{ "episodeId": "SLP509", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "lisa_neigut_of_base58": { "name": "Lisa Neigut of base58", "role": "guest", "tag": "LISA" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.59, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics brought to you by Swann dot com. Today my guest is Lisa Neigut of base58 and btcplusplus. Now, Lisa is a rejoining, guest on the show. She has previously worked at Blockstream as part of the team working on core Lightning and looking at the Lightning spec. Nowadays, she is focused On Bitcoin developer education and also hosting a conference, BTC++, so we talk a bit about her views on Bitcoin Layer 2, as well as Lightning Network and where it's going. We also get her views on how important APO Any Propose Out is for Lightning Network. Is it essential? Is it just a nice to have? We get into some of the details there, and we also obviously talk about her upcoming stuff, such as the BTC++ event in Berlin, and of course, Base58, her Bitcoin protocol school. Lisa, welcome back to the show. Hey," }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "00:59", "start": 59.14, "text": "Stefan, thanks for having me back." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02", "start": 62.0, "text": "So lots of things happening. There's a lot of, arguments and discussion about, you know, the future of Bitcoin, Layer 2s. you're working on, base58, obviously trying to teach Bitcoin developers out there. You're also organizing BTC++, so we'll get into all this stuff, and of course, talk a bit about where Lightning is at as well. so yeah, let's start with a little bit around, you know, what's happening with Bitcoin, Discussion now about alternative layer two, so for example, ARK is probably a good example. There are people talking about various ideas, whether that's like zk rollups and various things like that. do you have any ideas in terms of what's exciting for you, or are you, mainly, you know, focused in on Lightning Network?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "01:46", "start": 105.63, "text": "Yeah, so I mean, the things that I really like, and one of the reasons why like Lightning is a primary focus for me, is I'm really into like payment rails, like being able to pay people with Bitcoin, and that use case is like one of the most interesting as far as I'm concerned. So like, whenever we think about, whenever we like talk about, whenever you talk about like Layer 2s or like, you know, use, other use cases for Bitcoin, the ones that I tend to like pay the most attention to are the ones where it's like, okay, we're Ark definitely fits that, so I kind of like, I've definitely paid some attention to that, it's kind of interesting, like, how much do you know about like Ark stuff?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:26", "start": 146.03, "text": "you know, I, I could give a basic explanation, but not like a, a very in-depth technical explainer, but my, you know, my general understanding is that the main thing is it's dealing with this inbound liquidity problem, but there are some downsides to that obviously, right? Mainly, one, it requires a soft fork to actually be realistically usable, right? In a And obviously the other big one I know of is that it has a massive capital requirement on the ASPs in that model, the Arc service provider, which is kind of parallel to LSPs in the Lightning service provider model. So, I mean, yeah, without kind of going really into it, that's kind of my high-level understanding of it. do you have any, like, do you have any thoughts on that or do you think, you know, this kind of thing is gonna be, like, 'cause I think, here's one thing, that we could say on Mark, right now, it's gonna take time to actually get there, right? Because think about, if you think about, if you think back to Lightning, right? When did the Lightning white paper come? I think it was around twenty fifteen, if I recall correctly, right? And then Lightning in production on mainnet was twenty eighteen, and even then, that was like a very, you know, early clunky experience, whereas, you know, it took maybe three or four years to get to a point where it was reasonable and usable for the non-technical user." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "03:46", "start": 225.61, "text": "I mean, I think this is true about any new protocol, right? Is it takes a long time for, not just like the protocol to get developed and made to a state where people are building it feel like it's at a point where you can bring new people on, but then there's the whole like adoption curve, right? Of like how many people understand it and are built on it. And I think one thing that like, I think Lightning really hit this, but Bitcoin also, like, I would say, you know, the Bitcoin adoption curve is still also going up. Like, Bitcoin is Hopefully things like Lightning make the Bitcoin like adoption use case more attractive because it's like a real fast payment rails, right? So there's like some speed there that the Bitcoin base layer doesn't get you. Whatever, kind of handwave, but, talking about adoption curves, like part of what I think makes adoption curves for Bitcoin and then Lightning also just kinda slow, is that it takes a while for people to understand like what you're even proposing or talking about or like why this should be interesting to them. So just like the amount of learning and information that people have to like kind of acquire before they start really looking into like a new project or a new protocol is like quite steep also. I think like all these things kind of just contribute to slowing down how fast things get picked up. I think ARC, I think ARC might have a different trajectory if it actually does get shipped, in that it's a little more centralized than Lightning, right? Centralized in terms of like The li-lightning, you needed there to be a whole network, which means you need a bunch of like players who actually have payment volume between each other to like adopt lightning and get on board and like support it and like roll it out to all their users, et cetera. whereas with ARC it seems like really you just need like a wallet and like one or two of these central services, right? Or like, and like- Like, I mean, Lightning really tried to be decentralized all the way down to like the level of the implementation. So there's like a bunch of different implementations, and they all have to work together, and there's a spec, and like, all that takes extra time, engineering effort, money, like, you know, being decentralized is inefficient to some extent, and that's like just the nature of Nature of decentralization is that there's duplicated effort and like that's just like to certain, a certain extent, is inefficient, right? I think that like ARC was, as far as I've seen, is likely not to be like that. It's likely that there will be like one central implementation of ARC. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I would naively assume that since, you know, they're just working on getting it out and working and proving that it works, there'll probably be like one implementation. really all we'll need to go to market will be like a wallet One ASP, right, to at least get it like off the ground. so in terms of like how much talking do you have to do to people to get that working as well? I still think they're gonna have like that hard-- one of the difficulties of getting, you know, that protocol in is telling, explaining to people what it's even doing. I feel like even up until this point, like, you know, I'm fairly technical, you talk to tons of technical people, both of us. Still kind of have like a fuzzy idea of what exactly is happening there. and I think, I mean, I think, I think, I think I understand enough to be able to give like a fairly decent overview, but like overall, right? It's, it's, I think that might be the like more difficult side, is like even explaining to people how it works, et cetera." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:04", "start": 424.33, "text": "Yeah. Speaking of how we explain things to people, I'm curious if your view on Lightning has shifted over the years. I think this is something I've seen, perhaps you've commented on Lightning might be like a connective tissue between different custodians, different layers. There may be people who are using FEDIMINT, there may be individual sovereign lightning users, there may be, you know, exchange custodial lightning users. So, do you have any comment on this idea of lightning as a connective tissue?