Ring of Fire with Soulexporter and Czino

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Now what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

All right, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back to Bit by Bit. Today's episode is from Block 10 of 21ism. This was from the Code Block and it features two of my favorite Bitcoiners. They've become really good friends. Solex and Chino, they started the rings of fire projects some time ago.

And since then we've had loads of spin-offs. We've had loads of people coming up with their own projects. And this thing is just flying. It really is helping the lightning network decentralize and stopping having this sort of hub and spoke system that we could have ended up with.

These guys are awesome. Always love having them on. And if you haven't gone on to 21ism to look at the other articles and podcasts for the artists, musicians, meaners and everything else we've got on there, go and check it out.

Maybe you're a little bit bored of listening to number go up and why it's going up and why it will go up. If you want to see something a little bit more artistic or something a little bit different, then check out 21ism.com.

Before we dive in, I want to say thanks to my sponsors. I've got Coin Floor UK. If you're in the UK and you're looking to buy weekly, daily, monthly or just to do an OTC trade, you can do any of that with them.

And if you use the code that's in the bottom of the show notes, you will get 30% discount off your fees. I'd also like to thank crypto cloaks for sponsoring this show and just for making really fucking cool products.

They're smashing it out in the park as always. I'm sorry, it was my job. Always there, always wanting. Yeah, they make some great stuff. I've got a couple of block mitts from them, which I'm now using to stamp some extra seeds.

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It's crypto cloaks.com. Enjoy the show. Welcome Chino and Soul Exporter. You're featured for 21isms Code Block 10. We will be discussing the rings of fire for anybody who hasn't listened to our previous episodes

and got the rundown on who you are and what you're doing. Can we just do a bit of an introduction? Maybe Soul Ex, if you can start. Yeah, hello, Max. Thanks for having us. So, yeah, I'm Soul Exporter.

I was, for a long time, a lurker on Bitcoin Twitter, or on Twitter in general. I started out with Bitcoin to have quick gains, sheet coining a lot, trading and losing it all, and then learning slowly but steadily what Bitcoin really is.

I think a lot of us can relate to that. It's the right of passage. Yeah, yeah. And I think if you are able to go through those phases, at least you don't pull a breed love. Yes. Pull a breed love, I like it.

Yeah, and in the journey I also realized that although I came into space for trying to earn a lot of money by doing nothing and just having a lucky guess in investing in something that's growing, it was not what kept me there.

And it was actually the philosophy and technology, I'm in it for the technology. He says the guy with the colon chains, right? No, it's especially the philosophy behind it and realizing what Austrian economics actually is.

That fascinated me more and more. And it turned my life around in the vision of how I even see Bitcoin or the wealth of life is not in finance alone. Let me put it like that. And it was actually MTC BTC's such a ledger that made me dive deeper and deeper into really the Bitcoin and low time

preference to get rid of my son, referred to as a sollex boy. That's very cool. And so obviously MTC is actually one of us, one of our terrible gang. Yeah, that's really cool to hear that it's had that influence on you.

I was lucky enough to be away with him actually on a retreat camping the other day. And yeah, just he's another proper Bitcoiner. And cool to hear that it's got your son involved as well.

Was that something that has continued with him? Is he now a maxi? He is a maxi, but he also likes to explore constantly new things. So at the moment, he's more interested in drones or programming or whatever his feeling is at the moment.

So his attention span shifts a lot. But in the crypto space, if he can call it that it's Bitcoin only and nothing else matters. That's very cool. You're bullish on the new generation of Bitcoin.

Yeah, exactly. And Chino, what about you? What brought you into this weird and wonderful space? Yeah, for me, it's very similar to this whole story. I also started out with hoping to make quick gains and starting right away with shit coining.

It did not really work out. I think I luckily broke even. And at some point, I was following a shit coin on YouTube. Oh my god, crypto YouTube is the worst. I was following that. But that guy, he was interviewing tone base like the Bitcoin maxi.

And this is when I realized like it just hit me straight in the face that what tone base had made so much more sense about Bitcoin. And shortly after, I decided to just dump all my shit coins and then go fall into Bitcoin.

And I never looked back. And I think like Saul said, it's probably a better learning curve to start with the shit coining and get out of that morass. And then you stay probably cleaner forever than the other way around.

Definitely. And so what drew you into the shit coin space in the first place? Was it literally just number go up and you're looking at charts and going, right, fuck, I'm going to be so rich.

I remember when I saw on coin market cap all those different coins. And I of course, naturally, I only knew about Bitcoin and Ethereum second. And then I heard about Ethereum killer and it just sucked me into like this technology fallacy.

