In the middle of a Knots-vs-Core debate on Tone Vays’ show, a Bitcoin protocol dev straight-up punched himself in the face after he admits
@Truthcoin has been right all along about L2 fees.
Rearden acknowledges the core Drivechain argument: if L2s (Lightning, Ark, BitVM, etc.) get too efficient at keeping transactions off-chain, they could suck all the real economic demand out of Bitcoin’s block space. That leaves mostly empty blocks in 5–10 years, kills the fee market, and collapses the security budget. At that point, Bitcoin is effectively dead as a secure monetary system.
Then Rearden explicitly says:
“This is a place where Paul Sztorc is correct… one of the benefits of Drivechains is [they] aggregate the L2 transaction value to the base layer.”
That’s the entire Drivechain thesis in a nutshell. Unlike most L2s that try to minimize on-chain footprint (and thereby minimize fees paid to Bitcoin miners), Drivechains are designed to bring real, aggregated economic activity and fees back to the Bitcoin main chain. They turn L2 scaling into a feature for Bitcoin’s long-term security, not a bug that hollows it out.
Rearden still hopes other L2s will somehow do the same, but he concedes the point: if they don’t, the whole “L2s will save us” story falls apart — exactly what Sztorc has been warning about for years. Even Jimmy Song and Tone look like they’re processing the implications.
Pure vindication for anyone who’s been riding with Paul Sztorc on this. The market will eventually price it in. 🚀