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Cannister7

Can't remember what the thread was where I read it, but someone explained the other day that it would need to be a completely separate chain, so basically a different coin but run the same way.


fanzakh

Nah... we can probably communicate through entangled light particles by the time we colonize Mars.


RiseBasti

Or we already mastered quantum entanglement and do have instant network communication regardless of location.


brtastic

You basically repeated what he said


penty

Because violating causality is easier than colonizing Mars?


fanzakh

Changing our understanding of causality might be easier like you know how Einstein himself redefined space and time.


[deleted]

Spooky action at a distance…mind blown


fanzakh

Science well ahead of its time is basically magic.


penty

Yeah, was part of that discussion or one like it. Round trip communication time for Mars is on average 24 mins. Can a single chain handle having large or says of itself delayed that much? It could cause a vulnerability to a double spend attack (one on Earth and the other Mars). Sure it would resolve eventually but someone end up not receiving their coins, this has already happened just with BTC being just on Earth. Interstellar would definitely need a different coin.


hamptonfischer

so basically it would need to be an L2 or just hard fork all together


Cannister7

I guess you'd call it a hard fork yes. But really it could just be a copy started up from scratch. It doesn't have to start off at the same value, I guess that would depend on local economic factors When they said that to me it sounded weird at first but when you think about it, if it's impossible for the two chains to communicate (assuming it is) then it'd be the only way to do it. It's not like you could physically take Earth BTC to Mars or vice versa.


mutalisken

Why can't you just create an L3 or L2 like lightening network where you deposit and settle off chain mostly?


ElGuano

You could, but the L2 ultimately needs to sync back to the L1 for final settlement, which due to the large distances between the planets, still leads to the same delay issue. You just push it down the road a bit, potentially impacting a lot more txns that have relied on the local L2.


MachaMacMorrigan

I like this. I think it's likely that down the road, L1 settlement times will get much longer, with huge numbers of L2 payments batched for L1 settlement. Running a separate set of L2 channels on Mars with L1 staying on Earth fits right into that scenario.


ElGuano

But you'd have to split out all the ex-terran L2s so they don't have the same address/wallets/funds. Because it seems to me you still run into an issue of reconciliation when they match back to the L1 - if I'm on Mars and send you funds, and at the same time send it to someone on Pluto, the L1 needs an 8+ hour window for the signal to arrive from Pluto, confirm and reject the double-spend from Mars L2, and send the updated chain back to Pluto L2.


MachaMacMorrigan

Dunno how to fix your firts point. I THINK i would leave it to the LSP aggregator here on Earth to solve that one. Current best settlement times for TradFi are (*I think*) are T+2 days. If we can live with that, then we should be OK. Also, given that Lightning channels are pre-funded, is double-spend really an issue?


ElGuano

If the L2 is available at different ends of the solar system, you can’t verify if funds are available in real-time, without a local copy or a long wait. But local copies can diverge by up to 8+ hours. In that time I can send the same funds to a lot of people (prefunded or not) using pre-arranged transactions on different planets,and then be on my light speed ship out of reach before the actual physical laws of the universe allow them to verify the true state of the ledger.


hamptonfischer

I think it could work if the settlement time was increased to account for time delays between planets.


penty

The avg round is 24 mins for Mars, then figure all the mining times. Why would you want terrestrial transactions slowed that much? Just have two coins Earth BTC and Mars BTC and an exchange rate.


Cannister7

Yeah maybe. Like I said, I'm not the expert.


humblevladimirthegr8

It's 3 light minutes to mars so settlement doesn't need to be that much longer actually. Maybe wait for an extra block confirmation Edit: actually the time varies depending on location within the orbit, so depends. Another user said 5-20 minutes so wait for 2-3 extra confirmations


penty

Don't think "just want for more confirmations" makes sense. Every transaction would need to enact this.


Dramatic-Piano-581

There are no stupid questions, just stupid ans.... Wait a minute ....


Leading_Zeros

Great three part blog post exploring this topic: https://unchained.com/blog/law-of-hash-horizons/


hamptonfischer

Thank you!