Like it needs to be faster and maybe more privacy. And oh my god, it can solve supply chains. And this will solve that. And of course, at some point it will just turn out to be vaporware.

But at this point, I was completely flashed and I was more noise than signal. And now I rather like shut myself off of all this shit coin debate and just focus on the signal possible. And I found this in Bitcoin.

It's way pure and way more focused. For me, it was a unit bias. I think if I think back far enough, I don't even remember how long ago it was, but it was Bitcoin at, I don't know, 2000 euros.

And I thought I missed a boat on Bitcoin. Just too expensive. So that's why we need to switch just hats. But I think that's the feeling that you still see now. People are looking for the new Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is new Bitcoin.

It's so true that unit bias is such a killer. I remember that very clearly as well. I remember looking at Bitcoin at whatever it was when I entered the space, tens of thousands. And then looking at these other ones and I'm going, oh, you know, well, these ones are only a pound.

So if I got this amount of these and they go to the same value, then, well, I'm going to be the richest man on the planet. And you just stupidly think that that's possible. And you don't, you know, at the beginning, you're just trying to wrap your head around it.

And I think it catches us all out. And there might be a few exceptions to that rule. But yeah, sats are the standard for sure. And that's where the marketing comes in from the sheet coin.

It's feeding that hope. And people fooling themselves, taking on those marketing slogans to justify their choice and fooling themselves of, yeah, this is why I chose it. And forgetting is just about hoping to get rich fast without any effort.

And so obviously then if we fast forward a little bit, we're talking about having sats as the standard. Obviously one of the things that I think is going to make this a reality is lightning.

And you guys are on here because your project, the things that you're doing, they absolutely blow me away. And lightning, I think, is going to be the thing that really helps us on board more people have the UX that is needed and the ability for people to think in sats rather than 0.0000 whatever it is.

You too are running this rings of fire and it is a massive community that you have going. It's constantly popping off in my telegram and seems to be growing all the time. So can you talk to me about how you two met and how this whole thing has started?

How he met is I, when I first saw a solar exporter back then, he was still calling himself acid lord on Twitter. I remember how we met was that I was commenting on a tweet from him that he promised to make a little animation with the skull he, I think you drew it, right?

Yeah. Yeah. The skull like there was a contest as far as I understand about how to create a citadel logo and he had the skull that if you turn it around and turns into a castle or a citadel, really cool.

And he animated this with the names. I think the one I saw was with sweet Toshi. Yeah, sweet Toshi. And I won the next one and he made one for me in the game. This is how then we stayed into contact.

And soon after he invited me to a little private EU plants group and we talked ever since. That's nice. These friendships that are formed through Bitcoin are often very, very strong. And so is it something that you just hit it off straight away?

Like what did you have certain things where you were really aligned or like how did this friendship grow? I think what we have in common is that we don't have like how to put this like this strong opinion about things.

I think we are fairly reasonable when we are debating with others like we don't completely dismiss the other point. But we also try to understand what the other person is saying and even if that means disagreeing but in a respectful way.

And it comes also along with Seoul just said in all the private conversation that sometimes the conversation in Bitcoin Twitter they are not amounting too much. It's more like just repeating certain phrases or mantras that might be just misconceptions even or just a way to shut off a debate before it can actually happen.

So Lex, you agree with that? You think that it's kind of a little bit surface level at times and that the best connections are found a bit more one-on-one and off of Twitter? Not necessarily one-on-one but in smaller groups the better I think.

Especially if you can keep the discussion on topic and not on emotions I think what has me so interested in Zeno all the time or why I came to respect Zeno so much.

He has a lot of skills in all kinds of terrains and them just like hell but he is very humble about that as well.

And it's just very well and to keep it on the rings of fire everything came to exist as it is at the moment because Chino was just pulling it all further and with technical skills and just coming up with ideas.

And I was always from the moment that I realized who Chino really is. I was in orbit with what he did and how did he say it.

And I just wanted to see it happen. So I just took it on and tried to bring it forward with you together.

It was great it was building on each other but it was the technical stuff I learned so much and that's what I like the most.

It's a project where I learned a lot or it became a project where I learned a lot and that building on each other's skills and progressions makes you feel more part of something bigger let's say. And I think that's something that we miss in the world too much in general.

It's just that not kumbaya not that shit but just where we are as a society or people in general is because of building further on what other people did.

Where the written word became so important for us is even more important than fire because that knowledge can be passed on better. And seeing that in a digital era with Telegram or Twitter or whatever that is where the modern relationships might be built and I'm not talking

about romantic relationships. I'm talking about people to people, just people to be something that's the evolution of our modern society and where that Bitcoin fits in so nicely with that.

