Replies (43)

You also need to add a line about how this destroys privacy for the ENTIRE bitcoin network too. People should know they're fucking everyone, not just themselves.
How does silent payments work, if I may ask? What is hidden from the rest of the world's view (I.e. those not party to the transaction)
Payjoin = #JustChangeOutputPrivatization? All I want to do is (when it's time to burn the nsec) consolidate all the on-chain zap UTXOs that were ever received into 1 output (where the hygiene starts anew)... no bloody change, ever!
weev's avatar
weev 2 months ago
Silent Payments is better than not. I'm using it now, though BlindBit is very experimental and you don't want to trust it to handle large amounts of money. But it hardly delivers on-chain privacy. It's just a nice way to make unique new addresses for every transaction. But then people, when they go to sell Bitcoin, or buy Bitcoin, are going to have a bunch of wallets combined when they deposit to their exchange or send money to the retailer or whatever. And that will break the privacy at spend/exchange time. Only universal zk-Snarks like Pirate Chain (ARRR) or ring signatures with fullchain membership proorfs (Monero) will give legitimate on-chain privacy and fungibility. And Core has steadfastly refused any proposals that would actually make Bitcoin fungible as currency, like cash. Saylor is right about this issue:
jb55's avatar
jb55 _@jb55.com 2 months ago
i think you can make it feel like it via 0 conf β€œpending” zaps. Would be great for commerce/larger txns
I wouldn't call it a fix. But education is really important here. So thank you for listening.
You really think the masses are going to be that careful? They're going to see a bitcoin qr code and a balance that says "$10" and they're gonna put it in their btc wallet in their phone.
If your thesis is that the masses aren't that careful, what you just described would not fit, because that's closer to "being careful" - sending or sweeping a bitcoin balance out of the Nostr combo client+wallet purpose-built to accept & manage on-chain zaps, or exporting/importing the private key from it as backup, into a separate btc wallet. What does this btc wallet look like, anyway? Is it a crapware wallet that people installed despite negative reviews from Gigi & company, that it only has one receiving address & forces spending reuse?
alexw's avatar
alexw 2 months ago
how bitcoin still not has a good built-in privacy layer 16 or so years on, one users do not have to worry about, mildly baffles me every day. we are standing still and being overtaken by CBDCs at this rate. lol.
Of course Bitcoin has good privacy tools/layers. It's just not the base protocol because it was designed that way (for very good reason). - Coinjoin - Silent Payments - Lightning - Cashu
I'm saying less experienced Bitcoiners would see a QR code and a balance that says $10 and be like, awesome. I want that in my wallet now. It feels like a cash out. I'm sure plenty of people see zaps as a form of a tiny bit of play money. If the wallet didn't show your own QR code, it would make so much more sense. It's really not meant to be taken out of the noster ecosystem.
Flipping through my memory of dozens-hundreds of notes I read about this, I think some of the devs' intent seemed to be around letting people break out of the circular zapping back & forth to infinity, but there was also amenability to adding some friction, eg. mixing out. That's fine if it's an option, but there should also be a unilateral exit without friction or extra fees. What does $10 even buy you these days?
I have so many questions. First Onchain Zaps?? that's risky, if we ever get high fees again (if?) your zaps will break. min fee is what 150 sats? finally, can't you make this a stealth address? that would actually solve privacy for this usecase. lol
OK I freaking love that you guys found a way to do SP with onchain zaps. I also love this for a bunch of other wrong reasons, like now you can send nfts to people's nostr npubs lmao. but also, i hate it because nsecs are the most prostituted secrets in bitcoin, even with remote signing. Time to improve the nostr id security stack. heard of frostr.org ? This is the best solution to the key roation issue i've found, short of a key revokation NIP being widely adopted.
On this point you are wrong: "The biggest privacy freaks tend to be the most affluent and wealthy. This makes sense, but should their opinion matter more than actual dissidents? People who have no privacy because every system around them is already compromised. When privacy is a luxury, unstoppable funding is what people need most." Dissidents need privacy a lot more than the wealth, who can afford other means to defend them selves. See HRF's work with bitcoin powered activists, they are far more sophisticated than the bitcoin rich.
I agree on this: "Something I've learned through this is that Bitcoin's biggest fans despise its design on the most basic level. There is a religious fervor around the "right way" to use it, while its basic functionality is considered forbidden." there's a whole sect of bitcoin maxis that can not fking deal with people using bitcoin "the wrong way". those people are increasingly irrelevant as they purity test everyone out of their shrinking definition of purity.
↑