The fascination of Jameson Lopp with Bitcoin can be described in his own words as ‘elegant and ass-backward’, ultimately making him a distinguished figure within the Bitcoin community. Lopp, a cypherpunk and an advocate of a decentralized market, expressed his initial impressions of Bitcoin as something that goes against the traditional norms of computer sciences, by making everything ‘really, really expensive in terms of resource usage’.
Lopp’s opinion leaps beyond the philosophical underpinnings of Bitcoin to the real-world implications when it comes to its functionality and scaling potential. One side of the argument emphasizes rapid growth by allowing more transactions through larger block sizes. The alternative, however, as Lopp points out, lies in the risk of ‘ossification’, effectively a rigid, slow-changing network that could become too unwieldy to practically adapt over time. The danger, then, lies in future costs becoming prohibitive, limiting usage to larger businesses and thereby betraying the fundamental objective of decentralisation.
Indeed, one stark parallel to be drawn is with the early 1990s internet protocol where spam overwhelmed email networks, leading to the creation of costly, centralized reputation services to deal with the issue. The end result: around 90% of all email users are captured by just five corporations. Lopp provocatively questions whether this is the kind of mainstream adoption we want for Bitcoin and presses the need for preventive action.
Adding to the complexity of this situation are Ordinals NFTs, a result of the 2021 Taproot soft fork. The backlash against these NFTs could hinder much-needed upgrades as ‘ossification’ proponents regard them as an unwelcome result of protocol changes. Meanwhile, others feel that major strides need to be made to scale Bitcoin, presenting yet another challenge to consider.
For all his impressive work and advocacy in crypto, Lopp has also experienced the darker side of crypto notoriety. A ‘swatting’ incident, likely inspired by a disgruntled opponent in the Bitcoin scaling debate, resulted in an armed SWAT team being called to his home. This unsettling event epitomizes the fervor and extremes that surround Bitcoin’s philosophical and practical challenges.
Looking ahead to Bitcoin’s future, Lopp remains hopeful yet cautious. Promoting technological growth within Bitcoin is an intricate task requiring a delicate balance. While Lopp’s expectation is more towards the construction of second layers, like sidechains, drive chains, or rollups, it’s clear that the scaling challenges Bitcoin faces are neither easily resolved nor agreed upon. The question of its future continues to balance on a razor’s edge, neither definitively falling into ‘elegant’ or ‘ass-backward’.
Source: Cointelegraph
