Quote from: Wind_FURY on January 22, 2020, 05:38:12 AM

Quote from: nullius on January 22, 2020, 01:29:01 AM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on January 21, 2020, 08:24:32 AM

But why wasn't anything built on top of Bitcoin? I believe it was because the Core developers wanted the blockchain to be as "basic" as possible,

Basic sounds to me like youre saying base layer. So, yes: The Bitcoin blockchain is a rock-solid base layer that does one thing excellently: Global, decentralized BFT transaction ordering, resulting in a single global ledger with a unit of account that provides the sound-money properties which JayJuanGee described. (It also does some other things less-excellently; but I dont really care about that, and it is irrelevant to the point I am addressing.) Thereupon, we have a single global, public reference from which to synchronize private off-chain ledgers such as Lightning channels.

Quote from: Wind_FURY on January 21, 2020, 08:24:32 AM

and because accommodating them required hard forks.

Hard forks are a risk, and also raise the question of just who has the authority to call for one. I want to be conservative with risks in the base-layer handling of my money; and although I do hope that ongoing hardfork research can work out a good way to do a hardfork in a decetnralized system, the problem is so great (including its centralization risk) that I am automatically suspicious of anybody who even suggests a hardfork.

Segwit was a stroke of genius, because it added features necessary for Lightning (plus fixed some bugs) with only a softfork. From there, I think its clear, the solution for most needs is to build on top of the blockchain layer, not to add to it.

Quote from: Wind_FURY on January 21, 2020, 08:24:32 AM

Wasn't that the reason why Vitalik founded Ethereum? Because he can't build the things he wanted on top of Bitcoin?

Because he couldnt do the fantastically stupid high-risk project of bolting a Turing-complete VM onto Bitcoin? I guess so.

Imagine if the Ethereum DAO (to give only one example) had happened with Bitcoin. Horresco referens.

I am currently entrusting the majority of my life savings to Bitcoinyes, almost all my liquid wealth (excepting some small fiat cash reserveas small as I can keep it). I would not risk that on Ethereum, just on a technical level of asking myself, What if this piece of oh so innovative technology loses all my money? The prudence of putting money I cannot afford to lose into Bitcoin is financially questionable. However, I do think it is absolutely prudent to take that technical risk on the reliability of Bitcoin Core and the Bitcoin consensus rules.

For context, I asked, and said those things because JayJuanGee said,

Quote

then you should be considering that those systems are better built upon bitcoin, to the extent that they are going to be secure.

Then it becomes a catch-22 in my opinion. How can those systems that want to be better, can be built upon Bitcoin?

It's possible that we had been misunderstanding one another. I personally believe that a lot of things are going to gravitate into bitcoin, and they are not necessarily going to be built on bitcoin right away, but frequently, there are people who say that they are working on a lot of projects that are on various shitcoins, including the amorphous defi concept, but their purpose is likely NOT so much about building upon a secure system, but instead engaging in some kind of means to print money or to pump and dump and they do not care if their system is secure.

Sure, everyone needs to put food on their table, so I cannot really blame people for wanting to make money through whatever work they are doing, but I, personally, see a lot of seeming phoney baloney in the various systems that are built on ethereum, for example, because the whole ethereum project comes off as a big ass smoke and mirrors and confusion regarding what it is exactly, especially when it tries to imply that it is as good as bitcoin in terms of sound money and security, which is just baloney deception, so I have a lot of difficulty taking serious the various financial projects that are built upon such seemingly insecure coins like ethereum, but hey, even satoshi had recognized that there were going to likely be a lot of snake oil imitation products along the course of bitcoin's growth, yet in the long run the value of a lot of products are likely going to be hinged on bitcoin especially if they happen to have some redeeming features that can be tethered or federated into bitcoin (even if it might be on a second layer or something like that), and maybe even if there has been a lot of years of development and experiments on those projects (whether defi or otherwise) on other blockchains that are not very secure, compared with bitcoin (of course, bitcoin's security and its sound money are like a conglomeration of intertwined incentives packages that cause individuals to build upon it and to invest into it, even if it takes a long time to play out and to figure out).