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "07:33", "start": 452.58, "text": "Yeah, so- I think the idea of like, so I, I really think that like the Fedimint team to an extent really kind of showed how this would work. They were kind of the first ones to start building like what I would call like a lightning gateway, right? So that's this like concept that the idea is that you have like your Fedimint Cash tokens, whatever you wanna call them, are Only like, for, for feddament, right? Feddament is like a way of keeping track of who owns what within like a, I don't know, like a credit union, like a small bank. And so if you wanna exchange feddament cash with anyone on that bank, they have to like, they have to be like members of that bank, right? But it's probable that, you know, you're a member of a bank, you wanna transact with anyone all, all over the world, right? so feddament figured out really quickly is that you could integrate" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "08:25", "start": 505.29, "text": "rest of the Bitcoin network, right? So I think that that's like a really good example of how like Lightning is probably gonna be the like protocol that you use to connect all of these like I don't know, I would call them like, you know, kind of small Bitcoin communities or whatever. and one of the reasons for that is like Lightning, Lightning is banking technology. Like, Lightning makes a lot of sense. It looks like, so like when you look at the actual, like, how the protocol works, the, the way that, like, the Lightning protocol works is like almost exactly to, like, how big banks, like the Federal Reserve Have like deposit accounts with each other, right? Like you go and you put money into like this big account at like the Fed, and then when they settle, they settle at the end of the day, like the difference between- They" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:11", "start": 550.58, "text": "net it out, yeah." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "09:12", "start": 551.77, "text": "Yeah. It's kinda, I mean, Lightning is, Lightning settlement happens a lot faster. So every time a payment gets made, you make the settlement, so you're not waiting till the end of the day and batching it and only doing the difference between them, you actually do the updates as they happen, which is very new and novel for like a, a settlement network, like that's like basically unheard of and like first time, which I think is interesting. Yeah. So like, okay, what am I trying to say? I think that like, so Lightning makes a lot of sense when you have a lot of" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "09:43", "start": 583.01, "text": "You get that at the layer where there's like a lot of volume of payment happening, like it makes so much sense to have a lightning channel between like two big exchange networks or two big like fed mint communities, right? or between the fed mint community and like the rest of like kind of the Bitcoin ecosystem, like I think that that is like Yeah, I think that makes like so much sense and that like, Lightning is gonna be like really cost effective and like a really incredible way of keeping track of Bitcoin, et cetera, for that kind of relationship. I think that like early Bitcoiners who have Bitcoin Lightning nodes, like you get to be your own bank, right? You get to establish your own relationships with other people in the Bitcoin network and make your own payments through it, et cetera. If we get billions of people on the Lightning though, at some point that's gonna be too expensive. It's gonna be expensive, protocol is written, it's literally too expensive to like get billions of people to be using like their own lightning channels for everything. So, I mean, I think this is like gonna be on like the ten to twenty year timeline. I'm not talking like next year, I'm not talking tomorrow. but yeah, I do think that like at some level, like, Lightning probably, I think Lightning will be around for a long time. I think it's gonna be very, very difficult to displace because like, at some level, it is like the best. I was like, man, there's like a chart of like grading layer two solutions that I really should probably like, like, publish and like, do an actual job of. Lightning, I think has like the best Like terms of, in terms of like your ability to exit at layer two, et cetera, for like both participants, maybe we'll get some like fancy protocol upgrades that like are just as good, et cetera, but you, you also like- And Lightning and like, and Fetty kind of avoids, well, even then, like, at the end of the day, you start running into like, I don't know, like layers two start running into a problem when you like start getting into like sub-chain amounts, right? Like, whenever you're trying to transact with value which is lower than what the chain can accommodate, does that make sense? Right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:53", "start": 713.42, "text": "So just to understa- just to, as I'm understanding what you're getting at here is transacting on Lightning at amounts below the dust level basically is Kinda a bit, imprec- imprecise, maybe a bit more custodial. You can't really fully enforce it exactly. And so hypothetically, what you're, I guess what you're getting at is, imagine a future where on-chain fees were, I mean, in fiat terms, of course, of course, in Bitcoin terms it'll be different, but in fiat terms, let's say it was like fifty dollars. Yeah. And if-- and in, in order to enforce that claim, if I have to pay an on-chain fee of fifty dollars to enforce my claim of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:29", "start": 749.13, "text": "ten" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "12:32", "start": 752.39, "text": "Exactly. But I don't think this is a problem unique to Lightning. This is a problem that every, to some extent, every layer two is going to have, right? Like, if you're holding FETI eCash Tokens for twenty dollars, and it costs fifty dollars to get an on-chain UTXO. Your fundamental E-Cash tokens are like no- notional worth twenty dollars worth of Bitcoin, but like you can't actually like, claiming that on-chain doesn't make any sense. Like, so this isn't like, it's like, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter like what the layer two is or like what its relationship to the base chain is, like for every layer two, there's gonna be like a layer appointment beneath which like represents Putting that on chain just like doesn't make any economic sense, right? so things like, I mean, so this is when like getting that, like the fed, like the Fedamint with like the, the lightning rails between like other destinations that you wanna send Bitcoin suddenly starts making like a lot of sense because you can take that twenty dollars that doesn't have like, you know, an on-chain, an economic on-chain like value, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:37", "start": 817.18, "text": "And forcible value, yeah." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "13:39", "start": 818.58, "text": "Yeah, and all of a sudden it's still super useful and it's super useful like not- Even not just within your like fedemic community, but lightning makes it such that you can transact with that value like across the entire ecosystem, right? And like, I think like- Merchants are gonna accept Lightning, they're not gonna accept like, or they're not gonna accept every flavor of edamame cash token, you know what I mean? Like it doesn't make sense for that to be like the common, the common interface, I think, is gonna be Lightning. There's a lot of things that Lightning got right about commerce that I think are like really cool, like the invoice. The Lightning invoice is like revolutionary for Bitcoin, I don't think we as like Bitcoiners talk about this enough. like prior to Lightning invoices, we had Bitcoin addresses, like, it didn't tell you how much to send, it didn't tell you what you were paying for, it didn't give you like a timeline to pay it, like it was valid for. Like, this was like a huge-- you didn't get like a, a receipt really, like when you paid it. Lightning like kind of fixed all those problems, right? Like the invoice, the like-- Yeah. The" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:42", "start": 881.88, "text": "instant settlement is important too, right? Instant settlement," }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "14:44", "start": 884.2, "text": "yeah. Right? Exactly. All of a sudden we can like transact with Bitcoin and it, it like literally is But for the record, it's not an instant settlement situation, it is a like instant promise to pay, right? They just check that you've got like a, an account that you've promised to make a payment on. You don't even have- You don't have to have the cash for that, like, money, right? Today. You don't even have to have it tomorrow. Someone's gonna loan it to you. You know, like, it's like a line of credit. At least in America, we do line of credit stuff. I know debit cards are more popular elsewhere, but-" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:21", "start": 921.25, "text": "Yeah. So when it comes to broader, this idea of lightning as banking technology, and of course, in Bitcoin, we wanna encourage people to be your own bank, but also recognize at the same time there are certain limitations of the chain and layer one today Forks, maybe, you know, some other thing that, and expands that, there's gonna be a hard limit on how many people can actually enforce their claim on layer one. And so, you know, I think in some ways people can be disheartened because they can say, \"Well, no, not all eight billion people can self-custody.\" But I think we also have to remember it's a massive improvement on today where we have one Federal Reserve, and maybe around the world there's probably forty thousand banks or something in that range, but in a lightning world, we could literally" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:07", "start": 967.3, "text": "Important point is that there's no fractional reserve in the system, and so I think that to me is how I'm seeing it. But I guess the question I have for you is, do you think maybe the explanation of Lightning in earlier years, or at least the understanding, the common understanding of Lightning as being everyone's gonna have their own Lightning node, maybe that was imprecise, and maybe actually the way things are gonna be built out is more for businesses and sort of community banking. Is that how it's gonna be? What do you think?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "16:34", "start": 993.63, "text": "I think yes. I think running a Lightning node on core We're trying to make as easy as possible, you know, Zeman, who's now over at C equals, I think, working on LSP specs, made this amazing bot called CoreLight, CL-Bot, which does this like incredible job of managing your lightning nodes so you always have liquidity, et cetera. Like, there's tools to make Doing it easier, but I think there's always gonna be like a bar you have to be like this high to ride, if that makes sense. There's also always gonna be like on-chain costs, et cetera. Like, no, I don't think it's gonna make economic sense for everyone to run their lightning node. I'm just gonna say it. Maybe I shouldn't be saying that. I feel like, yeah, there's definitely this narrative, but that's definitely controversial, right? I feel like me standing up and saying like everyone running their own lightning node is like an amazing thing" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "17:21", "start": 1041.04, "text": "to aim Trying to get people to the point where they have enough knowledge to participate in the Bitcoin ecosystem as first class citizens, so to speak, which means like both in terms of running their own stuff As well as understanding it well enough to be like active independent agents within the ecosystem. Okay, that sounds like really-- maybe we can come back to that, what that means exactly, but like Like I do think that it's like a bit of like a pipe dream goal that we like set ourselves out as something that we're building towards and kind of like the north star of where, like, the accessibility and like how easy to use and How accessible it should be, but I think the reality is you're gonna end up with stuff that is a little more like community banking style looking. honestly, I feel like I should plug Greenlight, which is the big project that Christian Decker at Blockstream has been building for the last number of years. Which is like trying to make it such that, you know, the node is managed in like enterprise grade cloud software, but everyone who has the node like holds their own keys, right? So like kind of upending, I feel like that's like, you know, if we're gonna get mass market lightning, I feel like that is like probably the best way to go about it. Because everyone then is like self custody, in conjunction with like the verified lightning signer project, which makes it such that your node that's making the signing is like intelligent, it's not just blind signing. So, anyways, you hold your own keys, you get some assurance about like where you're spending your money, you can make really great first class user experiences on lightning where they like have their own channel experience, et cetera, but like a lot of the complication of running the node, et cetera, is like in the cloud How big that scales to, I think, is in question. And like, like I feel like we need like payment processors to start rolling it out at scale for us to like see how well that works. Like, I think we still kind of are missing like a certain amount of like medium master adoption and, and lightning to like, I think either like prove or disprove some of these like theories we've been talking about for years now. I also think that, like, you know, you talked about that North Star goal of like, Lightning needs to be like, accessible to everyone. I think that that is, like, again, like, really important for like, getting people excited about Lightning and getting a bunch of people to run Lightning nodes and really important for like, building like, an ecosystem. It's not out of reach for anyone to run a Lightning node today, I think. I think it will be out of reach in terms of cost of capital, both to get enough cap-- like, acquiring enough Bitcoin and having enough Bitcoin to make- Like running a node like something that you can do cost effectively or even like start, right? 'Cause like minimum channel sizes are a thing. Like when we get sat dollar parity, you know, people are saying a fifty thousand sat channel is on the low end. Like there's a lot of like nodes that won't open a channel above a million sats. Like that's like basically like saying, you know, maybe we'll never get dollar sat parity, but it could happen, and like that's like, oh, you have to have a million dollars in order to open a lightning channel, right? Like Get there someday. If having your own bank and participating in Lightning is important to you as a sovereign individual, now would be a great time to start acquiring the Bitcoin that you need to run a node, figure out kind of what the cost profile is, who you wanna open channels to, what your relationship to running a Lightning node is, et cetera. Like, 'cause I don't think that's gonna be accessible forever, I guess. and I think that's fine. Like, I think that's actually, like, maybe I shouldn't, I don't know, I think that's fine" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:06", "start": 1266.3, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. The lead sponsor of this show is Swann dot com, and Swann is organizing Pacific Bitcoin Festival. It's coming up October 5th and 6th in LA at the Barker Hangar. This is a can't-miss event. This will be such an amazing time to connect with all kinds of bitcoiners. There are top-notch speakers coming like Max Keiser and Stacey Herbert, Vijay Bohra, Party, Preston Pish, Greg Foss, Alex Gladstein, Corey Klipstein, Lynn Alden, Jimmy Song, and so many more. If you are in America or near America, this is going to be an amazing event. Last year the feedback was phenomenal, there was a wide range of people from all kinds of different interests in the Bitcoin world coming to talk about Bitcoin. There'll be talks, panels, fireside chats, there'll be activities, there'll be a swan dome with deep dive sessions for advanced topics and deeper discussions, as well as just a great chance to connect with like-minded people. 