Source: LayerTwo Labs   I. Introduction   At the end of 2022, a decentralized social protocol called Nostr caused a sensation in the entire Web3 industry. Nostr, which stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays, is an open source protocol for decentralized social networks launched in 2020. The project founder Fiatjaf is also the developer of Bitcoin and Lightning Network. The innovation of Nostr is that it is a completely decentralized social protocol through which users can publish content and interact with other users, thus truly solving the catastrophic landslide of censorship. The emergence of Nostr attracted the attention and participation of a large number of users and became famous for a while. However, Nostr was also banned by Elon Musk, the current CEO of Twitter, for its controversial content. This incident also sparked controversy over social media censorship and freedom of speech. However, Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, expressed his support for Nostr and provided funding for it with 14 BTC out of his own pocket. This move has aroused heated discussions among industry insiders and has given Nostr more exposure and development opportunities. While the popularity and controversy of Nostr has attracted people's attention and discussion on decentralized social protocols, let's take a look back at the developer behind Nostr, Fiatjaf, for his admiration for the geek spirit and his views on the Bitcoin ecosystem he had previously cultivated. Image (Twitter's ban policy at the time) II. What is Nostr? Nostr is a minimalist protocol that can create a censorship-resistant global "social" network once and for all. Nostr does not rely on any trusted central server, it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, and does not rely on P2P technology, and it will not issue tokens. Image So how does it work? Simply put: everyone runs a client, which can be a native client, a web client, etc. To publish something (such as a post), you sign it with your key and send it to multiple relayers (servers hosted by other people or yourself). To get updates from others, you can ask multiple relayers if they know these other people. Anyone can run a relay, which is very simple and does nothing except accepting posts from certain people and forwarding them to others.We don’t need to trust the relayer either, the signature is verified on the client side. Since Nostr’s developer Fiatjaf is also a Bitcoin and Lightning Network developer, Nostr natively supports Lightning Network. Lightning Network is very fast, has very strong performance, and can carry high-concurrency applications. This combination provides strong support for applications on Nostr. The Nostr protocol provides Lego building blocks for decentralized social networking. As a carefully designed infrastructure, it allows secretive super developers to build products that are beyond imagination and very Bitcoin-core. This is the magic of the Nostr protocol!   III. The explosion of Nostr decentralized social protocol   The reason why Nostr can explode is mainly because it provides a brand new social media experience and combines the spirit of Bitcoin and blockchain technology with social media. Image So the factors that really lead to the explosion of Nostr are as follows:   ● Decentralization, Nostr is not controlled by any central agency or company. Instead, the network is just a collection of independently operated data relays (servers). This means that Nostr as a whole is not susceptible to censorship or manipulation by any single entity. This is a unique protection against social media censorship and freedom of speech, which is one of the reasons why it has attracted more attention and concern.   ● Anonymity. Unlike many social media platforms, Nostr does not collect user data and sell it to third-party advertisers. No email addresses, phone numbers, or government identities are associated with Nostr accounts. Like Bitcoin, the system only verifies the validity of data through public keys and cryptographic signatures. This means that users have full control over their data and privacy. This attracts many users who are concerned about privacy protection.   ● Monetization. Nostr provides a unique monetization system for content creators. Unlike other social media platforms that rely on advertising revenue to pay content creators, Nostr allows content creators to monetize their content directly, and fans can give tips (also known as "zaps"). Nostr infrastructure providers can also monetize the services they provide through Lightning Network payments.But it is also thanks to Fiatjaf's experience in building the Lightning Network that users can conduct fast and convenient transactions on Nostr, which also increases Nostr's user experience.   ● Open source, Nostr code is available for anyone to view, use and modify. This allows transparency and collaboration in the development of the protocol. Anyone can contribute to the development of Nostr, and the community can work together to gradually improve the protocol. Nostr is designed to be flexible and adaptable, and can continue to evolve to meet user needs. It will make users feel that they own and invest in this protocol, which is crucial to the long-term success of the protocol. Nostr's popularity is the result of many factors. Its decentralization, monetization, Lightning Network payment, interactivity and controversy have attracted a large number of users' attention and participation. It is precisely because of these factors that Nostr also provides a new paradigm for the application of Bitcoin and blockchain technology in the field of social media. This is the charm of technology and a manifestation of Fiatjaf's geek spirit!   IV. Nostr founder's high recognition of Drivechain   Whether it is Nostr or Bitcoin, there is always a problem. Take Nostr, for example. When Nostr’s daily active users approached 100,000, the infrastructure powered by relays became more stressed, so developers needed to implement CDN and image optimizers to reduce bandwidth usage and make the Nostr protocol smooth. So you should understand what I’m talking about. Yes, it’s about capacity expansion. As for Nostr’s capacity expansion, we won’t discuss it for now. When its ecosystem reaches a certain scale, new solutions should emerge. Bitcoin’s capacity expansion is indeed a top priority now. As mentioned earlier, the anonymous developer Fiatjaf is not only the Builder of Nostr, but also an early developer of Bitcoin, and has contributed to LNURL of the Lightning Network community. He also created the centralized Ethereum application Etleneum, which uses the Lightning Network to increase the speed and scalability of Bitcoin payments. Like many other Bitcoin users, Fiatjaf does not want to reveal his real name. He may be determined to stick to the rare Bitcoin spirit in his heart.Because of his past architectural experience, Fiatjaf's views on Bitcoin expansion are unquestionably authoritative and constructive. Among the many Bitcoin expansion plans, Fiatjaf seems to be particularly optimistic about Drivechain. He believes that the concept of Drivechain can be completed through the BIP-301 mechanism or the Spacechains mechanism. Picture (Fiatjaf tweeted in 2021: Drivechain is the only hope for BTC) And Fiatjaf has called Drivechain more than once on his social media Twitter, and also called the entire LayerTwo Labs team led by its founder Paul Sztorc! You know, Fiatjaf is also known in the Bitcoin community for his keen insight and unique insights into technology. He has conducted in-depth research and analysis on technical solutions and projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and put forward many valuable views and suggestions. His voice is widely recognized and influential in the Bitcoin community. Therefore, Fiatjaf's support and recognition not only reflects the value and innovation of Drivechain in the Bitcoin community, but also reflects the important contribution of the LayerTwo Labs team led by Paul Sztorc to the future technological development and innovation of Bitcoin. One thing to note here is that Fiatjaf and Paul Sztorc himself and his team (LayerTwo Labs) do not have any business dealings, so we can see that there is more of a kind of mutual appreciation between them, which also proves the technical "superiority" of the Drivechain solution! (Fiatjaf tweeted: We need Drivechain, otherwise all the work related to the BTC industry by thousands of people in the past 13 years will be in vain) Fiatjaf believes that Drivechain can solve all the problems currently faced by Bitcoin. Drivechain can make Bitcoin experiments and new use cases more possible, such as issuing tokens, privacy transactions, smart contracts, Turing completeness, Gamefi, DeFi, oracles, etc. These are some very valuable ecological layouts, but they have never really landed in the Bitcoin ecosystem, because the above mentioned cannot be fully realized on Bitcoin. They either deceive users with concepts or are subsumed into custody solutions like Liquid or RSK, thus failing to truly gain corresponding network effects.Image The difference is that developers can use the Drivechain solution to create various Drivechain-based sidechains according to various application scenarios, so all these user groups can be satisfied at the same time. While all scenarios are implemented in the sidechain, the sidechain does not harm the Bitcoin main chain. Drivechain seems to solve the Bitcoin "scaling" problem, the blockchain security budget problem, and make Bitcoin more decentralized while completing the task. It is not difficult to see why Fiatjaf has repeatedly favored and advocated Drivechain. If the narrative of the Bitcoin ecosystem wants to go to a higher level, it will inevitably require the intervention of the Drivechain solution, and I think this day will not be too far away.   