E101: This Week in Bitcoin for November 26th, 2022 (Bitcoin, Lightning, Stacks, RSK, Liquid)

[00:00:00] :  what is up you beautiful People welcome back to the built on Bitcoin podcast, recovered everything going on across the Bitcoin ecosystem. I'm your host, Jacob brown. Just see me around as jake Blockchain and this is this weekend Bitcoin episode. So we're covering everything that I saw across Bitcoin, lightning stacks, liquid rsk, anything else? It's been quieter than usual. I think everyone's still kind of reeling from the SBF craziness. Um, but also I think just kind of heads down building maybe um, but also couldn't be missing stuff. So it's a lighter week than usual, but let's just jump right into it and not waste any time. So starting with Bitcoin main chain, the two big things I saw. One is I have this thesis that once an ecosystem has a very effortless and frictionless peg out system. I think people are gonna start to move to that. Um, that's not to say that, you know, they're not your keys, not your coins thing is not super important. It is, but I think when it comes to a certain level of risk, people will take and put it onto say stacks as S B T C or liquid as L Btc or rsk as R Btc or this new one called Btc dot B uh if it's safe enough and it's proved out over time. I think people have moved to that if the apps are there and so all that is to say that there is a new bridge and token on avalanche called Btc dot b and it's part of something called layer zero, which is a omni chain fungible token is how they describe it. And basically it allows you to bridge in Bitcoin from main chain into this uh asset called btc dot B and then use it across all of the ecosystem pretty easily. So we'll see how it plays out. I watched the video on how the bridging process works, It looks pretty clean. Obviously there's some risk there, but something I'm watching, I think the space is, it goes against some of the core bit corner ethos when it comes to just holding the stuff on a hardware wallet. But I think when it comes to the narrative switching into, how do you use your Bitcoin? Lightning is a big one, but something like B T C B or uh what's happening on stacks and R S K. I think it's going to be even bigger over time. Um, so yeah, something I'm watching and uh you can check out the links in the description to see any of this. The other big one is Bitcoin Core released their version 24 it had a pretty big and kind of controversial update in it related to the men pool and something called replaced by fee. So the gist of it is the main pool is just this kind of like a place that unconfirmed transactions go before they've been picked up and put in a block by a minor and if you want to increase your chances of getting to the top of that meme pool list, you can increase your fee, which is what you use this function called replace by fee. So you're swapping out your previous transaction, you can put this more expensive one in front of it. Um instead of doing double spend, it just replaces the transaction and hopefully that higher fee will get picked up by miners because the economic incentive is there. So uh there's been companies that do something called zero comp transactions where while transactions are in the in the meme pool there, watching the men pool and then they can automatically confirm that transaction for you because there's a pretty safe assumption. It'll get in mind on a certain night time. And uh I won't go too much more into that because I'm gonna be passed my skis. But there's a fantastic thread. I'll link in the description or if you subscribe to the newsletter it's in there. But it goes into why this was so contentious and why the culture kind of Bitcoin culture ultimately what went with the uh changing this option and enabling replaced by fee versus the opposite. So yeah, something something to look at though. It is a small change in the grand scheme of things. But it is a change that does affect some businesses and that's why there was some tension. So something to watch. All right. Next up. We got stacks and before I jump into stacks, quick word from my sponsor. We all know Bitcoin is for the innovators, the revolutionaries and the builders looking to build a better world for themselves and for the next generation. We also know the saying the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is right now, the same thing applies to building on Bitcoin. If you want to come build with the most active developer community, building new use cases for Bitcoin and it's time you make the leap to learning clarity, clarity. Is this tax smart contract programming layer, which enables us to work on defi smart contracts and so much more all built with the safety and security that comes with Bitcoin. Start today by going to start dot stacks dot org. Start dot stacks dot org has a five step journey that will take you from complete stacks, novice to teaching you clarity all the way to finding a job with the web. Three stacks startup, don't wait another month, year or decade waiting to get involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Start building on Bitcoin today. Go to start dot stacks dot org to start learning and building today. Alright, so jumping into stacks, there was two main things I saw Gamma is an empty marketplace on stacks and they just announced that they're adding functionality for ethereum wallets. So now you can connect your ethereum wallet, whether it's meta mask or wallet connect or something else and you can show your LFTs on your dot btc profile on gamma. So now you have your stacks and FTS FTS displayed one nice graphical interface, it could be like your home base, your portfolio of all your N. F. T. Collections. So that's pretty cool. Same thing uh N. F. T. Or ethereum people, wallet holders, they can launch collections from the Gamma creator tools. So trying to launch your own collection is kind of tricky still and Gamma has kind of been blazing the trails on how to make these no code solutions to make it super easy to launch your own