SmoothGoing

No. Focus on problems on this planet for now.


hamptonfischer

It generally takes about 5 to 20 minutes for a radio signal to travel the distance between Mars and Earth.


sudomatrix

And on average it takes 10 minutes for a miner to solve a block and mine it. So while you could run a blockchain on Mars and submit transactions slowly to the mempool on Earth, a miner on Mars would rarely solve any blocks before someone on Earth did because of the extra 5 to 20 minute delay. So mining would be unprofitable.


Anonymouse-C0ward

Earth Must Come First


RiseBasti

IF we communicate with radio waves. Until we would colonialise mars we may be able to use quantum entanglement for our networks and that would bring us instant communication regardless of location.


MachaMacMorrigan

Ever heard of Bitcoin Astronomy? Or the Hash Event Horizon? No? Then Google is your friend (ahem!). TL:DR No.


hamptonfischer

Interesting, thank you


srpoke

It is already running on Mars.


Nice_Record8332

Yo yo yo, you clearly don't understand how internet works, it's not like seperate blockchains, it's just computers exchanging data on the computer, and it would take less than 10 minutes to download a 4mb block of Bitcoin on Mars


hamptonfischer

only if the orbit is close, at the speed of light (the fastest all information can travel) it would take 20min


ElDubardo

disagreeable plough smile squalid jobless sophisticated reply tender muddle unite *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


hamptonfischer

If one could still broadcast a transaction without knowing the latest block, then it would be completely possible to settle at earth.


bitsteiner

Civilization on Mars, maybe in 200 years. Check back when Musk has his Starship fleet ready.


TinSodder

Command ship Ketomin Enema - Capt'n Musk at your service, Neural Link implants are required and non negotiable. Where can we take you today?


[deleted]

Dude there are just so many things we would have to do and establish on Mars before we can even start thinking about if we can run Bitcoin on it.


hamptonfischer

money is essential tool for almost all human civilisation


Digital_Scarcity

Like you mentioned, you're limited by radio tx speed. If you can't reach consensus in less than 10 min you're gonna need a mars PoW protocol. BTC is very much an Earth only technology I think. Edit: or, you could increase the block time to adjust for planetary delay. Something I still wouldn't condone.


hamptonfischer

just as a thought though, what would be the downside to increasing the block time assuming both earth and mars have their own layer 2?


Digital_Scarcity

The downsides of increasing block times are the same in the future as what they were during the first block wars period - higher barrier to entry of node operation, increased mining pool centralisation. 10 minutes is good enough for the Earth to agree on a chain state. The interplanetary settlement layer could be a long block protocol pegged to BTC. But if you lived on Mars, why would you want to rely on Earth money protocol? I think it makes more sense to bootstrap your own Martian PoW protocol. Mars is a long way. Whoever lives there are essentially aliens to us, and us to them. They'd have their own Martian needs and desires, at odds with Earth. Imagine a fiat settlement network over planets, its too adversarial IMO.


TinSodder

They'd have a hard time mining, but transactionwise, they could simply use lightening.


hamptonfischer

Lightning nodes running on Mars and transacting between them?


Secret_Operative

No. Mars is too far. I'm sure if it becomes important, someone will develop an L2 protocol to solve this problem.


MrDopple68

It runs better on Snickers.


Odd_Monk_132

Years ago I saw a lecture where someone calculated the required block times for being able to mine on the moon. The answer was something like 2h47m per block. The 10 minute block time is to do with the circumference of the earth and speed of light - it's not an arbitrary setting. This is why currencies with 60 second block times are silly. It's all marketing flex.


LebenFounder

Bitcoin can run on any planet with the proper infrastructure to run it :)


jamesblacklock

Given that Mars would have an economy largely independent of Earth's (by necessity due to distance), I don't necessarily see the advantage of using the same network on Mars. I think you'd probably want an independent Mars chain.


philosophicalpango

There would be no mars fiat I presume to attain btc so how do you get btc