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I can also use the Lightning Network Explorer when I'm looking for a new Lightning node that I wanna open a channel with, so it's a really useful tool that shows All kinds of things, whether that's the mempool, the blockchain, second layer networks, and the team is just continually innovating and putting up new measures and metrics and things that you can track. For example, in mempool v3, they've got the block template algorithm re-implemented. You can keep an eye on full rbf equals zero or full rbf equals one. You can see mempool blocks are scrollable and keep an eye out for the mempool accelerator integration which is coming. You can get all of this over at mempool dot space. And now back to the show. Well, I think that's the realistic answer, right? I think you don't wanna tell people the lie about, oh, yeah, eight billion people can self-custody. It's just not feasible today, at least, with the technology we have. And, you know, perhaps with additional technology, some of that could change. so obviously, I think a big one, I know you and a bunch of other Lightning developers are keen on, is any prevout. and I know there's been a lot of discussion online about soft forks recently, right? People talking about drive" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:47", "start": 1426.76, "text": "Like, OptX hash combined with CheckSig from Stack or something similar to that, like Brandon's proposal. Do you wanna just give us your thoughts on APO? Because I think some people have a perception that APO is just sort of like nice to have and it wouldn't really matter for Lightning, but I think you have a different view, whereas your view is more like, no, like it really would make Lightning much safer. What's your view there?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "24:07", "start": 1447.09, "text": "It's so important. Like, it's just like, it's one of those things where, like- I feel like, okay, so I feel like what happened is APO was fairly uncontroversial until it was discovered, so to speak, that there was like covenant-like somehow it got dragged into like the covenant thing, if that makes sense. But if you like ignore covenants and be like, \"We're gonna--\" like Bitcoin governance is like a totally different equation, hand wave. if you just look at APO based on what it gets for Lightning, I feel like it's like kind of a no-brainer. Unfortunately, that's not, it's a little more complicated in that I'm just gonna handwave over it, whatever. But But like, okay, let's talk about why getting APO or something that can do the same thing as APO in the Bitcoin is so important. right now on Lightning, there's like a couple of things that make it extremely expensive to do and run and like the risk of expense, I guess I should say. So like You know, whenever you're deciding where to put your capital, one thing that you're supposed to be calculating is like the amount of return you can get relative to the amount of risk you have of that capital, like being deployed, right? Right now, everyone who's putting money on Lightning is making a very bad risk trade-off, I would bet, I would say. I don't think people are charging enough money for the amount of risk that they're putting their funds into in terms of like the penalties, like The worst case scenario on Lightning is that you accidentally put old state on chain and all of your money gets taken by your channel peer. Like there is a risk, it is small, it is like, hopefully you're doing everything you can to like make it such that this doesn't happen, but there is a risk, however small, that your balance in any Lightning channel can go to zero, right? So any capital that you're allocating into the thing, if you're like an actual, like you're actually doing like the risk calculation, somewhere in your risk calculation, you should be expecting returns. On like this risk of it going to zero, does that make sense? there's also, maybe I'll just keep that aside, there's also like the risk of a force close, right? So this is like the channel getting go-closing, closing to chain, and you having to pay on chain fees to get all of your money out, like back, right? this gets so expensive with the current protocols, and there's a few things that we're trying to add to make it cheaper, and I've done some like numbers on them, like I have a whole spreadsheet where I go keeps you in like the best case scenario, and it's like maybe five percent, like maybe five percent of on chain weight, and it's like, like What am I trying to say? Going to on-chain with like the HTLC structure that we have currently is really expensive because of the way that like the contracts have to be built for like the revocation penalty case. You get rid of the revocation penalty case, and the penalty case is the thing that makes you go to zero, right? So like you have two things going on here. One, you have this risk of going to zero because of penalties, and two, because of you having to like make the contract such that a penalty can happen, all of a sudden your on-chain cost of going and forced Anyway, so like, you have like the risk of like accidentally doing a penalty that you have to cover or like build into how much you're charging to, to put capital in there to route capital, and then you also should be adding in the risk of forced closing with each LCL season and like how much that's gonna cost you. Some of those you might not even be able to claim back and might all go to the miner because of this dust limit that we've talked about. Right? Like kind of earlier, you were talking about like there's some amounts that kind of end up in this like no man's land territory, which is actually the miner fee. so like, like the existing protocol, I would say, like risk of expense, like from an expense thing, no one is charging enough money in routing fees, and I don't think that anyone is really doing efficient calculations around like on-chain costs, et cetera. Like, this is why I spent so much time working on bookkeeping for correlating, right? What about" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:55", "start": 1674.8, "text": "prior episodes is about accounting for- Yes," }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "27:57", "start": 1677.24, "text": "because, you know, I mean, I, my, my, like, I think career of what I've been working on in lightning has been about like liquidity deployment, making it cheaper, figuring out how to like help people figure out what they should be charging, as well as driving down the costs of deploying that capital, right? So like, splicing, dual funding, right proposal for like the- The fee rate cards, right, is about how to do more efficient like capital allocation, like placement pricing. the bookkeeping is really important because all of a sudden people have like really good information about where their costs are. which lets you figure out better prices for your liquidity, et cetera. Anyways, trying to make more efficient markets for liquidity on Lightning. Anyways, long story short, getting APO lets us move to something that we used to be called L2, the new name for it is Island Symmetry. There is a working prototype that Greg Sanders, formerly of Blockstream, now currently moved over to, Spiral recently to help work on some other base layer stuff that we need to help improve Lightning, like package relay that type of work. there's a working prototype on correlating a balance symmetry. I've been wanting to like get, and I, I think there's like a PO got shipped on like the Signet Inquisition, right? So like, ideally, you could take Correlating, take this fork that Greg made, get some nodes running and try it out, and like, it's on my to-do list to like try and get some nodes running and like maybe do some comparisons of costs and like, you know, figure out like what that- How much is the actual saving? What that difference" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:33", "start": 1773.45, "text": "would be, yeah." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "29:35", "start": 1774.62, "text": "Yeah, like, you know, get some real numbers, like show people that, hey, this works, that it exists, like it's out there, it's not just like us talking about it. No, there's like a protocol and an implementation, a basic first implementation of how to do this, it's out there, it exists. Like, you know, it's not like we're like ready, like You know, we're like ready to, like, I mean, there's still some work to do, I think, around cleaning it up, getting other people to look at it, you know, finalizing exactly what the protocol looks like depending on what base layer thing goes through, right? Like, if we end up getting, Taproot hash, Chexxig from Stack which is my understanding is like one way to get APO, that isn't APO, maybe we get APO, if we get APO, then we can use the design as is, you know, that kind of thing. You know, that all is like a little like in the air, but I think like demonstrating to people, like this isn't something we're just like talking about, like someone has put a lot of work into this, like we have, like we're like kind of ready to go, we just need to get Consensus, I guess, that like APO is like a thing we can do. I don't know, I really like APO because it's a stake hash flag, which means that it doesn't really get like locked, you don't really like- I don't know. Maybe that's like a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:47", "start": 1846.73, "text": "thing, but like- Yeah, I see. So let me try and explain. Okay, so we've gone through a lot there. Let me just sort of re- walk through some of that just to make sure everyone's following along. So Lightning today, we call it LN penalty, that's the model we're using, and if somebody-- So let's say you and I have a channel together, and if I accidentally broadcast an old state, your node will then go, \"Hey, Stephan's trying to cheat me. Let me steal, or not," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:14", "start": 1874.42, "text": "That channel, and, you know, Lisa gets them all. and then the other aspect is, as you mentioned, the force close aspect. So the HTLCs that we are routing, so this isn't just directly between you and me, but let's say somebody else is routing through me to you, there's an HTLC that's part of that channel, and if that channel were to be force closed and shut down, then it would cost me a lot, and it might cost you some money too, in terms of how much goes to the miner fees today. And what you're trying to How much that would really be versus if we were to move to LN symmetry where we can change the structure and reduce those costs. So in, in short, it makes backups a lot easier, it makes the HLCs and the forced closure case a lot better, and I guess you would argue that it makes it easier for Lightning builders, not just at the protocol level, but application level Lightning builders to build for Lightning. Would you say that's a fair summary?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "32:10", "start": 1929.84, "text": "Yeah, and there's a lot of other like things you gain in terms of like com-computational requirements to run a node, amount of storage space you need to keep a node running at scale, like as we start getting into like, okay, we want payment processors that are really processing millions of payments to be using lightning, moving to L2 is like a huge space savings as well, like there's, there's just like, there's a lot of efficiency that you get. As well as like reducing like cost and like risk of funds. Gotcha." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:38", "start": 1957.97, "text": "Yeah. And easier to run watchtowers as well. so that's another- Oh, so" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "32:41", "start": 1961.45, "text": "much easier. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:43", "start": 1962.69, "text": "Yeah. Okay, so I guess those are some of the ideas around, you know, what, what can be improved with Lightning. Also, as you mentioned, there's tooling required, so it's-- there are certain hurdles, right? If we're talking about what are the hurdles that you need, that exist today to run a Lightning node, right? Firstly, well, you obviously need enough Are personally comfortable with the forced closure risk, right? Because if, if it could cost you twenty dollars if a channel closes down, you sort of need to be, let's say, wealthy enough or have a high enough income that you're okay with that, that you can just kind of budget for that as part of your cost, either 'cause you're rich and you don't care, or secondly 'cause you're making enough money that you just treat it like, hey, that's the cost of doing business. So that's one hurdle. And then the other is just technical hurdles of being able to" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:33", "start": 2013.36, "text": "Team have that recently put into Phoenix. I know Core Lightning has recently put that into the latest release. So that's a few examples that, you know, some of that may not be easy to automate, it may still require manual management. W-what do you think about that aspect, the channel management?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "33:48", "start": 2027.63, "text": "Yeah, I think that, I think that channel management is going to be a kind of like, forever job. I think that like we'll probably get some automation. You know, there's like, there is like SLP509, which like talking to Chris Gita, who's Bitcoin Core Lightning lately. He said he's been running CLBOS like since he started doing Lightning, and CLBOS just magically got his node into the top hundred nodes without him having to do anything. So like, there is stuff out there that like will do some of that hard work for you. Again, I really just think it kinda-- I don't think anyone really like, like the, you know, how much capital, is it capital efficient? No, I don't know. Is it like- Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I, I think managing liquidity and like doing that work to move the stuff around is gonna be, you know, a Bitcoin jobs program. Like we need more, lots of people wanna work in Bitcoin, like being able to like manage liquidity, understand where like lightning node like expenses are, figuring out ways to like lower your costs and raise your revenues of like having capital allocated to lightning, I think it's gonna be like, hopefully like something that like people will keep working on and trying to improve for like a long time. So," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:01", "start": 2100.78, "text": "yeah. Yeah, okay. Also, you're organizing BTC++ coming up in Berlin, so let's talk a little bit about that, and I know you've got a theme of Nix and reproducibility. Do you wanna just tell us a bit about that?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "35:13", "start": 2112.68, "text": "Bitcoin Plus Plus. so Bitcoin Plus Plus is a technical Bitcoin conference series. we started in Austin. we do international conferences though, which is just kind of fun. mostly 'cause like I like hanging out with Bitcoin devs all over the world, and I want to Bitcoin to feel like a global developer ecosystem. So, we're doing our next one in Berlin. We also always pick a topic for Bitcoin Plus Plus. as you were mentioning, our last topic was Layer 2s, so learned a lot about Like all the different layer twos of the last one. This next one, we're picking what I would say is probably our most like niche topic yet. it's something called Nix Bitcoin. So the joke is we're nixpelling bitcoiners. So if you're a bitcoiner, and you work in open source or you like have a project that you're working on this is a great opportunity for you to like come talk to other people that are using this Nix project, for shipping their software, how they're doing their build pipelines, how they're helping, how Nix is helping people onboard like new contributors to open source projects faster, how it's making it easier and more reliable to like roll out, Bitcoin nodes. I've been using it, I've been using Nix since February, I, I love it. I've been using it for, and sorry Lisa," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:32", "start": 2191.53, "text": "just to be clear, with Nix, are you referring I did an episode a couple of years back, I can't remember the number, Nick's with the guy from NixBitcoin, but there's Nix, the Linux, you know, distro, distribution, and there's also NixBitcoin. So are you referring just to NixBitcoin or are you kind of referring to both? Both." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "36:49", "start": 2208.86, "text": "So like, the idea is that we'll be talking about both. So we'll have like pretty much everyone who works on the NixBitcoin project, which is an effort to take NixBitcoin open source software and make it available and easy A Nix OS operating system, right? So it's like, it's like I recently moved all of my lightning node and bitcoin node infrastructure over to Nix OS using Nix Bitcoin, and it's just incredible how fast it is to like ship new updates for core lightning or manage it, because of like how declarative it is, et cetera, and all the work that the Nix Bitcoin like team did to make it such that you can easily configure your node in the way you want, it also has like a bunch of like NixBitcoin is a project, they baked in like all the best practices around security, around having a Bitcoin node on a like home server, and it takes like one line of code in the right spot to like add that to yourself, if that makes sense. So you can get like best in class, like kind of like From like the most expert Bitcoiner and sort of doing it the longest, you can get a Bitcoin node with like pretty high security guar-- like, I don't know, I don't guar-- I don't guarantee anything, but like, you know, best practices deployed on a box that you bought, so like, you know, my Bitcoin node runs on a refurbished Like business desktop that I bought used from like Newegg, which is like a computer retailer here in the US, and like so, you know, you get this box, you install an XOS on it, you set up a configuration file that describes how you want all this stuff to get deployed, et cetera, and then it's really easy to like roll it out to your box with just like a few Like a couple commands. If there's a problem in your deployment, you can roll it back. Like Nix is just great. It really, I don't know, I'm like, I feel like Nix takes like deploying software to computers and makes it more like deploying software. So like as a software dev, I love Nix because like it fits a lot of paradigms I'm used to. There's like the compilation loop, there's the ability to roll back everything is described in one place, kind of like code, right? So there's a problem, you go to like the one code file and like fix it there and then redeploy it. Yeah, so it's just, it's really" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:04", "start": 2344.29, "text": "nice. Back to the show in a moment. Are you looking to build with Bitcoin or do you want a job in Bitcoin? Having Bitcoin skills could really help you here. Base fifty-eight is a Bitcoin protocol school by Lisa, and this is the place to get guidance in your Bitcoin developer education. Now, don't be concerned if you're a total beginner, they Ranging all the way through from beginner all the way up to expert level classes. Now, there are online classes as well as in person intensive classes where you can speed your process of learning about Bitcoin development. So the Taproot intensive class is coming up, covering Taproot, Tap, Tapscript, Schnorr, Frost, and MuSig too. This class will be on just before TabConF and on again in Austin, Texas, thirteenth to fifteenth of November. Go to base fifty eight dot info to get the information on signing up. CoinKite dot com are the creators of the Coldcard, my favorite Bitcoin hardware security device. It has two secure elements, it's got plenty of RAM and a CPU, it's a very reliable performer, it has NFC support, and it also has micro SD card, so you can put transactions in and out using a micro SD card rather than directly connecting with your computer. Though of course, if you're a beginner, you can just get a USB-C cable and directly plug it to your computer and use it like a standard hardware device. But of course, there are these different options Options available for you so that you can increase your security. Also, they've got different color devices, so for those of you who want your cold card in red or black or glow in the dark, they've got different colors available on the site, and they also have a range of accessories that you can use. So for example, you can get the block clock, which is a great clock that shows you things like the Bitcoin price or the block height and all other statistics are available there, and you can also get the seed plate, which is a metal seed backup product for your hardware wallet. Seed. So go and get all this over at coinkite dot com, use code livera for a discount. And now back to the show. So I guess in a way you've been, yeah. So in a way you've been spelling it out, but just for people who aren't clear, why is Nix's reproducibility good? Why is that important for us?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "41:09", "start": 2468.6, "text": "Yeah. So I think this is really important for, it's really important for, so like, I think first thing I should say is it doesn't do the same sort of like reproducible builds, like the But it doesn't, my understanding is it doesn't give you like the level of certainty that you want in terms of checking to make sure that like I'm running the exact same software that like the people who produced it are, like it I think there's like some stuff you can need to change to get exactly, and this is where I get a little fuzzy, but like to a large extent, reproducibility in the Nix sense is that, and this is more for like software developers, what we love is that I can run it on my machine, which is Ubuntu machine, using the Nix like definition that defines how to like pull the things in and build them and exactly what version of all the dependencies to use, like exactly, and use hashes to make sure that all the dependencies are exactly the same. Same. And then I can take that same Nix definition file and give it to someone who's running on a MacBook or like maybe like a cloud server, right? So pushing it out to production or someone who's like trying to get up on the project and like is new and needs to install a bunch of dependencies, and it guarantees, guarantees basically that all of the different builds across all those different platforms are identical, and that's where the reproducibility comes in. So I have some assurance as someone like writing and building software that I can distribute it to other builders and other people who wanna run it, and it'll like work. So it just like removes kind of an entire class of complications, difficulty, there's so much frustration when you're a new dev about getting on board, like installing all the dependencies to make" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:54", "start": 2573.96, "text": "getting the right environment." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "42:55", "start": 2575.2, "text": "Oh my god, it is insane. Like when I started in software dev over a decade ago, I would literally spend a week trying to get like the Python thing install like copy pasting things from Stack Overflow, totally messing up my entire computer just to try and get whatever x y z project running. and Nix really like, ideally, makes it such that it's like all of that headache goes away, not only for like People working on the project all the time, your deployment pipeline, your test pipeline, but also for like hopefully new people coming onto the project, we can teach everyone to use Nix and how Nix works and get it installed and like, this is like at least my goal of like making a whole conference about it, is that we can start making Nix kind of the default or like have as many open source projects in Bitcoin support Nix and be shippable on Nix and like just sort of have have this nice reproducibility about them, that getting new people into Bitcoin and building on Bitcoin and running Bitcoin software will suddenly be like that much more accessible, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:59", "start": 2638.52, "text": "Okay, so yeah, so obviously you're very passionate about Nix. One other question around Nix OS and Nix Bitcoin. My understanding is with Nix, you don't necessarily have to run Nix OS, that you can actually run Nix in a kind of virtual machine and create a virtual environment, even if you're on other flavors of Linux or even on Mac and Windows, correct?