0:04

How much of the sort of management

0:06

burden, how much of the security burden can

0:09

we take away from users while

0:11

they are learning, while they are sort

0:13

of reaping the benefits of using Bitcoin?

0:17

Maybe they only become interesting

0:19

once you've seen the upside. Hello

0:22

there from Bedford, how are you all doing? How was your

0:24

weekend? It's probably not as good as mine. I

0:26

had an amazing weekend. We

0:28

had two incredible results in the football. Real

0:30

Bedford men won 5-0 away to MK

0:33

Irish in the FA Vars.

0:34

And yesterday the ladies won 4-0 in the FA

0:37

Cup against Stevenage. Two incredible results.

0:39

Both teams in the hat for the next round of those competitions.

0:43

Incredible weekend, great football. Very very happy

0:45

here in Bedford. Anyway, welcome to the

0:47

What Bitcoin Did podcast, which is brought to you by the absolute

0:50

legends at Iris Energy, the largest NASDAQ

0:52

listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable

0:55

energy. I'm your host Peter McCormack and today

0:57

we have Bitcoin development royalty,

1:00

OG Christian Decker back on the podcast

1:02

for the first time in a very long time.

1:04

Now Christian came out to London a couple of weeks ago, so of

1:07

course I jumped at the chance to record with him. And

1:09

so in this episode we get into Christian's

1:12

big project at the moment, Greenlight, and

1:14

what it means for the Lightning Network and scaling Bitcoin,

1:17

as well as the trade-offs between scaling Bitcoin

1:19

and it being used in a sovereign way. So I hope you

1:21

enjoy this. If you have any questions about this, anything

1:24

else, you know how to get in touch. It's hello at whatbitcoindid.com.

1:30

First time I interviewed

1:32

you, we did the first ever Lightning

1:34

Show on What Bitcoin Did. We've done 700 shows, but the first

1:36

ever Lightning Show was with you. It might

1:38

have been, yeah. It was back in Boston in

1:40

some weird

1:42

small room and we

1:45

just squirreled away and locked ourselves

1:48

up in some room and recorded

1:51

something. In a professor's office.

1:54

Maybe. Yeah. It was the first Lightning

1:56

Show we did. Yeah. Yeah, Danny

1:58

confirmed it this morning. It was the first Lightning Show.

1:59

new show. That

2:02

one was possibly more

2:04

than four years ago? That

2:06

was, that must have been

2:09

my first year at Blockstream, so five

2:11

and a half years ago. Hold

2:14

on, I started the podcast five and a half years ago. It

2:17

was something February

2:20

because I actually managed to slip

2:22

and fall in Boston. It

2:24

was icy. I did not realize

2:27

that Boston can be this cold. Yeah. So

2:30

would that, that would have

2:32

been February 2019? Possible.

2:36

Yeah. I'm really bad with dates, by the

2:38

way. Well, if it was in February, it would have been, so

2:41

I launched the pod in 2017 in November, but

2:45

I only did a couple of shows that side of Christmas,

2:48

and then I really got going in like the January,

2:50

February, and it wasn't then. So it would

2:52

have been the year after, so that's 2019. So

2:55

that's four, yeah,

2:57

so four years ago. God, it's

2:59

gone so quick, man. So much fun. We go back. You're

3:02

a, you're now a manager. What

3:04

do you say? So you're

3:07

not deving or you're doing some dev? I'm

3:10

still very much involved in the actual development

3:12

of both core lightning and our new

3:15

service Greenlight, but

3:17

I also now have a team

3:20

that I supervise. Peter

3:25

Neurowt, Eric DeSmet, and

3:28

Randy, they're all great

3:30

developers, and they essentially joined

3:32

my team to make core lightning

3:35

more accessible, essentially. How do you

3:37

like being a manager? I'm

3:40

definitely hoping that it will swing back

3:42

to more developing at some point, but

3:45

it's a new challenge. It's

3:47

something that I haven't been doing before,

3:50

and it's

3:53

different. Not better,

3:55

not worse, but

3:57

you learn a new facet of... of

4:00

how stuff is built, I guess. Well,

4:02

so listen, if we sat down in Austin

4:06

four years, seven months

4:08

ago, and talked about Lightning then, so

4:12

it's a long time ago. It's been more than

4:14

two weeks, which used to

4:16

be our go-to, hey,

4:18

when's this going to be finished? Oh, two weeks. Yeah.

4:20

So don't ask me if it's

4:22

finished now. But it's never finished, right?

4:25

It's never finished, yeah. We have a tendency

4:27

of coming up with new stuff that

4:31

pushes those two weeks out a

4:33

bit more and a bit more. And our

4:35

ambitions are never satisfied,

4:38

I guess.

4:39

So

4:40

in those four years, seven months, how

4:43

far have we got? How much has Lightning developed?

4:47

How pleased are you with progress? I'm

4:49

very pleased. There's

4:52

been a lot of progress already

4:57

on the specification that

4:59

we had back then, right? 2019 was sort

5:02

of the celebration of the

5:04

version 1.0 of the specification.

5:08

And we've implemented most

5:10

of the stuff in there. Some

5:12

of the more aspirational

5:15

features are now in there. Core

5:17

Lightning just released a support

5:20

for splicing, for example, in

5:22

the last release. We spoke about that about

5:24

three years ago. Indeed, yeah. So

5:27

two weeks, right? Two weeks. And

5:31

yeah, so some of the more aspirational stuff

5:33

is now making it into the various

5:36

clients. And while we all

5:39

share sort of the same base

5:41

set of features, everybody

5:43

is still out there exploring new trade-offs

5:45

of what they can do and how

5:48

to achieve different things. Look

5:51

at L&D's taproot

5:53

assets, for example. They've

5:56

just published a version where they

5:58

are going to publish a version that includes. Taproot

6:00

asset support. We

6:03

are now looking into

6:05

integrating more and more of Taproot into

6:08

the Lightning specification itself, starting

6:11

from simple stuff like the Gossip,

6:14

make stuff more private by

6:16

essentially not telling the rest of the world,

6:19

hey, those are my funds, by the way.

6:22

Watch them and see where I spend

6:24

them. Yeah, good. Fuck you, Chainalysis. Pretty

6:27

much, yeah. And we

6:31

are moving towards a world where we can

6:33

do PTLCs, payment de-correlation,

6:35

and all of the fun stuff that we've only been

6:37

dreaming about the last time we

6:39

spoke, I guess. All the stuff I don't understand. Which

6:43

you shouldn't have to understand in

6:46

reality, right? I mean, ultimately,

6:50

my realization and the reason why I

6:52

started Greenlight was essentially

6:54

listening to your podcast in part, saying

6:57

that, hey, all of this stuff

6:59

is interesting, but hey,

7:02

I've run a real-life business and I

7:05

don't have the capacity of digging in hours

7:07

and hours and learning

7:10

about all of the concepts on Bitcoin.

7:12

And then on top, we have to learn these

7:16

hundreds and hundreds of new terms and

7:18

ideas and totally different

7:21

concepts from Bitcoin itself. All

7:24

of those, you have to learn before

7:26

you're even allowed by the community to

7:28

touch lightning, right? Christian,

7:32

I didn't even want to entertain

7:35

the idea of having

7:37

to even think about opening channels. Yeah. I

7:39

didn't even want to, or somebody said, will you open a channel

7:42

with them? I don't want to open a channel. Why do I have to open a channel?

7:44

What is a channel? What does it do? I want

7:46

to have an address, which I can send the receive

7:48

from. That's all I want. I want nothing else. I want everything

7:51

else to just work. Exactly. And going

7:55

back to the splicing idea, it

7:57

very much allows you to have this one address.