collection and own your contract. So they're bringing that to eat as well, which is a step in the right direction of being able to go kind of cross chain but have it all reside around this dot btc name, which I think is powerful, so love what they're doing, that's super exciting. And then on the defi side Alex has uh they proposed some changes to the to economics a few weeks ago, this was in conjunction with their team and maddie stacks, who was the two Economics president at the Tax Foundation. And the vote starts in something like a couple of days, I think we're about 700 blocks away as at the time of this recording on saturday november 26th at four PM. So something to watch if you're an Alex holder and you want to see what they're doing going forward. I think the big change is they're gonna tie token emissions to trading volume or Yeah, how much volumes on the platform. So if it's slow token emissions are trickle out. If things ramp up then they'll go accordingly, which on kind of retrospect seems like the way to go just basing it off of time versus like a sliding scale or an adjustable scale makes a lot of sense. And then uh Last in stacks land if you're a founder building the Bitcoin ecosystem, especially if you're in the stack space, uh stacks, ventures is taking on founders and looking for the next few investments for the accelerated program. So right now applications are open until December 15. Next Cohort runs in early February. So if you're interested I'll hit the link below but you can also hit me up a little chat with you. Alright, next up we've got lightning uh not to much happened on lightning but few I saw there's a app called torque that's on the umbrella store and this allows you to connect your lightning node and get analytics and data on how your note is running and how channels are operating from, you know, liquidity and fees and that kind of thing. So it gives you a nice easy day to look at from one dashboard. Uh next up BTC pay server, this is probably the most used app to run your own node and accept payments from a front end? They released a version 1.7 which allows you to receive Bitcoin from one unified QR code. So if you saw a couple weeks ago cash app announced that they have lightning integration into the cash app app. What they also did is when you scan a QR code in cash app, it's a unified code so it can, it can thank you to Bitcoin on chain or lightning without having to be different QR codes. So starting to abstract it then the wallets can choose which one do you want to do, which network you want to use? And so Btc pay server is using that same functionality where if you want to use you spin up one Q. R. Code for your customer to pay you. And then when they scan that QR code it will give them the option. If they're using a lightning only wallet, it'll be lightning if they're using a multi wallet will give them the option and if it's just a Bitcoin only wallet they'll pay with on chain. So super easy. Makes it more seamless. Which ultimately should be the way to go where if lightning is Bitcoin um just make it easy and based off of fees or really just about abstracting the user user experience where it's just as easy as possible to I scan it, I pay you the rest just don't worry about it. So that's cool. And then last uh Dear G I think I say say it pretty prominent on twitter, he wrote a little blog article on stacker news about the kind of future of the value economy and he did it through the lens of the web to world had to treat attention as currency because it's all I had and now with web three we can start to shift some of that narrative not have attention and eyeballs and focus and ads b the main way that we extract value or get value from our customers but we can have lightning and Bitcoin be at the core of it and just put it into more and more interfaces and make it more and more frictionless which I'm super super bullish on with things like mash or albie I think they're just the first inning but once you start using it um just having a chrome extension that holds like 10 bucks in Btc that you can just click and it sends off you know three cents of value for an article. It's it just changes things so radically. I'm super bullish on it. Alright, last two things we got one for Rsk one for block stream. So rsk the main thing I saw there is a sergio Lerner who was the chief architect, one of the main guys at Rsk that builds out the actual core Blockchain, he had an interview and sat down with Santiago from Sovereign and they just chopped it up there at some conference together and chopped it up so highly recommend you watch that one if you like those guys, They're kind of in the non dogmatic Bitcoin camp, which is always good to see. Alright then, last but not least somehow I missed this. I was announced over a month ago but Block Stream has their own new smart smart contract programming language called simplicity. So they're doing this big push. I talked about it in the last update video of build on L two, which is their new initiative to attract Bitcoin developers to or developers to build on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Obviously with the focus on liquid liquid and Block Stream but they're branding it as Bitcoin kind of like how stacks has gotten roasted for that over the years. Uh It's it's mostly about just treating it as if you want to build in the Bitcoin ecosystem, this is a place that you can come to and so there's a video of adam back announcing it kind of, there's a five minute spiel on what this new language is about. Again, it's called simplicity. Um Yeah, I don't know much about that besides that but I think that's kind of a big development and somehow it slipped through my pro time life. So that's it, that's all I got for this week in Bitcoin. I've been off for a couple of weeks but I'm back and uh yeah we'll keep it going to the bear market until next time, love y'all peace. Welcome to Built on Bitcoin. No girl, but I'll be waiting. I've been trying to figure out a way to make it out. Make it out.