. And I I think that like and so like inscriptions had like extreme product market fit. BRC BRC20s also obviously had extreme product market fit like there was like a huge like hype cycle but like we're not seeing that as people roll out these like EVM or like smart contract like L2s like we're not seeing them catch fire in the way that inscriptions BRC20 and to some degree like runes although runes was obviously like completely the same as BRC20 in


00:51:13
terms of what was interesting about it like we're not we're not seeing the BRC BRC20 20 moment for these like L2 like rollup smart contracts, whatever. I think they do have dev market fit is not the right way of saying it, but maybe there's a lot of crypto developers who want to work in crypto. They want to tinker away on a crypto project because that's what they're interested in. And so the thought of having a little project to tinker on is very exciting to them. Yeah. Maybe they have debt


00:51:48
and there's VCs that are like, I want a crypto product to invest in. And so there's this fit, I think, between builders and investors. That is real, right? But there's no user. There's no users. Yeah. I think that's the users are just people that are chasing alpha in the same way that the VCs are. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's no Uber, you know what I mean? Yep. Uh, next we have two like very real projects that I have good feelings about and these are Cashew and Fediment. So Cashew and Fediment, they're both


00:52:22
different takes of a Chamomian ecash mint on top of Bitcoin. What is a Chamian mint? So David Chom is a cryptographer. He created something called a Chamian mint, which is basically a bank. It's a centralized entity that users can have accounts at that bank and they can make they can make deposits, they can make withdrawals, they can make payments, but the bank is oblivious to any of their activity. It has no idea who they are and it has no idea what their balances are. So there's just an anonymity aspect.


00:52:54
Anonymity aspect. Exactly. Yeah. You know, it's a KYC with the bank. Uh the bank could the bank when you do a transaction it doesn't know which of its customers is making the transaction. So yeah no no KYC bank just has no idea who anybody is. Um Cashew and Fediment are both different takes on this idea. I'll start with Cashew because it's the it's the simpler one. Cashew is basically like anybody can run a Chomian mint on top of Bitcoin but that mint is fully trusted. So you could run the Chomian mint. you


00:53:26
would take people's like bitcoin deposits um but and and and they could make these anonymous transactions and also make lightning network payments out of the mint so they don't just pay people within the mint they can pay people like outside on the internet using lightning network um but you Aaron can just rug anybody everybody's bitcoin at all times so what's the benefit privacy for the users basically like imagine like if River didn't know anything about River's clients River


00:53:54
could still rug everybody just like River could today. But you would get this anonymity all the users of River from out from from River's point of view and from outside of River's point of view, they would get private Bitcoin. So Cashew and Fedaman aren't scaling Bitcoin. They're not about scaling Bitcoin for the purposes of having more transactions. They actually do also scale Bitcoin transactions because once you're on the mint, once you're in the mint, you can make transactions between


00:54:21
within the mint. Within the mint and lightning network transactions out of the mint and those both don't require uh L1 Bitcoin transactions. Okay, so they do scaling and privacy. Scaling and privacy. Good for them. Good for them. Yeah, Cashew is like single point of failure. It's much simpler. Like the benefit is that it's much much simpler and anybody can just run a cashew mint. I can run a cashew mint. You can run a cash mint, but anyone who runs a mint can rug. Fediment is more complicated in that mints are


00:54:48
run by a federation of users and all of the federation members or some threshold of the federation members have to rug in order for the users to get rugged. So like Y, and Raph could run a Fed instance and one and all three of us would have to rug for the users to get rugged. As long as one of us continued to be honest, then the users wouldn't get rugged. That's nice. It's it's very nice. It's it's kind of in some sense better than Cashew. The disadvantage is that it's way more


00:55:19
complicated. Sure. Like the complexity of running these like federated mints is super super complicated. I do kind of feel like with all of these things with scaling Bitcoin, you basically are just trading off some aspect of what makes Bitcoin great. Oh, yeah. Right. And I think as long as that's honestly communicated to you and you understand the trade-offs of that, that seems fine. If it's a multiig, it's a multisig. And I'm not saying that about Cashew or But it's like if that's what it is and