Beautifully put. Yeah, it's interesting how this has come about as well. You know you were saying Chino that Solax has come up with this idea and then Solax you're saying well Chino has a lot of skills to be able to implement it.

With most of these interviews that I do on 21ism I generally haven't spoken to the people before so we're all friends we do a show together monthly. I've got to know both of you pretty well.

So it's a little bit different this one because I'm trying to cover ground that I've already covered so that people get to know you a little bit deeper. From what I know of both of you Solax you have some of the best ideas I've ever come across and a very humble about it like I speak to a lot of people but when it comes to ideas.

I don't know what your brain's doing all day but it's obviously doing a lot. So you're coming up with these things that blow me away you know on a consistent basis. So what was it with this one particular idea, where did it come from and what got you thinking about it.

Why did you know why did you suddenly go right well this ring of fire thing which is now very successful I'm going to think it up and now let's implement it like how did it come about. I tested in lightning quite early but I was always afraid of everything.

But I went into when to look how to start and how to build channels and there I came onto a telegram group. It was that again called now it's called lightning liquidity and pool I think or something like that but before it was balanced channels or something whatever it was.

And it was about finding people with whom you want to fund a channel where you agreed and to one person sent home chain sets to another person and that person then opens the channel and pushes the amount that you sent.

Then back over that channel when opening the channel so you both put in the same amount of such in a channel and you balance it at once. But that involves quite some trust because you have to send sets to somebody you don't know at all.

I think they call them ghetto swaps if I'm not mistaken. I have no clue how I like the name but I don't like how it's performed. It's also something I don't really like. Maybe to explain a little bit so in lightning it lightning use should consider as a two person contract where you lock those sets within a channel.

If you have sets on one side of the channel you can use that channel to pay to the site where there are no sets let's say or at least if you have sets on your side of the channel you can use those to send a lightning transaction.

If you have different people change together you can hop from one to the other over those channels where there is enough balance to push out the sets further.

If you don't have any incoming channels you can only pay with your sets that you have on your channel that was my first opening of channels was just for example Bitco buying stickers or whatever I bought a shitload on him.

So I opened a channel to him with a double of the amount that I wanted to buy and then I had instantly a channel balance channel because I paid half of it to pay my bills let's say.

So to open or if you only open channels and you want to do also some transactions you have to make sure that somebody has also liquidity to you so that's called inbound liquidity.

So that's what that group was about was making sure that you can open instantly a balance channel. There was a just a very famous person I think in the lightning world.

He does a lot of explanations also on the Bitcoin kindergarten it is called I think if I remember right and yeah with him I came up with the idea to have between him and me and my son.

So I saw a solx boy to have like a triangle where we could then push half of the mount further without having the need to send home chain transactions, which worked out quite nice and good as long as there was no force close, which happened at certain

time due to how they call it again the discrepancy where one note says something is not as I see it and then lightning automatically closes the channels involved, which is not fun.

But that was the original idea of having the possibility to open channels without the need to send on chain transactions and also the trust is also a little bit lower because then you can do small amounts between each other and then just balance like that

if needed if you don't trust the person too much. And I always had a feeling like that this should be possible to be bigger better because it seems such a loss to having to have so much on chain transactions.

If you want to once that back maybe is I cannot see Bitcoin succeed without being able to buy products with Bitcoin buying products with Bitcoin means smaller bias means only such worth of stuff.

So the perfect example is the bitco again Bitcoin now ski sticker is perfect for for a sat transaction lightning transaction. And if you don't build up that economy where you can pay more and buy more with sat if you don't spend your sets.

You're just hoarding and you're actually buying into or becoming a rent seeker to you're just hoping that somebody else later will buy those sets from you for a higher price.

And that's not what Bitcoin is all about. The hyper Bitcoinization is that a lot of people use that and not that everybody just hoards us to in the hope that they become word more.

So yeah there's a circular economy. Sorry cutting you off there but yeah circular economy is key and it's something we discuss a lot and yeah lightning makes this possible and systems like this make it so that you don't have such a centralization of the network

as well which is which is very very cool. Yeah yeah and especially that the the reach out is further because the problem with that balance channels group was.

We have a car skookier who has bought that creates graphs graphical representation of your group and if you looked in that group or if you look outside of the group and see the general you have those on those sites where you can see a visual representation of the lightning

network is that you have those huge hubs where everybody wants to connect to because there's a lot of traffic going on there. And that just seems to me like okay that's a single point or becomes become single points of failure if you're able to to

block one of those the lightning network ceases to to be functional and yeah that's that was on the other part of it is I want to see even in that group small group you had really liked those store patterns

where everybody connects to and and that was not how I see the future of lighting network that's also that's also typical criticism point that lightning network creates hubs and spokes.

