Topic: Bitcoin Scaling Solution Without Lightning Network... - page 2. (Read 1738 times)

LN is not the solution for bitcoin. because LN is not bitcoin

LN is a separate network <- emphasis

LN is a separate network which many coins will use.

im surprised that people would prefer to defend developers by saying bitcoin is broke and wont scale and the only option is another network
even when it has been made clear that LN have flaws that wont be fixed people continue to push the defend a dev, call bitcoin broke and then promote an alternative network that is not even a blockchain and not even directly tied to bitcoin.

LN is just.. and in simple words a separate project that is just using bitcoins as its trial test coins. but not a bitcoin feature itself

bitcoin has been modified to be LN compatible. much like litecoin, vert coin and other coins.
LN has not been made to only fit bitcoin (whereby being a feature of bitcoin) which is why its not a bitcoin feature. but a cryptocurrency feature.
they are simply currently using bitcoin as their test coin to play off the fame of bitcoin

EG if LN used vertcoin as the initial testcoin. LN devs wouldnt be paid(as much) to develop LN but LN would still be the same network it is today. again for emphasis. its not a bitcoin feature its a separate network thats just playing off the fame of bitcoin because the LN network allow bitcoin access to the network (now bitcoin has been modified to fit LN)

im not saying LN doesnt have a niche. but clarifying that those that want bitcoin to remain the main currency of utility are not realising that LN will hurt bitcoin.
(imagine all the locked UTXO's)
anyway heres a video of the LN dev's themselves actually trying to remind people that the utopia of LN is not as perfect as promoted.
https://youtu.be/8lMLo-7yF5k?t=570
(do not reply about my post unless you have watched the video)
(do not reply about my post unless you are replying to defend the bitcoin network(not devs but the bitcoin network))
(do not reply about my post to derail the conversation into personal attacks of me. as the video itself is doing the bashing. not me)
(do not reply about my post just to promote other networks. because that is not about scaling bitcoin)

You act as if that is set in stone. Like it can't be changed for any reason. If Bitcoin is still around in 2118, is it still going to be this way?


Asking people to compromise with a less secure solution just isn't acceptable. From what I can tell, the BTC network is the most secure by leaps and bounds over any other altcoin.



So the Core team is going to stick to this plan, no matter what? I really doubt they are that inflexible if it appears they can't find an acceptable solution to people loosing coins.

It "seemed" that way. But where are we now? The fees are as low as ever in satoshis/byte. You have to consider that Bitcoin is not Paypal. "Satoshi's vision" of a peer to peer digital cash cannot be achieved on-chain. It is not scalable.


It is reality, and what the market has to offer until a solution is found. What the Core developers will not do is give way to a group of people who want a hard fork to bigger blocks, which will be problematic on its own.


As long as it should take if it has to work well for everyone.

Lightning nodes and channels are increasing. I believe there is more than $1.5 million of liquidity in Lightning, and growing.

This is not an argument. I think you should spend a couple of minutes reading my post, it is not a wall of text after all.

Hashrate and price basically follow each other in a complicated socioeconomic game while price linearly determines how tense are security threats. It is how bitcoin becomes a stable dynamic system that regulates itself to remain in an equilibrium state. Doubling or tripling the hashrate doesn't make bitcoin "more secure", it would be just a waste of electricity.

Developers have a lot of problems to solve, we are already late in terms of versioning, nobody should apply for a premature retirement and we need to recruit even more.

Franky,  based on all of your comment and discussion, much of which I agree with, I think you should look at BlockReduce.

There is also a discussion thread on it specifically.