8:00

And you give that address out, and you

8:03

can receive on and off chain payments, for

8:05

example. Why should you care about which

8:08

of the layers you're using? Should

8:11

you even know about the existence of these

8:14

different layers? And

8:16

so I thought that we as

8:18

a community are going at

8:20

it in a very weird

8:22

and a very techie

8:24

focused way, which worked

8:26

for me because I am a techie who enjoys

8:29

these technical complexities. But

8:31

essentially shaming people into not

8:34

having the ability of touching any

8:36

of these systems, any

8:38

of the promised land,

8:40

so to speak, of Bitcoin and Lightning.

8:42

And before you

8:45

have a deep understanding of

8:47

how these things work

8:49

and learned about Bitcoin, learned

8:51

about Lightning, the different concepts, and

8:53

then sort of learned the best practices

8:56

about how to manage your node and stuff

8:58

like that. And it's very off-putting

9:00

for anybody but techies, right? But

9:02

there's a reason it happens because

9:05

the original community

9:08

of Bitcoiners outside of the cypherpunks

9:10

was mainly techies. I mean, obviously some cypherpunks

9:13

are techies, but it's mainly techies. So

9:15

techies built something that did a thing.

9:18

Yeah, absolutely. And they were using

9:20

the command line interface to do

9:22

it. And it worked. And then we

9:24

got some GUIs, and they worked. But

9:26

that's techies leading things. I always just revert

9:29

back to when I had a very

9:31

simple web company. We'd be at websites.

9:34

And the techies were brilliant. You couldn't do anything without them.

9:37

But we would never put them in front of the client to

9:39

say, solve this for them. You'd put a planner

9:41

and put them. Then you'd have a UX designer.

9:44

And then you'd have a functional spec. And the

9:46

designer would create the designs that

9:49

overlay the wireframes from the UX

9:51

guy. And then that'd go into a brief to the

9:53

techie to build it. And what

9:55

you tend to find is that the

9:57

designer would make things too pretty and

9:59

not too much. consider the technical

10:02

requirements and the techies would often make

10:04

things too technical and not consider the interface.

10:07

And you would kind of get this marriage in the middle, which would

10:09

be the project manager, would kind of marry,

10:11

yeah, or the planner that would marry these things up. I

10:14

feel like a lot of early Bitcoin development was just

10:16

tech, tech-led. And so,

10:18

you know, these became prominent voices,

10:21

leading people in the world of Bitcoin. And

10:24

I often found that when in the web agency,

10:26

the tech guys, they actually couldn't understand

10:29

why some people didn't understand tech the same

10:31

way as them. They couldn't compute

10:33

that. So why doesn't everybody understand this? But

10:36

some people just don't. But it's really

10:38

good because in the last few years, we have seen UX

10:40

designers and the interface

10:42

designers come in and just make this easier

10:45

to use. And so

10:47

that shaming of people is starting to lose

10:49

weight. Absolutely. Yeah. And

10:52

look, I'm probably too blamed for that as much as anybody else.

10:56

I joined Bitcoin back in 2009 when

10:58

the value really was zero, right? The

11:03

only thing that could get you interested in

11:05

Bitcoin was the technology behind it. It

11:08

happened to match quite nicely for me. And

11:12

so as somebody who grew

11:15

up with this stuff, who sort of took

11:20

on all of the details and helped

11:23

develop some of it, it

11:25

comes very natural to somebody like me to

11:28

essentially say, OK, yeah, that's trivial,

11:30

right? It's not like everybody

11:33

should get this. Come on, it's easy. But

11:36

ultimately, listening

11:38

to all of the different voices about

11:43

difficulties of people wanting

11:45

to use these technologies, but not wanting

11:47

to invest all of the time it

11:49

takes to do so in a correct

11:51

manner, understandably

11:54

so, right? People have real lives outside

11:57

of Bitcoin and whatever. you

12:00

have You

12:03

realize that you have to somehow make

12:05

make this easier and make this more accessible

12:08

and so What what

12:10

we try to do is to

12:12

start and think hey How much how much

12:14

of the of the sort of management

12:16

burden how much of the security burden can

12:19

we take away from users? while

12:22

they are learning while they are sort

12:24

of reaping the benefits of using

12:26

Bitcoin and Once

12:28

they have seen what what lightning and

12:30

Bitcoin can do for them now is the time

12:33

that we can Expose them to all

12:35

of these details and if they're interested they

12:37

can they can get educated They

12:40

can learn about all of these all

12:42

of these techie details that are really interesting

12:44

to me but maybe they

12:47

only become interesting once you've seen the upside

12:50

to you, right and so what

12:52

what green light tries to tries

12:55

to do is essentially to Take

12:58

on some of those management burdens to

13:00

the infrastructure for

13:03

for running a lightning node and leave

13:05

you with the bare

13:07

minimum of Responsibilities

13:10

and that's keeping your keys because

13:13

not your keys not your con So

13:16

this comes down to an interesting kind of area

13:18

in point where there's a number of

13:20

things that Bitcoin I've refused to learn I just

13:22

don't want to be like here,

13:24

but you own Big Bitcoin

13:26

podcast you should learn this I'm like no I refuse to

13:28

learn it because I don't want to because I want to have the experience

13:30

others do say It's pubs for a long

13:32

time. Yeah, I just refused it. Somebody said

13:34

you need to know I don't know I don't want to know I

13:36

don't want to care. It's too technical My

13:39

dad will never get it. My sister will never get it. My

13:41

brother. None of us will just figure it out

13:43

So I don't have to learn that I didn't run a node

13:45

for a long time If that's probably isn't

13:47

Bitcoin. I didn't even have a node and

13:50

I stand by these principles, but I Also

13:53

didn't I'm sorry Confession

13:56

I've never run fully

13:59

run a lightning node I tried to set

14:01

one up, it was a pain, but the thing that actually turned me

14:03

off it was when I was out in

14:06

Pacific Bitcoin last year, we had a little

14:08

real Bedford shop and you could

14:11

buy your merch in Bitcoin. We

14:13

had a number of people come and pay on Lightning and we had people

14:15

use Strike and people were using Wallet of Satoshi.

14:18

Every now and again, someone would come and do it with they've actually connected

14:21

to that Lightning node. There were so

14:23

many pain, painful experiences. One

14:25

guy's like 15 minutes, kept failing,

14:27

kept having issues. Every time someone's

14:30

trying to pay for their node, it was always an issue.

14:32

I was like, well, I don't need this. There's

14:37

a comparable. When I was out in Argentina,

14:41

people wanted Tetheron

14:43

Tron. The

14:46

reason they wanted Tetheron Tron is they wanted stable

14:48

dollars and that's the cheapest, fastest

14:50

network. The free market of needing

14:53

dollars said that is the

14:55

best solution. The free market

14:57

for me of wanting to use Lightning is

15:00

Wallet of Satoshi. Yes, there's

15:02

Phoenix. Yes, there's Moon. Yes,

15:04

you can run your own node, but I feel like Wallet

15:06

of Satoshi has won the free market because the

15:09

experience is tap works.

15:12

Every single time, it just works. What

15:17

my hope is, is that from

15:19

what little I know about Greenlight, is that

15:22

this might be potentially

15:24

a game

15:27

changer for people wanting a very

15:29

easy wallet solution. I'm

15:32

definitely hoping so because, as

15:34

you rightfully point out, you

15:37

have essentially two options for participating

15:40

in the Lightning network. One

15:43

is to go through all the growing pains

15:46

and getting your node set up and actually learning

15:48

how to run it. Then

15:51

potentially failing because you're not managing

15:54

it. I do have a day job

15:56

as well. I don't spend

15:58

hours and hours every day doing it. essentially

16:01

managing liquidity. I

16:03

want to use Lightning

16:06

because I want to send and receive payments every

16:09

once in a while. It's not my day job

16:11

to manage Lightning nodes. And

16:14

the other option would be to essentially throw

16:16

up your hands and say, hey, OK, custodial

16:18

it is then, because

16:21

custodial services have the

16:23

best possible user experience, right?

