SatoshiVM - "A New Era For Bitcoin"

[ABCbits]

Do we need another sidechain? Liquid and Rootstock already exist, while Drivechain still in development.

I think the crucial difference is the way how the sidechain would be to be implemented, according to the information available until now in the whitepaper.

SatoshiVM is thought to be a rollup, this means it's not a completely independent sidechain but rather a method to bundle transactions so they occupy less space on L1 (but regularly injecting data on L1).

While you're correct, most people only care whether how well it works and it's adaption (e.g. which wallet or exchange support it). And with no detail how "sequencer" (party who create block) is chosen, i expect many enthusiast won't bother trying SatoshiVM either.

RSK and Liquid are currently federated, but afaik their goal is not to use rollup technology but eventually become completely independent sidechains with 2-way pegs, so apart from the deposit/withdrawal transactions, no information has to be stored on L1. This is of course a much more ambitious goal.

At least for RSK, Bitcoin TX also created on these occasion,
1. Merged mining, https://dev.rootstock.io/rsk/architecture/mining/implementation-guide/.
2. Powpeg/federator members update, https://dev.rootstock.io/rsk/architecture/security/.

Although obviously it has no noticeable impact on TX fee or blockchain size.

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[n0nce]

NFTs and "digital artifacts" users might prefer the security of the Bitcoin blockchain though, and would not care for the high fees.

You can still make those on Lightning, though. And why would you want to pay $10 to move that JPEG from one owner to another if you can do it on Lightning for $0.01? Lightning security is based on Bitcoin security; we should really try to put / keep as much stuff as possible off-chain.

I'm sad that RGB & Taro don't see as much popularity as the Ordinals or other projects. I found the RGB protocol very promising when I discovered it a bunch of years ago.

I think I saw that RGB is going to work with Liquid Network, and that is gaining more attention with new Aqua wallet that supports both LN and main chain along with Liquid.

That's true; I still need to check that one out, preferably after source code is released.

[d5000]

While you're correct, most people only care whether how well it works and it's adaption (e.g. which wallet or exchange support it). And with no detail how "sequencer" (party who create block) is chosen, i expect many enthusiast won't bother trying SatoshiVM either.

Sadly for now this is true for all sidechains (while RSK and Liquid have some adoption, they aren't seen as an alternative for most Bitcoin users), and I doubt SatoshiVM will change that.

I think also that real Bitcoin enthusiasts will only really massively migrate to sidechains with the same enthusiasm like some show for LN when their native token distribution becomes decentralized, e.g. done via PoW. That seems to be currently a major hurdle - all operational sidechains I've seen, either on Ethereum (where rollups already are quite popular) or on Bitcoin, are either federated or work with a highly centralized native token. This means that in general the operators, or a small group of large investors, have control if something fails - and they could also probably scam the participants if they wanted to.

It's possible that the reason for that are simply economic incentives (operating any centralized altcoin makes it much easier to earn money for the devs). But it's also possible that the technical obstacles for secure sidechains with 2-way pegs, which have been extensively discussed for example at Paul Sztorc's website, are still valid - and thus it's possible that a decentralized sidechain is highly likely to fail.

We could however start an experiment: Simply create a fork of Nomic, which is PoS (Cosmos/Tendermint-based). But instead of distributing it per ICO, do it according to a snapshot of a PoW altcoin (either one that already exists, or a new altcoin created). We'd have a sidechain which would be the most decentralized on the market


PS: Just a little addition: Those with doubts about that project seem to have a point. The token distribution seems to have been quite shady - red flag, as I already wrote. I fear this may not be a serious project at all.