Amazingly, the Liquid proprietary sidechain from Blockstream has barely been discussed.
Major Bitcoin companies like Bitfinex and BTCC will apparently use this blockchain to exchange value with each other. And isn't it wonderful that "many other financial players we’ve met with over the past several months" are excited too.
Liquid is closed source. You cannot inspect it or modify it. Binary executables are not available, so you can't run it on your system. And in fact, you can't even use it. Any instances that are running are totally private.
We know that Liquid is not secured by mining. It is a centralized system without proof-of-work whose blocks are signed by "functionaries". Or rather, Liquid is "decentralized, but in a different way ... Liquid trusts a majority of a small group of known blocksigners who rely on the system functioning". So yes, Liquid is centralized https://blockstream.com/2015/11/02/liquid-recap-and-faq/
Does Blockstream claim that ONLY value locked from the bitcoin mainnet will be represented on the mysterious Liquid sidechain? That Liquid currency units will not be created in any other way?
If the answers to these questions are negative, Liquid is clearly an altcoin (and why should anyone trust the answers anyway?)
As well, if Liquid currency units are used in consumer accounts, they will not be interoperable with bitcoin. They would have to be exchanged.
In the ridiculously brief discussion of Liquid on /r/Bitcoin, numerous red flags were raised with no answers offered by Adam Back or Austin Hill, including
* Liquid is "built from open source" only in the way that OSX is built from FreeBSD
* Code for consensus, validation, in/out transfers is NOT AVAILABLE
* What is the legal entity that will run Liquid? Will it have to comply with KYC/AML?
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3osda3/liquid_sidechain_sourcecode/
If Blockstream wants to design a system that could serve consumers as a substitute for bitcoin, should they really be hosting conferences and signing documents whereby Bitcoin miners promise not to do anything that actually improves its scale? Should they really be labeling minor blocksize 75% consensus fork proposals as "altcoins"? Isn't that a wee bit hypocritical?
I was shadow-banned from reddit entirely for posting this.
Major Bitcoin companies like Bitfinex and BTCC will apparently use this blockchain to exchange value with each other. And isn't it wonderful that "many other financial players we’ve met with over the past several months" are excited too.
Liquid is closed source. You cannot inspect it or modify it. Binary executables are not available, so you can't run it on your system. And in fact, you can't even use it. Any instances that are running are totally private.
We know that Liquid is not secured by mining. It is a centralized system without proof-of-work whose blocks are signed by "functionaries". Or rather, Liquid is "decentralized, but in a different way ... Liquid trusts a majority of a small group of known blocksigners who rely on the system functioning". So yes, Liquid is centralized https://blockstream.com/2015/11/02/liquid-recap-and-faq/
Does Blockstream claim that ONLY value locked from the bitcoin mainnet will be represented on the mysterious Liquid sidechain? That Liquid currency units will not be created in any other way?
If the answers to these questions are negative, Liquid is clearly an altcoin (and why should anyone trust the answers anyway?)
As well, if Liquid currency units are used in consumer accounts, they will not be interoperable with bitcoin. They would have to be exchanged.
In the ridiculously brief discussion of Liquid on /r/Bitcoin, numerous red flags were raised with no answers offered by Adam Back or Austin Hill, including
* Liquid is "built from open source" only in the way that OSX is built from FreeBSD
* Code for consensus, validation, in/out transfers is NOT AVAILABLE
* What is the legal entity that will run Liquid? Will it have to comply with KYC/AML?
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3osda3/liquid_sidechain_sourcecode/
If Blockstream wants to design a system that could serve consumers as a substitute for bitcoin, should they really be hosting conferences and signing documents whereby Bitcoin miners promise not to do anything that actually improves its scale? Should they really be labeling minor blocksize 75% consensus fork proposals as "altcoins"? Isn't that a wee bit hypocritical?
I was shadow-banned from reddit entirely for posting this.
Last edited:
