Custodial.

Custodial absolutely works in developed countries. The higher the on-chain, the more people will use custodial solutions.

Yeah, i'm saying this is not a good thing. One of my points in the preceeding long form comment that was somehow not understood by Lyn and others, is that the plan for scaling and onboarding the third world are mostly custodial in some shape. Fedimints, Ecash/chaumian rely on custodial and extra complicated trust models. And LN breaks down for them at high fees. This is a form of colonization. This third party middle-manism is not how they use cash or store wealth now. Continuing to refer to them as an example of how mint type systems and multisig arangements can work, is just marketing, divorced from on the ground social realities. Cubans use single owner wallets. In so much as they have to save their few dollars on Custodial WOS type apps is a failure on the part of the project. Contrary to Blockstreams go to excuses, they have no legal means to challenge a rugpull, or other abuse by the likes of liquid partners, for instance. The whole point was trustless, non-custodial, pear to peer cash.

I understand your point. But unfortunately self-custody for everyone was never possible. From the start of the project, the scalability issue and the need for second layers was known. Self-custody is only possible on-chain. Most people will have no choice but to use custodial services. There is an economical reality. Someone with an annual income of $150 can self-custody, but they can't spend if they have to pay $10-$40 in fees. I think that onboarding anyone, regardless of where they live, in a custodial manner is irresponsible, unless they want to buy thousands of dollars at once. Imagine someone, how has been advise to self-custody, DCA $50 on-chain every week, then when they want to consolidate or spend, they have to pay $10-$40 in fee. That's bad advise.

This is a commonly held, but inaccurate assertion by nuBitcoiners. Realize first, that the pessimism towards scaling solutions you've just demonstrated in that comment has been implanted in you by a very carefully crafted marketing campaign, pushed by a very specific faction, who engineered a "solution" they intend to profit from. Bitcoin is facing a type of Vendor lock-in, from deliberate ignorance like yours. The scene was very different at one time. Since these self destructive factions are bent on being against Drivechains (a non custodial scaling solution), and that having read the word drivechain your brain is already scurrying with memes and objections carefully worded for dumb money, get on your knees and pray to whatever god you believe in that BitVm two-way pegs work out. Please interpret any snark in this comment as contempt for the faction i just mentioned.

I'm not pessimistic about scaling solutions, I'm realistic. They are a few scaling solutions being currently proposed and discussed. It will take a few years for those who pass the discussion and experimentation phases to actually be available to Bitcoiners. The Fedimint protocol on the other hand exist and soon Bitcoiners will be able to use it. Fedimint is another custodial option we can chose from. Which I consider to be a good think. Drivechains are not a noncustodial bitcoin solution. Bitcoin never leaves the Bitcoin network. Users deposit and withdraw their bitcoin in and out of a sidechain with a one-to-one conversion rate. Drivechains help find new ways to grow the revenue from transaction fees by offering functionalities not available on Bitcoin. You want zcash privacy without the exposure to the token valuation, you deposit your bitcoin on the zcash sidechain. Want to move back into bitcoin, redeem your sidechain tokens for bitcoin. You want smart-contract functionalities without etherium, deposit bitcoin on your smat-contract sidechain of choice. When you are done exchange the sidechain tokens for bitcoin. That's not even bitcoin custody. You exchanged bitcoin for sidechain tokens. What do you mean by Bitcoin facing vendor lock-in?

>Drivechains are not a noncustodial bitcoin solution. Bitcoin never leaves the Bitcoin network. Users deposit and withdraw their bitcoin in and out of a sidechain with a one-to-one conversion rate. Your understanding about how DC works is incomplete. I could waste my time and describe it here, or you could actually read how the escrow would work. No one has custody of the escrowed funds. More non-custodial and trustless than 15 multisig federation. Look specifically at whether the author expects users to be doing this depositing or not. >That's not even bitcoin custody. You exchanged bitcoin for sidechain tokens. Depending on the sidechain design, the exchange could be for tokens you have direct custody of just like a main chain bitcoin wallet. It's funny, you have a similar lack of horizontal thinking as Peter. Not an insult, nothing i say here is personal, just a critique of the same arguments rehashed since 2015 if not earlyer. >What do you mean by Bitcoin facing vendor lock-in? Any solution that is not LN, gets shot down. The approved solutions happen to depend on LN. When alternative solutions or improved protocols exist but a company is unable to support them because their investment in one single software that excludes them, the company is locked in to that exclusion. This can be life or death for a company or project and is one of the competitive advantages of opensource and libre. Sort of like how Microsoft has or had a monopoly on South Korean (among other states) computer infra. Those who advertised these changes to Bitcoin including segwit, happen to be selling solutions they stand to profit from and are skill stacked to exploit, not because alternatives do not exist ready to go, or that it is inherently impossible for alternatives to exist. The tautology goes like this: This and not that, can be trusted. You can trust me because i trust this and not that. Circulars like this all eventually fail. The free market eventually breaks them. This is a fast and true law. The only question is if Bitcoin survives this inevitability. Not guranteed. Drivechains allows the freemarket to both break this circular, experiment, keep main layer bitcoin stable and benefit Bitcoins long term survival. Bitcoin should be as popular and dependable as Usdt and Usdc by now. It should be as private as Monero and as experimental as Ethereum was. Instead we are dealing with layer 1 spam drama, again. And fucking block templates. Insert WHAT YEAR IS IT meme. It only isn't because of the logic loop influencers and devs are stuck in that stand to lose through their ad-hoc bandaid solutions and inbred conference circuit. Their popularity will, as a consequence, not survive the next big crisis. It didn't have to be this way, but is historically predictable. An example is RGB and tokens/assets. Zero adoption. LN ~5k bitcoins. It is that factions answer to ordinals and tokens (a fad already on its way out) they spent years of dev time to build a response to a fad, with no monetary signal to tell them if the effort was desired by the market. We, therefore are locked into their vision of bitcoin and lightning. Only to have ordinals cause a huge issue on main net ANYWAYS. DC could have avoided this misallocation of effort with immidiate monetary feedback for the idea in a sandboxed sidechain on a reduced blocksize attack surface. (To be fair Primal and related tech by Orlovsky has enough creativity to outlast even the next crisis or off chain innovation. Its that far ahead in antifragility and uniqueness.) It's actually getting to the point of criminality if not outright sabotage/treason. For instance, I'm rather technical and security aware. Through poor ui and lack of op_vault and other solutions, have had funds stolen, just replicating regular user behavior as an experiment. I hold them and the toxics responsible for it and countless other thefts and privacy breeches. Bitcoin and software is not easy, it's true. All the more reason not to out all our eggs in a single basket of orthodoxy.