Basically it is using Proof-of-Work to create a hierarchy of merge mined blockchains.  It allows for incremental work to be used (lower chain blocks) to efficiently group and propagate transactions to the entire network.  I think of many of the people here, you would get it and be able to provide constructive feedback.

here is another way how i see a system where shards could be used, (dismissing my own concerns of masternode monitoring inevitability)

imagine one chain as the master financial audit chain. where the transactions are smaller
FFFFF AAAAAAA -> FFFFF AAAAAAA
                            FFFFF AAAAAAA
in byte count
5 7 5 7
     5 7
=36 bytes

the F is a byte and are an identifier. 5 bytes allow over 1 trillion identifiers
the A is a byte and are coin amount.7bytes allows 72quadrillion so easy to store numbers upto 2.1quad satoshi

and then a shard stores an ID chain
   EG:       FFFFF = bc1q.... lets say less than 50 bytes per entry
and then another shard stores the signatures
  lets say under 100bytes per entry

essentially making the financial chain that audits coins right back to the coinreward(creation)
only using 36bytes of data per minimal tx instead of 225bytes and a multisig of 2in- 2 out being 48bytes instead of 300bytes+

this not only lets more tx's per mb. but brings down the utxo down to 12 bytes per 'address' and coinage

---

ok imagine it. everything got locked down tomorrow. hashrate doesnt evolve. difficulty locks, developers retire and we stay with 10,000 full nodes..
how long do you think it will be before things start to go bad

Nop. Bitcoin doesn't need to evolve because of security. Who says that? It is already secure ways more than necessary, as I mentioned above. It needs evolution for new problems that has been raised recently, the most important one being what we are discussing here: mass adoption and scaling. It is not a security question for me.

There is and there have been no security crisis in bitcoin, forget about bugs, we are not discussing bugs here are we?

Security of bitcoin is guaranteed by its elegant use of game theory in its core model. It is defined as the result of equilibrium between costs of attack and maximum incentives for committing it. It is not just about one side, there is no one sided equilibrium, do you really need to be addressed about this?

As bitcoin price surges the threats are being escalated and difficulty too, it keeps bitcoin safe, just safe, not safer. It does not make sense to say bitcoin is getting safer when threats are getting stronger! Difficulty rise keeps us safe despite the escalated threats. Again, safe and not safer.

because "EB" is a buzzword
EB is for a particular limitd proposal

the way EB handles increments is one way. but i can think of dozens. so again its not about EB.. but about increments without hardforks.
just like mentioning 32mb. suddenly your mind instantly thinks of an existing proposal.
this is not about those specific proposals.

the 32mb is about something entirely different. which is technical. by which certain proposals latched onto. now if you ignore the proposals which came second to the 32mb thing. and then concentrate on the 32mb as its own thing. where many concepts and proposals can develop from. you will see that i am not talking anything about resurecting old proposals. but getting to the root issue of hardforks and the 32mb issue.
again try not to make is a thing about old proposals. but about how to scale bitcoin with known things that need to be addressed.

How do you propose something and then basically say "this is not about the thing I'm literally proposing right now"?  

Perhaps it would allow us to forego the continual hardfork drama, but it's still not remotely as simple and clear-cut as you're making it out to be.  There are very good reasons why people are opposed to such a system and if you aren't even going to attempt to overcome the objections and only talk about the positives, then don't expect people to take this proposal seriously.

anyway once people play scenarios around that sharding will eventually lead back around to needing masternodes (full nodes)
and then once people play scenarios of if a masternode is needed that stores all shard data. why have it separate because the regional nodes are now just lower down the network and of less importance.
and play around with scenarios of if not separate we are back to a single nodebase of code monitoring everything.. it just full circles. that the strongest network is one that is united under one ruleset


fixed that for you.
however having a case where we remove the witness scale factor and have code set in consensus of
4mb pool policy /32mb consensus,
4.25mb pool policy/32mb consensus,  
4.5mb pool policy/32mb consensus

means no hard forks pre increment. and then just some code of when the blocks soft increment by 0.25
again to demyth the PR campaign.
this is not about 32mb blocks.
this is about avoiding 3 years of debate just to perform one hard fork. then another 3 year debate to perform another hard fork
blocks will not be 32mb. they will increment at the pool policy amounts. all monitored and adhered to by nodes enforcing that pools dont go over the policy amount until a coded thing happens that soft activate a 0.25 increment

