Bitcoin Builders Exist Because Of Users

Bani: Nicholas Gregory

Language (s): C ++, rust

Contribution (S/ED) to: Ocean Sidechain, Mainstay, Mercury Wallet, Mercury Layer

Work (S/ED) on: Commerceblock (previously)

Before Bitcoin, Nicholas was a program developer working in the financial system of banking companies that develop trading and derivative platforms. After the 2008 financial crisis, alternatives to the old financial system began to be seen in the repercussions.

Like many of that time, completely ignore the original Slashdot article that includes the white bitcoin sheet due to the clear focus on Windows as an application platform (Nicholas Developed/Linux developer). Fortunately, someone introduced him to Bitcoin later.

The thing that acquired his interest in bitcoin instead of other alternatives at the time was its specific structure as a distributed computer network.

“The fact that the matter was an alternative method. All of this depended on (a) a type of network (…). What I mean, building financial systems, people always wanted a system ranging from 24-7.

How do you deal with someone who interacts (with) in different geographical parts of the world without being central?

I saw different ways to solve this problem, but it was not done, as you know, in a kind of developmental solution (…). And the use of (…) encryption and proving work to solve this issue was just a stranger, to be honest. It was completely strange to me. “

All other systems that designed, some of which were created, were distributed systems across multiple parts of the world. Unlike Bitcoin, these systems were obtained and restricted to those who can update the database (rules) related to the fact that copies were repeatedly distributed worldwide.

“The fact that in Bitcoin you had any person to do this work proof, which is what it is. And everyone who wins does (the database) writes. That chaos (ED) with my head. It (…) was very unique.”

Starting construction

Nicholas Building Road in Space was an organic road. As he lived in New York City, being developed, it was of course found that the original Bitdevs was founded in New York City. At that time, the meetings were incredibly small, and sometimes less than ten people, so the environment was more favorable for in -depth conversations than some big meetings these days.

First, “amateur” construction on a stream of Counter (OTC) trading programs for some people (at that time a very large volume of Bitcoin was circulated for money or other Fiat media). From here, Nicholas and Sibli’s order, which they met in Bitdevs, work together to pay to the contract (BIP 175).

BIP 175 determines the schemes as the customer who buys well in creating the address provided by the merchant. This is done by the two first corresponding to a contract describing what is paid, after which the merchant sends a major public key to the consumer, who uses the fragmentation of this description of the element or service to create an individual address using the retail key and the public key.

This allows the customer to prove what the merchant agreed to sell, and that the payment was made for good or service. You only need to publish the main public key and the contract allows any third party to create the paid address, and check the amount of money from the money there.

The main ocean

Nicholas continued to find Commerceblock, a bitcoin infrastructure company. Commerceblock has followed a similar approach to business as a technology building to facilitate the use of Bitcoin and Blockchains in general in trade and financing. Shortly after that, Nicholas Tom Trevithan, who came on the plane, met.

“I met Tom across, yes, a joint friend, happy to say who is. There is a man who is called, who, may not know new people who is, but Ogs does, John Mattonis. John Matones was a good friend of me, (I was) he knew for a while.

The first main project they worked on was Ocean, a fork from the Sidechain platform, which was developed by the Blockstream on which the Sidechain liquid was based. Coinshares and Blockchain companies launched in partnership with others Sidechain their headquarters in the ocean in 2019 to release DGLD, a gold -backed digital code.

“So we, as you know, we were working on chocolates of the elements, and doing a work for mustard.

The main distinction between the ocean and the liquid as the Sidechain platform is the Ocean use of the Commerceblock protocol called Mainstay. Mainstay is a chronology protocol, unlike OpenTimestamps, strictly orders the Merkle tree that you build instead of adding elements randomly in any order that is presented in it. This allows all Sidechain the timelines enjoyed by its current blocking at Bitcoin Blockchain every time the Mainchain competitors find.

While this is not glorified for any bitcoin linked to Sidechain, for real organized global origins (RWA), this provides an individual history of ownership that the union that Sidechain cannot change. This removes the ambiguity of ownership during legal disputes.

When he was asked to close the project, Nicholas had this saying:

“I don’t know if we were early, but we had a few customers. But it was, yes, there was not much adoption. I mean, a liquid was not amazing. As you know, in London/Europe, whenever we met from customers to do box, we were competing against other projects that finance it well.

It shows the number of years that they had previously received money from people like IBM or some large consultations and were promoting Hyperledger. Or the days when we were competing against EOS and Tezos. So since we were like a company that needed money to build preliminary models or build a janch, it made it very difficult. At that time, there was not a lot of adoption. “

Mercury wallet and mercury layer

After turning off the ocean, Nicholas and Tom at the end started working on the statechain application, although the road to this was not clear.

(R) here there were some things that occur at the same time that led to it. So the two things that we participated in (evidence of the concept), and the POC are very small (…) like a possible customer. But this rolls around the secret registry contracts about the statechains.

In the end, they did not end up publishing a statechain solution for DLCS management, but they went in a different direction.

Well, something else was happening at the same time, Coinswaps. And yes, in mind, in those days, everyone is concerned about (…) 2024/2025 (…) The network fee can be very high. To do (…) metal currency bodies, you want to do multiple rounds. So (…) The state chains felt perfect because you (…) take the UTXO mainly, put it in the chain, and then you can replace it as much as you want. “

Mercury Wallet was completely built and practically, but unfortunately no user dependence has acquired. Samourai Wallet and Wasabi Wallet took control of the ecosystem of the privacy tool, and Mercury Wallet was unable to successfully eaten a bite of the market.

Instead of surrendering completely, they returned to the drawing board to create a Statechain variable using the Schnorr with the signature of the coordinator, which means that he could not see what he was signed. When asked why these changes were made, he had this saying: “This would give us a lot of flexibility to do other things in Bitcoin with L2S. You know, at the moment you have a blind solution, we thought, well, this may start with the possibility of intercourse with lightning.”

Instead of building a user facing a portfolio this time, they built the SDK software development group (SDK) that can be combined with other portfolios.

“{

The end of trade

In the end, Commerceblock closed its doors after many years of great engineering works. Nicholas and the rest of the team built many systems and protocols that were very well designed, but at the end of the day, she seemed to always take one step. This is not necessarily a good thing when it comes to building final users systems.

If your work is very advanced on the demand of users, this is in the end not a sustainable strategy.

“… to be in the United Kingdom, which does not do it well from an organizational point of view, I played in it. If I live in Dubai, this may be a different conversation. You know, when we made this decision … things were not great in the United States. I think things had improved there too.

When asked why it is believed that people do not use layer 2 on a large scale, he had this saying: “… in my adventures to work on civkit (No central market)One of the questions that have always been asked for me, when you are a rope, when Stablecoins? So when you work in a project that tries to promote bitcoin in the global south, but every person you meet in the global south wants Stablecoins, you start to ask, well, do I build the right tool? Does people even use this? “

At the end of the day, the most useful engineering work and sound should still be adopted, otherwise what is the value of that in the first place?

“… there has been a shift in the past four years to be a wealth store. I think this is a danger because I think that if people use Bitcoin at the present time and Mempool was exorbitant, it was high, and the drawings were high, there is enough bright people to build the source well, but they are not built because there is no request. And you do not know, no one wants to build programs, when this is the source. This is one of the challenges of Bitcoin at the present time.

“I think there are many smart people in Bitcoin who can build interesting things, but I think the focus now should be users.”