V. Summary   Sometimes hundreds of people may spend ten years or even more to overcome the difficulty of a transaction. Its significance is that its existence or birth can solve more and bigger problems, and those who benefit from it regard it as a symbol of liberation and revolution. Today, with the rapid development of the Web3 industry, the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem is urgent. The emergence of Drivechain is very necessary for the Bitcoin ecosystem. It can provide scalability and innovation for the Bitcoin network, while also ensuring the security of the Bitcoin main chain. It can be said that it fully meets the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem, thereby promoting the development and growth of the entire ecosystem. I believe that with the intervention of the Drivechain solution, the Bitcoin ecosystem will also usher in a boom. By then, although Drivechain will not be as popular as Nostr, it will be more popular than Nostr for a longer time, just like Bitcoin! Special notes: 1): Nostr is a minimalist decentralized social protocol that does not rely on any centralized server. Client information publishing and transmission are completed by relays that do not communicate with each other, and information publishing and transmission are censorship-resistant. Any user can create public and private keys without relying on specific social accounts or domain names, making it easier for users to settle in and getting rid of restrictions from third-party servers. It has been sought after by the Bitcoin community, but was banned by Elon Musk, the current CEO of Twitter, and also made Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, pay 14 BTC out of his own pocket to provide funding for it.2): Fiatjaf is an anonymous developer who is the developer of Nostr and also the developer of Bitcoin and Lightning Network. 3): Fiatjaf believes that Drivechain will bring a new paradigm to the Bitcoin ecosystem. References: 1):https://fiatjaf.com/drivechain.html (Fiatjaf’s original opinion on Drivechain) 2):https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/24607 3):https://twitter.com/fiatjaf 4):https://link3.cc/layertwolabs Understanding Drivechain requires a shift from the paradigm most bitcoiners are used to. It is not about “trustlessness” or “mathematical certainty”, but game theory and incentives. (Well, Bitcoin in general is also that, but people prefer to ignore it and focus on some illusion of trustlessness provided by mathematics.) Here we will describe the basic mechanism (simple) and incentives (complex) of “hashrate escrow” and how it enables a 2-way peg between the mainchain (Bitcoin) and various sidechains. The full concept of “Drivechain” also involves blind merged mining (i.e., the sidechains mine themselves by publishing their block hashes to the mainchain without the miners having to run the sidechain software), but this is much easier to understand and can be accomplished either by the BIP-301 mechanism or by the Spacechains mechanism. Understanding Drivechain requires a paradigm shift that most Bitcoiners are used to. It is not about “trustlessness” or “mathematical certainty”, but about game theory and incentives. (This is also true of Bitcoin in general, but people prefer to ignore that per se and focus on some illusion of trustlessness provided by the math). Here we will describe the basic mechanism (simple) and incentives (complex) of “hashrate escrow” and how it enables a two-way peg between the mainchain (Bitcoin) and the various sidechains. The full concept of “Drivechain” also involves blind merged mining (i.e., the sidechains mine themselves by publishing their block hashes to the mainchain without the miners having to run the sidechain software), but this is much easier to understand and can be accomplished either by the BIP-301 mechanism or by the Spacechains mechanism. How does hashrate escrow work from the point of view of Bitcoin? A new address type is created. Anything that goes in that is locked and can only be spent if all miners agree on the Withdrawal Transaction (WT^) that will spend it for 6 months. There is one of these special addresses for each sidechain. To gather miners’ agreement bitcoind keeps track of the “score” of all transactions that could possibly spend from that address. On every block mined, for each sidechain, the miner can use a portion of their coinbase to either increase the score of one WT^ by 1 while decreasing the score of all others by 1; or they can decrease the score of all WT^s by 1; or they can do nothing. Once a transaction has gotten a score high enough, it is published and funds are effectively transferred from the sidechain to the withdrawing users.If a timeout of 6 months passes and the score doesn’t meet the threshold, that WT^ is discarded. 从比特币的角度来看，哈希率托管是如何工作的？ 一个新的地址类型被创建。任何进入该地址的事物都会被锁定，只有在所有矿工都同意提现交易（WT^）的情况下才能花掉，而提现交易需要 6 个月。