00:55:47
that's what they tell you it is, I have no problem with that. Yeah. I'm like, why do I talk about Cashew and Fedaman as being particularly good? They have strong devs who are upfront about like what the protocol does. All of the development is open source and shared and public. Um, and all of the code is online, you know, and they're very clear about the trade-offs that they're making. A lot of the time projects that I don't like, it's because you can't find the code anywhere. It's


00:56:14
very unclear what it actually is. It's some weird white paper which is like divorced from reality. Cashew are like what it does like on the tin. Mhm. Um, next, just like BRC20. Just like BRC20. Yeah. So, next is Glock. I hadn't even heard of Glock. Yeah, Glock. I'd heard of every other one, I think. Yeah, Glock is very new. Glock is like the cryptog in the cryptography preprint print stage where it's basically like BitVM, but you don't have to challenge the computation. It's like if somebody does


00:56:51
the computation wrong, they leak a signature and somebody can steal all the money. So it sort of has a smaller it's sort of BitVM similar to BitVM but smaller onchain footprint. Um but it is completely in the most early stages. Like nobody is saying go who's doing Glock? Like real cryptographers. This guy named Liam is a is a Glocker. Not not my Liam but Ali. Alien is doing Glock. Um serious cryptographers are doing Glock. Uh but it's in the very early stages. It's just out. So,


00:57:24
did they name it after like the gun? I mean, obviously it's named after the gun, but like it's like some like garbled locks. Okay. They're called garbled locks. Oh, I kind of like that. Yep. Um, next we have Odin.f fun. Odin.fun is just like a centralized platform where you can shitcoin and then sometimes it gets rugged. So, yeah, Odin.f fun is not great. Uh, it's just a website, guys. It's just a website. It's a website. Yeah. And then like somehow some of the rugs can get


00:57:53
promoted from off-chain rugs to onchain rugs through some process. Well, it's like you deposit into Odin, right? Yeah. So, it's like you would have some amount of Bitcoin or tokens or whatever. Y you deposit into Odin and then you like on Odin and then when there's enough DGEN, it turns into a real rune, but it's all trusted up until that point. Is that true? Yeah. It's like a It's like a runes incubator where I thought Counterparty was doing that too, right? I mean, it's totally


00:58:18
different, but like isn't Counterparty doing something like that where you launch a token, but then if it doesn't get enough mints, then it doesn't happen or something. Yeah, I think so. I feel like Dan was telling us about this. That's onchain on Counterparty, I think. Yeah. Yeah. This is offchain, so it's all fast. Is it on ICP? No, no, no. It's just Bob Bodley's computer. Okay. Yeah. And that's not an internet computer. That's not an internet computer. No,


00:58:38
just normal. Okay. Well, and then sometimes he gets hacked. And sometimes he gets hacked. That's the real I think the main thing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but you know if you want to do it, you know, whatever. Yeah, you can do it. Yeah, you can do it. I mean, I think he told me that um after they got hacked the last time that they did 300 Bitcoin in volume the next like two days after like the community rallied. They rallied. That's they were like we got to get back on here. Yeah, we got to get back on Bob Bodley's


00:59:05
computer. I mean, we got to Bob Bod's computer. They're having fun in there. They're having fun. That's why it's called to do that. Odin.f fun, you know. So, um, it's all it's all Chinese. I think it's all Oh, not fun is all Chinese. I mean, not like the developers, but I think the people that are using it, it's primarily Okay. Yeah, it's big with the Chinese. Y. So, also big with the Chinese is our next contestant, which is Fractal Bitcoin. Hell yeah. I love Fractal Bitcoin. Fractal Bitcoin


00:59:31
is very simple. So, the the idea, they're going to clip just that. They're going to go, I love Fractal Bitcoin. Fractal Bitcoin is so simple. They're going to clip it, be like, "See, yeah, the idea of frack Bitcoin is like, what if we just like reran the whole Bitcoin playbook over? Like, what if we just forked Bitcoin and then made like a mempool.space instance and then also just did like inscriptions, BRC20s, and runes over again on fractal. Bitcoin? Do they unlock when those things


01:00:01
unlocked based on block height? No, I I don't think it's based on block height because we wouldn't have gotten to runes yet because like they're still at block like 1 million or something. No, they're they're further than us. We're only at block like 8 something 800 something. Are they really at block 8 million? They're in the future. No, no, no, no, no. But we're not at block 8 million. We're at block 800 something or 900,000. They are further than us. Fractal


