Bottle: A Bitcoin SV Browser | Hacker News Reader

Bottle: A Bitcoin SV Browser

bottle.bitdb.network

Please note this is hosted on the BitcoinSV (BSV) network, which is not the same as the Bitcoin network that we all know as BTC.

BitcoinSV has much bigger blocks than Bitcoin, which is probably why this idea is possible.

While the same idea could be applied for the original Bitcoin network, that is far more popular, it would be highly impractical as blocks are smaller and transaction costs are higher.

I don't want to start another big/small blocks debate but if this idea gets popular, I doubt there will be many nodes that want to host the insane amount of data that will be accumulated, and the incentives for hosting a full node cost-effectively is the main reason why Bitcoin blocks are small.

I also sense a malicious intention with the website not making any reference to the fact that this is not the BTC network that 99.9% of visitors associate with the word Bitcoin.

I guess the word "Bitcoin" used here refers to the protocol that the browser builds on, and not the chain commonly known as Bitcoin which has BTC as base asset. Bottle is not limited to BSV but could as well be run on other chains implementing the Bitcoin core protocol such as BTC, BCH, LTC and Doge.

You are correct but it actually could not be run on BTC or BCH because of changes that were made to them that make them incompatible with the design laid out in the protocol whitepaper. It also would be prohibitively expensive to do so due to the block size limitations they have in place.

In theory it could work on BTC or BCH. Bottle relies on large OP_RETURN which is a miner-adjustable limit, not consensus. But in practice you (1) would need to find a miner to do this. (2) could only put in 1MB of data on BTC. (3) would have to pay a lot of satoshis (as you pointed out).

Yes and also, BTC and BCH don't have a "Stable Protocol" Mindset, OnChain Developer Apps will get Their Apps and Tools fked up every time the Core Protocol Changes.

Aside from the lack of infrastructure, in BTC they already abandon the miner, The money that should be Goes to Miner for securing the chain, it goes to the Lightning Network Node.

When block reward diminished it'll fked up, they cannot survive with such low income from LN.

This post is running around BSV-associated social media outlets. [1] [2]

BSV is a project almost entirely propped up by a billionaire gambling tycoon named Calvin Ayre who is promoting a known con-artist named Craig Wright [3] as the inventor of Bitcoin. They promote BitcoinSV, which came into existence last November as the "One True Bitcoin". They are invested in massive astro-turfing for publicity and to lend themselves perceived legitimacy.

[1] https://twitter.com/_unwriter/status/1143599992667590656

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoincashSV/comments/c5eg27/its_t...

[3] https://craigwright.online/

the twitter you link is the developer

I'm reminded of a question Peter Thiel asks founders: What is one thing you believe that nearly everybody else disagrees with you on? Having a good answer means you might be onto something big. Everyone building on BSV has a pretty good answer right now.

But there is no good answer while everyone disagrees with you

I guess that's true if you think good == popular, but I don't.

Totally!

BSV is the pure capitalist, maximalist version of the BitCoin experiment. If they're correct and it works, things are going to get very interesting soon.

I don't care if you fork Bitcoin. It's open source, fork away!

But don't masquerade as Bitcoin and intentionally confuse people. That's not cool.

And if you build new things on top of this foundation, and you also intentionally conflate the names with an intent to deceive people, then you certainly don't have my best interests in mind.

I'll stay far away from this project.

It is BitCoin. Same address space, same hashing algorithm, same consensus rules.

BTC is just one version of the BitCoin experiment.

Highly misleading. This runs on an alternative network called Bitcoin SV. It's most definitely not Bitcoin, but a fork of a fork of a fork.

Amusing really, because the "SV" stands for Satoshi's vision. The founder, Craig Wright has been bamboozling people for a long time with his nonsense.

It's so long ago that most have forgotten, but the real Satoshi weighed in on a pretty heated argument about whether the Bitcoin block chain should be used to store DNS records. Satoshi was against it due to scaling concerns.

The project went on to create its own network and blockchain called Namecoin.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg289...

I would take this project in the same spirit. Someone created a block chain and network for mass data storage. At least that's the goal. The result is what you see, but it's not Bitcoin.

It uses "Bitcoin" to refer to the protocol, not the BTC network. People fought about the name "Bitcoin" for ages and everybody has their own opinion about this topic. The network that you refer to as Bitcoin has forked several times as well and least resembles the original protocol and idea when compared to BCH or BSV. OTOH the market values it the highest.

> Someone created a block chain and network for mass data storage.

I don't like the phrase of storing data on the chain. The blockchain is not a storage medium but a network that incentivised connectivity and data propagation.

