waxwing
Great deep dive from John Newbery at London Bitcoin Dev meetup last night; deep dive into Bitcoin Core 0.17 (just tagged), the new features, development/PR/release process, and also some interesting Q/A. Thanks to both John and @michaelfolkson for organizing.
Aug 17, 2018 at 11:34amWeb
Show threadwaxwingAug 17, 2018

@michaelfolkson
Also I was interested to hear John describe his general vision be similar to what a lot of other people, including myself, are thinking: Bitcoin should hopefully trend towards being near-exclusively a verification engine, not for execution (of contracts). This implies better privacy and scalability, and means "off-chain" in the most abstract sense.

There are a number of sources, talks, writeups, which talk about this issue. I'll try to link one or two in followups to this.

Show threadwaxwingAug 17, 2018

@michaelfolkson

Here's a twitter thread I wrote a few months back on discovering an interesting old presentation doc written by Maxwell/Wuille a few years ago (it's linked in the first tweet): https://twitter.com/waxwing__/status/988033817087807488

It covers a lot of these concepts. I think v. helpful to get a clearer idea of how BTC both does, and should, work.

Adam Gibson on Twitter

“Slide 9 from https://t.co/AAQAuCpeYf : "Bitcoin's consensus does not have accounts, it tracks transaction outputs - “Coins”; Accounts are toxic to privacy and once you use as many accounts for privacy they provide little value but still incentivize harming privacy."”

Twitter
Show threadantanstAug 17, 2018
@waxwing @michaelfolkson Hey, thanks for the gem. Haven’t seen this before. Makes me wonder; is something out there like a collection of such good docs/slides/mailing list msgs/bct threads etc? Too many nice stuff lost in the wheel of time
Show threadwaxwingAug 17, 2018

@antanst @michaelfolkson

Not really I think.
Another recommendation is to watch one of Andrew Poelstra's recent talks, all of which (except one about bulletproof technicals) have been about scriptless scripts, and he tends to elucidate a similar set of ideas. The one in Boston is a good choice I think: https://youtu.be/jzoS0tPUAiQ?t=3h44m31s

L2 Summit Hosted by MIT DCI and Fidelity Labs

YouTube
Show threadwaxwingAug 17, 2018

@antanst @michaelfolkson

This old post from Greg Maxwell is actually a critique of Ethereum's approach, but it's kind of talking about similar things. Rather interesting: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1427885.msg14601127#msg14601127

Turing completeness and state for smart contract

Turing completeness and state for smart contract

Show threadantanstAug 17, 2018
@waxwing @michaelfolkson Thanks. I’m not patient enough to watch videos but this bct link was good. I’m going to start digging through arcane bct scrolls and see how it goes. Who knows, maybe this’ll become a list at some time :-)
Show threadwaxwingAug 17, 2018

@antanst @michaelfolkson

Probably a good idea to ask kanzure (Bryan Bishop) for a link to his archives. He stores basically all papers, transcripts he can lay his hands on. Easy to find him at #bitcoin-wizards if you do IRC (freenode).

Show threadSosthène the ZealotApr 18, 2019
@waxwing @michaelfolkson hi, just digging up old posts, these slides look interesting but the link seems to be dead now, do you have it by chance?
Show threadwaxwingApr 19, 2019
@Sosthene @michaelfolkson Oh damn you're right, they've removed it. Must have been recently too. Maybe we can find a copy somewhere.
Show threadMichael FolksonApr 22, 2019
@Sosthene @waxwing Found and saved in London Bitcoin Devs Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ldbvewsyz95ht8/Maxwell%20and%20Wuille%20Stanford%20presentation.pdf?dl=0
Maxwell and Wuille Stanford presentation.pdf

Shared with Dropbox

Show threadAPhysicist🐧Aug 18, 2018

@waxwing

@michaelfolkson

Is there a video recording somewhere? Or maybe even slides?

Show threadwaxwingAug 18, 2018

@Crypt0Physicist @michaelfolkson

The usual answer: Will be on youtube, probably quite quickly (mine took about a month though).

Show threadgabridomeAug 18, 2018
@waxwing @michaelfolkson
Any streaming available?
Show threadwaxwingAug 18, 2018

@Gabridome @michaelfolkson

Hi, see other answer, it will be on youtube.

Show threadgabridomeAug 18, 2018
@waxwing @michaelfolkson great! thanks.
Show threadwaxwingAug 21, 2018

@Gabridome @michaelfolkson @Crypt0Physicist

Video of talk is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f33HlAvJUFw

John Newbery - Bitcoin Core 0.17

YouTube