Bitcoin smart contracts are the new frontier
When Elon Musk tweeted to the World Food Program (WFP) to open their books and provide easily accessible accounting for solving world hunger, the organization used a lot of fancy words but did not honor his request. Why?
Why wouldn’t an organization, whose mission is to “solve world hunger”, do everything in its power to accept an additional $6 billion from the richest man in the world? Are they hiding something? What if the organization didn’t quite live up to its mission statement? I mean, how would we know? Are we supposed to trust a few marketing images and accounting tricks to reveal where the donations are really going?
This raises the question of transparency and its role among other charities. The Red Cross. Doctors Without Borders. Save the children. My intention here is not to smear any of these organizations. The question is: do we believe that charities have a duty to prove that money and support are actually getting to the people who need those resources the most? Are there factors that enforce this type of accountability outside of mission statements and internal audit? “Don’t trust, verify.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1454809318356750337?s=20
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1454921466500222977?s=20
Source: Charity Navigator
What if we wanted to donate to a cause we believe is fair and just? A cause like the #FreedomConvoy of Canadian Truckers? We can see that centralized outfits like GoFundMe and GiveSendGo perform quite well at first. The user interface is clean; personal financing is quick and easy. But what happens when these platforms deem your cause unfair? What pressure can the centralized powers exert on these crowdsourcing sites to justify instant funding freezes, or even worse, use the donations for something entirely different? Who are they to decide what people do with their hard-earned money?
After venturing down the rabbit hole of “PEPE RARE”, I began to realize that even after being on an orange tablet since 2016, I had completely missed the potential of layer 2 protocols over bitcoin with smart contracts NFTs backed by bitcoin.
Now, before I go, “Whoa whoa G, are you gonna start shitcoining us with bored monkey NFTs?” I will ask you to listen to me.
The first smart contract asset created on Bitcoin dates back to 2014. The asset test is described here on the BitcoinTalk forum. Yes, Bitcoin was actually first in the NFT and smart contract space long before the Bored Apes. NFTs are cool and all, but the power behind smart contract technology on Bitcoin Layer 2 is revolutionary. Why? Well, how can millions of people fund a just and right cause like, say, world hunger, without centralized powers saying that world hunger is no longer a just and right cause? What if we wanted to support Bitcoin City in El Salvador even if GoFundMe suddenly decides that El Salvador is a blacklisted country? How can you trust an international contract that is easy to understand for everyone? If you start to understand where this is leading, you start to see a much bigger picture.
The best way to experience a new system is to use it. So I put this new “Counterpart” layer 2 system to the test. The counterparty is not its own blockchain, it “rises above” the Bitcoin blockchain. Another way to think of the relationship is to use the Russian nesting doll comparison where the largest doll would be the Bitcoin transaction and the next doll (located inside) would be a counterparty transaction. This integration method is technically known as “built-in consensus.”
I created my own token called BTCTRUCKERS. I created art with the intention that all proceeds go to truckers in Canada. I wanted to see if we could somehow show open source accounting to a charitable cause, in a transparent way. I created art and boom. I had my own bitcoin backed NFT smart contract. My art even made the RAREFAKE Series 5 Card 15 (a bit serious).
I’ve set up what Counterparty calls “dispensers” (think ATM transaction). In this exchange, you send BTC and the counterparty system automatically transfers the asset/NFT to the buyer’s wallet and then sends you the BTC. Pretty cool, right?
“So how can we trust you, G?” Why would people buy your NFT? How can you prove to us that the BTC was sent to truckers? Excellent question, I’m glad you asked it!
First, let’s find the asset: https://xchain.io/asset/BTCTRUCKERS
Then we click on the “distributors” tab and see that I have configured several assets; the first to buy got the cheapest price. Now, as you can see, the first three distributors have sold out and we only need a few more to close distributor four. With some simple math, we can see that each of the Distributors that sold held 11 NFTs before moving to a higher price.
https://xchain.io/tx/70fd533e768eb050062ae0542756eabe36fd6ac30642a5435ab9903b8efc9896
To recap: the first dealer had 11 NFTs for the price of 0.001111, which means that 11 times 0.001111 equals 0.012221.
We continue the calculation for distributors two and three with the highest price and get a combined total of 0.085547. (Another great site that brings together all the sales data: https://dankset.io/assets/BTCTRUCKERS)
Below is the transaction of bitcoin priced NFT coins on the bitcoin blockchain sent to Canadian truckers… How do we know for sure? The tallycoin (https://tallyco.in/s/lzxccm/) asked everyone to send funds to the Bitcoin address below: bc1qlc2gpmzrr9gded07d9a40lt2lq7pp2v7h4c5jx
We can also see that the funds came from the same wallet that created BTCTRUCKERS:
https://xchain.io/asset/BTCTRUCKERS, 1JJP986hdU9Qy9b49rafM9FoXdbz1Mgbjo and
https://blockstream.info/tx/f5a87236bdfe3adc7ae7c9ac82130cf89b679b1c6d4fcdf5dddc98497579577f.
So far I myself have collected over 20 million sats for truckers with just this piece as an example of transparency. Not only can I prove that the transaction was sent to the Freedom Convoy, but the buyer now has a rare digital token representing that donation. If I can do it, why not WFP? The Red Cross?
Going even further, how can we trust elected officials to spend money on certain projects we voted for without the transparency we have just witnessed through layer 2 protocols on Bitcoin? Accountability and trust by verification will set humanity on a new path of accountability from our leaders.
As Elon Musk says,Sunlight is a wonderful thing.”
Update: As of this writing, as of March 7, 2022, I still have 0.15 BTC in wallets to send to truckers, however, Canadian government crackdown has forced them to stop using the donation address of origin. I personally spoke with Greg Foss on March 5, 2022 at Unconfiscatable 2022, the remaining 15 BTC in the wallets and all future sales will go to the Canadian truckers legal defense fund as the lawsuit is now in the hundreds of millions. All my sats will take place until this new address is revealed.
This is a guest post by PappyG45. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