again to demyth the PR campaign
this is not about EB (trying to turn the debate into mentioning a certain group of people)
this is about allowing progressive growth without hard forks and 3 year debates per increment

or... thre are issues. that the LN devs themselves admit. but some people that want LN to be a success dont want the positive PR train to stop. so will argue endlessly that LN is utopia

here are LN devs themselves saying about issues with LN that wont be fixed.
https://youtu.be/8lMLo-7yF5k?t=570

and yes factories is the next evolution of LN concepts where factories will be the new masternodes housing lots of peoples data and also monitoring multiple chains because they know LN is not bitcoin. its a separate network for mutiple coins where LN wishes to be the main system and leave bitcoin and litecoin as just boring shards/data stores

It doesn't have to be an integer, so let's get rid of that myth too.  Why not:

1.25mb base/5mb weight,
1.5mb base/6mb weight,
1.75mb base/7mb weight
2mb base/8mb weight
and so on?  

It's not just about it happening "over time", it's also about sensible increments.  Based on what you've witnessed to date, it should be more than obvious that most BTC users are in no rush to double or quadruple the base.

People must have a short memory. During the prolonged tx backlog event back in 2017, it certainly seemed that way. Since the tx fee is based on tx size and not the amount sent, people wanting to move around smaller amounts were getting eaten alive with fees. Although a fee of 300 sats per byte is trivial for someone wanting to move around 1 BTC, it was prohibitive for someone wanting to move around 1 million sats.


So the riffraff have to settle for a 3rd rate shitcoin network? Sounds like a vip2vip attitude to me. 


How long has this been in development? I may not be from Missouri, but you still have to show me. Perhaps I will be less critical when and if I see a product that is actually usable and less prone to me losing funds for computer/human error.

bitcoin and crypto is not secure. its why difficulty exists.
yes bitcoin is secure against a CPU attack as it wil require trillions of PC's to match/overtake
but its not secure against certain things though. which is why it has to keep evolving.

only last month there was a bug that could have DDoSed the network

too many people have the mindset that once the titanic is built its too big to fail
once banks are in power they are too big to fail
once bitcoin was made in 2009 its too big to fail.

the mindset should be look for weakenesses find weakenesses solve weakenesses and then repeat
this is why so many ICO's and shardings dont launch. they spread out a utopian dream and instead of finding/solving problems they double down on promoting the utopia and try shutting people up if they mention weakenesses.

true developers want to hear weakenesses so they can fix them. bad developers only want to hear "great job, now you can retire rich"

scaling bitcoin is not a 1mb base block or 1 gigabyte base block argument
so lets demyth that old PR campaign right away

its 1,2,4,8,16,32 and so on.. here is the important thing. over time
just like 2009-2017 (2009: 0.25->0.5 upto 2013  then 2013: 0.75->1mb upto 2017)

so when you mention costs, i have to ask at what cost.
people do not keep hold of and demand to only ever use their windows xp computer forever. they naturally upgrade.
things progress over time.
trying to keep things at floppy disk space / dialup internet speed forever is not natural.

the whole PR campaign narrative of "visa by midnight or else fail" is a fail in itself. the stats of visa are not of one network. but of multiple networks. and then combining the numbers to then assume one network and that bitcoin needs as one network to be that powerful ASAP.


so many people think scaling bitcoin means as soon as code is activated servers and centralisation occur. all because people think 1mb->1gb overnight.

