Episode notes
In this episode, Aaron (@AaronvanW) and Sjors (@provoost) discuss a recent blog post by Bitcoin Core developer Anthony Towns (@ajtowns), “Putting the B in BTC”, in which he outlines a vision for scaling Bitcoin to facilitate billions of users. As Aaron and Sjors walk through the article, they explain what some of Towns’ proposed solutions are, and which tradeoffs they entail.
Link to the blog post: https://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2023/06/21/putting-the-b-in-btc
Sjors New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Technical-innovations-Sjors-Provoost/dp/9090360425
Chapters
00:00:00 Introduction, Bitcoin Core course and listener support
00:01:57 Anthony Towns’ vision for billions of Bitcoin users
00:05:09 More efficient validation: Utreexo and ZeroSync
00:09:58 The risks of leaving validation to others
00:12:52 Off-chain payments and Lightning’s scaling limits
00:14:16 Sidechains and Liquid: withdrawal tradeoffs
00:16:15 Fedimint and federated custody
00:17:40 Connecting thousands of custodians through Lightning
00:19:09 Custodial concentration, full nodes and reserve risks
00:24:38 Scaling through bottlenecks and innovation
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