16:26

You have a support crew that

16:29

is there 24-7, managing

16:31

the one node which every

16:34

participant or every user is then

16:36

mapped onto. And it's

16:39

in their best interest to do so

16:41

in a way that maximizes

16:44

the chance of success. And so

16:46

what we essentially tried

16:49

was to say, hey, is

16:51

there some middle point in the spectrum,

16:53

right, between non-custodial and custodial?

16:56

Is there something we can do where we

16:58

can say, OK, we help users

17:01

with the setup of their node? We

17:03

help them essentially synchronize

17:05

the gossip. But we help them manage

17:08

their databases and ensure

17:10

that databases don't get lost. Funny

17:12

story is, while I was walking

17:14

over here, I was essentially helping

17:17

somebody recover their Lightning

17:19

node because they restored

17:21

an old backup. And suddenly their node was

17:23

saying, hey, you restored. This is

17:25

not safe, right? And

17:28

people run into these issues. And so our

17:31

goal was essentially to add a new point

17:34

to the spectrum between custodial and non-custodial

17:37

and see how much of the

17:40

management burden we can take on without

17:43

having our users surrender

17:45

their keys. Because the

17:48

last thing I want to do is

17:51

being responsible for somebody else's funds.

17:55

That would be, I couldn't

17:58

sleep at night if I had to. those

18:00

keys, right? And

18:02

that meshes very much with

18:06

what used to be our motto

18:09

for Blockstream was, can't be evil.

18:12

Can't be. Rather than Google's

18:14

don't be. Very much inspired by Google's

18:17

don't be evil is

18:19

we try to build out technologies where

18:24

we bind our hands

18:26

behind our backs so that we can't

18:30

do anything nefarious. And

18:33

many of these will

18:35

then result in products where we essentially

18:38

build the product and give them to our users,

18:40

right? And say, hey, good luck. And

18:43

green light goes

18:46

a bit in a different direction where we say, hey,

18:48

we actually want to hold your hand through the

18:51

process. And ultimately,

18:54

once you have seen the benefits and once you've

18:56

learned about all of this, you're free

18:58

to take your note and run it

19:00

wherever you want, right? You can set up your

19:03

Raspberry Pi at home if you want.

19:06

So it is very much an onboarding

19:08

experience where we try to help people

19:10

to slowly onboard, see

19:13

the benefits and then expose them

19:15

to the complexities if they choose

19:17

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21:50

Didn't Google drop the don't be evil?

21:53

Um because they can't probably

21:55

claim that they aren't evil anymore?

21:58

Well that's that's the thing. So you know,

22:00

when you come out with a motto of don't be evil,

22:03

you have to always maintain that. Otherwise

22:05

you said, do you know what? I've

22:08

made the bargain. I'm now happy to

22:11

be evil. And I think it's probably to do with like expanding

22:13

into China or agreeing

22:15

to censorship around Tiananmen Square

22:18

and things like that. But it's kind of like, so

22:20

you've made billions and now

22:22

you're saying I'm gonna be evil. Yeah, guys, we

22:24

used to not be evil, now we're evil. What the

22:26

fuck is that all about? It's a very, very bad look to

22:28

drop a motto like that. It's

22:31

like you guys going, yeah, sometimes

22:34

we can be evil. What the fuck's that

22:36

about? OK, Greenlight,

22:39

explain it. Walk me, explain

22:41

it to me like I'm me. Like,

22:44

what is it? How does it work? How will I use it? Yeah,

22:47

so if you're using anything

22:52

like Wallet of Satoshi or Spark

22:55

or any of the web-based front ends,

22:57

you very much already have an experience that is similar

22:59

to Greenlight. What

23:02

you usually have is some server

23:05

running your node and

23:07

a client that talks to it, right?

23:09

That can be your front end, that can

23:12

be your accounting software, that can be

23:16

some security system that

23:18

makes audit logs and stuff like that. So

23:21

we have these two components, a server running

23:23

on your server usually or Wallet of Satoshi

23:26

in case it's a custodial system, and

23:29

the client which presents

23:31

you with a front end, scans

23:34

your QR codes and stuff like that. Now,

23:36

the idea of Greenlight is what happens if

23:40

every single user gets their core

23:43

lightning node. We run stock core

23:45

lightning on our servers. And

23:49

we rip out the part that is actually

23:51

handling keys. And

23:53

so we still have the system where we

23:55

have a client on your phone, on your

23:58

laptop, wherever you are on your phone. or

24:00

iPhone smartwatch or whatever, talking

24:04

to a server. This server, now,

24:06

instead of running on your infrastructure or wallet

24:09

of Satoshi's infrastructure, runs on Blockstream

24:11

servers. The

24:14

node doesn't have the keys anymore, so we need

24:17

to have some place where we store the

24:19

keys, and we simply do the same that

24:21

we did for the client connection, and we

24:23

move it back to the user. So

24:25

the user has the client

24:28

and has a signer, and the node is just

24:30

a dumb operational process that

24:33

manages state and doesn't do much else. And

24:35

so what you end up doing is you

24:38

now can, as

24:41

an app developer, you essentially take our

24:43

API. That is

24:46

our programming interface,

24:48

allowing you to get access to our servers.

24:51

And in a matter of seconds,

24:53

you can essentially say, hey, spin up a

24:55

new node for a new user. The

24:59

keys for that user reside on

25:01

the app itself, right? On the user's

25:04

device, and the

25:06

node is spun up in our cloud. And

25:09

once that is spun up, the client

25:11

essentially connects to it and can start performing

25:14

operations on it, sending, receiving

25:16

payments, opening channels, you name it. Whenever

25:21

something is touching the funds, as

25:24

in, hey, I'm receiving funds or

25:26

I'm opening a channel or I'm sending funds or

25:29

closing channels, we'll

25:31

need a signature from the

25:34

keys that are associated

25:36

with those funds, right? Those

25:38

keys reside on the user device. And so

25:40

the node, what the node does is essentially it

25:43

sends that signature request to

25:45

the device. Now,

25:48

that all sounds very fancy

25:51

or not, depending

25:54

on how you look at it. The

25:56

real trick is how can we make sure

25:58

that... an attacker

26:01

or a blockstream operator having access

26:03

to the server to the node itself can't

26:07

do anything with the funds. If

26:10

I were accessing

26:14

the node and I were to say hey send

26:16

all funds to Christian's address and

26:19

the signer sees that they

26:21

will probably just sign it off. So

26:24

we had to take the signer and

26:26

add additional verification on top of it. The

26:29

way we do it is essentially every

26:31

single client you register with your node

26:33

has an identity and the

26:35

signer will verify that

26:38

oh yes this payment instruction

26:41

that I'm now being asked to sign off actually

26:43

came from an authenticated user that

26:47

I trust and not some attacker

26:49

having access to the node on the server. So

26:52

this end-to-end verification

26:55

is the core innovation here.

26:59

And we actually just merged an update

27:01

yesterday on it. So it's very much

27:03

still in flux, but we're

27:05

getting there. And so the overall

27:07

flow is very much like you

27:09

download an app, you open the app,

27:11

get to write down maybe a seed, maybe

27:14

not depending on the decisions of

27:16

whoever developed the app and

27:18

whether they trust seeds or not. After

27:23

the seed is being stored Blockstream

27:27

servers are getting asked to spin up a node, the

27:30

client connects to that node, you can

27:32

now interact with the node. As soon as you touch

27:34

funds you send instructions

27:36

to the node which are then forwarded to the signer.

