Exclusive Interview | Bitcoin $250,000? Is Turing complete wrong? Blockstream CEO Adam Back talked about these

In the long run, Bitcoin, as a competitor to physical gold, could reach $250,000 if it meets some comparable indicators in the future.

For Turing complete, I think it's a mistake because it creates storage requirements, which makes it difficult to extend, state, and create the race conditions that Bitcoin's UTXO model avoids, which is technically unnecessary. .

There are already too many coins on the market, so there is no need to create more.

Blockstream also invests in Bitcoin, and part of the wages of all Blockstream employees are paid in bitcoin.

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– Adam Back

Adam Back

Dr. Adam Back is a cryptographer with 25 years of experience in cybersecurity and holds a Ph.D. in computer science. In 1997, he invented the famous HashCash mechanism. In 2009, Bitcoin was born, using a PoW mechanism similar to hash cash, and it is therefore widely believed that hash cash promoted the birth of Bitcoin.

In 2014, Blockstream, which made an important contribution to the development of Bitcoin, was born, and Dr. Adam Barker was the founder of the company, and he also served as CEO. Other founders include Gregory Maxwell, Pieter Wuille, Jonathan Wilkins, Matt Corallo and other well-known bits. Coin developer. Over the years, Blockstream has been committed to the development of Bitcoin, has launched a number of bitcoin related products and released a number of heavyweight open source technologies, including Liquid sidechain solutions, Blockstream Satellite Bitcoin transaction broadcast network, etc. Research and development of technical solutions such as lightning network, Schnorr signature technology, and confidential trading.

In 2019, lightning network and cross-chain projects became a hot topic in the encryption community. The crypto bear market, which has continued for nearly two years, has continued to rebound under the impetus of the IEO wave. Is the bear market already over? How will the booming bitcoin sidechain technology develop in the future? Babbitt recently conducted an exclusive interview with Dr. Adam Back and invited him to answer these hot spots and questions. In addition, he also gave a personal opinion on the recent behavior of BSVs under multiple exchanges.

The following is the details of this interview:

1. As a well-known cryptographer, HashCash inventor, what made you decide to devote yourself to Bitcoin?

Unlike previous advanced electronic systems, Bitcoin has many advantages, especially because it is deployed in a robust manner. Bitcoin survives because it is decentralized and flexible. The system is centralized and often fails due to a single point of failure. But compared to previous systems, Bitcoin's privacy and substitutability are relatively weak. As a person with experience in privacy technology and previous e-cash system application cryptography, I am interested in trying to improve the privacy and substitutability of Bitcoin. One of the things I could do was to present and outline the Confidential Transaction (CT) mechanism in 2013 (before Blockstream), which was later carried out by early Blockstream co-founder Greg Maxwell and others. Optimization and improvement have become a secret, privacy, and replaceability feature used by Liquid and Elements. CT is now also used by other blockchains.

2. Blockstream has been working on the development of Bitcoin technology, such as lightning network and sidechain technology. Blockstream has a lot of scientists and famous developers, so your company has considered creating your own blockchain and token?

For me, I tend to think that it is more reasonable to have a single currency tipping point, so that working with everyone else in the ecosystem to improve and build Bitcoin will be more constructive. . On the contrary, if everyone releases their own currency, then there will be no progress, and the network effect of the currency will collapse.

3.Liquid is mainly developed based on Bitcoin code, and its ease of use and functionality are limited. Does Blockstream have plans to improve features in the future, such as Liquid's script or UTXO mechanism?

Yes, the R&D team led by Blockstream Research Director Andrew Poelstra is working with other independent experts, academics and other ecosystem companies in multiple R&D areas, and we hope to bring the results to Liquid and Bitcoin in the future, whether directly A consensus upgrade for Bitcoin (such as working with Schnorr), or through more Layer 2 features that don't require trust, as Liquid can provide.

Is Turing complete a mistake?

4. Many Chinese blockchain projects have focused on the development of sidechain technologies, such as the Bychain. They have a sidechain project called Vapor (https://github.com/Bytom/vapor). Vapor has improved UTXO to carry more types of assets (not just its local tokens), but also to run more complex Turing-complete scripting languages, and optimized two-way hooking technology (2WP) using DPOS +PBFT to implement the federation function. What do you think of this side link line?

Independent research and experimentation are useful, and there are many projects internationally, so I am not familiar with them, so it is difficult to comment specifically. In addition, Liquid provides local support for multiple asset types while providing confidentiality for both Bitcoin and Liquid assets.

In the general technical direction, I do think that there are some basic restrictions on PoS, so I am not very optimistic about this direction at present.

Similarly, for Turing complete, I think it's a mistake because it creates storage requirements that make it difficult to extend and stateful, creating the race conditions that Bitcoin's UTXO model avoids, which is technically No need , as the Blockstream formal language security expert Dr. Russell O'connor has explained—that is, the contract should be seen as a proof of successful execution, not a program that needs to be executed. Treating contracts as evidence of execution can reduce the resources required for storage and verification.

