bitcoinerrorlog
John Carvalho

CEO at Synonym, creators of Pubky, Bitkit, and Blocktank.

Public Key

npub13ndpm2hm9hud4azsq5euhf5mv3d05r90wymwxsd7rdn29609hhvqp60svh

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgeksa4tajm7x673gq2v7t56dkgkh6pjhhzdhrgxlpke4za8jmmkqpnfmhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0y5erqamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wd3skuep0y5erqffjxpshvct5v9ez2v3swaehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hj2v3sy5erqctkv96xzu39xgc8wumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetjv4kxz7fwvdhk6te9xgc8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7ffjxpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctvqyxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvztj78k

Publishing to

nos.lol/%20wss://nostr.land/%20%20avatar%20wss://nostr.wine/%20%20avatar%20wss://purplerelay.com/%20wss://relay.damus.io/%20wss://relay.snort.social

Author Public Key

npub13ndpm2hm9hud4azsq5euhf5mv3d05r90wymwxsd7rdn29609hhvqp60svh

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Last Notes

2026-03-16 07:30:15 UTC

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bro wtf are you even talking about i make open source software

2026-03-16 07:21:18 UTC

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i'm just curious whether you actually know anything at all

2026-03-16 07:16:30 UTC

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what does that even mean, are you capable of substantive text?

2026-03-12 06:58:26 UTC

https://x.com/BitcoinErrorLog/status/2030921248750928239/

2026-03-11 13:17:50 UTC

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You’re confusing routing with enforcement.
Bitcoin isn’t a packet network, it’s a global arbitration system with finite capacity.
Layering only works while users can still enforce their claims on L1 within the required time window. When that becomes too expensive, the system shifts from trustless to trusted.
Your probabilistic outcomes assume proof of work is obtained already, but layers create new trust games on top of future blockspace, not PoW.
The security model degrades under congestion. Because it doesn't scale, by design. Layers force you to trust your cosigner and compromise your prior PoW assurances.
The base layer size still determines how many people can retain real sovereignty. Layers force you to trust your cosigner and compromise your prior PoW assurances.

2026-03-11 11:47:13 UTC

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i have a deadline to share my paper on this in May, til then my advice is, well, actually do the math

2026-03-11 10:42:09 UTC

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I cant speak for others, but no, I am arguing that onchain scale ultimately limits active users to the millions, and if you compress too many in a layer, you quickly get cascading issues interacting directly with onchain blockspace limits. 2-week windows become too expensive to enforce, channels become trusted, etc.
It's just admitting that Bitcoin has a size. You can increase blockspace, but you can't gain meaningful scale via layering to even 10 million active users in current conditions.
Will users tolerate regular blocksize increases so layers can slowly scale at pretty much the same proportion to onchain? Or will they tolerate their channels requiring regulation due to being trusted?
Note, I AM a Lightning provider since the beginning.

2026-03-10 17:39:36 UTC

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All layers introduce counterparty risk via shared msig constructions, and then use some form of onchain enforcement to mitigate betrayals.
That's why layers dont actually scale Bitcoin, because their assurances require onchain txns.

2026-03-10 10:50:51 UTC

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Layers are just unconfirmed transactions. They do not provide scale, they provide coordination of trust.
You're just arguing for bigger blocks in the end, which is fine, but also requires coordination or trust to pull off, and can only do so much.
What you're missing about our work is that being trust-compatible enables actual scale, and having a credible exit from that scale is all you need to commoditize central providers.
You're just reciting your script while remaining ignorant of the design.

2026-03-10 06:16:23 UTC

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Sorry, I don't have time to dismantle all of your preconceived personal limits and misconceptions about our work. Your posts are hot air. Just propose something specific instead of nihilizing everything.
Trust is society, you must design it into any network.