27:39

The signer will use those instructions to verify

27:41

hey yes this is actually Peter asking

27:43

me to send a payment and

27:45

only then sends back the signatures

27:48

required to perform these actions.

27:51

So you haven't just built it for you

27:53

guys to build into your own wallet,

27:55

you've built this for everyone. So

27:57

I built it very much for my own

27:59

needs. But it is

28:02

obviously something that

28:04

is very powerful. One

28:07

of the... So I mentioned before that end

28:09

users are sort of our target audience here,

28:11

right? Because end users are the

28:14

ones that need the assistance. You

28:17

are. You would be a perfect customer for

28:19

us. The

28:21

problem is I really do suck at

28:24

front-end design. User experience,

28:27

user interfaces, I can't do it.

28:30

Maybe we should collaborate then. The

28:36

core point is that end

28:38

users are but part of

28:41

our target audience, right? Who else

28:43

is suffering from these issues? App

28:45

developers. App developers are having a

28:47

really hard time to develop apps that are

28:49

integrated with Lightning, because they

28:52

usually have to bundle the Lightning

28:54

node with their application itself. And

28:57

that requires them to learn all

29:00

of the intricacies of Lightning,

29:04

but also how to code

29:06

these practices into the node. Because

29:09

once your app is on the phone of

29:11

a user, you're not

29:14

getting to touch it anymore. That would

29:16

be you commandeering their funds, right?

29:19

And so channel management

29:21

and all of that stuff either has to be exposed to

29:23

end users or you have to automate it.

29:26

And trust me, automating is really, really hard because

29:28

we don't even know what best practices are. And

29:31

so what we... The

29:33

target audience that we are talking

29:36

to more directly is app developers.

29:39

Because they can now use our

29:41

programming interface to spin up nodes

29:43

on our infrastructure, integrate

29:45

with just using RPC

29:48

calls and not care about

29:50

any of the rest. There must be

29:52

other benefits though as well. My

29:55

assumption is the biggest benefit is this

29:57

makes the Lightning network more decentralized. It

30:01

makes it more accessible to

30:03

many more people. I wouldn't say

30:06

that it makes it more decentralized. No,

30:08

is there any centralization components

30:11

to this? So, like are

30:13

we centralizing a whole part

30:15

of the Lightning Network under Blockstream?

30:18

So it always is a bit of a tricky question

30:21

when it comes to decentralization. What constitutes

30:24

decentralization? If you

30:26

consider decentralization

30:29

the fact that individuals

30:31

are taking care of their own funds and

30:34

managing their own nodes and

30:37

essentially not a

30:39

single entity sort

30:41

of merging all of these

30:45

things together under

30:48

one umbrella, then we

30:51

are indeed increasing decentralization.

30:53

If you consider decentralization that

30:56

a single entity can essentially

31:00

see what happens on the network,

31:02

then we are increasing centralization.

31:05

Okay, so you're decentralizing

31:07

the sovereignty but perhaps centralizing

31:09

the infrastructure? Exactly. That

31:13

is very much by the nature of the system

31:15

is if we want to help people

31:18

to set up databases

31:20

and manage watchtowers and stuff

31:22

like that, we very much have to make

31:25

sure that we have access to that. Another

31:29

thing that

31:31

we have is essentially

31:34

we do see traffic on our

31:36

nodes, which

31:38

we can then use to turn around and

31:40

essentially inform the development of the open

31:43

source core Lightning again. Right,

31:45

so there is a bit of a trade-off here between

31:47

privacy and information

31:50

we can use to improve the open

31:52

source core Lightning. And we

31:54

use that a bit as a as a notch

31:56

for users to actually offboard eventually.

32:00

Like I said, my ultimate

32:02

goal is to educate

32:04

users and then giving them the knowledge

32:07

to run these nodes themselves, at

32:10

which point they'd

32:12

be fully self-sovereign individuals on

32:15

the Lightning network, just like

32:17

any techie who has had the

32:19

inspiration of digging in right from the

32:21

get-go. As

32:24

such, we are decentralizing

32:27

ownership and centralizing a bit of the infrastructure

32:33

with an eye towards then hopefully

32:36

off-boarding people again into their own infrastructure.

32:39

How much of a challenge is it with the

32:41

different implementations of Lightning

32:44

with doing this kind of work? Because,

32:46

correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of

32:48

base chain is now core. I

32:52

know Luke has his knots implementation,

32:55

but generally speaking, tell

32:57

me how wrong I am. But I feel like

33:00

almost everyone just uses core. So,

33:03

for layer one, it's definitely the case

33:05

that Bitcoin core has almost

33:10

a monopoly on it. And that is by necessity,

33:13

to be perfectly honest, right? The

33:17

Bitcoin blockchain protocol was essentially

33:20

never documented. I tried in 2011

33:24

to write the protocol

33:26

specification, which later

33:28

got renamed to documentation, because

33:31

it turns out that there are so many

33:33

minute details inside of Bitcoin

33:36

core that are important,

33:38

right? That you can't get wrong

33:41

or can't get differently wrong than

33:44

Bitcoin core without falling out of consensus.

33:47

And so, it was

33:50

renamed to documentation

33:52

because it's an effort to document,

33:55

but it is not authoritative, right? That

33:57

is very much different from how Lightning

33:59

works. however, where we started right

34:01

from the get-go with the specification,

34:04

which is authoritative. And as such,

34:07

whenever there is a disagreement between different clients,

34:11

there is a document we can refer to and

34:14

say, hey, the document

34:16

says x, implementation

34:18

a does x, implementation b

34:20

does it slightly different, implementation

34:23

b is at fault. Or many

34:25

times, we discover, oh,

34:27

it's under-specified. So let's hammer out

34:29

the details and decide together

34:32

who is wrong and then

34:35

reinstate that

34:37

correctness again, which you can't do

34:39

on a base layer. But wouldn't a monopoly

34:42

on the Lightning Protocol also be better?

34:46

It would be different.

34:49

So monopolies are always dangerous. I'm

34:55

just reading Cory Doctoroff's

34:58

Seize the Means of Networking, which

35:01

very much speaks about monopolies, talks

35:03

about big tech, but monopolies in general.

35:06

And in my mind, monopolies

35:08

have to be very well argumented

35:12

and justified. And

35:14

I think we have that justification

35:17

in Bitcoin on-chain because any

35:19

deviation in behavior would

35:22

constitute a fork. If

35:25

my implementation were to

35:29

flip a bit on any

35:31

signatures, then any signatures I

35:34

create are invalid on

35:36

the other side. And we don't want a fork. And

35:38

we don't want a fork because essentially, the

35:42

trust in the system itself comes

35:44

from the stability that

35:47

the system provides. This

35:49

is no longer true for layers

35:52

we build on top, where we can

35:55

be much more experimental. And we have

35:57

been much more experimental as well. because

36:00

we are now working with a subset

36:02

of all of the users

36:05

of Bitcoin. A subset that has

36:07

opted into the experiment, right? Such

36:10

as building Lightning channels, building

36:12

DLC contracts, building

36:15

more advanced, more experimental

36:18

stuff, experimental L2 implementations,

36:21

stuff like that. And

36:23

so the trade-offs are very much different

36:25

and I think it would be very hard to justify

36:28

a monopoly on the Lightning network at this

36:30

stage. Okay, that's fair. Okay,

36:33

so is Greenlight live?

36:36

Can I play with it without knowing I'm playing with

36:38

it? I don't know. So we currently have

36:40

a developer preview that is going

36:42

on. The way

36:44

it works is you essentially ping

36:47

us and we give out invite

36:49

codes to anybody who is interested.