Except for an early hard fork due to a transaction verification bug that allowed for infinite Bitcoins to be created, the main Bitcoin chain, as implemented by the Bitcoin Core client, has never forked, to my knowledge. It also seems disingenuous to claim that it doesn't resemble the original protocol, when the block size cap that the forks adjust, was put into place by Satoshi himself.

FWIW, that was a soft fork, since it's backward compatible. It did cause a brief chain fork, however.

Bitcoin core altered the protocol by removing instant transactions and adding segwit. So it’s not bitcoin anymore

"Removing instant transactions?" Do you mean "the GUI shows 0-conf transactions as pending?" And why does adding Segwit make it "not bitcoin anymore"? Further, the Bitcoin Core devs didn't alter the protocol, the miners and users did by using the voting mechanism to enable Segwit, entirely of their own volition.

> Do you mean "the GUI shows 0-conf transactions as pending?

It's not just GUI but also a miner policy which can break the use of BTC as cash - as it was originally intended.

> And why does adding Segwit make it "not bitcoin anymore"?

It's an ugly addition to the original protocol that among others breaks the definition of a coin as a chain of digital signatures. This might lead to legal issues as some people (including lawyers) pointed out.

BTC hard forked twice (or thrice if you count the one accidental hard fork) and soft forked a dozens of times. Claiming that BTC is the "main chain" is misleading. The main chain is dead for years; run the original bitcoin client, it won't sync up.

It's actually the very first text on the page:

> Did you know that you can upload files directly to the Bitcoin network, as permanent, immutable, and monetizable Bitcoin transactions?

Seems like there are a lot of people caught up in whether or not Craig Wright is a fraudster or a genius and not a lot of people evaluating Bitcoin SV and the various projects being built for it on their own merit.

Bitcoin SV is most definitely bitcoin.

It is simply the original bitcoin protocol, ie. with all the stupid things that were added to "BTC" since 2009 removed.

... that makes it infinitely scalable and useful like bitcoin was supposed to be, not just for money, for data storage, and for computation.

No Segwit No RBF No block size limit No limits on scripts or data sizes

BTC is useless in comparison... and the 'ad hominem' will only cover this up for so long.

> It is simply the original bitcoin protocol, ie. with all the stupid things that were added to "BTC" since 2009 removed.

Bitcoin SV clearly introduced many changes. But those changes are backward-incompatible for Bitcoin nodes, meaning that every one of them will reject an SV block.

It really doesn't matter what you think about the wisdom of what was added since 2009. All that matters is that Bitcoin nodes will ignore the blocks.

Experimentation is all well and good. But fringe groups breaking the protocol willy-nilly then claiming the result as Bitcoin is misleading at best.

That's what I was pointing out. It's a tactic used repeatedly by SV advocates including Wright. His involvement is relevant given the extraordinary nature of his claims and the deliberately misleading nature of his proof.

> No Segwit No RBF No block size limit No limits on scripts or data sizes

Scaling is so very easy when users are scarce.

You're talking about BTC, not BitCoin.

This is ridiculously cool. Something in me burns to brush this off, which kind of annoys me. I wasn't aware of how affected I've been by the current wave of anti bitcoin/blockchain/deep learning reaction. It's sad because ultimately, that kind of sentiment just limits the ability to appreciate really awesome stuff that people make, like this.

I madly respect the creator of Bottle for wasting your time on something wondrous and original.

If you're interested in this sort of idea, you might be interested in beaker browser [0] (I'm not affiliated in any way). It is essentially a way to browse files hosted on a bittorrent-like api, so anyone can seed a website to keep it up. I think it's still a work in progress though and has a lot of features left to add.

[0]: https://beakerbrowser.com/

We're working on our next release. I tweet about it (@pfrazee) and do weekly streams on sundays (twitch/pfrazee).

Commenters have objected that this is BitcoinSV rather than Bitcoin, so I put SV in the title above. I don't actually know what that means, so let me know if I got something wrong.

It uses the Bitcoin protocol and operates on the Bitcoin SV network (notice the space) by default.

Ok, have a space. Anything else?

Looks like a lot of new accounts astroturfing this submission?

They are coming from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoincashSV/comments/c5eg27/its_t...

Interesting that some of the top comments on that reddit thread seem to at least be encouraging commenters to follow the etiquette here... polite astroturfing is better than impolite maybe?

> There’s a much different tone of discourse there, so be sure to leave your ad hominems and hero worship behind.

Ok, we've closed the thread to new accounts for now.

