Approach Blockchain enthusiasm as a devil’s advocate
By: Henk Van Cann
Tags: Bitcoin, Blockchain

In the two days of Bitcoin Workshop with Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd in Baarn we got to know a friendly devil’s advocate: he kept asking critical questions as if he did not want us to use the bitcoin blockchain at all... Come on! We are here for a developer’s workshop! Let us code, now please!

Nope, not before Peter has fired a sh.t load of questions at you.

Peter Todd (@petertoddbtc) on software development environments for bitcoin core: ‘mostly I use pen and paper. My work is creative.’

Peter Todd: “Now we finally might have a reasonable application for a blockchain.”

Simple question -> many follow-up questions

Peter wrapping up an hour of interrogation on Bitcoin core applications: “Now we finally might have a reasonable application for the blockchain.” Not that Peter has been put under pressure; on the contrary: he was the one asking the questions!

You might expect trainees to be the ones that ask questions during this workshop, but no, Peter Todd is. The atmosphere in the room is great: informal and friendly. There is eagerness in the air to learn a lot at this developers workshop (link).

It is an interactive session. Questions and answers. With one important exception: if someone makes preparatives to actually want to do something with software on top the bitcoin blockchain (which might not be too off-topic at a developers workshop anyway), the tone of voice gets sober and supercooled instantly! How is that possible?: Well, Peter approaches the bitcoin blockchain with a lot of realism. He crosses his arms, bends backwards on his chair. Trainees feel that they have to defend themselves that they want something to do now.

Trainee: storing data inside a transaction, pro’ and con’s, limitations, opt code etc, how do I take it from here?

Core developer Peter Todd takes out his semi-automatic weapon and fires relentlessly:

What are you trying to prevent from happening?

What do you want to solve?

Why do we need global consensus on this application?

How many copies are needed?

Is a public ledger with cryptographically signed / protected data really needed?

What are you trying to prevent from happening?

Is expensive wide replication viable?

How is this fraud going to happen?

If you suppose blockchain, how is that going to solve the problem?

How is it going to offer freedom (from the reign of an intermediate) at the expense of inefficiency?

How are state commitments and state changes relevant? Do the states need to be signed off?

How do you know that the miner is not feeding you transactions with far too high fees?

If you go back 100 steps, how do you know the 101-th step is real?

Concludes laughing: I have an infinite supply of questions!

Todd is acting like the most friendly devil’s advocate. By firing repetitive to-the-point questions he prevents us to not jump to conclusions. End-result? …

In most (business) cases one does not need a blockchain!

In Toddian language: “OK, then we’ll take a database and ask the officers to sign it off there, right? We’re done.” or “So you want decentralize trust and use biometrics on your mobile phone at the same time? Forget it, you trust the device that verifies the fingerprint. And by the way: a mobile phone is very easily hacked.”

How many dents can your enthusiasm take? But no worries:…

When you have Peter picking up the board marker and start to draw Merkle trees, you know you got him lined up for a blockchain solution.

Merbinner tree

‘Merkle binary trees’ an invention of Peter Todd. ‘I am not good at names. I should have called it a Todd-tree, but then: what Todd?’

That his teachings apparently never stop is shown by the following anecdote:

A trainee is happy that Peter retweeted a tweet of his. He thanks him. “How do you know it was me?” Well, it was your twitter-handle that retweeted. “But it could have been a hacker, or my mom. Most probably my personal assistant” :-)