..
as for sharding

imagine there are 5 regions with 5 maintainers per region where the final region(5) is the important one everyone wants to attack
5   5   5   5   5 taking over one region is easy

3   3   3   3   5
                   8 the last region is now being 160% attacked

4   4   4   4   5
                   4 the last region is now being 80% attacked

imagine an outside has 6 friends
5   5   5   5   5
                   6 the last region is now being 120% attacked

thus what happens is a master node that takes in all 5 regions where to break the masternodes rules now requires more than 25 malicious participants to take over the masternodes rules. because the masternode can just reject blocks made by the (8)160%, (4)80%, 120%(6) attackers allowing the (5) to be accepted while wasting the attackers time.
thus keeping the (5) region alive and acceptable

this is why bitcoin came into being because although there are(now) 'pools'.. there is 1 rule all node/pools(regions) have to abide by.
sharding does not solve the byzantine generals rule. sharding are undoing the byzantine generals solution and taking the debate back a decade to what cypherpunks couldnt solve before satoshi came up with the solution. where pools have separate rules.

for instance. in the 5 regions where 5 separate maintainers. without oversight of a master rule the maintainers can change the rules of their region which can affect the other 4 regions.
imagine one region decided not to accept transactions from another particular region. they can do it as they have no masternode that rules that each region must accept each other.

once you wash away all the buzzwords created by the "sharding" community and play out scenarios as a real world usage and not the utopian 'it will always work'... you will see issues arrise.
too many people have a project and only run tests on 'how its intended to work' and not run 'hammer it until it breaks to find the weakeness' tests

take visa. thats sharding in basic form(washing away buzzwords). america decided not to accept transactions from russia because the visa system is separate networks and one network can change the rules and just cut off another network.

however if there was a single rule that all transactions are acceptable. then russia would be treated the same as america. and america couldnt do a thing about it

bitcoins beauty is about how to solve having multiple generals ruling multiple regions but ensuring they all comply to one rule.
and solves how those generals abide by that one rule without having one general.

the answer was everyone watch everything and reject the malicious individuals
we have had "sharding" systems in the real world for decades. sharding is DE-inventing what makes bitcoin, bitcoin

Security, is good but too much security is nightmare as it comes with costs and costs should be paid somehow. Sharding is what we need in over-secure situations where we can safely split.

In the context of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, security is not defined as an absolute measure linearly dependent on the costs of 50%+1 attack, it is just an unfortunate misunderstanding:  Bitcoin has always been secure since the first day while the costs of carrying out such an attack has increased substantially from a few bucks to hundreds of million dollars.

Security is not quietly an 'indexable' measure, saying 'this coin is less secure', 'that coin is more secure' is absurd in cryptocurrency context, the way I understand bitcoin there is no "less" or "more" security, you are secure or you are not ... and wait ... there is a third state:
You may be ridiculously overpaying for being secure against threats that don't ever exist, e.g.  the current situation with bitcoin!

A proper sharding/splitting/partitioning would not put anybody in danger if it is applied to an over-secure blockchain and I'm not talking about an overloaded one, like what OP proposes.

As of your other arguments regarding propagation delay and my block time decrease idea, I choose not to go through an endless debate over this for now but to be clear, I denounce almost everything you say in this regard. Let's do it later, somewhere else.

Then "VIP2VIP cash" is the wrong terminology. Bitcoin remains to be an open system.


No. I already said that users will be forced to use Bitcoin Cash. Other more secure altcoins would be better though.


As any software development project, it may succeed, or it may fail. But Lightning has been developing well, let's hope that continues.


There has been misinformation attempts on the Lightning Network everywhere, made by the people who want all transactions to be processed on-chain, in big blocks, and by all nodes. That is not scalable.

But I will ask around and find a good answer for you.

We are discussing the scaling issue.   You really think the blockchain fee is going still going to be low if and when the demand is 100x higher than currently ? Let's hope if and when that ever happens, LN will somehow ease the risk of losing coins either due to your channel partner closing a channel in an earlier state and you not catching it or you having a system error and closing a channel in an earlier state in error, and getting a penalty. (Or closing it in an earlier state not in your favor.) BTW, can someone get a penalty if they close a channel in an earlier state that is not in their favor? It appears that way to me. Talk about adding insult to injury. Sure hope that I am dead wrong about that. Otherwise the penalty system is a joke.