Edwin

Before Satoshi disappeared he gave one developer a secret key that could override every single Bitcoin node It was called the Alert Key Satoshi added it to Bitcoin in 2010 after the 184 billion coin bug almost killed the entire network When a valid alert was sent using this key, every Bitcoin client would go into "safe mode" and could freeze transactions He handed it to Gavin Andresen along with control of the entire code repository right before he vanished Only three people had access: Satoshi, Gavin Andresen, and Theymos The key was used 12 times between 2012 and 2014 to broadcast emergency upgrade notices A decentralized currency with no central authority had a hidden override switch controlled by three people for six years It wasn't removed until Bitcoin version 0.13.0 in 2016 In 2018 developers published the key publicly so it could never be used again The most decentralized financial network in history had a backdoor the entire time and almost nobody knew about it

Good space today with Saul. My concern was always that rapid feature implementation inevitably result in the need for smart contracts on the XRP Ledger to preserve network security. I was "hit from all sides" though. Ayo and Vito published shortly after the formal verification and specification roadmap. Military and aerospace grade security for XRP. Mind blowing moment, security without a single line of code first? Wow. The same security is being asked now after the Drift protocol compromise on Solana. Interesting. Then, the conversation with Fig from Squid 🦑 router on Krippens Show. Man, that was a heavy one. The industry is moving towards off chain business logic. See Polymarket, Uniswap etc. Intents is the key word here. We need to research and talk more about this btw, its the bleeding edge. Thats a topic for another day though. Okay so what now? Keep the blockchain for custody and settlement thats it. Saul and Fig had this intuition already. Before him certainly David and others too. I'm not concerned about runaway network cost with xls-101 personally and thats a leap of faith given we have no data here. Even less on incentives coming on protocol level. So where am i currently with smart contracts on XRP? I think my arguments for it have become a lot weaker especially around network security. Is there a need for infinite developer optionality on chain? I don't believe it entirely, but i can't say no either. Flexibility is really valuable - to a degree. Maybe the ultimate middle ground is smart extensions proposed by Mayukha. I could mention that i believe liquidity guarding for bootstrapping is crucial only possible via smart contracts. But is that really true? You know how much i would love the DEX to be bootstrapped. I don't know yet and especially given the bootstrap efforts by XRPLF, Evernorth and Ripple i have to sit that position out for now and let it play out. The ball is in the air, i can see it land on off chain business logic and settlement / custody on chain only.

XRP price predictions aside. I may not like this observation. But i do think the delusional people will win at the end. Somehow, being a dreamer is just too powerful.