36:53

An invite code allows you to register

36:56

and spin up a node on our infrastructure

36:58

and then use the programming interfaces

37:01

to talk to it. And

37:05

for a couple of partners that we

37:10

are collaborating very closely with, namely

37:12

Breeze and Green, and

37:15

a couple of others as well, which

37:17

I probably shouldn't mention because they want to announce

37:19

themselves, I guess. But

37:21

they will be announced by the time this is coming out, wouldn't they?

37:25

They will choose their own time of

37:27

announcement, I guess. Who will

37:29

it might be? But

37:33

anyway, Breeze and Green are

37:36

essentially live. Oh, and Green is yours.

37:38

And Green is ours, yes. So guess

37:41

where the name Greenlight comes from. I have no idea.

37:43

I'm very bad at naming and technically

37:45

I was barred from ever naming a

37:47

product again after the whole L2 fiasco.

37:50

What was that? Well,

37:52

it turns out that

37:56

the internal name for L2 was

37:58

always the letter L. L2

38:00

as a number and at some point

38:03

somebody made a jock, you

38:05

shouldn't use the phonetic spelling L2 and

38:07

it stuck. Oh

38:10

yeah, it did. And more

38:14

sort of, a bit less funny was that at

38:20

the same time the whole Me Too movement

38:23

was going on on Twitter. Right, okay.

38:25

And so people were confused about

38:28

our names and hashtags,

38:31

so it was strange for a while. Yeah,

38:34

but that's just, there's

38:37

no plan to that, you can't help. Okay,

38:40

so when can I play with it? You

38:42

can, if

38:44

you are a developer. No, we know

38:47

that. You probably don't

38:49

want to play with it right now directly. No,

38:52

I just, playing with it means me

38:55

playing with a wallet and not knowing I'm using it. So

38:58

there is a green variant where

39:00

you can turn on the experimental features. I

39:03

actually have it here. Not on my green wallet.

39:06

Not on your green wallet, I think. There

39:09

is some way of

39:12

enabling it. I probably should have the

39:14

green team for it. You should ask, you should wait for the green

39:16

team. And Breeze has

39:19

a version of their client

39:22

which is backed by

39:25

green light. And the really interesting part

39:27

about that is you can use both and

39:29

have it be backed by the same node. So

39:33

very much like one

39:35

issue that we had with users essentially

39:37

bundling the node

39:39

with their application was that every single application

39:41

had their own node. And so you'd be splitting

39:44

funds, and if you wanted to try out a new

39:46

chat app, well you'd essentially have to

39:48

drain funds from one node, move

39:51

them over to the new app, and then open

39:53

channels, and only then you could find out that

39:55

it's actually crap and you don't want to use it. So

39:58

this show is coming out. after your

40:03

Bitcoin Amsterdam talk by design. But

40:08

you've got an announcement there. Yeah. Is

40:10

the announcement that Greenlight's ready?

40:14

The announcement very much is that

40:16

the Greenlight is ready for end users to use, yes.

40:18

So that's the big announcement. That's the big announcement.

40:21

So will there be a live wallet by Amsterdam?

40:25

There will be a live wallet in the form of

40:28

Breeze and Green. Brilliant. So

40:31

that's about when I can play

40:33

with it. That's when you can play with it. Oh my God,

40:35

this is amazing. I think it's super

40:37

cool. But it leaves me because I've got other questions,

40:39

right? Mm-hmm. I've

40:42

got two main questions that

40:44

no one's ever given me a really good answer

40:47

for. Ooh,

40:49

that sounds ominous. Yeah, well, like, so

40:54

in a future world of

40:58

a much smaller block reward, much

41:00

higher base chain usage, much higher

41:03

on-chain fees, you

41:05

still need an on-chain transaction

41:08

to open up a Lightning channel.

41:10

So say I'm a brand new Bitcoiner

41:13

and it's 2030 and on-chain

41:15

fees are wherever they are. And

41:18

I want to get involved in Bitcoin. I

41:22

can't afford on-chain fees because

41:24

my first, I just won $100, 100 pounds

41:26

of Bitcoin and on-chain fees might be super high.

41:28

It's just prohibitive

41:31

to me. So how, can

41:33

I, in your way, I will be able to

41:35

get on Bitcoin without owning a UTXO?

41:41

Excellent question. And I just realized why you

41:44

never got a straight answer for it because

41:46

nobody knows the answer. Yeah, this

41:48

is my issue. Neither do I, by the way.

41:51

Very much all of these scaling solutions get

41:53

us one, two, three

41:56

orders of magnitude. And many,

41:58

many people then sort of extrapolate. and say, hey,

42:00

this is the solution going forward

42:03

forever. Whereas in reality,

42:05

we will bump against the limitations of lightning.

42:09

Now there's

42:11

two options we have here, right? Either

42:13

we evolve lightning, or we

42:15

come up with something completely different, and

42:18

it just is called something else,

42:20

right? Well, I think it leads to a bigger

42:23

point. Is that if in

42:25

a future world, most

42:28

of the people we onboard into Bitcoin is just into

42:30

lightning. Say that's the future world we end up

42:32

in. Can you ever be truly

42:35

self-sovereign if you're only on lightning?

42:37

Because you're possibly on

42:40

somebody else's UTXO or

42:43

their channel, which they could close at some point. Well,

42:45

I mean, being on somebody

42:48

else's UTXO in this case is a bit of a

42:50

mischaracterization, right? It's co-owned

42:53

by you. Yes, OK. Your signature

42:55

is needed to

42:58

determine what happens with those funds. And

43:00

that is very much the basis for all of these off-chain

43:02

protocols where we essentially say, hey, we pool

43:04

funds, and then we go into a separate

43:07

room and decide what happens with those

43:09

funds, and we'll come back to the chain only

43:11

once we know how to settle it, right?

43:13

Let's go back a step. I download a

43:15

new wallet, and

43:17

I deposit some stats

43:19

in there. So lightning wallet, I've got 50,000

43:23

stats in there that somebody sent me.

43:29

What's the UTXO behind that? Is it everybody?

43:31

Who's sharing that UTXO? That

43:34

very much depends on which kind

43:36

of solution we end

43:38

up with, right? It could

43:40

be a multi-party channel where

43:43

essentially hundreds of people pool their funds

43:45

and co-decide what happens with those funds.

43:49

It could be something like a sediment

43:51

where we delegate control of

43:54

the UTXO to a federation, or

43:56

it could be a custodial solution, right?

43:58

I'm not one to two.

43:59

sort of rail against custodial solutions, I

44:02

just think we should give people the ability

44:04

of choosing something more secure. So

44:07

in a custodial solution, you

44:09

can be rugged. Absolutely.

44:11

So you're not really self-soffered. Exactly.

44:14

Because it's not your keys. In a

44:17

federated solution, you

44:19

can be rugged, but there's a lower risk in

44:22

that it may be fairly

44:24

transparent who the federation is.

44:28

OB often talks about a community one

44:30

and you have the reputation of the people. I'm

44:33

still not 100% convinced of that. It's still

44:35

not your keys. I mean, at that point,

44:37

you might have an

44:40

external system such as a legal system that

44:43

might actually act as

44:45

your safety net, right? Well, this is where

44:47

I wonder where we're going long term. So

44:49

currently with the bank, if I go to bank, it's an

44:52

IOU. My money, if I go into

44:54

my revenue account, what I see is an IOU

44:56

and I can, the only time I'm sovereign is when

44:58

I withdraw it or at the

45:00

time where the payments confirm because I know

45:03

that payment's gone, so I pay for something. But essentially,

45:05

I'm not sovereign. The bank has a lot of money, it's an

45:07

IOU. And I'm only protected

45:09

up to 80,000 pounds. It

45:11

feels like with Bitcoin, we're potentially building a

45:13

new version of this with just a different set of rules,

45:17

a better trust framework, a

45:19

better technology. And

45:22

ultimately, a fixed

45:24

limit currency that backs it, it

45:27

brings more honesty to it. But in the end, it

45:29

feels like we are having to

45:31

redesign a new banking infrastructure

45:34

because there is a limitation

45:36

on the scaling of UTXOs. I

45:39

wouldn't say that the UTXOs is

45:41

the limiting factor here. Well,

45:44

sorry, the cost of on-chain could

45:46

be the limiting factor of getting people UTXOs.

