₿🛠️ Satoshi's 21 #012: Consensus, Cryptoeconomics, Threat Models 🔥

We'll be joined by Bob McElrath, Eric Voskuil, and others to discuss some "moonshot" ways in which Bitcoin could be improved, that is aside from what's on the foreseeable roadmap of its developer community.

It is often purported that Bitcoin has a lot of shortcomings especially in regards to scalability, while many other projects in the larger "crypto" space allegedly offer a lot of innovation.

Bitcoin development may be very cautious and slow in moving forward to preserve backward compatibility, but if a vastly better protocol design could be found and agreed upon, the UTXO set (the "state" who currently owns what money) could be imported into the new system.

Sharding, (Hybrid) Proof-of-Stake, DAGs, ZK-Rollups,... — what do these approaches bring to the table, and which of them could make sense for Bitcoin eventually, considering

• what their tradeoffs are,
• what Bitcoin is trying to achieve,
• the threat model against which Bitcoin is designed?

Which of these designs have previously been debated, and outrightly rejected, or indefintiely postponed, and for what reasons?

Participants:

Bob McElrath, ex-Fidelity Digital Assets, Phd Theoretical Physics

• https://twitter.com/BobMcElrath
• http://bob.mcelrath.org/

Eric Voskuil, ex-Microsoft, libbitcoin, "Cryptoeconomics" book

• https://twitter.com/evoskuil
• https://voskuil.org/

You?

• This is an interactive event, feel free to contribute, ask and answer questions!

Material: see comment section below

Format: Socratic Seminar https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-want-to-learn-about-bitcoin-try-a-local-socratic-seminar

Language: English

Target Audience: Intermediate, strong tech background recommended

Streaming/Recording: Yes

Location: Online. As a YouTube stream, or you can join via Jitsi Meet (ordinary video conferencing functionality; easier) or via the Mozilla Hubs (VR environment; more possibilities of interaction) (we'll connect these platforms with each other). Both are Free and Open Source Software, non-profit, respect and preserve your privacy, don't collect any unnecessary data, don't require any login/registration, and simply run in your web browser without any downloads.

• Jitsi Meet on FreifunkMUC: https://ffmuc.net/wiki/doku.php?id=knb:meet-en
• Mozilla Hubs: https://hubs.mozilla.com/

How to find us: We'll share further instructions and the exact access links one hour before we start in the comment section below (this should also trigger a reminder mail).

Timetable:

(19:00 Announcement of the link to the conference call, resp. the name of the server and room, and the link to the YouTube stream.)

20:00 Rolling start, chime in, say hello, introduce yourself off-the-record if you want to, organizational stuff
20:15 Livestream starts, optional on-the-record introductions, start of the seminar
22:00 (roughly) Wrap-up time, Livestream ends, optional break-out sessions

About Satoshi's 21:

This is our in-depth, no-nonsense seminar series Satoshi's 21, which will take place every 21st of a month in various different locations (hackspace, co-working space, conference room, or similar), or online if circumstances so require.

We'll have one or more selected topics concerning Bitcoin's technology, security, ongoing software development, business opportunities and challenges, economics, monetary theory, or its societal and political impact. Some preparation work might be required from participants in order to make the most out of the seminar.

Satoshi's 21 stands for:

• Every 21st of a month so that weekdays rotate
• 21 participants is the targeted and ideal working group size, but we could be more, we could be fewer
• And of course: honoring Bitcoin's monetary supply of 21 hundred trillion sats!

Contact us:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitcoinmuc
• Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/CYllaksSLloRHorac85fIQ

See you around!