01:00:24
Bitcoin has surpassed us. Are you sure about this? I'm pretty sure. Let you can pass me my phone. We haven't hit block 1 million like in real Bitcoin. I just forget if fractal Bitcoin is at block 1 million or at block 100,000. No, no, no. It's at block 1 million. The blocks come every 30 seconds. Like it surpassed us. It's Fractal Bitcoin is living in the future. Okay. Loading Fractal Bitcoin. Meool.fractalbitcoin.io. Uh yeah, block uh block 1 million. Yep. Yeah. We won't be on Fractal Bitcoin's


01:00:58
level for at least a couple another months. And by that point, Fractal Bitcoin will be even further in the future than that. Right. I thought it was something where it was like at the block heights that it unlocked on Bitcoin. It unlocked on Fractal. I could be wrong. I just remembered something about that where it was like they were like, "Yeah, and like it's going to happen in like February." I thought they were just scheduling it in the future, you know? Maybe. Yeah. I don't remember. But yeah,


01:01:20
they're speedrunning. Uh they're just rerunning. And now they're like, "Wait, [ __ ] The like the nodes are so big. They is that a problem you for? Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. Well, duh. I mean, yeah, that's the whole thing. Did they change the block size? Do they have a 4meg block every It's a fourmeg block every 30 seconds. Let me take a look at So, it's Bitcoin but just fast. Yeah, they just sped it up. Why don't the Bitcoin developers do that? You know, that's the question.


01:01:45
Yeah, they they have they have up to four meg blocks. So, yeah, good luck, guys. Yeah, they just they they like were like, "All right, let's run fraction." It's only been like a year. Well, that's the problem. They're going to have like a million blocks a year. Yes, exactly. Wait, so it's it's uh 365 days time 24 hours time 60 minutes time 60 seconds divided by 30 seconds. Yeah, that's about a million blocks a year. Okay. Yeah, they've been going for about a


01:02:12
year, right? Good luck, guys. Uh yeah, the interesting thing this gets a lot of volume. Like there is activity on the fractal Bitcoin block explorer. It's [ __ ] [ __ ] but you know, it is what it is. Y it's cool. I mean, it's like it's what I like about it is it seems like no one cuz they're basically just like let's do Bitcoin but blocks everything like let's just try it and and they're also like they're like rerunning the like ordinals BRC20 runes. They're like oh we'll just do that again


01:02:36
on our own blockchain. Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's interesting that it doesn't seem like any of the concerns of that ever were like told to them. What do you mean? Like oh your node is going to become really big really fast. Well, I mean I think it's fine honestly. Like a million blocks is like if the chain is you just need like a one terabyte hard drive a year. Yeah. You need to have one terabyte a year. Yeah. And it's not like it's not like it's a decentralized network. Like it's


01:03:01
not like Bitcoin where No, but I mean it's like the they they have the nodes in the data centers. Like no hobbyist is out here running a fractal Bitcoin node. Yeah. I mean I remember the orfluencers really had their heyday with Fractal for a sec. And I was like what like posit positively? Oh, really? Yeah. They were like, "Guys, this is the new thing." Yeah. I remember I was we were at a Fractal Bitcoin event in like Hong Kong and like some some like kind of nice like sort of marketing person was like,


01:03:30
"Oh, Casey, you're here. Like, what do you think of Fractal Bitcoin?" And I was like, "I feel like I'm at the zoo like watching the monkeys throw shit." Like that's this this is this is what it's like. Yeah. It's um it kind of has a similar it's different but it has a similar sort of bitmappy feel to me where it's just like there's just a level of I guess just ignorance is bliss naivee almost where it's just like it's pure. Yeah, it's very pure. It's


01:03:56
pure. I mean I think there's something pure about fractal bitcoin and sat 20 as being these like bro like you know get with the future like whatever. Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. So kind of weirdly positive feelings. Yeah. Weirdly positive feeling. They're just doing what they're doing. That's the vibes level. That's the vibes. Yeah. Next is RGB. Uh RGB is like a token a client side token protocol and like smart contract system. I think RGB is one of the most complicated overengineered things that


01:04:24
I've ever seen in the entire world. It's so complicated. There are so many layers and it's not clear that it's what anybody wants. Um I think it's what zero people want. Yeah. Like for example, like I think one of the big things that makes like runes and BRC20 like popular is you can go on chain and you can see all the transactions. You can see all the mints. You can see all the balances. So everybody can be like, "Oh, what's the new coin?" RGB. It's all client side


