An excessive amount of of this area, and issues being constructed round it, is centered round basically mimicking the legacy monetary system. There may be not a lot being constructed making an attempt to blaze new grounds. Micropayments, whereas admittedly one thing I’ve been very important of as a result of person expertise of getting to consider tiny transactions all day, has seen nearly no actual experimentation or improvement in making an attempt to unravel that UX drawback at scale.
I wrestle to consider any software that’s actually revolutionary. Sure, issues like crowdfunding or micropayments in video games take away a central level of management that can be utilized to censor use instances of those functions, however they’re nonetheless reinventing the wheel. Quite a few initiatives are centered on collateralizing fiat or stablecoin loans with Bitcoin, greenback fee rails on Bitcoin, and so on. These are necessary functions to construct if Bitcoin is for use in commerce, that’s past a doubt, however they aren’t issues which might be solely potential on Bitcoin.
In some instances this has implications for the general community and protocol if adopted by way of to its excessive. Within the case of Bitcoin collateralized greenback loans, for instance, it’s inescapable that this stuff interface with the legacy system. This offers these methods some extent of management over these functions, and (proportional to how a lot exercise on Bitcoin they make up) Bitcoin itself.
Consensus on Bitcoin just isn’t ruled by voting, it’s ruled by participation. That’s,. these actors that truly obtain bitcoin in financial exercise, and people who transact and generate income for miners. Should you aren’t doing certainly one of these two issues, your node has no affect on community consensus, particularly through the occasion of a chainsplit or contentious fork. That’s simply the chilly actuality. Bitcoiners specializing in constructing functions that leverage or interface with the legacy system are simply giving the system we try to flee a bar wedged into Bitcoin the legacy system can use to leverage towards it.
It’s silly, quick sighted, and a serious tactical error.
The trail ahead is to concentrate on sustainable functions that don’t require that interface, that may operate completely independently of the legacy system, whereas nonetheless producing income for miners and software customers and operators. That is the one means ahead when it comes to encouraging Bitcoin adoption with out slowly ceding an increasing number of affect over the community and protocol to the precise kinds of gamers we got down to escape within the first place.
To really thrive outdoors of the present system, we’d like markets for digital items, for providers, for actual merchandise, for brand spanking new kinds of functions that legacy gamers gained’t or can’t clone and monopolize for Bitcoin.