2026-03-09 19:23:00 UTC

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show me what you got

2026-03-09 19:20:53 UTC

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You're still conflating money, payments, settlement, and credit. This is why your replying with weird hot-air "fallacies" and metaphors.
Bitcoin does not need to scale (it could never) for every economic interaction on-chain. Layers, altcoins, stablecoins, etc, already concede that.
Bitcoin only needs to be censorship-resistant sovereign money with large-enough proof of work.
Lightning "scales" payments by reusing liquidity and delaying final settlement ... thanks to trusted unconfirmed transactions, not amazing protocol design.
Atomicity scales further by digitizing trust explicitly, so obligations can be routed, netted, and settled incidentally instead of pretending every meaningful economic act must be immediate final settlement. It's a mutual credit system. It coordinates trust where it exists, not as a last resort.
An occasional block increase does not solve for global retail, commerce, or finance. It just moves the bottleneck while increasing centralization pressure on validation and propagation.
The real fallacy is thinking Bitcoin failed because finance cannot be made fully trustless. Trust is not a bug in finance, nor for massively scalable payments. It is a requirement. Trust is the subject.
The gap is whether trust is explicit, contextual, and user-controlled, or, managed by institutions and platforms.
The next step is not pretending the base layer or LN should become Visa. The next step is building open payment and credit systems that preserves Bitcoin as the settlement anchor, to the degree its users require, not a crusade for Bitcoin domination.
#nevent1q…mhe9

2026-03-08 09:12:35 UTC

Minimizing Violence Through Systems Design
https://pubky.app/post/gujx6qd8ksydh1makdphd3bxu351d9b8waqka8hfg6q7hnqkxexo/0034RZVYA7780
https://blossom.primal.net/f59d89bab86e0e8a6c16441af94623799a9963016200ba17594bfdb7061e4175.png

2026-03-08 06:31:03 UTC

Good morning, you should be building on Pubky.

2026-03-07 06:53:23 UTC

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You have Bitcoin goggles on, so you deny yourself understanding.
"Bitcoin doesn't scale" is not a mantra, it is an objective fact that any rational engineer can observe about its design.
You can just use math; it isn't actually debatable. I will make anyone look like a fool for such beliefs if given a fair format.
Further, Bitcoiners have some retarded views on what things like money, payments, and settlements are, so they support dead-end research that appeals to their emotions and hopes.
You. Will. Never. Scale. Bitcoin. Trustlessly.
Thus you will always need to digitize trust explicitly.
It's your lack of creativity & experience that makes you think any of this is coping or naive.
I am offering a solution that maintains P2P sovereignty, not excuses.
#nevent1q…z2ek

2026-03-06 17:46:40 UTC

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I'll just build it and show you instead of try to explain it further. Have fun waiting for covenants or whatever it is you do.
Freedom can't compete without coordination and trust.

2026-03-05 18:55:01 UTC

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Do you actually know our design for our system, and specifically for how to employ P2P credit?

2026-02-19 20:57:09 UTC

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You’re still blending authority with attribution.
Bridge admins have no authority, agreed. They’re just reposting content. That’s precisely the problem with proxy identity. There is nothing binding the bridged account to the origin user beyond social assumption.
Pubky doesn’t grant bridges authority either. It removes the need for them to have any.
Authority comes from key control. Attribution comes from signatures. Discovery comes from resolving the user’s published endpoints.
If a bridge reposts ActivityPub content, you can verify:
• Did this originate from the user’s key?
• Does it resolve from their declared endpoints?
• Is it mirrored faithfully or modified?
If not, it’s just an unaffiliated repost, exactly as you described. The difference is it becomes trivially provable instead of socially ambiguous.
On your other questions:
DHT = Distributed Hash Table. Think of it as a decentralized key-value store. Instead of DNS mapping domains to IPs via registrars, pubky records map public keys to user-declared resource endpoints via the DHT.
And no, DNS is not limited to IP mapping. It’s a general record system. Pubky uses the same concept, just key-native and registrarless.
Compatibility with ActivityPub wouldn’t be about protocol replacement. It’s about identity resolution. ActivityPub actors could publish pubky (PKARR) records pointing to their canonical data, mirrors, or servers. Apps that resolve those records gain cryptographic attribution instead of trusting instance admins.

2026-02-15 17:13:20 UTC

Introducing BoomerTabs!
BoomerTabs is a Chrome extension for people who always have too many tabs open.
The goal was simple: make tab management faster and less annoying.
What it does best:
- Replaces tiny-labels with larger, readable tabs
- Supports multi-row layouts so you can actually see more
- Lets you drag, drop and organize tabs, including between rows
- Supports tab groups with color cues and inline collapse/expand
- Includes fast search so you can jump to the tab you need
- Handles zoom levels properly, so the UI doesn’t break at different scales
If your browser usually has dozens of tabs open, this makes a real difference!
https://github.com/BitcoinErrorLog/boomertabs
You have to install manually with the ZIP for now, but I did submit it to the Chrome Store for review!
(Yes, this is a Sunday vibe-coded project)
https://blossom.primal.net/6c2f29a7e59fda3869bc774b96a951f50f8e6aef073962fd7d7ac1eb93973cc0.png
https://blossom.primal.net/d7425c568b7f799ae563aa8572799fb22b039b13deffe484203ce24bbc2eb297.jpg

2026-02-03 17:16:07 UTC

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I think everyone else still sees it 🤷‍♂️

2026-02-03 16:12:32 UTC

Is Nostr culture anti-innovation?
What happens if something truly better arrives, will you stay out of pride?