01:04:49
validated. It's all private. You can't see [ __ ] anything. I don't think anybody wants that. And it also it's like it's like, oh my god, this [ __ ] is so complicated. Uh it took me a long time to understand RGB. So, I think RGB is what comes what happens if you really like writing specs and then you write a bunch of specs and then you write a bunch of code and like I don't think it's going to go anywhere ever. No. No. I feel like we'll get I think we'll get


01:05:14
to your apologies later. Mhm. But I feel like you sort of owe a reverse apology to RGB in the sense that something that I've noticed about you is I think because you have Bitcoin maxi brain where you've just like lived through Bitcoin history long enough and like that that in the same way that like old people they sorry to say it that way but you know what I mean like it's like old people have lived through things that make it hard for them to see the world with fresh eyes in a way that would


01:05:41
probably be beneficial to their overall view of the world. Sure. I feel like Bitcoin maxis that have lived through the block size wars that have kind of seen like the ICO boom, all this stuff, they have like Bitcoin maxi wisdom that makes it so that they're like weirdly nice to certain things and weirdly hard on other things. And I feel like RGB when I look at it, it's like it's not really that different than a lot of these things that but you we gave RGB like a three-hour episode on hell money.


01:06:10
I just wanted to understand how RGB [ __ ] works. Yeah, but like you didn't do that for any you would never do that for any of these other ones. And like if anything, you'd be actively antagonistic. Yeah, I think maybe that happened. Not so much anymore, but like that's where I'm saying that the apologies coming later cuz the the the real example of this is in a couple bullet points. Yeah. I think it's because RGB has been around for a long time. Yeah. Like and that's why I was like curious


01:06:33
about it. You know what I mean? And now that there's so many different things, like I just don't give any of them the time of day. Yeah. It's just I mean I think RGB I had a negative view of it because it was from my perspective that was why Yakamo Zuko was so anti-Ordinals in the beginning cuz he was an investor in RGB and he was like wait we have to do NFTs on Bitcoin my way and like just threw a total fit. Yeah. And so to me I was always like okay that's just terrible NGMI vibes y


01:07:00
you know not saying that encapsulates I I do love like Gideon and Hunter Beast which is who we had sort of as the representative RGB people. Mhm. when we had them on the podcast. But just looking back on that, it's crazy to me that we gave that topic the time of day when there's so many other topics that like you would never true. But I feel like that's your Bitcoin maxi disease, you know, where you're like, well, RGB had some really good people behind it. And it's like you're talking about


01:07:24
Yakamo Zuko. I don't know if I ever said that. I mean, but I feel like that's like the it's like I was It was for a long time when I was like like I remember like before I released Inscriptions that it was that uh what what are the [ __ ] Lightning Labs assets? Tapass. Tapass. Yeah. Tapass and RGB were like the things that I was like, "Oh, these are like the potential competitors." Yes. And look at us now. Yeah. And look at us now. They just never materialized. No. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I feel pretty negative about


01:07:57
both of those groups. Um, more negative than I do about BRC 22.0 kind of loaned me over. Mhm. I feel a little bit more positive. All right. Um, yeah. Like it just feels like those projects it really they I just feel like so many Bitcoin projects are given so much grace just for the sake of being Bitcoin projects. They don't have to deliver anything. They don't have to like really ever be used by anyone or even wanted by anyone, but just the fact that they're kind of backed by the right


01:08:30
people who were on the right side of the issues in previous battles. Everyone's just like, "Yeah, we love that." Yeah. Anyway, y we'll get to I don't you you don't need to apologize for RGB, but I will make you apologize later. Okay. All right. Next one. Uh next is Radfi. Uh, Radfi looks like it's like sort of these like it's basically like swaps that you can do like swaps and there some sort of minting swap. I've never heard of this one. Yeah, I think I met the Radfi guys once


01:08:56
at like a party. I like them. Uh, but yeah, looks like swaps. Looks like uh like I the doc said something about the EVM that seemed like it wasn't available yet. Uh, I don't even know why I put this on this list given that I have no [ __ ] idea like what to say about it. But just cuz you liked them when you met them. Yeah, but you know it's a thing. that exists. Go to radfi.co. Okay. Uh, next is Spark. Spark had a big moment because they air dropped a bunch of inscriptions. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah.