Philosophically, I believe that blockchain should be optimized, improve space efficiency, be designed to be unaffected by race conditions, and be as simple as possible—because complexity is the enemy of security, and the lowest complexity of Bitcoin itself has been It is quite high. At Blockstream, Russell has been working on a formal security intelligence contract system designed to design and extend Bitcoin's UTXO model and put security first, called Simplicity. We may add Simplicity to Liquid in the medium term, and perhaps Simplicity related technology will be adopted by Bitcoin. 5. In addition to the exchange, what are the main application scenarios of Liquid in the future? How does it compete with other blockchain alliances?

Liquid is a networking technology, and Blockstream is focused on providing infrastructure, so we want individuals, open source contributors, application researchers and startups to try out many use cases and find interesting new use cases for the blockchain. There are already many companies that are researching many use cases. I think Liquid's intention to differentiate is to build a safety-first model based on Bitcoin's strong security record. The way to do this is to extend Bitcoin through a modular second-tier approach without introducing any new tokens.

6. Sidechain and lightning network are the focus of Blockstream's research. So how do sidechains compete in the commercial market with lightning networks? Or can they complement each other?

They are complementary. Because of the trade-offs between liquidity, capacity, and online wallet, Lightning Networks is best at providing fast retail payments, and Liquid's goal is to provide a different use case: providing fast cross-exchange transfers for Bitcoin and other asset traders.

What challenges will the lightning network face in the future?

7. Lightning Network is one of the hottest topics in the encryption community. What are the challenges of mainstream adoption of Lightning Network? What will the future of Lightning Network look like?

Lightning networks are growing very fast today, and many individuals, businesses, and academics are researching and making rapid progress in protocol concepts, implementation, interoperability, and wallets, use cases, and applications. I think the simpler user interface, combined with the functionality of the main chain and Lightning Wallet and the quick start mechanism, are starting to be created to help end users use the Lightning Network more easily. The application of lightning networks is growing rapidly in terms of network nodes and network bitcoin capacity.

8. As everyone knows, two-way hooks (2WP) can't achieve no trust. What do you think are the difficulties in the current implementation? Is there any research result or direction (for coaching and learning), and a cross-chain solution without trust is the answer?

There are some security compromises in the current 2WP. One of the basic issues to be aware of is incentive compatibility, which means that honest behavior with Bitcoin is profitable, as long as not too much power is not a short-term rental, because mining is a long-term investment. To some extent, the sidechain provides a direction when the bitcoin mining returns are less. – That is to say, after more halving, each block will have less bitcoin mining – therefore, bitcoin will have to solve some sidechain problems in the future.

There are many people working in this area, so maybe some new ideas or basic new building blocks will eventually provide a p2p solution in a very robust way. For example, significant advances in technologies such as Bulletproof can validate code without the risk of execution or scalability side effects.

Talk about the BSV being removed – the exchange should remain neutral, a cryptocurrency promoter is not welcome and cannot be a reason for the downside

9. Due to opposition to Aoben Cong CSW, some exchanges recently announced the removal of BSV, which some believe is contrary to the spirit of centralization. What do you think? Do you think the exchange has too many rights? Or do you think that decentralized exchanges will be the future?

This is a very controversial area, not the direction of Blockstream. Personally, I have publicly stated that I believe exchanges should be neutral, as long as an asset has sufficient demand to cover the engineering and maintenance costs of the exchange, as well as other common sense precautions, it should be provided A market. In my opinion, the opinion or behavior of a cryptocurrency promoter is unpopular and should not be the reason for being delisted because I feel that it deviates from politics or becomes a popular competition.

10.Liquid is mainly used in exchanges. Does it help decentralized exchanges to develop and solve the abuse of current exchange rights?

Yes, Liquid has some features that can help reduce the risk of exchange hosting. First, because the currency can be transferred faster through Liquid, the user can save the currency in a wallet outside the exchange and can deposit quickly. But at the same time, it supports and studies a local atomic level interchange. Blockstream has formed a joint venture with Digital Garage and Tokyo Tanshi, and is currently using a developing Japanese currency in Japan to provide atomic trading for OTC traders. This is of interest to users, traders, and regulators to protect users from hacking by exchanges and to help exchanges avoid the need for regulation to run market functions and match matching.

11. According to previous reports, you think the bitcoin side chain will beat the competition currency. There are already thousands of coins on the market. Do you think there are too many? Or do you think developers don't need to develop new blockchains for these competitors, but should develop on the sidechains? If all the blockchains are attached to Bitcoin as sidechains, does this mean that Bitcoin has become a center? Does this not detrimental to the free development of the blockchain?

