Re:BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin [pdf]
by legutierr on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @10:48AM
(#37929500)
>> Sure, but are they provable in polynomial time?
> It doesn’t matter, does it? That computation happens off-chain.
It does matter if the speed of proof generation off-chain lags behind the speed of the underlying blockchain itself. If your blockchain needs to slow down waiting for off-chain provers, it doesn't matter how fast on-chain verification is.
> And despite the hype, the practical use cases for Turing complete smart contracts are quite small and limited in scope. If you have a smart contract with real world applicability that can’t be reduced down to a handful of easily checked signatures and if-else clauses (or something of similar complexity), I’d like to see it. I know of scant few examples, and this is my field of expertise.
It's ironic that someone working on ZK tech would decry the "hype" surrounding Turing-complete smart contracts, considering how much value has been generated by the later and how little concrete utility has been generated by the former (with the dubious exception of privacy coins and tumblers).
Are you saying that all of DeFi (Maker, Uniswap, Aave, Synthetix, etc, etc) can be "reduced down to a handful of easily checked signatures and if-else clauses"?
It's an interesting assertion, but a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
> It doesn’t matter, does it? That computation happens off-chain.
It does matter if the speed of proof generation off-chain lags behind the speed of the underlying blockchain itself. If your blockchain needs to slow down waiting for off-chain provers, it doesn't matter how fast on-chain verification is.
> And despite the hype, the practical use cases for Turing complete smart contracts are quite small and limited in scope. If you have a smart contract with real world applicability that can’t be reduced down to a handful of easily checked signatures and if-else clauses (or something of similar complexity), I’d like to see it. I know of scant few examples, and this is my field of expertise.
It's ironic that someone working on ZK tech would decry the "hype" surrounding Turing-complete smart contracts, considering how much value has been generated by the later and how little concrete utility has been generated by the former (with the dubious exception of privacy coins and tumblers).
Are you saying that all of DeFi (Maker, Uniswap, Aave, Synthetix, etc, etc) can be "reduced down to a handful of easily checked signatures and if-else clauses"?
It's an interesting assertion, but a bit of a stretch, don't you think?