01:09:25
Right. That remember the gay one with all the people holding hands. Do you remember? Do you remember we had the sub space and someone was like, "Are you guys seeing this thing that just got air dropped?" And then that made me think that they had just like they were pumping their bag, but it was actually Spark had air dropped some like Kumbayash, some sort of global homo situation. Yeah. Um, yeah, they did that, but I don't know if anything happened. Yeah, it's just some scaling with state


01:09:50
chains. Uh, the security model is that you have like a bunch of operators and they work on a multi-IG and then they've got to delete their key for it to be secure. Uh, it's more weird vaporware scaling that like it's never going to go go anywhere. Okay. Yep. Pretty nothing. Pretty nothing. Uh, stacks. Stacks is really old. I really dislike stacks from the beginning because this is where you owe the apology in my opinion because you were so hard on stacks. The reason I didn't like STAX is because


01:10:20
they were claiming to be Bitcoin. What do you mean? I don't even know. I was they were saying they were saying like STAX is Bitcoin. They were saying like STAX is finance for Bitcoin when in reality it was this just like trust. It's basically like they had a trusted bridge where you could like so [ __ ] complicated this like this you could stack you could stack stacks by like tying up your Bitcoin or whatever. Uh yeah, again I don't even know I'm talking about this. I clearly didn't do


01:10:50
enough research. You don't even know. I don't even know. You don't even know STAX. I'm like, okay, whatever. It's like more NGMI DeFi. I just feel like STAX like really did it first. Like of all these projects, Rootstock did it first. Roottock did it first. Roottock did it first. I don't know Rootstock though. I literally only know Rootstock from you bringing rootstock out. Roottock is like what if we made Ethereum inside of a multiig on Bitcoin. Okay. So Roottock did it first.


01:11:14
Y but stacks just like I mean I just remember when I got into Bitcoin in like you know 2020 2021 STAX was really the only sort of I guess shitcoin shitcoiny sort of vibe L2 project and now we have like a hundred. I know. Yeah. You know, and if anything, STAX was kind of trying most earnestly, I feel. Were they? I think so. I mean, they have a genuine community of builders and they really try like to do like they did their Nakamoto upgrade. I don't really know what that did. Yeah. The thing about the about stacks


01:11:46
is that the the trust model always just seems insane to me. What is it? I don't know what it is. I don't know. It's like this proof ofstake [ __ ] and like it's just very complicated. See, this feels like Bitcoin maxi disease. Yeah, it probably is. Like it's where you're just like I don't know. at some point I turned against them and I haven't thought about it. Which is fine. Like I'm sure that's definitely true. I'm sure you're right in the sense that


01:12:07
all of these are that. Yeah. Right. But some of them you're like, "Yeah, you know, they're just trying to" Whereas Stacks, you're like, "No, STAX." It just depends about when I heard about them and like the the context in which I heard about them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's where I'm like I feel like STAX was like ahead of its time, you know, and that's why it was so hated. Yeah. Right. But it's kind of crazy. Like with the bubble of hype around


01:12:32
Bitcoin L2s, it was crazy to me that STAX didn't really get but I think it was just too early. Like if STAX had launched like a year ago or two years ago, people would be like all over it. They'd be like, "Oh my god, STAX is the future. STAX is so awesome." But because STAX was just doing it before, I'm also biased cuz I like STAX people. Yeah. I've It's been shocking to me. This is my vibes level assessment, not technical level assessment. Mhm. It's been shocking to me how many


01:12:59
Bitcoin companies or groups that I respect that when I meet the people, I'm like, "Oh my god, this is bad. This is a bad situation." But you like the STAX people. But the STAX people are lovely. Okay. They're lovely. Like really, they're some of the best people. Yeah. I mean, I do like the STAX people that I've met. And I'm not even I I don't really know devs. I know more like marketing people, but they're hardworking and they're nice and like they're genuine. Like I've been


01:13:23
kind of shocked that like the vibes are especially good. Aaron says the stacks vibes are good. The stack but I would never use stacks. You know what I mean? But I would never use any of these. That's kind of my point. There's no pro if you're talking about the trust assumptions of the product market fit. It's all over. Like there's no version of the cashew fedamament stuff maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. But again I it actually same. Those are probably the only in cashew fedamament lightning