每条侧链都有一个这样的特殊地址。 为了收集矿工的同意，bitcoind 记录了所有可能从该地址支出的交易的 "分数"。在每一个开采的区块中，对每一条侧链，矿工可以用他们的一部分 coinbase 来增加一个 WT^的分数，同时减少其他所有 WT^的分数，或者他们可以减少所有 WT^的分数，或者他们可以不做任何事情。 一旦一个交易得到了足够高的分数，它就会被公布，资金就会有效地从侧链转移到提现用户手中。 如果 6 个月的超时时间过去，分数没有达到阈值，该 WT^就会被丢弃。 What does the above procedure mean? It means that people can transfer coins from the mainchain to a sidechain by depositing to the special address. Then they can withdraw from the sidechain by making a special withdraw transaction in the sidechain. The special transaction somehow freezes funds in the sidechain while a transaction that aggregates all withdrawals into a single mainchain WT^, which is then submitted to the mainchain miners so they can start voting on it and finally after some months it is published. Now the crucial part: the validity of the WT^ is not verified by the Bitcoin mainchain rules, i.e., if Bob has requested a withdraw from the sidechain to his mainchain address, but someone publishes a wrong WT^ that instead takes Bob’s funds and sends them to Alice’s main address there is no way the mainchain will know that. What determines the “validity” of the WT^ is the miner vote score and only that. It is the job of miners to vote correctly – and for that they may want to run the sidechain node in SPV mode so they can attest for the existence of a reference to the WT^ transaction in the sidechain blockchain (which then ensures it is ok) or do these checks by some other means. 上述程序意味着什么？ 它意味着人们可以通过向特殊地址存款，将 Coin 从主链转移到侧链。然后，他们可以通过在侧链上进行特殊的提现交易来从侧链上提款。 特殊交易在某种程度上冻结了侧链中的资金，而将所有提现汇总到一个主链 WT^的交易，然后提交给主链矿工，让他们开始投票，并在几个月后公布。现在最关键的部分是：WT^的有效性不被比特币主链规则所验证，也就是说，如果 Bob 要求从侧链提现到他的主链地址，但有人发布了一个错误的 WT^，反而把 Bob 的资金送到了 Alice 的主链地址，主链不可能知道这点。只有矿工的投票分数决定 WT^的 "有效性 "。矿工的工作是正确投票--为此他们可能想在 SPV 模式下运行侧链节点，这样他们就可以证明侧链区块链中存在对 WT^交易的引用（这样就可以确保它是正确的），或者通过一些其他方式进行这些检查。 What? 6 months to get my money back?Yes. But no, in practice anyone who wants their money back will be able to use an atomic swap, submarine swap or other similar service to transfer funds from the sidechain to the mainchain and vice-versa. The long delayed withdraw costs would be incurred by few liquidity providers that would gain some small profit from it. Why bother with this at all? Drivechains solve many different problems: It enables experimentation and new use cases for Bitcoinpoo Issued assets, fully private transactions, stateful blockchain contracts, turing-completeness, decepo ontralized games, some “DeFi” aspects, prediction markets, futarchy, decentralized and yet meaningful human-readable names, big blocks with a ton of normal transactions on them, a chain optimized only for Lighting-style networks to be built on top of it. These are some ideas that may have merit to them, but were never actually tried because they couldn’t be tried with real Bitcoin or inferfacing with real bitcoins. They were either relegated to the shitcoin territory or to custodial solutions like Liquid or RSK that may have failed to gain network effect because of that. Why do this? Drivechains can solve a lot of different problems: It enables experimentation and new use cases for Bitcoin, issued assets, fully private transactions, stateful blockchain contracts, Turing completeness, decentralized games, some "DeFi" aspects, prediction markets, decentralized yet meaningful human readable names, large blocks with lots of normal transactions, chains optimized just for building Lightning-style networks on top of them. These are some ideas that might have merit, but have never really been tried because they can't be tried or interfered with with real Bitcoin.它们要么被归入屎币领域，要么被归入 Liquid 或 RSK 这样的托管方案，可能因此而无法获得网络效应。 It solves conflicts and infighting Some people want fully private transactions in a UTXO model, others want “accounts” they can tie to their name and build reputation on top; some people want simple multisig solutions, others want complex code that reads a ton of variables; some people want to put all the transactions on a global chain in batches every 10 minutes, others want off-chain instant transactions backed by funds previously locked in channels; some want to spend, others want to just hold; some want to use blockchain technology to solve all the problems in the world, others just want to solve money. With Drivechain-based sidechains all these groups can be happy simultaneously and don’t fight. Meanwhile they will all be using the same money and contributing to each other’s ecosystem even unwillingly, it’s also easy and free for them to change their group affiliation later, which reduces cognitive dissonance. 它解决了冲突和内讧 有些人希望在 UTXO 模式下进行完全私人的交易，有些人则希望 "账户 "可以和他们的名字绑定，并在上面建立声誉；有些人希望有简单的 multisig 解决方案，有些人则希望有复杂的代码来读取大量的变量；有些人希望每 10 分钟分批将所有的交易放在全球链上，有些人则希望在链外进行即时交易，并由之前锁定在渠道中的资金支持；有些人想消费，有些人只想持有；有些人想用区块链技术来解决世界上的所有问题，有些人只想解决资金问题。 有了基于 Drivechain 的侧链，所有这些群体都可以同时得到满足。此外，他们都会使用同样的资金，并为对方的生态系统做出贡献，即使是不情愿的，他们以后改变自己的群体归属也很容易，这就减少了认知上的不协调。 