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "44:19", "start": 2659.26, "text": "Yeah, that's right. So, one of the things that I found when I was getting into Nix earlier this year that was really complicated is that there's like, the term Nix, there's like four or five different things that that encompasses. One of them is like at its core, a package manager. So you can run Nix as a package manager, and I run Nix as a package manager on my Ubuntu machine, run on your Mac machine, I think you can run on your Windows machine, and so that lets you take any like software project Et cetera, that's shipped itself as available as a Nix package or that like as a dev environment, has like a dev environment set up that you can like install and like run like a, a dev environment on Nix. That gives you accessibility to like those features of like the Nix aspect of, of project packaging, et cetera. I think the other things that are like Nix related are, Nix is also the name of the like programming language or like- Like almost like, I think the right term would be like a syntax or something," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:22", "start": 2722.28, "text": "yeah." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "45:23", "start": 2722.98, "text": "Yeah, like they call like domain specific language, like a DSL, but it's like the way you like write or configure like what needs to be built, et cetera. Like how you write like a Nix, like, I don't know, description of like how to build a project or like where to get dependencies from, or how to configure a whole machine when you start it up, that's also called Nix. That's like its own, I'm gonna call it semi-functional, it But it's like kind of a functional lazy execution sort of like build scripting thing. I did Gradle stuff a long time ago 'cause I was in Android prior to Bitcoin and like spent a lot of time, energy, and effort doing the build pipeline for the Android application at Etsy. That was like one of my projects there, and it reminds me a lot of that kind of work. So maybe this is why I like Nick so much, is it's like sort of familiar, like the, the paradigms of how to build those kinds of scripts and like- Like," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:20", "start": 2780.02, "text": "gotcha." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "46:21", "start": 2780.68, "text": "Yeah. So that's like Nix the language, and then there's Nix the operating system, and what goes along with the operating system and what's included in like the Nix Bitcoin project is something called Nix modules. This is where someone takes like a Nix project Packages it up and makes it such that you have like options for configuring it when you deploy that software on Silicon XOS machine. So it was like," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:47", "start": 2806.91, "text": "okay, so there's a few different variants. Okay, gotcha. But obviously, because this is a Bitcoin conference, it'll be mainly about NixBitcoin and, you know, obviously around that. So those dates are October sixth and seventh in Berlin. And, let's talk a little bit about base fifty-eight then. So you've got BTC++, the technical Bitcoin conference, and then you've also got base fifty-eight. So what's base Base fifty-eight, and what are you trying to achieve there?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "47:09", "start": 2828.77, "text": "Yeah, so Base fifty-eight is a Bitcoin technical education school, I don't know, training program, whatever you, you know, name of thing, choice. I started it about a year and a half ago as an online project, doing classes to teach people how Bitcoin transactions work at a really low level. Still doing that. We have like most of that available as a Udemy class. Also started doing classes on how Lightning works. so I've done three of those in the last two months, three classes of how Lightning works, all in person. About to do my first ever Taproot class, so we can learn how to build and write. Taproot scripts for all different kinds of, all the different fancy new, signature like algorithms. So that's like the new thing we're doing. but basically it's like my project to take all the stuff that I know about Bitcoin and how Bitcoin works at like a really technical, practical level. So it's like come in and like get your hands dirty on like the byte level of like how all these little protocols are implemented. So it's- It's kind of like, it's like Bitcoin protocol school, like an implementation school. It's like one way that, like, you get better as a programmer by implementing things, right? So this is an attempt to take all of the stuff in Bitcoin, all the protocols in Bitcoin, and build curriculum around how they work How they implemented and set up like, you know, instruction that explains how the pieces work and why they work that way and why they're built in that particular way. But as well as like building a bunch of like exercises on Roplit, et cetera, where you can get your hands dirty and like actually re-implement all the little pieces for yourself. So the idea is that like by the time I'm done writing what I hope is like the core curriculum for base58, you, like, if you go through all of it, you will have at some level like re Implemented ECDSA. So the current class I'm working on for, online, which I'm hoping to get out by the end of this week, like before TapCon, would be really great. we'll see though, 'cause I'm, I'm also trying to do the Taproot stuff, so it's kind of, I'm behind, it's fine. But, the, the signatures, so I'm working on a digital signatures class, and we like, in the class, we re-implement ECDSA. We like open up the Wikipedia page and we implement ECDSA" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "49:27", "start": 2966.72, "text": "Different pieces that you're do-- doing. We implement it, it works. Then we like, figure out how to like, use ECDSA to verify signatures for Bitcoin transactions. We learn how to take a Bitcoin transaction, make a digital like, message hash from that, implementing, there's like two different algorithms you have to implement depending on whether you're using pre-segwit or segwit. so we like, implement all those algorithms, we implement ECDSA, we implement the little thing to like, turn a signature into something you can put into a Bitcoin transaction We go through like how multisig works, prior to SegWit, prior to Taproot, and so like at the end of this class, you'll have implemented like your very own multisig, you'll have made signatures for like, you'll have the software that will like, you can take any Bitcoin transaction prior to Taproot, since we're taproot in this class, and you'll be able to like understand like where a mess, where, where a signature comes from, what goes into it, how like, how powerful these signatures are, what, does the signature let you change On the way there, and making it just like super accessible, to everyone." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:31", "start": 3031.38, "text": "Speaking of, speaking of the audience then, so can you tell us a little bit about who's the right audience in terms of how much programming skill they require? Like, should they already come to the class knowing Python or like what's the, what's the level required here?" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "50:44", "start": 3044.26, "text": "Yeah, that's a great question. I think it kind of depends on the class. So if you have programming experience and you know Python, The class will be easier because there's less things that you're learning, and when I do things on, like when I do little examples using Python, you'll understand what I'm doing. That being said, I really think that if you like- You have like maybe like a buddy, so like we used to run this class as like an online class and have TA hours. I'm hoping to maybe open up some like paid TA hours, so if you're taking the class and you wanna come to TA hours, you can just sign up to come get help. We had someone, so I had someone who went through the online version of this transactions class, being the very first thing they did in programming. It was hard, but they made it through it. They later went back and did, they realized it doesn't really teach you programming, it just teaches you You don't have to be like an expert at programming. In fact, if you're new to your career, it's probably a really great way to like get better at programming while also getting better at Bitcoin, right? Because they're little- Like hopefully bite-sized exercises that you can do and achieve, and like, you know, you get some confidence that you know what's going on. You learn a lot about how Bitcoin transactions work While also like, building out your like ability to like take a task and do it in code, right? 