I see that there's validity and there but it doesn't mean that lightning network has failed because as we see there not only rings a fire but there are also other approaches to counteract those forces as well.

And so is that one of the things that interested you then Chino wants you want you to spoken to Solax about this. Were you thinking about the fact that we have this hub and spoke sort of thing going on was it that that attracted you or was it something else.

Yeah that was the thing for me even soul told me about this I had two channels, namely to async and Alan markets because I thought okay. I had this exact same thinking of I need to connect to a well connected node.

Maybe two and maybe I find some degenerate gamblers from async notes to and in markets and I could earn some routing back then I wanted to earn routing I was my initial motive but now it's not it's less about that it's actually more about

supporting the network and he connected myself and I would rather be connected to other plebs and I saw this promise immediately when soul told me about this idea of creating rings of nodes that are connected to each other.

And so can you talk anyone listening through obviously we've spoken about this a little bit before I have a general idea of it but for anyone listening who at this point is like right I know a little bit about Chino I know a little bit about soul X and I think I understand why they're doing what they're doing.

Can you give a like a basic overview of someone who's coming onto lightning how they would join this and how it basically works so that they grasp it please. Yeah let's assume they enter our group the rings of fire there we currently have few open links to other private groups for each ring.

So they can choose and select what ring they would like to participate in and say they have 1 million sets they would like to put on lightning there might be a 1 million sets ring size.

So in those groups he will find other lightning participants who then organize between each other the order of the ring like where do you fit inside the ring and who is your left partner and your right partner.

Once the order is established then you start opening channels in one direction I'd say clockwise if this is what everybody agreed on so you start opening a channel to your let me think right person 1 million sets

person 2 is right person 1 million sets and so on until the ring is closed and once the ring is closed there's a possibility to have one participate within the ring to pay himself a lightning invoice of half of the channel

which will go around the ring he receives such on the other channel and effectively has halved the balances how they are distributed on each channel so they are all perfectly balanced with everything also right.

I get it so do you have a limit on the amount of people who can join one of these rings or is the only limit the fact that you have to have the organization between you and you need to be contactable.

Yeah so we played through different sizes I think we started with 12 on average and quickly realized that it always caused problems because coordinating the opening someone is a lot of work especially since we are all living in different time zones.

We are working we're sleeping and we have a private life too. So we quickly realized that we should rather reduce it to six. So this is now our average ring size of participants and it seems to be working much better that way.

But of course technically there is no limit and even one member of our community he proposed the idea of an infinitely sized ring where people just keep joining the ring but it will never close, which was a funny concept I don't know if they actually followed through this because

I have not heard much more about that. Yeah no the six person seems about right and so you know as I said you offer we're going to do it as 21 is to open our own because you know we talk every day anyway so it would just work and there are six of us.

But I do think you're right in terms of like coordinating any more people than that seems seems like it would be a real pain in the arse. But but then presumably if you've got this you've got this ring and everyone's helping balance the channels, then they all have connections themselves outside of that ring.

Does that then mean they would find an easier path if they're routing payments and say say like the arse is 21 isn't had it. And then you know bad as needed a connection to Bitcoin Q&A and I had a channel with Bitcoin Q&A then that would bang from him through me and then on to him is that kind of how it would work or

so it would actually help with connectivity as well as having a balanced channels all the time. There definitely helps with connectivity it just depends if you and better so maybe on the other side of the ring then there might be a shorter and cheaper path.

But at least there will be a path guaranteed if there's not a cheaper and shorter path then you would go through the ring through betters and Q&A or the other way around.

Cool yeah it's a it's a really really clever concept and you were showing me a graph before we jumped on which looked crazy like a which we're going to have on the website so anyone who will be listening to this will be able to see it now live.

It looks like you've had unbelievable growth of this thing. How has that come about is it literally all been just word of mouth.

Spread like wildfire don't you think so it's for it. Yeah it was I think Nonya had big effort in that he mentioned that on his pot and then Matt O'Dell also mentioned it in a conversation somewhere.

That's the citadel I think. But yeah it went word of mouth on Twitter I guess and then just people reaching out to each other but it's funny to see now that even the meme went further than the group actually.

Yes it completely got out of our hands. I heard of one person who built a complete website that basically automizes the process of finding rings that you can join.

And he did not even know that our group existed despite like not even the documentation we have written in the beginning and everything. In fact he was doing rings on the umbral forums it was completely separate community from our telegram group.