It solves “scaling” Multiple chains like the ones described above would certainly do a lot to accommodate many more transactions that the current Bitcoin chain can.One could have special Lightning Network chains, but even just big block chains or big-block-mimblewimble chains or whatnot could probably do a good job. Or even something less cool like 200 independent chains just like Bitcoin is today, no extra features (and you can call it “sharding”), just that would already multiply the current total capacity by 200. Use your imagination. It solves the “scaling” problem Multiple chains like the ones described above would certainly do a lot to accommodate more transactions than the current Bitcoin chain can. One could have special Lightning Network chains, but even just big block chains or big-block-mimblewimble chains or whatnot could probably do a good job. Or even something less cool like 200 independent chains just like Bitcoin is today, no extra features (and you can call it “sharding”), just that would already multiply the current total capacity by 200. Use your imagination. It solves the blockchain security budget issue The calculation is simple: you imagine what security budget is reasonable for each block in a world without block subsidy and divide that for the amount of bytes you can fit in a single block: that is the price to be paid in satoshis per byte. In reasonable estimative, the price necessary for every Bitcoin transaction goes to very large amounts, such that not only any day-to-day transaction has insanely prohibitive costs, but also Lightning channel opens and closes are impracticable. So without a solution like Drivechain you’ll be left with only one alternative: pushing Bitcoin usage to trusted services like Liquid and RSK or custodial Lightning wallets. With Drivechain, though, there could be thousands of transactions happening in sidechains and being all aggregated into a sidechain block that would then pay a very large fee to be published (via blind merged mining) to the mainchain. Bitcoin security guaranteed. The calculation is simple: imagine what the security budget per block would be in a world without a block subsidy, and divide it by the number of bytes a block can hold: this is the price (Satoshis) you would pay per byte.In reasonable estimates, the price required for each Bitcoin transaction would reach a very large amount, making not only any daily transactions insanely expensive, but also the opening and closing of Lightning channels infeasible. So without a solution like Drivechain, we are left with only one option: push Bitcoin usage to trusted services like Liquid and RSK or hosted Lightning wallets. With Drivechain, however, there could be thousands of transactions happening on the sidechain, all aggregated into sidechain blocks, which are then posted to the mainchain (via blind merge mining) for a very large fee. Thus, Bitcoin's security is guaranteed. It keeps Bitcoin decentralized Once we have sidechains to accomodate the normal transactions, the mainchain functionality can be reduced to be only a "hub" for the sidechains’ comings and goings, and then the maximum block size for the mainchain can be reduced to, say, 100kb, which would make running a full node very very easy. Can miners steal? Yes. If a group of coordinated miners are able to secure the majority of the hashpower and keep their coordination for 6 months, they can publish a WT^ that takes the money from the sidechains and pays to themselves. Will miners steal? No, because the incentives are such that they won’t. Although it may look at first that stealing is an obvious strategy for miners as it is free money, there are many costs involved:  1.The cost of ceasing blind-merged mining returns – as stealing will kill a sidechain, all the fees from it that miners would be expected to earn for the next years are gone;  2.The cost of community goodwill – when participating in a steal operation, a miner will suffer a ton of backlash from the community, which is not something to be ignored. If they are public entities they can be physically harassed, receive death threats, or be persecuted by the State justice system;  3.The cost of coordination – assuming miners are just normal businesses, they just want to do their work and get paid, but stealing from a Drivechain will require coordination with other miners to conduct an immoral act in a way that has many pitfalls and is likely to be broken over the months;  4.The cost of miners leaving your mining pool: when we talked about “miners” above we were actually talking about mining pools operators, so they must also consider the risk of miners migrating from their mining pool to others as they begin the process of stealing;  5.The cost of Bitcoin price going down: If a steal is successful that will mean Drivechains are not safe, therefore Bitcoin is less useful, and miner credibility will also be hurt, which are likely to cause the Bitcoin price to go down, which in turn may kill the miners’ businesses