At Blockstream, we promote the concept of “no speculative innovation”. We demonstrate by example that innovative technologies can be added to bits in a non-trusted, modular way using sidechains and other Layer 2 technologies such as lightning networks. Coins, so there is no need to develop more coins . Both Liquid and Lightning Networks are Layer 2 technologies that provide new functionality and capabilities for Bitcoin. For example, Liquid added a confidential transaction (CT) that brought better confidentiality and value privacy than a mainline deal – but because of compromises, Liquid is more suitable for exchange traders and interested in securing confidential transactions. People, but the Bitcoin backbone has always been better at resisting censorship and long-term storage security.

12. You pointed out that mining centering is a P2P side chain that has not caused much attention to the main reasons. Although the current centralization of Bitcoin mining has improved, it does not mean that future mining will not become centralized again. This problem cannot be solved once and for all, so how can the side chain continue to develop from this problem?

Perhaps, as people have seen the negative effects of centralization, they may be more directly involved in protecting the Bitcoin network as individuals and small businesses. I think the more decentralized bitcoin is more valuable because it is safer, more independent, and more trustworthy.

Bitcoin needs to be extended to support the p2p sidechain. Even if we assume that the decentralization of bitcoin is safe, there are some development issues in how to do this safely. So you need to do more work. 13. The Bitcoin network itself is hard to suffer from 51% attacks, it has no single point of failure, but many people think that the side chain is vulnerable to 51% attack. If a side chain is attacked, this will destroy the entire side chain network. If there is a double flower, how can we avoid this problem?

The sidechains we know today how to build do have some additional seemingly basic security compromises, unless significant technological breakthroughs are made in demonstrating operational efficiency. Several different approaches are currently being tried, and Liquid uses a federated model with incentive compatibility for enterprise use (cryptocurrency exchanges, etc.), and the drivechain has a slow withdrawal process for detection and human cancellation. The attack leaves time, and Rootstock is developing a hybrid model that combines federation and signature.

14. One solution for side chain 51% attack is to use a mixed mining mode to protect, but this method can only reduce the possibility of 51% attack, but it can easily lead to mining centering. How do you think about it?

I think the hybrid mining model is reasonable and may be a good way, but it does not solve the incentive problem because an attacker can honestly mine on the bitcoin chain and then attack the side chain, bitcoin chain. I won't notice this because it is not technically aware of sidechain attacks.

15. Since the beginning of this year, many cross-chain projects have attracted attention. For example, Cosmos and IRISnet have launched the main network. Polkadot also plans to release the main network this year. So what is your view on cross-chain technology? Side chains and cross-chains are somewhat similar. What do you think is the difference between them?

There are many blockchain projects, and I am not familiar with most of them. But I do think that they are often plagued by complexity, security risks, and generally lack of experienced and skilled developers, and even Bitcoin is in short supply in these areas, due to efforts to improve the attractiveness of the Bitcoin main network, Bitcoin The resources are many times higher. Therefore, I think it is difficult for new projects to compete on the basis of security and robustness. For example, as a person with 25 years of experience in the security field, my professional opinion is that it is very likely that many systems have flaws, just because people with analytical skills are busy building Bitcoin and have no time or interest to analyze. Without being discovered. This is because in network security, a recurring problem is that independent expert security review is critical to gaining real-world security.

When will the encryption bear market end? Bitcoin will reach $250,000 in the future?

16. The cryptocurrency bear market has been going on for nearly 2 years. With the arrival of the IEO wave, Bitcoin and other currencies have recently risen to new highs this year. Do you think the bear market is over? What will halve in 2020 bring to Bitcoin?

I can't provide financial advice, but I personally optimistic about Bitcoin for a long time . In fact, I have publicly stated that I think in the long run – a few years – Bitcoin as a competitor of physical gold, if the future meets some comparable The indicator, it may reach $250,000.

Blockstream also invests in Bitcoin, and all of the Blockstream employees' wages are paid in bitcoin . We and our investors believe that this is a good strategy for the company to form an alliance with Bitcoin. To improve and build Bitcoin technology.

Of course, short-term market movements are difficult to predict. Historically, price increases have occurred before and after the halving event, as the effect of halving the supply of newly mined coins seems to be underestimated or not digested by the market. We are not sure if this will happen again, but compared to the size of the traditional market, the bitcoin market tends to be very thin. Due to the long-term investor's mentality, the available and sellable currencies only account for a small portion of the total. This does cause price volatility. 17. What do you think of the Chinese blockchain and encryption community?

I have been to China several times. Before the birth of Bitcoin, he came to China with a startup. China has a fairly large bitcoin and cryptocurrency market that was once the largest encryption market for some time. Over the years, I have met many Chinese communities and technicians through discussions on gatherings, conferences, and bitcoin mining, mining pools, and agreement work. Seeing people's interest in bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading is a very global phenomenon, I think this is very interesting.

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