And this is how he heard of the rings of fire although he now he calls them lightning swaps so that's a different name for the meme of the ring of fire. But essentially this is how he came to the idea of creating the website and it's so fascinating to see how this idea just

keeps developing without even being aware of it's fantastic like I love how Bitcoin is sometimes just take an idea and bring it to the next level in such a short time.

I think we started in March, early March we build all first ring with all first members. And now we are at this point. March of this year was it. Fuck that's so quick. That's so quick it just goes to show like the power of a good idea.

There's no marketing is literally just people have gone. Oh, this seems useful. Let me give it a go. And yeah, it's pretty impressive. So if you play that forward, where do you guys see this going? Like what do you think's going to happen?

You just see this continuing to grow. And if so, how the hell are you going to keep up because I know the telegram channels are very, very busy. I know both of you are busy with lots of projects all the time and there's only a certain amount of hours in the day.

Like how do you how do you see this going forward? Sorry if I may quickly plug in the name of the website is called lightning network plus I think deserves to be mentioned and just quickly adding to that. I think this also the future that we find ways to automize this process because right now in the group.

I think the whole exporter is like the one who always puts up the polls and keeps up with the pin message to lead new users to those groups and I think he managed to reduce the amount of work he has to do and streamline the process with other admins.

I think there were there are no little questions like from new users how they get started and everybody quickly finds the way. It's working but I think having an automated solution is probably the next step in that process.

I was going to say the same actually I just hope that there are more of those pages popping up and automizing. I'm spending or I just muted all of my telegram groups to be able to cope with telegram as a whole.

I only go to check in the groups when I'm mentioned. Most of the site of creating the groups, the people organize themselves so it's the plebs within the rings that take care of the nitty gritty stuff.

But the search web pages or such evolutions of an idea is what keeps me going is like I said that's how we get further as a species by building further on each other's ideas so I'm really happy with that to be honest.

And I think that's the future is there and the best is actually if there are different pages like that so rings of fire if they keep exist as a telegram group. I don't mind if it ceases to exist and there are different web pages where you can do this automatically or automized or people just start organizing their own rings.

I think it's all beneficial for the network as a whole that it's not all connected to the same starting point also. That it doesn't become another star in the graph let's say. So I think it's a really nice evolution to see and onto my next idea would say.

Well I know you've got many so give it another couple of blocks and we'll have you back on I'm sure.

And so what did that feel like so I actually know the website that you're talking about because I've I've seen it and I remember I remember thinking that it's really really slick it has all the diagrams on it the triangles and the squares and all that kind of stuff it's a very nice website.

When you saw that and it's so close to the time of you starting and an idea coming to something so big so quickly. So how did that make you feel I mean if it was me and my idea I feel really fucking proud did it excite you.

Yeah. To be honest that's just cool to see to get it starting alive on its own that's that's beautiful to see. Yeah, for me I felt a little bit of jealousy but also was very thankful that somebody had done it because I also thought about doing this but I never found the time to actually get behind this.

Seeing that being done is just thank you whoever did it. I don't know who the plan behind is I only know the official account. I think I have to look it up on Twitter Ellen something but yeah the website is not perfect yet.

It's still fairly new and I wish that many have complained that you have to sign up with email. So I hope the next feature that will be added is actually being able to sign up with your note.

That's what I love when I saw this from Ellen markets that you just sign up with your note through an Ellen elf URL with your code and boom your authenticators.

There is no email no real name attached to and I think this should be the way how we also identify ourselves in future because lightning notes those identities are also hard to forge. Like emails you can just create an email out of nothing but a note with certain capacity that's costing you.

So there is an identity but it's still anonymous or pseudonymous and I really like this method of authentication so I hope that this is the next step to authenticate on that website. Bit of proof of work there you can't just create it out of nothing it seems to follow the ethos a little bit more of Bitcoin than an email address.

It's actually proof of stake. In terms of you have to have actual effort that's gone in and have channels and have lightning notes you've got. It's not that much work but you have to put in some sets of your own to.

That's true. I can get behind the definition of proof of stake actually like that. It's a real proof of stake that is this democratic compared to the proof of stake. For example Ethereum or a bunch of people say okay we're just going to do proof of stake of the coin that we pull out of our ass.

This is really. Yeah you earned it. Absolutely yeah it makes a lot of sense and so in more general terms and obviously both of you are very very excited about lightning and you're dedicating a huge amount of time to it.

Can we talk a little bit more loosely on lightning as an ecosystem and as a layer two and what it is firstly that excites you so much and where you see the system as a whole going what you think is going to be possible over the coming years and what you're particularly excited about.

Maybe Solax you start with that because you'll probably spark some sort of idea that will take us a leap forward. I had already some ideas. Here we go.

But they're too far fetched. I actually discussed it already a little bit with Cino but it was more of a drawing than really a plan or a project, but I didn't have much time to get in there.

In lightning, the most important is I think the circle circular economy that is going to be the or that is my logic actually behind my personal investments of such on my channels is the because I don't make for the record I don't make any

gains with my nodes. Our logic is every set that we invest in our channels make the sets that are stored on our cold storage world more and because they're being put to work.

I think it's possible to let Bitcoin let's say how to say this correctly. I believe very strongly in Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is not just a proof of storage or a store of value.

It's more than that and without that extra it cannot become more. But at the same time it's lightning cannot be valuable if you don't have a base layer that is very strong currency.

How lightning can grow down further is that in those micro payments that become cheaper micro transactions not only micro payments but for example, it was actually Cino who brought me to Kiva to small projects that you lend out money to people in dirt world countries.

Something like that on lightning where you can fast do mini transactions mini loans out to people where it's needed.

The whole story of the lightning being or strike going to El Salvador sparked also the idea of opening channels to people who want to run their own nodes where we can offer free liquidity.

There are a lot of possibilities still in a growing economical ecosystem. And I think there are the opportunities to be explored. Sorry. I think lightning it is here but it definitely has not reached its full potential yet.

There is still so much to build out considering how many bitcoins we have currently locked up and lightning it's around 1,700 bitcoins. I envision that it's going to be much more considering that it was around 1000 just a few months ago like four months.

It has grown a lot and I would like to think that the idea of rings of fire helped a lot with that. I cannot prove that maybe somebody could do a study on this.

But yeah like there is a lot of growth recently and it might also be due to the fact of El Salvador now making Bitcoin legal tender or having it made and building out their infrastructure.

The current high fee environment also now has moved a lot of Bitcoiners to actually work on getting up to speed with lightning and who knows what might be coming.

I see that we going to integrate a lot of a lot more websites, services, games with lightning and I hope that some at some point I even have a real full-time job or even my own company that is facilitating lightning payments.

I would love it so much if I could just get paid my salary right now on lightning. It would be amazing. I think it's possible I have the liquidity, the inbound liquidity that would definitely make it possible.

And if I keep of course also spending the money or moving it off on chain that could very well work like this notion of lightning failing when you try to send 50 bucks. It's completely wrong like that might be have been the case two years ago.

But lightning gets more and more stable by the day. The more people join the more liquidity comes on the network. It's getting just getting better. It's brutal. And I think because we were talking before that everybody wants to connect those big nodes, it's not that we're against those big nodes.

I think they're a very important part of the ecosystem, but we made the reference or the comparison before between lightning channels and a road network for example, where those centralized hops are more highways.

Whereas we are trying to connect more the small roads together to be able to reach those highways as well. Like for example, loop is one of those things that can be improved in the future as well.

Now if people connect to loop to open a channel to loop, it just drains all their liquidity. They try to cover that a bit high fees. So people, if you connect to loop, make sure that you put in high enough fees.

Otherwise, you're just going to be drained and the closer channel and you end up with a close channel that's on which you didn't make any money or any subs.

And also, in balance channels on the other side. Yeah, and I think there are all of that is the system trying to evolve or trying to find a way how to balance itself out in a real economical ecosystem.

Because shops, for example, they need all the inbound liquidity, they need to transfer their lightning bound sets to, for example, an account or they have to sell it for fiat because their suppliers don't accept lightning or Bitcoin or whatever.

So there is the end and the bits closing the circle. I think that's the future for lightning. Vaccino says he wants to be paid in sites that would be nice.

But it's the moment that I can buy my vegetables, my small stuff that I need daily and I can buy it from the grocery shop here, the small farmer who has his own bio vegetable, for example.

Or the butcher or an untapped growth in Europe, and I'm missing at the moment, and I can buy my steak there. With that, those are some willing to spend. If we reach that point, then I think we have almost made it.

Of course, it will probably still develop after that, but this is definitely the point I want to see in the new future.

Yeah, and you mentioned El Salvador earlier. What I'm wondering is if it's implemented and if this thing goes ahead and if we see their economy get better, we see the connectivity get better and the remittances and all this sort of stuff and it's all running on lightning.

Maybe this is an example to the rest of the world, what's possible, and maybe it will stop people thinking about that this system really is capable of so much and it doesn't take long, saying how quickly this thing has grown already.

If you have a country on board and you have some big players on board, this can really grow very, very fast and it is necessary. Even though at the moment the memples are empty and it's very, very easy to get these transactions through and it's fairly cheap, it won't be that way forever.

The things that really excite me are the ideas of streaming sats and all these cool things like Sphinx and all these amazing things that are possible only with this system and literally impossible with the current financial system.

What's your thoughts on that? Do you think that people will suddenly realise that wow, we can do stuff that literally is impossible with any other system and it changes people's perception of Bitcoin as a whole?

Well, people are already doing that now. When I say people, I don't mean us three and a thousand other weirdos on the internet who talk about Bitcoin all day long and dream about it.

I'm talking about the rest of the world, a larger proportion because we're all massively excited about this, but we are a very, very, very tiny percentage of the world.

Well, I think the biggest benefit that probably would bring people to Bitcoin and Lightning is that they have a more efficient system that costs them less.

If we can teach especially merchants to accept Lightning and don't eat up whatever the current fees when you pay with credit card, something around two and a half percent.

They'll still be reversed a few months later and on the contrast if they accept Lightning, they pay barely any fees and it's immediately settled with reasonable security. Although it's on Lightning, it is not settled yet on Bitcoin, but even those hash time locks on what we're going to have there, fairly final, they are settled almost.

And if we can show those merchants and also have, of course, the people willing to spend sets for products that they offer.

If we solve this check on the X situation, this thing could really kick off and give them world much more freedom because what I also love about Lightning is that everybody can participate and not nobody who is asking the silly question or do you need a license for that? Can you stop that?

Do you say could you ask your question? No, that's a stupid question. That's a stupid question. Ah, yeah, what a fucking idiot. He has got to be a spook or something. He's got to be, he must have a handler who is getting him to say these sort of stupid things.

Yeah, this question was way too specific on a random topic. Yeah, that's what I think. I think maybe they've got something on him and they're blackmailing him or maybe he always did have a handler and he's been allowed to climb up the ranks.

These sort of things, some of the stuff that he's coming out with, yeah, is way too specific. It's such a weird thing to come out with. The beautiful thing is that no matter how many stupid questions from all these sort of people, it doesn't really matter because we've got a system that's done right, they can't fuck with.

All of his money comes from government instances, so don't bite a hand at feet, you know. No, I can't find him. Yeah. But at the same time, you could have just bought go and fall into Bitcoin and then say, fuck you.

Yeah, but then he loses his customer base. He doesn't like it. He's a billionaire, but his dream is sending up rockets to Mars. So the only way to finance that is without screwing over all of the people is still doing that by accepting government money, but it's the United States government that will be paying those bills in the end.

But I don't care what he does. If you have to have a fun complex about him, that's your problem. I still love SpaceX, but they're doing, but SpaceX is not Elon Musk. Elon Musk is just a businessman, and at this moment, he is more a joker than anything else.

Definitely a joker. Yeah, not even a funny joker at this point. No, true. Yeah, and just coming back to something that you'd said earlier where you're talking about these fees and what merchants are paying, I think that's something that's not talked about nearly enough.

I mean, literally yesterday I made a payment, quite a large payment. The person I was sending the money to was paying 2.9%, which that fee was passed on to me. And that was for credit card or debit card 2.9%.

I was thinking at the time, the same thing, like, do these fuckers not know about Bitcoin and Lightning? Like, do they not understand what is possible? Because they're paying these fees, they're having, and normally there's other fees on top, you have to have annual fees on top as well.

And for people who have smaller margins, 2.9% is massive. And that's just for the merchants. And then you have these remittance payments, which, you know, especially in places like El Salvador,

are enormous, the percentages are like eye watering. So it just seems as though, like you said, right at the beginning of this thing, and it only seems as though it is going to go one way and that's just growth.

That's why the circularity is so important of the Lightning network. Because for now, if you have to loop out, I think that would be the greatest cost for a merchant that is accepting Lightning, who is not able to pay his suppliers with Lightning or Bitcoin.

So if you can close that circle, that is the future for Lightning, in my opinion. Absolutely. Yeah, fully agree the potential is there. And speaking of fees, I'm also not a fan of having zero fees because I have the opinion that those who put up the sets, they should be compensated.

I mean, I appreciate the ideology to set up zero fees, channels, and maybe they also have the viability, but definitely not for the whole network, because you need to somehow compensate those who built the roads, maybe highways or smaller dirt roads.

Yeah, I'm still also not a fan of high fees, so I try to find his health a balance of as little as 50 sets per million. So if you send 1 million sets, the fee would be 50 sets, which I consider fairly low, how much is this in percent less than 0.05, I believe.

And compare this to Visa and debit cards, 2.9, what you said, that's an astronomical difference. Yeah, yeah, and like you said, it's got the finality, it's instant.

You don't have all this nonsense of people holding your funds, and you make a payment, and then it's reverted, and then for whatever reason, you can pick out of a list of about 10 reasons that they come up with, and then they close your accounts and all this sort of stuff.

And you just don't have those issues with this system, and so it's just just miles and miles ahead. Outside of what you're doing with Rings of Fire, so we dig in a little bit more.

Both of you have some interesting hobbies and interesting ideas on things outside of lightning, so before we sort of round things up, I just wanted to dig into what you guys are doing on a more personal basis, if possible.

Chino, I know you've got a project going on at the moment, can you shed some light on what's going on? Well, it's not only one project, I think I have too many projects, to be honest, and I have barely time to follow up on all of that.

But currently I concentrate on my own land, trying to start living off-grid and doing permaculture. It's the dearest to my heart this project, and it means basically my own sovereignty, like the future of my life and those of my family.

And at home, if I have time, I also work on a Bitcoin-themed game, which features known characters such as Audelnut, Katoshi. Solik's Porter is in this game, my son. Yeah, I hope that I can publish it soon, it's still a lot of work to do, and currently I work on one end post, it's Augustin Carson, the big guy.

The big fat fuck, yeah. And as you can imagine, animating this guy is a lot of pixels. Yeah, I can't wait to see it. I've obviously seen a couple of images and stuff, but do you have any idea, do you have a sort of timeline for it?

I keep pushing it, but I hope that I still manage to finish the main storyline by this year. And then if people like, then start adding more stories and characters to the game. Very cool.

It's going to be free to play, and it's currently running on donation base. So if you donate around 50,000 subsequently, I add you to the game as a character, and this way I can also add more color to the game and have a lot of funny phrases and memes.

And can you show where people would go to do this? And you can just contact me on Twitter. Cool. Okay, I strongly suggest people that you do that because it looks like a great project, and also the permaculture stuff.

I've been dragged down this rabbit hole, and I've done a couple of episodes on this on bit by bit, so have a look at that as well. And it's another rabbit hole that seems to have no end. It's absolutely fascinating.

And very similar to Bitcoin, I can totally understand why there are a bunch of Bitcoiners who are also into permaculture, and I'm not the only one. It's a growing community, and I love to see that as well.

Yeah, it seems to just be aligned in so many ways. And this idea, this self-sovereign idea to have your own land and your own food and produce, it's just really fucking cool. Don't trust, verify, make yourself.

To me, it's the life I definitely want to live, especially with everything that's currently going on. And there is such an uncertainty being dependent on a lot of things. It goes from food, health care, energy, water, you name it, a lot of things.

And I don't want to be dependent on anybody else, just living on my own. And if I fuck it up, then it's my fault, nobody else's. Absolutely. And sublax, anything that you can share or any shills or anything that you can give us?

No, at the moment, I'm just spending a lot of time with the kids and trying to improve myself, learning a lot of stuff. And a little bit of gardening, it's all exposed. I would love to do more permaculture.

But we are limited to some vegetables and some fruits here, which we love to do. Well, if I can recommend you the book Gaius Garden, it's for home-scale permaculture, and you could totally apply some of the principles and designs.

I'm going to check it out, I'm for sure, because I did buy a permaculture book online, and I got it, and it was like a small magazine size and a set. Okay, that was not worth the wait. Because I was looking for the big one that you had, but that's way too much.

That's for me. Yeah, I also got a cheap, tripled, or 6-2 book. It's the name for that in price, which was crazy to see. I think there's some whole shortage of books. Yeah. But yeah, from my part, I'm preparing my holidays.

Preparing the weekend that we're going to spend here with a very small amount of Bitcoiners, and finding myself at the moment, planning whatever, thinking on the next big idea. I look forward to hearing this next big idea that they are always good.

And for anyone who's listening, and they think, right, this rings a fire thing sounds really fucking cool, how do they get involved? What's the best thing for them to do? Do they join the Telegram group, or reach out personally?

How do they get involved? They can always reach out in the Telegram group if they can find it. Or on GitHub, there is GitHub/ringthefire, it has a wiki page, it explains a lot of the stuff.

You could basically run it yourself, you own with a couple of friends. Yeah. And people would recommend that even. Yes. Excellent. Well, I'll link those bits on the page anyway. As always, guys, absolute pleasure speaking to you both.

I look forward to our next Mesterdown monthly, and I still really look forward to at some point meeting you both in the flesh. But not quite possible at the moment, but one day it will happen, and I can't wait for that.

Same either. I hope next year we can join the meeting and things end. Definitely. That sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. Thanks again, guys. And thanks for what you've built. It's really, really fucking cool.

I appreciate you, once we all get involved and set up our own Ring of Fire and never to be break it. So, yeah, we will speak soon. Looking forward to it. All right. Cheers, guys. Take care.

Cheers.