SV is a fork of a fork (Bitcoin Cash). Many Bitcoin SV advocates get pretty uptight that theirs is the original (based on philosophical differences with Bitcoin development over time) and less of a fork than a reclaiming of the original "vision" (I know it sounds like a bit of convoluted logic ... if it quacks like a duck ....)

Most people don't know what they're talking about, they're easily swayed by crowd dynamics, you should look into it dang and see for yourself. Bitcoin (sv) is Bitcoin. That's distinct from an assertion that it is superior to what currently trades under the BTC ticker. But it's probably that too.

There's a really high noise to signal ratio right now, I'd love to see how this comment ages over time.

Kind of interesting, would like to have a map of the known links/what is it at a basic overview level at least eg. file, site, image, etc...

Only concern to me is that "lack of distributors" if you compare against public web so what do you put in here? That depends though, someone has to host, you(pay bills), or big company that has free hosting like a forum.

You are browsing stuff that is hosted on Bitcoin

Check this out: https://c.bitdb.network/

And this: https://b.bitdb.network/

You can browse images storted on chain https://bitstagram.bitdb.network/

It just renders all MIME type img files that are stored as OP_RETURNs. Oh, also you can tip to the sender out of the box (because the uploader's address is just a bitcoin address!)

If we are posting data to the Bitcoin blockchain, does this data live alongside transaction data? And if so, are there fees to host this data (as we need to pay miners to include data in a block)?

i think all these things we're looking at in the browser are stored as transactions using some clever protocol scheme.

Fell down the rabbit hole and found these:

https://b.bitdb.network

https://c.bitdb.network

https://bit.planaria.network

Yes. It lives as a transaction output under op code 'OP_RETURN'.

See example of weather data stored on chain https://whatsonchain.com/tx/6dac238576e9778458bb62a2f7d936fd...

>are there fees to host this data (as we need to pay miners to include data in a block)?

Yes, current fees are about 1 sat/byte.

This is really a write once, read many type of system.

> 1 sat/byte

What's a sat?

1 satoshi = smallest current unit of a bitcoin = 0.00000001฿

1 satoshi per byte. 1 satoshi = 0.00000001 BSV

Presumably a Satoshi, the nickname given to the current smallest fraction of a bitcoin that is recorded on the block chain - 0.00000001 BTC.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_(unit)

So it will be roughly $115 USD per megabyte? (1% of a BTC). High, but at least you get a 10000x replication factor.

No, it will be around 20 cents to store 1MB

I can see use cases where this would be worthwhile.

Not so much for backing up your photo collection, but more along the lines of publishing some textual information that someone powerful does not want published. It could even potentially function as a sort of notary service.

Yes.. the data is included in the OP RETURN field. You pay 1 Satoshi per byte. For now that's the minimum relay fee.

> does this data live alongside transaction data?

Yes.

A Bitcoin "transaction" is actually a short Forth-like program running on a stack-based, non-Turing complete virtual machine. When Bitcoin has been sent to an address, the output script of a transaction is something like this:

    let HASH = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
    if (check(HASH, pubkey, signature) == True) 
        return 1;
    return 0;

And recall a Bitcoin address is a RIPEMD-160 hash, which means any 20 bytes binary data is a legitimate Bitcoin address. So earliest and simplest method of storing data is simply submitting a payment that sends pennies to a bunch of garbage Bitcoin addresses corresponding to your binary data.

This method was controversial in the early days, as it created a lot of not-actual-transaction garbage in the blockchain. Bitcoin developers later introduced opcode "OP_RETURN", which is seen as a standard and less-evil way to post data. In this case, the script is something like:

    let DATA = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
    return 0;

Also, from the perspective of the system, it's just a transaction. Although for a OP_RETURN transaction, it won't be added to the UTXO (unspent transactions) list, because the script always returns false, it's not spendable.

The limitation of using Bitcoin blockchain as a data storage medium is the astronomical transaction fee. The larger the transaction (i.e. the script), the higher the fee. Typically, nobody can afford to store more than a few hundred bytes.

Good summary.

> Bitcoin developers later introduced opcode "OP_RETURN", which is seen as a standard and less-evil way to post data.

This is not true and an error in the Mastering Bitcoin book. OP_RETURN was introduced by Satoshi in the very first version of bitcoin.

> Typically, nobody can afford to store more than a few hundred bytes.

This depends on the artificial constraints put on the network. Bottle operates on top of BSV which comes without a cap on supply and offers cheaper fees when compared to BTC.

people need to pay attention to a detail. BitcoinSV is not Bitcoin as people know it and it is misleading. This is a super cool project but being clear should be a priority in something that has the theme of trust and decentralisation

Of course BitcoinSV is Bitcoin. It's just not how you see Bitcoin.

