John B ᯅ

Rational Bitcoiner | Software Engineer | $BTC - $TSLA | Barbecue | Retired USAF C2 / Air Defense / Battle Management / Tactical Data Links / JICO

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@MilbournZack How?

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@IceCoan @CryptoMichNL @fundstrat It’s a logical constraint. So is proof of work. It’s an an if else statement. Like proof of work.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@IceCoan @scottmelker Miner's don't project power.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@IceCoan @BitcoinMagazine

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@MartinSeward101 @1914ad Softwar is silly. Bitcoin does not "project power."

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@MomOfBrutes3v2 🤦No

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

Softwar rebrands Bitcoin mining as warfare by stacking metaphors on top of each other. Antlers become watts, spam filters become weapons, and none of it rests on any evidence. The central claim (that mining projects physical power onto adversaries) has no mechanism: the energy cost falls on the miner, not on anyone they oppose. The historical anecdotes are inverted, e.g. Constantine wanted cannons and couldn't pay for them. Burning electricity does not injure or deter anyone who won't play along.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@jerimican5445 @CJ_Bitcoin @Strategy @AuthLN No problem. Bitcoin isn't easy to understand for most people. Lowery presents something that sounds cool, but is nonsense. He won't defend it, he never has.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@Anomylous2 @Micro2Macr0 🤦‍♂️

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

No. AuthLN isn't proof of work by Softwar's own definition. Lowery is clear: proof of work means real watts burned, and the "proof" is the receipt that they got spent. Then he spends half of Chapter 5 saying staking is the opposite of that. He calls proof of stake "proof of imaginary power." He says "stake" doesn't physically exist. So hold AuthLN up against the thesis it claims to implement and it fails the book's own test. Locking sats in a channel is staking. Nobody burns watts to log in, and an honest login gets the funds right back.
You said it uses proof of work because lightning settles back on Bitcoin. No. Miners burn watts to make blocks whether anyone logs in or not. That has nothing to do with an individual auth attempt, and channels don't even have to settle on chain. Theoretically a channel could stay open forever. Saying the login "uses proof of work" because the asset is denominated in BTC is like calling a gold payment "proof of physical labor" because the gold got mined once. The origin story doesn't change what it is. It's funds in escrow.

And it's a Rube Goldberg machine on top of existing auth. You need a wallet, you need BTC, you need a funded channel, and the admin has to babysit the whole thing. Captcha, 2FA, a Yubikey all add a verification step without making the user risk money or run payment infrastructure. Friction is why we don't have 4000 character passwords. No sysadmin in their right mind takes all that on for brute-force protection that rate limiting and captcha already give you for free.

Back the real Bitcoin and Lightning work, the open source stuff that actually does something. AuthLN isn't that. It's closed-source, patented garbage riding the trying to ride the coattails of Softwar, which is already bullshit. Bad theory with a dumber implementation.

Now imagine working for a company that actually implements this. You just want to log into your work system. So hang on... let me pull out my company app, make sure it's funded, connect it to the login system, then log in... shit, typed my password wrong, lost funds... try again... fuck, was caps lock on? Lost funds again. Alright, finally got it. But no worries, the company funded the wallet anyway. So who the fuck cares? It's just painful UX. Nobody actually lost money, nobody did any proof of work, and you've bolted a whole wallet-and-escrow layer onto your login for nothing. Why would I do that when a Yubikey and 2FA gets me there?

Defend this @AuthLN "we make attackers pay" lol. You make valid users and the company that implements this pay.

No. It doesn't use proof of work at all. Bitcoie from the earth. While I agree that properties of Bitcoin are great, this is no different than using any crypto or money for staking purposes. The sttakey

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

I don't know what we are disagreeing about.

- Softwar claims the bitcoin protocol can somehow enhance general cybersecurity using proof of work. Yet provides no mechanism.

- AuthLN claims to be an implementation of that but doesn't use the Bitcoin protocol or proof of work.

PoW in Bitcoin is really good at one narrow thing, providing a block production cadence mechanism along with the difficulty adjustment. That is all. Anyone claiming things outside of that, must show a mechanism or it's just talk. I could rewrite Softwar using toaster ovens in place of Bitcoin miners and have the same technical weight as the thesis.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@jerimican5445 @CJ_Bitcoin @Strategy @AuthLN Not my problem. I’m not the one claiming a false defense system using Bitcoin.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@jerimican5445 @CJ_Bitcoin @Strategy @AuthLN Because they originally claimed they were an implementation of Softwar. But that is impossible, because Softwar is pseudoscientific.
Then they pivoted to Lightning payment escrows.
That has nothing to do with proof of work.
It imposes ZERO physical cost on attackers.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@jerimican5445 @CJ_Bitcoin @Strategy @AuthLN I've read the patents. It's a lightning payment held in escrow. It's ridiculous UX.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@jerimican5445 @CJ_Bitcoin @Strategy @AuthLN Then why would you say "look at "authLN"? It's a proof of funds paywall. We've had that in the past. Proof of funds has been disregarded because it imposes unnecessary friction on valid users. Security isn't just about costs. It is also about ease of use on valid users.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@jerimican5445 @CJ_Bitcoin @Strategy @AuthLN The Bitcoin protocol does nothing to protect anything outside of the next Bitcoin block from attack. @AuthLN is proof of funds. That is all. Bitcoin doesn't protect against malicious AI or "the internet."

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@AdaptiveAlph Bitcoin imposes physical costs only on those:
1. willing to participate
2. wanting to write the next block

It imposes nothing on anyone outside of that small, specific, un-targetable, subset. The Softwar thesis is ridiculous.

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@CYaDeepState @JasonPLowery

[John B ᯅ @utxoshit]

@CYaDeepState @JasonPLowery