2026-02-03 11:31:11 UTC

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Pubky is now open!
Pubky SDK is ready to build with!
Pubky Ring let's you keep your keys cold!
https://pubky.app
https://medium.com/pubky/opening-pubky-4bdca7dc4c77
https://pubky.org

2025-11-11 22:01:28 UTC

BREAKING - @npub1qny…95gx supports BIP177 in recent public statement:
"If you guys wanna call sats bitcoin I don't really give a shit... Stay humble, stack bitcoin."

2025-11-08 05:17:41 UTC

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Rights are enforced. The rest is bullshit
Bitcoin provides enforcement of units per identity by proof of work.
Nostr does not enforce anything at all, it just signs things and broadcasts them.

2025-11-03 15:36:53 UTC

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No, that isn't the problem...

2025-11-03 15:06:49 UTC

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No. It is simple because any design that implies trust in miners must accept that also means trust in government, and trust that nothing would convince them to rug pull.
This is a horrible assumption.

2025-11-03 14:28:33 UTC

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You could just ask the miner to run a mint for you and get a better UX.

2025-11-02 08:41:30 UTC

Only fair for me to post this here too:
https://x.com/BitcoinErrorLog/status/1984626185930781122

2025-11-01 16:55:31 UTC

The birth of Lightspark, led by David Marcus, was the top indicator for LN.
He is like a vulture that arrives to pick the bones of a trend 2 years too late.

2025-11-01 15:48:31 UTC

Drivechains are a trainwreck.
https://pubky.app/post/gujx6qd8ksydh1makdphd3bxu351d9b8waqka8hfg6q7hnqkxexo/003452JMEVW7G

2025-10-01 07:27:24 UTC

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She didn't say anything bad. The idea is that ALL transactions can be subjectively judged, and there will always be txns people don't like. We have NO WAY to know how people are using txns, or even how they value those txns. All txns are "NFTs" and none are explicitly more "money" than the others.
This orients the conversation correctly, away from policy discussion, toward protocol discussion, forcing opponents to properly propose REAL solutions for data on Bitcoin, instead of handwaving policy drama that fixes nothing.
Currently, this is mostly a culture war over default settings in an app.

2025-09-30 16:20:26 UTC

Let's see a bet (bounty?) on Polymarket that someone will post the EPSTEIN FILES onto Bitcoin.
Bonus points if they use the new OP_RETURN policy for a really big file, thus frustrating literally everybody except good progress-minded people!

2025-09-14 07:19:08 UTC

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Because Pubky is both protocol and an app. Nostr use cases are actually a subset of Pubky's, not the reverse, because Pubky also introduces discovery via PKDNS.

2025-09-09 11:08:47 UTC

Bitcoin Does Not Scale: A Real Solution
https://pubky.app/post/gujx6qd8ksydh1makdphd3bxu351d9b8waqka8hfg6q7hnqkxexo/0033WQ2A64RBG

2025-08-30 08:29:57 UTC

Matt Odell is a coward and a liar.
We interacted on Nostr about Pubky differences a month ago, and I've done interviews with him in the past, but he refuses to have me on his show again.
Why?
Now that he is aligned with Primal, a Nostr app, and has seen some of my arguments, and Pubky tech, he seems to be scared and unwilling to have a candid conversation with me about comparing Pubky to Nostr.
He claims to support freedom tech, even if it is better than Nostr, so what is the problem?
So, @nprofile…zx3h you get the #coward badge until this changes!
https://blossom.primal.net/f34a6204e3f555d198e6c430dae148523e14f806d71902fc49c28edd5b96a415.png

2025-08-30 07:21:41 UTC

Tell me your oldest internet memory and I'll give you a Pubky beta invite code.

2025-08-26 08:21:39 UTC

What should my new vlog/podcast thing be about?
I think it's time for me to make a podcast series of some kind again.
I have ideas for themes & topics, but I'm interested in what kind of content YOU might like to see from me.