Some see Bitcoin exactly as shown here. A new way of thinking about our internet. One where money is embedded in the protocol.

Don't get misguided thinking that the more people validate your transactions, the more secure the network is. Decentralisation is not a matter of how many validator nodes the network has. Decentralisation truly exists where/when no single entity can control the protocol, including developers! Attacking Bitcoin is an economically unwise move, as long as miners are getting more rewards in mining than they would in attacking.

This is where projects like Bottle really showcase the true destiny of Bitcoin. It's almost like the internet that ARPANET would like to have built :D

This might take years (10-20 ? who knows) to fully catch on, and other Bitcoins will exist in the meantime of course. But if you think about it, eventually they will just be rendered useless, as any good first prototype of a new technology is. Very important, uncharted grounds, but once matured, the prototypes are just that. Museum pieces.

Wrong. Bitcoin SV follows the whitepaper the most

The OP's comment was that bitcoin SV is not the bitcoin that most people know as bitcoin, which is true: of all the people who even know what bitcoin is, 99% of them think of BTC as bitcoin.

OP said nothing about how closely it follows the whitepaper.

VERY cool. It reminds me a bit of this project, which has some of the same concepts and uses the Ethereum blockchain: https://ethsites.io/

ethsites TLDR: host unstoppable censorship resistance websites that can be accessed anywhere in the world (as long as you can remember a small JS snippet or print it on a tshirt or something)

It's a neat idea. Although, I'm skeptical of its practicality for hosting any serious amount of data.

If everything is hosted on the Bitcoin blockchain then every node in the Bitcoin network will need to keep a copy of every file uploaded. I would prefer the DHT model used by IPFS and DAT where each node only hosts part of the network.

opcode return data can be deleted by nodes at will, they will be as redundant as they are profitable to the storage provider.

Nodes would be big server farms and preserve immutability by competing for block rewards. If you're running a Bitcoin application you don't need to store the entire chain, only the subset you need.

OP_RETURN data can be pruned, actually. Miners/node owners can decide for themselves if they want to keep the data; eventually a market will emerge for such a service, but for now the blockchain is small enough that it's not a problem.

In most cases, you don't even need a pruned node. https://github.com/interplanaria/bitbus

Do you mean IPFS & DAT? There is also Webtorrent, GUN, SSB, etc.

Yeah, I made a typo. Fixed now.

It's all about the incentives. What is the incentive in IPFS to keep data? If offering it to clients earns you money, what is the incentive to distribute it to competing peers? The blockchain is the solution: A miner must distribute the data in order to claim the block reward (subsidy + fees). Nodes can prune/drop any data they don't care about. You'll end up with specialised and competing nodes where each node only stores a subset of the data - some data might even be completely deleted or only available in archives if it has too little value.

READ THIS: https://medium.com/@_unwriter/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-...

https://neon.planaria.network/#/ https://twitter.com/_unwriter?lang=en

Nasdaq just released interview about Bitcoin SV (BSV) if you want to learn more about basic concept of original Bitcoin and what it does: https://twitter.com/TradeTalks/status/1143588281340137473

>And because it's on the blockchain, ownership is provable, the content is permanent, and it can be directly monetized forever.

How can content be monetized foreved if it costs something to upload (send a transaction to create the block) but nothing to browser (navigating through the blockchain costs nothing)?

The author of the content can be tipped, because he can access the address used for posting. Also, content can be encrypted and decryption, after payment, can be automated.

Thanks, makes sense now!

The Bitcoin blockchain stores and secures a ledger. So these websites are just content (text, code) encoded and published through various entries (outputs) on that ledger. You can publish on the Bitcoin ledger for 1 satoshi/byte and an average transaction is around 250 satoshis. These include info on the "sender", "recipient", amount, etc. But with the a special type of opcode you can also publish strings. So the cost of publishing on the Bitcoin blockchain depends on the size of the text you need to publish.

A satoshi = 0,00000001 bitcoin and 1 bitcoin recently crossed 10k dollars. So being conservative, 10 bucks would allow you to publish a very simple website.

Bitcoin's blockchain is a terribly inefficient place to publish websites, unless you're looking for censorship resistance. The Bitcoin blockchain is secured by the strongest network on the planet by far. So once you publish it you can be pretty sure it won't be easily taken down.

Navigating the blockchain in the sense I think you mean wouldn't cost anything. You'd just need to interpret the encoding of the text that was published.