'Cause this is a lot of like mini tasks you have to use code to accomplish. All of the examples, et cetera, are in Python, but if you wanted to, you could take all the exercises and do them again in a language that you know better, you know, that sort of thing. So, I don't know, I think it's like, it's like a super fun way to like learn about, like, you know, the new money, new internet money Like concrete fun little programming tasks that you can like be successful at and see it actually get shipped out and like so you get these like cool, fun, practical, useful skills, and you get to grow hopefully as a programmer through like the course as well, which is fun." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:44", "start": 3163.92, "text": "Gotcha. Yeah. And so as you mentioned, you got the online one, and then you also have the in-person classes as well." }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "52:49", "start": 3168.86, "text": "Yeah, and I think, yeah, we have in-person stuff. So all my new stuff, I do in-person first, that helps me like- Kind of workshop it, figure out what works, what doesn't, before translating it into online stuff, and then I've got online classes, it's just like self-paced. I'm hoping to get a schedule out where there's like a online, it's like online, but you have like class time, so it's mixed. So if you want help with the stuff, hopefully- Like, like I think what would be really great, and hopefully I'll get, hopefully I'll find time to like put on my schedule, would be like, one for like people that are like new to programming and wanna go through like the basic level of base fifty-eight, and it's like meant for people that are new, and so we spend a lot of time talking about how programming works in addition to the stuff, if that makes sense. So, yeah, like, great ways to like keep up with us is follow us on Twitter, I'll be putting up any updates that we do" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "53:44", "start": 3224.41, "text": "Up, which is base fifty eight dot school. I think in theory I have a newsletter, but I haven't signed anything out in a while, and I don't even know if the signup is out there. So, yeah, that's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:55", "start": 3234.63, "text": "the cool stuff. Yeah, yeah, great. So base fifty eight dot, school or, base fifty eight dot info, I realize as well. Okay. Yeah. So, in terms of picking what you're going to do a class on, how do you, how do you do that? Like, do you just sort of-- Is it" }, { "speaker": "lisa_neigut_of_base58", "time": "54:12", "start": 3252.18, "text": "So I think there's a couple things going on here, like, some of it is stuff that it's like, okay, this is something I wanna teach or like I wanna talk about or even like I wanna go through and like, I was learning and like as I was learning it, I was writing out kind of like how I wish someone had explained it to me. So like it- It's, it's like the, the fastest way to learn the information as thoroughly as possible is like kind of one of the goals. I think my, like, my ambitions with it are that at some point we'll have pretty much any, every protocol that is like actually useful that you ever would touch in Bitcoin, we'll have like a class for it. So I'm working on finishing out like this digital signatures part. I've got a lightning class that I'm running now that's in person. I'm about to have a Taproot class. Ideally at some point, all of that will be like, either in a book or like online as like these like online courses. Adding, like, I wanna do a wallets class, that's like really in demand. I've been talking to the Ordinals teams about like how to take, make like a class about Ordinals protocols, 'cause I think that's all really cool. I mean, that's all like Bitcoin protocol stuff, right? So It's a mix between like what people have told me they want, what I think like will probably get people interested, or like what's the new thing that like people will probably want to know the most about, as like Lightning and Taproot kind of fit in that schedule and that like thing. And then I sort of try, I don't know, my infinite free time, trying to like also build out like modules online for like PSBTs is like one I wanna do. There's a whole section of wallets, like a whole wallet umbrella of, of coursework that I'd like to turn into like Available online class curriculum. I think my goal with base fifty-eight is that at the end of it, it is like the go-to curriculum for teaching Bitcoin, if that makes sense, like from like a practical, hands-on, this is how it works, like, perspective. So like by the end of the day, like, or the end of whatever, all of like the basic protocols, et cetera, will be part of like the base fifty-eight coursework, and you can like, you know, start wherever you are, you know, you can come just like learn about one particular You could go through the whole thing. yeah. Anyways, that's like where we're going. I don't know why I'm doing it, it's like kind of fun, I like doing it. it's really rewarding to see people's like brains light up when they figure out how it works and like suddenly go from like, you know, like 'cause knowledge is empowering' and I kinda touched on this earlier, like Bitcoin Bitcoin is about being self-sovereign. Bitcoin is about like being your own bank. Bitcoin is about like having your own ability to save money independent of anyone else, like Bitcoin, I think. But I think- Like Bitcoin is, like, all of these things at the end of the day make you, like, an independent actor in the world, right? And so what I want is I want any software engineer who touches Bitcoin or is interested in Bitcoin, I want them to be empowered at the level of knowledge that they are an independent sovereign actor in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It means they understand how the protocols work, it means they understand why they are the way they are, they understand the values behind, like, the Bitcoin as a protocol. I think that will give us Like the, like, you know, I want, I want thousands of developers to understand Bitcoin at that level and be like that, like, self-sovereign. So when someone's like, \"Hey, we wanna change Bitcoin by changing X, Y, Z, like, adding APO,\" everyone as a part of that, like, anyone who wants to, will have the requisite information to understand what that means, understand what's being changed, understand like, what's, like, how we're gonna move forward, et cetera. Maybe they can look at it and say, \"Hey, that We can do better. This is how we can do better. Or like, anyway, so just like, you know, people who understand what, like, I feel like almost like history, but like also how things work to some extent. Like, you become just like a totally different actor in the world when you have that level of knowledge and capability and practice, like hands-on practice where you like have actually the confidence that you like understand it, right? And I think you get that confidence through these like self-implementation projects, et cetera. so that's what I'm trying to A bunch of bitcoiners that like have some like independence and like their own can like come to their own thoughts about Bitcoin without having to be told them by other people, et cetera." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:36", "start": 3516.11, "text": "Well, yeah, I think that's a great goal to have. so yeah, I guess that's probably a great spot to finish up. I think, more people being able to be independent in Bitcoin, and, less trusting. So, base58 dot, school, and I'll put all the links in the show notes. Lisa, thank you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:55", "start": 3534.6, "text": "The show notes are available at stephanlivera dot com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }