Erik Voorhees expressed:  Noise: Bitcoin doesn’t have smart contracts Noise: Bitcoin does have smart contracts Signal: Bitcoin has some smart contract ability, but it’s far more limited than other protocols such as Ethereum. Signal: Ethereum has greater complexity & attack surface due to this.

Community Response:  I’ve heard about this “increased attack surface” argument before from maxis but now 6+ years in, have there been any significant successful attacks on Ethereum at all (not counting smart contracts deployed by 3rd parties, I mean just the protocol itself).

That’s irrelevant to the point… Ethereum objectively has a larger attack surface because it’s a more complex protocol. This complexity is intentional, and is serving a market need. Doesn’t mean it’s worse or better, but it is a difference between BTC and ETH

Show me some decentralized projects build on Bitcoin, I am waiting.

Signal: Development done outside the longest running, highest security time-chain helps safely validate ideas, despite the high transaction costs. Signal: Successfully tested/validated projects will ultimately migrate to the bitcoin time-chain to reduce technical debt.

First point is reasonable. Second point is propaganda at this point. Empirically that is *not* happening, and “it will eventually” was an okay answer in 2016 but not any more. Many features aren’t coming to Bitcoin, and that’s okay.

Signal: The world only needs 1 money.

Then maybe that money should be truly private like zcash or monero? Or do you not care about privacy in finance? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s okay if there are multiple monies especially when massive liquidity between them exists.

Signal: But that “complexity” is necessary to have contracts that can power applications that provide actual utility. Bitcoin’s contracting capabilities haven’t amounted to significant applications and users. So pick your poison.

Any thoughts on Stacks as a viable DEFI protocol for Bitcoin?

Stacks has never been viable nor will ever be viable. Stacks doesn’t exist.

I don’t like “greater complexity” as it is ambiguous Bitcoin’s limited script pushes complexity to the protocol design (if you do more than just access control) Ethereum’s complexity is not explicitly defining all execution paths and an unknown execution path may be an exploit.

Signal: Perhaps Eth went too far by implementing a turing complete compiled smart contract language. Maybe a decidable language that doesn’t compile can accomplish what most people are looking for with fully expressive smart contracts more securely.

Signal: Different coins are good at different things and that’s okay. They don’t need to all do the same things.

There are over 100 Smart Contract programs that run on blockchain. What you are saying makes no sense. Node has been around since 2012 and that’s it’s function. Are you sure you are Eric Voorhees?