45:49

Yeah, I think it very much is

45:51

a spectrum, right? So, there are a lot of solutions

45:53

that we want to offer here. The

45:55

spectrum of current options that we have in

45:57

the banking sector are essentially all

46:01

And with the avenue

46:04

of Bitcoin, we enable people to take

46:06

charge of their own systems. And

46:13

there is various grays in

46:15

here, right? Federations,

46:17

non-custodial, and so on. And

46:20

ultimately, I think the major limitation

46:23

here is that using the fully

46:26

non-custodial, sovereign solutions is

46:29

very technically challenging. Some people

46:31

might choose not to use that.

46:33

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46:40

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46:42

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46:44

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46:49

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46:51

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46:56

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47:00

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47:02

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47:04

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47:06

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47:09

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47:12

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47:15

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47:17

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47:20

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47:26

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47:28

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47:30

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47:32

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47:35

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47:37

maybe grab a beer and talk about hyper-Bitcoinization.

47:40

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47:42

it super easy to find nearby Bitcoiners

47:45

to connect with. And it's also the largest

47:47

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47:50

if you go into the Orange Pill app, you'll see all the Real

47:52

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47:54

using the app for when I travel, and

47:56

it's been a game changer, but it's also been pretty cool as random

47:59

Bitcoiners read. out and get in touch and

48:01

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48:04

if they're local. So head over to the

48:06

orangeappleapp.com or search for Orange Apple App

48:08

in the Google or Apple App Stores and

48:10

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48:12

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48:15

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48:17

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48:20

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48:22

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48:24

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48:26

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48:29

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48:31

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48:33

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48:35

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48:37

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48:42

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48:50

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48:56

which is s-h-o-p dot l-e-d-g-e-r

49:00

dot com. It's not the technically

49:02

challenging bit of using base chain that worries

49:04

me. If I can set

49:07

up a wallet, if I can set up a multi-sig, if

49:10

I can manage my UTXOs,

49:12

most people can do that right? Now it's getting easier and

49:14

easier. My worry is the cost

49:17

of onboarding millions slash

49:19

billions into this. So I've just been out

49:21

to Lebanon, previously Argentina,

49:25

very, very high poverty

49:27

rates, millions of people

49:29

living under the poverty line, like high double

49:32

percentage figures. And

49:35

you go somewhere like that and share

49:38

some photos, people are like Bitcoin fixes this and most

49:41

of the time I ignore them because I haven't been there and I haven't seen the reality.

49:44

But if the reality is just that we want to

49:46

get millions of people on boarded, I

49:50

don't think we're going to onboard billions of people into

49:52

the base chain. No.

49:53

Okay.

49:56

But we constantly say not your keys, not your Bitcoin. But

49:59

I... I feel enough people there for having the conversation. It's

50:02

like, well, yes, it's not your keys, not your Bitcoin. But

50:04

the future of Bitcoin for a lot of people won't, will

50:06

be not your keys, not your Bitcoin. Because

50:09

there will be a spectrum of custodial,

50:13

semi-custodial, federated

50:16

trust models that most people will

50:18

have to use. So

50:21

is that a blind spot? Is that something people are avoiding?

50:23

Or is there a belief that actually, though these will all be

50:25

sold as well? I think we

50:28

are essentially pushing in two directions. One

50:31

is technical feasibility. And

50:34

that is mostly the front I've been working

50:37

on, essentially making sure that

50:39

stuff becomes easier to use, stuff becomes

50:42

more scalable. With

50:46

multi-party channels, we can build

50:48

arbitrary large off-chain

50:50

protocols

50:53

that essentially replicate all of the

50:55

attributes that

50:58

on-chain payments have,

51:01

still being anchored in on-chain payments.

51:04

And the other dimension is that

51:06

we obviously want people to go

51:08

towards a more self-custodial

51:12

solution. And that goes

51:14

hand in hand with simplifying, but

51:16

also with scaling.

51:20

I

51:21

can't say how we're going

51:23

to do it, because otherwise I would have

51:26

published it as a paper already. Then

51:28

again, I don't write papers that much anymore.

51:33

But I'm relatively optimistic

51:35

that when the time comes, we

51:38

will have the solution. With these

51:41

multi-person UTXOs, I can't remember how you

51:43

explain it, but multiple people share in a UTXO.

51:48

How would a group of

51:50

people agree to close that? Would

51:52

everyone have to sign or certain percent? Is it essentially

51:54

a multi-sig on that UTXO?

51:57

It is very much a multi-sig. And could it

51:59

get to the point? I mean, is there a limit taking

52:01

hundreds of people share a UTXO? Is

52:03

it that possible? And then could you get to the point where

52:05

essentially some UTXOs will almost certainly

52:08

never close because it won't have enough people

52:10

to agree into closing it so you could have permanently

52:13

open UTX channels? So

52:18

to be safe, all of

52:20

the current constructions of these off-chain protocols

52:23

allow an individual user to essentially

52:25

say, hey, I'm taking my toys and going

52:27

home, right? Actually

52:29

taking the off-chain

52:32

protocol and settling on chain, moving

52:35

their funds out, and then the others

52:37

can do whatever they want. And

52:39

there are very interesting constructions right now

52:42

being discussed on the mailing list where we can use covenants

52:44

to actually allow us

52:48

to expel inactive users from

52:51

such an off-chain system. So that

52:55

the number of participants

52:57

becomes larger than the chances of one

52:59

of them not being reactive and not

53:01

being there to sign off on the next change increases.

53:06

And so

53:09

there are constructions where we can say, hey, Peter

53:13

has fallen asleep. Maybe

53:16

he wants his sons back on chain. And

53:18

the rest of us can essentially say, hey, OK,

53:21

let's go on chain, split out Peter's

53:23

funds and then recreate that system

53:25

very much like we do with splicing already

53:27

today. And

53:30

so there are interactivity requirements for which

53:32

we are looking for solutions and there are

53:34

scalability requirements where

53:36

we try to increase the size

53:39

of these multiparty

53:41

channels. And

53:44

another very interesting research topic since we're talking

53:47

about research topics is

53:49

the issue of dynamic memberships. If

53:52

I have a group of 100 people and now Peter comes and wants to join them.

54:00

this? How

54:02

can we make Peter part

54:04

of this group without

54:06

touching the chain itself? Because

54:09

you can't trust the remaining 100

54:12

people that they haven't sort

54:14

of an agreement inside that they are collaborating

54:17

to defraud you, right? So how can

54:19

we make sure that even if you join after

54:22

the fact, we can prove to you

54:24

that this is the latest state and yes,

54:26

indeed, you own 100 bucks on this system.

54:30

Where are we at with covenants? Because I know it's

54:32

something Jeremy Rubin worked on. I know

54:34

he has some challenges with his

54:38

ideas for implementation that he

54:40

didn't manage to build up enough support.

54:43

I think he's pissed off about it. But I think people

54:45

also at the same time respected what he was trying

54:47

to do and they want covenants like, by

54:50

the way, I don't even know what the fuck covenants are. But

54:52

I know the background like, where are we at with that?