and savings;  6.Another small way the community goodwill can end up affecting self-interested miners is that if they attempt to steal, even if failing at the end, that will contribute to growing concerns over exaggerated miners power over the Bitcoin ecosystem, which may end up causing the community to agree on a hard-fork to change the mining algorithm in the future, or to do something to increase participation of more entities in the mining process (such as development or cheapment of new ASICs), which have a chance of decreasing the profits of current miners. Another point to take in consideration is that one may be inclined to think a newly-created sidechain or a sidechain with relatively low usage may be more easily stolen from, since the blind merged mining returns from it (point 1 above) are going to be small – but the fact is also that a sidechain with small usage will also have less money to be stolen from, and since the other costs besides 1 are less elastic at the end it will not be worth stealing from these too.All of the above consideration are valid only if miners are stealing from good sidechains. If there is a sidechain that is doing things wrong, scamming people, not being used at all, or is full of bugs, for example, that will be perceived as a bad sidechain, and then miners can and will safely steal from it and kill it, which will be perceived as a good thing by everybody. So, will miners do evil? No, because of the incentives. While it may seem at first that theft is an obvious strategy for miners, there are many costs involved: The cost of stopping blindly merging mining revenue - since stealing destroys a sidechain, all the fees that miners could have expected to earn from it in the next few years will disappear; The cost of community goodwill - when engaging in theft, miners will suffer a lot of blowback from the community, which cannot be ignored. If they were a public entity, they would be physically harassed, receive death threats, or be persecuted by their country’s judicial system; The cost of coordination — assuming miners are normal businesses who just want to do their job and get paid, stealing from Drivechain would require coordinating with other miners to engage in unethical behavior, which has many pitfalls and is likely to be broken within a few months; The cost of miners leaving the pool: when we talked about “miners” above, we were actually talking about mining pool operators, so they also have to consider the risk of miners migrating from their pool to other pools if they begin the theft process; The cost of a drop in the price of Bitcoin: if the theft is successful, it means that Drivechain is not secure, so Bitcoin is less useful, and the miner’s reputation will be damaged, all of which has the potential to cause the price of Bitcoin to drop, which in turn could kill the miner’s business and deposits; Another way that the goodwill of the community could eventually sway self-interested miners is if they try to steal, even if they fail in the end, this will prompt growing concerns about the power of miners in the Bitcoin ecosystem, which could eventually lead to the community agreeing to a hard fork that changes the mining algorithm in the future, or doing something to add more entities to the mining process (such as developing or using cheap new ASICs), which has the potential to reduce the profits of current miners.Another thing to consider is that one might be tempted to think that a newly created sidechain or one with relatively low usage might be easier to steal from because its blind merge mining reward (point 1 above) will be small - but it's also true that a sidechain with low usage will also have less money stolen, and since the other costs besides 1 are ultimately less elastic, it's not worth stealing from those sidechains either. All of the above considerations are only valid if miners are stealing from high-quality sidechains. For example, if there is a sidechain that is doing the wrong thing, deceiving people, is not being used at all, or is full of bugs, this would be considered a low-quality sidechain, and then miners can and will safely steal from it and destroy it, which would be considered a good thing. What do we do if miners steal? Paul Sztorc has suggested in the past that a user-activated soft-fork could prevent miners from stealing, i.e., most Bitcoin users and nodes issue a rule similar to this one to invalidate the inclusion of a faulty WT^ and thus cause any miner that includes it in a block to be relegated to their own Bitcoin fork that other nodes won’t accept. This suggestion has made people think Drivechain is a sidechain solution backed by user-actived soft-forks for safety, which is very far from the truth. Drivechains must not and will not rely on this kind of soft-fork, although they are possible, as the coordination costs are too high and no one should ever expect these things to happen. If even with all