Bitcoin Adoption and the Scalability Problem. What can normal users do to help? - page 2.

Oulay

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Activity: 133

Merit: 37

Quote from: Carlton Banks on March 13, 2018, 05:20:23 PM

Quote from: Oulay on March 13, 2018, 02:49:37 PM

LN is not activated yet.

It's not a soft fork, so it doesn't activate. Your statement therefore doesn't make any sense

So what's the right term to use here? And why the term 'activate' can only be used for soft forks?
English isn't my first language so I want you to help me a bit here :3

Quote from: Carlton Banks on March 13, 2018, 05:20:23 PM

Lightning is already running, but still in a beta form. The UX is fairly clunky and there are potential bugs in the various implementations. It's not ready for mainstream use yet.

I get that, if it was ready it would be "out?" (since I can't say activated :p ) already.

Quote from: Carlton Banks on March 13, 2018, 05:20:23 PM

Quote from: Oulay on March 13, 2018, 02:49:37 PM

Even when LN is activated I don't know if it would solve things up.

The transaction capacity of Lightning is only really limited by it's BTC capacity & it's routing resolution. As long as the incentives work out, it could be so widely used that scaling will rival incumbent payment networks (Mastercard, Amex etc) and completely eclipse SWIFT. How much more capacity could Bitcoin need than that?

I read that:

Quote from: Bitcoin wiki

Lightning is 180 times (17,900%) more efficient than basic Bitcoin.

But please help me with this question, will LN be available for the normal user with a small internet bandwidth? or does it require certain setup?

Oulay

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Activity: 133

Merit: 37

Quote from: BillyBobZorton on March 13, 2018, 04:04:43 PM

Have you looked at the mempool lately?

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,1y

It's as empty as it can get. So no, we are far from having real scalability problems. These big ass peaks were obviously abnormal behaviour, either be by exchanges not properly batching transactions, Roger Ver and Jihan Wu spamming the network, and so on. Add in segwit and the mempool is empty. Transactions are now fast and cheap.

We don't need to rush things in order to accommodate a "mainstream demand" which simply doesn't exist, otherwise BCash would have full blocks as well Bitcoin itself. Censorship resistant and robust of the system > rushing things scaling wise.

The last "peak" lasted for months, even being from spamming the network, it did negatively affect bitcoin, and increasing the tx capacity would make such spamming attacks harder to achieve and less effective. I'm not asking for bitcoin to handle as many transactions as paypal, but I am hoping for such peaks to never happen.
I have near to zero technical knowledge so I can't say if LN development is going faster or slower than it should be. But I can't see how a faster adoption of SegWit would be "rushing things". SegWit is fully developed and it's the responsibility of wallets, exchanges and other services to start supporting it.

Quote from: BillyBobZorton on March 13, 2018, 04:04:43 PM

If you want to help learn to code and drop good BIPs

I might actually do it :p
I have some knowledge in programming languages like C++ and java, but I don't know what you meant here by "learn to code", do you know where can I start?

Carlton Banks

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Activity: 3430

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Quote from: Oulay on March 13, 2018, 02:49:37 PM

LN is not activated yet.

It's not a soft fork, so it doesn't activate. Your statement therefore doesn't make any sense

Lightning is already running, but still in a beta form. The UX is fairly clunky and there are potential bugs in the various implementations. It's not ready for mainstream use yet.

Quote from: Oulay on March 13, 2018, 02:49:37 PM

Even when LN is activated I don't know if it would solve things up.

The transaction capacity of Lightning is only really limited by it's BTC capacity & it's routing resolution. As long as the incentives work out, it could be so widely used that scaling will rival incumbent payment networks (Mastercard, Amex etc) and completely eclipse SWIFT. How much more capacity could Bitcoin need than that?

buwaytress

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Activity: 2828

Merit: 3487

Join the world-leading crypto sportsbook NOW!

Quote from: BillyBobZorton on March 13, 2018, 04:04:43 PM

We don't need to rush things in order to accommodate a "mainstream demand" which simply doesn't exist, otherwise BCash would have full blocks as well Bitcoin itself. Censorship resistant and robust of the system > rushing things scaling wise.

If you want to help learn to code and drop good BIPs, get nodes running etc.

This has been the oft repeated reality, and one I understood only after many months of using Bitcoin - there is always going to be a need to scale, but the network is far from reaching its capacity with real-world use. Even so, with everything slotted for upgrades, bitcoin's well equipped to handle spurts of growth when it does eventually happen.

As the cypherhunk manifesto says, yes, learn to code... I'm embarrassed that I don't and cannot contribute in this way, but I'd like to think that using bitcoin - paying things with it, accepting payments for it, sending it to people for their very first coins... these also help in small ways. Encourage people to consider using Bitcoin, the way you were encouraged.

BillyBobZorton

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Activity: 1204

Merit: 1028

Have you looked at the mempool lately?

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,1y

It's as empty as it can get. So no, we are far from having real scalability problems. These big ass peaks were obviously abnormal behaviour, either be by exchanges not properly batching transactions, Roger Ver and Jihan Wu spamming the network, and so on. Add in segwit and the mempool is empty. Transactions are now fast and cheap.

We don't need to rush things in order to accommodate a "mainstream demand" which simply doesn't exist, otherwise BCash would have full blocks as well Bitcoin itself. Censorship resistant and robust of the system > rushing things scaling wise.

If you want to help learn to code and drop good BIPs, get nodes running etc.

Oulay

member

Activity: 133

Merit: 37

I have reached a conclusion that Bitcoin has almost got to the highest adoption it can sustain and we can't get to a higher adoption without solving the scalability problem first. As:
Higher adoption ----> more transactions per second ----> higher tx fee/time ----> inability to do smaller transactions ----> less adoption.

We can see this happening when Steam stopped accepting bitcoin in December last year after the high surge in its transaction fees.

What I find weird is how slow things are going. SegWit adoption is low and LN is not activated yet. Even when LN is activated I don't know if it would solve things up.

What can we do to help?
What comes to my mind is that we should start using SegWit addresses for all our transactions. I think if more bitcoin users show interest in SegWit and LN it would encourage their adoption among wallets and other services.
Any other suggestions on how we as a community can help solve the scalability problem?

PS: Though technically it's not a technical question but I preferred to post it here and get useful replies rather than posting in bitcoin discussion and having to deal with all the spam.

Topic: Bitcoin Adoption and the Scalability Problem. What can normal users do to help? - page 2. (Read 375 times)