> Unlike the cloud based Internet where it's easy to get away with uploading illegal content, Blockchain remembers forever, and because the content will stay on the blockchain forever with your signature, you don't even have the deniability when you get caught.

How could you be traced if you are on an anonymous network and create an anonymous one-time-use wallet?

On-off ramps aka exchanges , kyc , unless you mine your bitcoins in a very secret way

Have a look at https://medium.com/@_unwriter/the-metanet-starts-84f255a6578...

This is awesome.

Interesting concept. Looks like it would be possible to add analytics / monitoring to the request transformer to track content access though. Wonder if it would be possible to open that up?

Who decided that b:// and c:// should represent Bitcoin-stored files? I can't imagine that this is standardized by the IETF or IANA.

It's not. They will evolve. Anyone can make up protocols like that right now.

Wow. This is truly phenomenal. I thought Bitcoin was a worthless ponzi scheme. Really looking forward to seeing Bitcoin SV progress.

BTC has turnen unfortunately in a ponzi. the minining rewards on the next halving might kill it. Lets hope people are aware of this.

the reason bottle is build on top of Bitcoin SV is simple, because it scales and it's true to original design by Satoshi him self.

Read Bitcoin whitepaper https://bitcoinsv.io/bitcoin

Are there similar projects for the Ethereum blockchain? Imagine a censorship resistant Darknet.

Bitcoin (SV) is also going to make blockchains like Ethereum redundant.

Bitcoin can do all the things people typically go to Ethereum for, smart contracts, token, 'on chain computation, etc. Bitcoin can do them even better.

Ethereum really isn't great for stuff like this. Check this article:

https://www.yours.org/content/blockchain-computing-on-ethere...

This is awesome, but it's a real shame that it's not for the Bitcoin network

So freaking cool but also worrysome for my transaction fees! AWESOME!

Since this is on the Bitcoin SV network, fees are tiny and the blocks are large. This enables all sorts of use cases for bitcoin, as the creator intended.

interesting... so all this is stored on the blockchain?

Yes

So how does one go about uploading, say, a PDF for someone to access with the browser?

Very cool btw

You can upload it using, say https://add.bico.media/.

Then you just share the transaction ID or sha256 hash of the pdf file to recepient.

Recepient can access that file as long as blockchain exists (basically forever).

And all this is achieved by OP_RETURN, a special op_code in bitcoin script that allows you to return data to blockchain.

Except that the link you suggest is for BSV, a bastard fork of bitcoin that tries to lure newcomers.

BSV is the original bitcoin. I'm afraid you have been misled by what 'fork' means.

adjective: bastard

    1. (of a thing) no longer in its pure or original form; debased.

The idea behind this fork is that it is bitcoin IN it's original form

Built on BitcoinSV!

Who will be able to run a full node if it’s full of media content?

Data centers.

Doesn't that run contrary to the idea of Bitcoin being decentralized?

Not if there's a data center in every city on the planet.

When there are at least 3 independent data centers, it is already decentralized

It actually goes way beyond what y'all are just discovering https://metanaria.planaria.network/

The rabbit hole goes much much much much deeper.

Certainly an interesting idea, but I think you're raising the barrier to entry by not simply implementing this as a browser extension. By having to develop a completely separate browser you're wasting a lot of time and resources that could otherwise be used to achieve the goals of the project.

I also seriously doubt the willingness of most people to install yet another battery-guzzling Electron app.

According to the website:

Why a standalone browser instead of building as an extension for existing browsers, or waiting for mainstream browser support?

1. Build for the future

Many things we take for granted in the old "web browsing" experience--including the security model--no longer apply in the new world of Bitcoin.

The thing is, Bitcoin is NOT "the next web". In many ways it's completely opposite of what the WWW is, which is why Bitcoin is so powerful.

That's why it's more beneficial to start from scratch instead of forking an existing full-fledged browser built for the existing WWW, with many legacy features that can constrain future directions. We can create a new user interaction model optimized for the new Bitcoin world order.

2. Bitcoin-Native

Bitcoin has a fundamentally different architecture than the old web in many different ways, with built-in immutability, a self-contained authentication model, and natively monetizable/traceable files.

Instead of thinking from the old WWW mindset, we should think from a Bitcoin-native mindset.

Bottle can discipline us to publish Bitcoin-first documents, build Bitcoin-first apps, each interconnected to one another in Bitcoin-native ways.

There is a browser extension actually:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/b/eonhdpmmjdekgnmc...

I didn't know that, thanks. πerhaps putting it one the site would be useful.

It's not developed by the same dev. Since Bitcoin is an open protocol, everyone can provide tools to query, view, automate,... the same data.

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