54:54

So I'm definitely not a covenants expert. But

54:57

the way that I understand it is essentially

54:59

that you can mark an output

55:01

for certain

55:05

restrictions in future spending, right? So

55:07

that you can say, hey, I

55:10

have these 100 bitcoins and

55:13

they can only be spent by

55:15

either sending them back to me or after

55:19

a timeout they can they can

55:22

thaw and be sent somewhere

55:24

else. So it's essentially vinculating

55:27

up front what may happen to those

55:29

funds later. And you

55:31

can see that in in off-chain protocols,

55:33

this is something very powerful, right?

55:36

We as a group can decide, hey, either

55:38

A or B happens. Nothing

55:41

else can happen to those funds. And that

55:43

is something that helps us limit

55:49

what might happen to those funds as

55:51

when it comes to security, those funds can be stolen. But we also

55:53

can build things like delayed settlements

55:55

on top of it, right? If

56:01

I know that when I send

56:03

those funds on-chain, they can

56:05

only be used to split up in 1,000

56:09

smaller chunks and those individual

56:11

chunks go to the 1,000 participants

56:15

of my off-chain protocol, it can be very

56:17

cheap for me to essentially settle an off-chain

56:19

protocol into one output and

56:21

then sort of wait for fees to settle down

56:23

and be less expensive during

56:26

the night, for example, and split

56:28

them out to the individual participants. There's

56:32

a good difference to the $5 wrench

56:34

attack with those as well, right? Yeah,

56:37

you essentially took away power from yourself,

56:40

from your future self to divulge

56:43

or manipulate your own funds in the case

56:45

of a threat. And I could also, I guess,

56:47

the Covenants do something for my children's

56:49

inheritance about where these funds can

56:51

go and when. Yeah, and

56:53

you can disintermediate many, many of

56:56

the interactions that might require

56:58

third parties right now. And

57:01

the idea is relatively old. I think at

57:04

least the first time I read about it was by

57:07

Kansor about

57:10

the vaults

57:13

system where you can have funds

57:16

frozen and then thaw them up

57:19

for later use or sort of

57:21

move them away if the thawing

57:23

was triggered by somebody who shouldn't

57:26

have access to those funds. Interesting.

57:29

And there's been a lot of development lately.

57:31

In Germany, Rubens' OPC TV is

57:33

definitely among the more well-known

57:36

proposals. But

57:40

as is so often the case in Bitcoin,

57:43

it ends up essentially we

57:46

end up everybody

57:48

diverging into different directions

57:50

and sort of exploring. And at some point

57:52

we converge again

57:56

towards a single solution that sort of

57:59

integrates all of the learnings that we had during

58:01

the experimental phase. And the Lightning Protocol

58:03

is one such example, right? We met

58:06

in 2016 in Milan for

58:09

the first spec meeting, but that's

58:11

not when we started developing Lightning, right?

58:14

The Async team, the Lightning Labs

58:16

team, and the Blockstream team were all working

58:18

in different directions. And

58:21

at the end of the day, we sat down and said,

58:23

hey, look, we learned a lot. Now

58:25

let's combine our knowledge and

58:28

learnings and make this the best

58:30

protocol we can. There is no point in us creating

58:32

three separate non-interoperable

58:35

networks. We want to have

58:37

a system where everybody

58:40

can talk to everybody. And I expect

58:42

the same to happen eventually

58:44

for covenants as well. There is just

58:47

a lot

58:49

of different proposals flying

58:52

out there right now, among which any

58:54

PREV-OUT, which is one of my proposals that

58:57

can be used to simulate a lot of CTV.

59:01

And CTV can be

59:03

used to emulate together with CheckSick

59:05

Verify and CheckSick from Stack

59:07

to emulate APO. Anyway,

59:12

ultimately, there are a lot of different

59:15

proposals. And we essentially

59:17

now need to discuss and figure out,

59:19

hey, have we? Is one of these

59:21

solutions the end-all, the-all solution

59:23

that we want? Are we OK

59:26

with the powerful primitives

59:28

that we can build with it? Do we

59:30

want to be a bit more paternalistic and

59:34

prevent people from shooting themselves

59:36

in the foot? I am probably not

59:39

in that camp. I

59:42

think that people

59:44

should have the ability of shooting themselves in the

59:46

foot if they want to. Back

59:50

to green light. So is

59:53

there anything we haven't covered on green light? Or

59:59

is it just a case we need to- get it out there and have people see

1:00:01

it and not see it, but

1:00:03

essentially use it. I would

1:00:05

very much like to see it being

1:00:08

used and to

1:00:10

see how well it holds up. It

1:00:15

is a system that we have been working on for the last

1:00:17

two years. And so far,

1:00:19

we've had about 10 million sessions already,

1:00:23

as in nodes spinning up and spinning

1:00:25

down. Oh,

1:00:27

that's probably an interesting fact.

1:00:30

One of the scalability

1:00:36

classes that we have is that

1:00:40

the node only needs to be operational as

1:00:44

long as you have your app open

1:00:46

on your phone or on your laptop.

1:00:49

And once that app is closed,

1:00:52

we don't have access to the keys anymore, right?

1:00:54

You can't send the signer

1:00:56

any more requests. So we

1:00:59

just turned that node off. Let

1:01:02

me ask something.

1:01:05

With regards to receiving payments,

1:01:08

you have to be online, right? To

1:01:10

receive payments. So if

1:01:13

the phone is off and

1:01:15

the node is off, that means you can't receive payments. There's

1:01:20

an intermediate solution for that and a long-term

1:01:23

solution for that. The intermediate one is essentially

1:01:25

that we

1:01:27

can be told by your peer

1:01:30

partners that there is an incoming payment,

1:01:33

right? They can't ping us. And

1:01:35

we will try to summon your

1:01:38

phone, for example. And

1:01:40

by essentially you have an

1:01:43

incoming payment that is being held for

1:01:45

like 10 seconds at the edge

1:01:50

of greenlight. When greenlight

1:01:52

gets pinged, we ping your phone.

1:01:55

Your phone connects. We spin

1:01:57

up the node, reconnects

1:01:59

to the... appear and at that point we have

1:02:01

the ability to essentially forward that payment

1:02:04

to you. And so it's a very reactive

1:02:06

system where we can essentially by

1:02:09

reaching out to the applications we

1:02:11

can summon those

1:02:13

notes just in time for the payment to terminate. Does

1:02:16

that all happen without me having to do anything? Yes. Yeah,

1:02:19

okay. Okay. Because

1:02:21

what I'm thinking is, this is a great

1:02:23

option for me, but I also run businesses that accept

1:02:26

Bitcoin. And sometimes I'm asleep. And

1:02:28

sometimes I'm asleep. And I'm

1:02:31

not there to check my phone. I don't want payments

1:02:33

to fail. I just want them to keep coming. So

1:02:37

there's sort of an extension to that, namely

1:02:39

that remember that I told

1:02:41

you that you don't have to, you

1:02:44

can add as many front ends

1:02:46

to your note as you wanted, right? The

1:02:48

same is true for signers, right? As

1:02:50

long as you have one signer online

1:02:53

and that could be a smart

1:02:55

plug that you plug into your

1:02:58

outlet back home, as long

1:03:00

as one signer is online, you can essentially

1:03:03

accept payments. Or we can spin up

1:03:05

the note. We will have access to

1:03:07

the keys to terminate that payment. The

1:03:11

longer term solution will

1:03:13

obviously be that Matt

1:03:15

Corrallo has a proposal for

1:03:17

async payments, where payments are

1:03:19

deferred until the recipient

1:03:22

is online. And

1:03:24

we essentially trigger those payments in

1:03:27

the background when you happen to

1:03:29

be online. Okay. And is there a lot

1:03:31

of infrastructure work that Blockstream have had

1:03:33

to do to make this work? Oh,

1:03:35

very much so. So

1:03:38

we essentially, we

1:03:41

have the

1:03:43

control plane that allows you to spin

1:03:46

up nodes on demand. Like I said, it takes

1:03:48

about a second for us to provision your new

1:03:50

node and have it running on our system.