01:13:47
network. Yeah. Yeah. That's really it though. But and even cashew fedment, they also give me sort of village hut vibes where it's like I have to put myself in some imagined scenario of a hyper bitcoinization future that sort of looks like a long house. Yeah. You know, you have to long house yourself. I have to long house my future self in a way that doesn't quite like it's hard for me to really think about myself using it, but I it I can kind of relate to it. But the rest it's like, yeah, it's


01:14:15
there's no use for any of it. At least stacks, they're nice. Yeah, right. Okay. buy stacks. Anyway, so I'll apologize on Casey's behalf. Yeah. Uh cuz he was too mean to you were too mean to them. Okay. I was too mean to stacks apparently. Y uh na last one for some reason because the sub uh on the subspace request uh do swap Nexus. Look. Okay. I spent two minutes looking at this. It's a PSPT based swap system which actually makes it like pretty simple. They're just doing like PSBT swaps. So yeah,


01:14:47
whatever. Why not, you know? Yeah, whatever. Why not? Yeah, whatever. Why not? That's like basically this whole list. Yeah. No, no, we started out really strong. The first like five or like eight, I really had something to say about all of them, but then we got into the also rants, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, let us know in the comments. Let us know in the comments. Like, uh, yeah. What did I get wrong? What was I unfair to? Which one is actually going to, you know, revolutionize finance?


01:15:14
Which one has the best vibe from your perspective? cuz for me it's like bit mapap and DMT sort of have the best sort of esoteric vibe. Fractal's funny. Um stacks I like the people. Mhm. Yeah, that's kind of those are the standouts for me. But let me know if I'm missing if I'm if I'm not tuned into some sort of I like the I like the Grug brain [ __ ] Like when you ask me like what do you think of BM bit map? I'm like oh I hate bit map. But then when I look at this list in context I'm like oh yeah bit map


01:15:43
and DMT. Like why the [ __ ] not? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do some schizophrenia. Yeah. Which are your what are your favorites? Uh Cashew and Fediment. Um like I think they're doing something real and interesting and good. Um uh Bitmap and and uh DMT are funny, right? You know, um what else? The rest of them I'm like they there's no product market fit for any of this [ __ ] Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah, I think that's true. Um but best of luck. Yeah, good luck. Prove us wrong. Yeah,


01:16:14
I love I love the culture of innovation and builder uh vibes that have been brought back to Bitcoin. Even though they're nonsense for the most part, I still like them. You just want people digging ditches and filling them up again. You know, you're a new deal kind of person. Men have to do something. Men Yeah. Yeah. And what are these men going to do otherwise? Rob me on the street. Exactly. You know, so at least rob me on the internet. Yeah. Aaron was chased down the street by an Arch Network developer who almost


01:16:42
threw a bottle at her. Yeah. That's the state of San Francisco. Yeah, it's not good. Um, that's not true. Sorry, Arch Network. Yeah, but I don't know that for certain, I guess. Spiritually. Spiritually. Yeah. Um, yeah. That's really all we have. That's it. That's what we got. Thanks for joining us for another elucidating, educational, comprehensive, wellressearched, thoughtful, uh, illuminating episode that of the Helman podcast. Oh, you said elucidating. I think elucidating and illuminating.


01:17:18
Uhhuh. Yep. Um, no, I think this is about as much as we could ask of you. Yeah, thank you. In terms of reviewing these, you know, like it really we couldn't have done more. Well, I mean, I read more like white papers than I've read in a long time. Yeah, like I think I think it was the the Filecoin white paper that I read back in like 2017 when I was like this is dog [ __ ] and then I just stopped reading white papers. Well, I feel like this is similar to um like the point we've made several times


01:17:46
on this podcast that the best attack against core is just to distract. It's like if if you were just to try to read every white paper, like nothing would get done. Yeah. So, it is sort of um yeah, just overloading with information. Mhm. If you have a 42page white paper, it's over. Yeah. That [ __ ] should be shorter than the Bitcoin white paper. That's right. What are you doing? What are you doing? You know. Yep. So, yeah. Yeah. That's it. All right. Thanks for joining us. Bye, everyone.


01:18:13
See you next time. Bye.