the incentives against them (see above) miners do still steal from a good sidechain that will mean the failure of the Drivechain experiment. It will very likely also mean the failure of the Bitcoin experiment too, as it will be proven that miners can coordinate to act maliciously over a prolonged period of time regardless of economic and social incentives, meaning they are probably in it just for attacking Bitcoin, backed by nation-states or something else, and therefore no Bitcoin transaction in the mainchain is to be expected to be safe ever again.What do we do if miners steal? In the past, Paul Sztorc has suggested that a user-activated soft fork could prevent miners from stealing, that is, a majority of Bitcoin users and nodes would issue a similar rule that invalidated the content of the withdrawal transaction in question, causing any miner that included it in a block to be demoted to their own fork of Bitcoin and not accepted by other nodes. This suggestion leads people to believe that Drivechain is a secure sidechain solution supported by a soft fork of user action, which is far from the truth. Drivechain must not and will not rely on such soft forks, and while they are possible, they are far too expensive to coordinate. If miners still steal from a good sidechain despite all the incentives (see above), it would mean the failure of the Drivechain experiment. It would also likely mean the failure of the Bitcoin experiment, as it would prove that miners can coordinate malicious behavior for a long time without regard to economic and social incentives, meaning they could be backed by nation states or something just to attack Bitcoin, and therefore any Bitcoin transactions on the main chain would no longer be secure. Why use this and not a full-blown trustless and open sidechain technology? Because it is impossible. If you ever heard someone saying “just use a sidechain”, “do this in a sidechain” or anything like that, be aware that these people are either talking about “federated” sidechains (i.e., funds are kept in custody by a group of entities) or they are talking about Drivechain, or they are disillusioned and think it is possible to do sidechains in any other manner.No, I mean a trustless 2-way peg with correctness of the withdrawals verified by the Bitcoin protocol! That is not possible unless Bitcoin verifies all transactions that happen in all the sidechains, which would be akin to drastically increasing the blocksize and expanding the Bitcoin rules in tons of ways, i.e., a terrible idea that no one wants. What about the Blockstream sidechains whitepaper? Yes, that was a way to do it. The Drivechain hashrate escrow is a conceptually simpler way to achieve the same thing with improved incentives, less junk in the chain, more safety. Isn’t the hashrate escrow a very complex soft-fork? Yes, but it is much simpler than SegWit. And, unlike SegWit, it doesn’t force anything on users, i.e., it isn’t a mandatory blocksize increase. Why should we expect miners to care enough to participate in the voting mechanism? Because it’s in their own self-interest to do it, and it costs very little. Today over half of the miners mine RSK. It’s not blind merged mining, it’s a very convoluted process that requires them to run a RSK full node. For the Drivechain sidechains, an SPV node would be enough, or maybe just getting data from a block explorer API, so much much simpler.Because it is in their own interest to do so, and it is cheap. Today, more than half of all miners are mining RSK. This is not blind merge mining, which is a very complicated process that requires them to run an RSK full node. For the Drivechain sidechain, an SPV node is enough, or maybe just fetching data from the block explorer API, which is much simpler. What if I still don’t like Drivechain even after reading this? That is the entire point! You don’t have to like it or use it as long as you’re fine with other people using it. The hashrate escrow special addresses will not impact you at all, validation cost is minimal, and you get the benefit of people who want to use Drivechain migrating to their own sidechains and freeing up space for you in the mainchain. See also the point above about infighting. What if I still don’t like Drivechain even after reading this? That is the entire point! You don’t have to like it or use it as long as you’re fine with other people using it. The hashrate escrow special addresses will not impact you at all, validation cost is minimal, and you get the benefit of people who want to use Drivechain migrating to their own sidechains and freeing up space for you in the mainchain. See also the point above about infighting. Special addresses for hashrate escrow won't affect you at all, verification costs are minimal, and you get the benefit of people who want to use Drivechain migrating to their own sidechain, making room for you on the mainchain. See the point above about infighting, too.