1:03:53

That includes database management.

1:03:55

That includes the host management.

1:03:58

It includes the host. for the databases.

1:04:02

I'm, with Greenlight,

1:04:04

I don't have to answer Telegram to

1:04:07

guide you through recovery

1:04:09

for your note because well, we

1:04:11

made it so that we can assist you in

1:04:18

those cases. And we

1:04:21

can spin up and down those notes in

1:04:24

less than a second. So by the time you open

1:04:26

the app, your note is

1:04:28

already ready. We have a watchtower

1:04:31

system in place. We have all of the,

1:04:34

what I like to call the circulatory system in

1:04:37

Bitcoin. So

1:04:40

since we need access to the Bitcoin

1:04:42

network, we very much have

1:04:45

to run a Bitcoin core node that

1:04:48

allows you to get access to the Bitcoin network.

1:04:50

And all of that stuff is

1:04:53

happening behind the scenes and you don't

1:04:55

have to care about it at all. It very

1:04:57

much, if you've ever

1:05:00

worked against one of the

1:05:02

custodial options of

1:05:04

spinning up a

1:05:06

node and then sort of backing

1:05:09

your shop with it or something like that, the

1:05:12

experience should be very similar with

1:05:14

the difference that now there's an

1:05:16

additional component that you have to manage, which is

1:05:18

a signer. But it's

1:05:20

very much just an application that runs in

1:05:22

the background and you don't actually have to

1:05:24

interact with it at all. Trying

1:05:27

to recreate the custodial experience

1:05:29

in a non-custodial setting essentially. I

1:05:32

mean, I love it. I can't wait to see it. I

1:05:35

wanna play with it. I wanna play with something

1:05:37

that I don't actually get to see, which I know benefits

1:05:39

me, benefits Bitcoin. See, deep down,

1:05:41

you're a techie anyway. No, I'm the opposite.

1:05:44

I wanna play with it knowing that I don't have

1:05:46

to do anything that is all done for me.

1:05:49

To me, this is the end goal for all

1:05:51

of this stuff. And I salute

1:05:53

anyone who does. I salute you for trying

1:05:55

to find these solutions because I do think

1:05:57

there are a lot of Bitcoiners who have a massive blind spot

1:05:59

around. They say people should

1:06:01

learn these things. Do you have a podcast? You should learn

1:06:04

this. Like, no, you should fix

1:06:06

it so I don't have to. And I feel

1:06:08

very strongly about that. Exactly. You

1:06:11

should be free where you decide to invest your time

1:06:13

in, right? It's not up to

1:06:15

us to shame you into... It's not even

1:06:17

about shame. It's just better for Bitcoin. It's

1:06:20

better for individual users. It's better for

1:06:22

my dad if he... No, I'm saying the

1:06:25

Bitcoin community attitude is usually to

1:06:28

shame people into, oh, you're not

1:06:30

a real Bitcoin. You don't turn your own

1:06:32

Bitcoin core node off. How could you?

1:06:35

A little known secret is that for a long time I

1:06:37

haven't been running Bitcoin core myself. What?

1:06:40

Yes. What? Look,

1:06:42

if Christian Decker can get away with it, I can

1:06:44

get away with it. Man,

1:06:46

wow. Is there anything I've not

1:06:48

asked you you wish I had? No,

1:06:52

I think we did a really good job of

1:06:55

explaining what green light is and what

1:06:57

it can do. We are planning

1:06:59

to continue building out many

1:07:02

of these features. Ultimately,

1:07:05

we have integrations with LSPs

1:07:08

going, so we hope

1:07:10

you don't have to decide on looking

1:07:13

at your channels. But if you wanted

1:07:15

to look at channels and wanted to manage them yourself,

1:07:17

of course you could. There

1:07:23

are quite a few expansions that

1:07:25

we are looking into building out. One

1:07:30

such extension is essentially these

1:07:33

are currently end-user nodes. They

1:07:35

are not really meant

1:07:37

to back an

1:07:40

enterprise or a business.

1:07:43

But eventually we want to take these learnings

1:07:46

and offer specialized solutions based

1:07:49

on the same technology. Businesses

1:07:52

still get to manage to

1:07:54

keep their keys and not tell them

1:07:56

to us, but at the

1:07:58

same time have the... have the same

1:08:00

user experience

1:08:03

as end users do. And for

1:08:06

that, we are also building

1:08:08

out some more advanced capabilities that

1:08:10

you couldn't replicate with

1:08:12

in-app nodes. For example, we

1:08:14

have an entire permission system built

1:08:17

on runes that allow

1:08:19

you to restrict what individual clients

1:08:21

can do with your node. So

1:08:23

for example, you could have a point of sale that

1:08:26

is only allowed to create invoices. You could

1:08:28

have a back office that is allowed to

1:08:30

send and receive payment. And then you

1:08:32

could have an accountant that

1:08:35

gets an audit log while

1:08:37

the business is open

1:08:40

in real time. And more

1:08:43

interestingly even is that the

1:08:45

signer is the place where

1:08:47

everything has to go through, right? And

1:08:50

as such, that is a perfect place for

1:08:52

us to place an audit trail, right?

1:08:55

The only stuff that is signed off by the

1:08:57

signer can even

1:09:00

affect your funds. So why not put an

1:09:02

accounting audit trail just there to

1:09:04

see, hey, Peter just sent $10

1:09:07

to this coffee place. Maybe I'll check

1:09:09

it out later as well. Love it. Well, listen,

1:09:11

if people want to find out more, where do they go? So

1:09:14

we have a green light landing page on blockstream.com

1:09:17

slash green light. And we

1:09:20

will have a sign up page

1:09:22

to get access to

1:09:24

green light without

1:09:27

having to contact us by mail this

1:09:29

time at

1:09:32

greenlight.blockstream.com. And you will

1:09:34

be presenting a Bitcoin Amsterdam telling

1:09:36

everyone about this, which they'll

1:09:38

have heard it by now. Well, they'll probably have

1:09:40

heard it by now. Yeah, they would have heard it because they're just coming

1:09:43

out after that. Christian, thanks for coming

1:09:45

in. Thanks for everything you do. Let's

1:09:47

not wait three years again. Let's try and do this

1:09:49

again sooner. Thank you to Bedford. Yeah,

1:09:52

let's go to Bedford. I wanted to go to Bedford

1:09:55

this time around, but. We'll be ready.

1:09:57

We're not going anywhere. You know how timing

1:09:59

is. We'll be ready for you, man. Thank you so

1:10:02

much for having me. It's been a blast. Thank

1:10:04

you Alrighty,

1:10:07

what do you think of that one? Right Christian was

1:10:09

first back on the show in the very early days

1:10:11

of WBD and you know what? I

1:10:14

really like talking to OG devs

1:10:16

people like him like Andrew Polstra They

1:10:18

do a really great job at breaking down these complex

1:10:20

topics So the less technical people like me can understand

1:10:23

and help some of you may be less technical people understand

1:10:26

anyway What do you think of green light to me? It sounds

1:10:28

like a very promising solution to get people

1:10:31

holding their keys when using lightning and

1:10:33

so hopefully we'll see more Solutions like

1:10:35

this and probably get people away from these custodial

1:10:38

wallets. So yeah, very cool. Nice

1:10:40

work Christian Also, because looking

1:10:42

pretty strong right look at the price looking pretty

1:10:44

strong Hodler's being rewarded

1:10:46

right now, which is very very cool Alright,

1:10:49

if you got any questions about this anything else, please

1:10:51

do get in touch. It's hello at what Bitcoin did calm

1:10:53

Look forward to hearing from you. Have a

1:10:55

great week and I will see you all on Wednesday