Topic: Gary Gensler: "Bitcoin is not that decentralized" - page 2. (Read 1105 times)

Each has our own perspective on how they view a thing even if it was wrong. Meanwhile, BTC is decentralized but maybe some thinks it isn't now due to the changes that occurs in the space such as regulation and accumulation (only to name a few) as there might be more than these but for me, I still think BTC is decentralized and will remain like this because I believe that it's not like the other coin that has lots of teams and then lots of supply.

You know, some of them may be untrustworthy and hold most of it and even if not them, investors can do it. Some says Satoshi Nakamoto owns a lot of BTC but I still don't think he will sell it only to make money because his vision is different from the majority.

@franky1: I try to be very synthetic because otherwise this discussion will derail from topic completely. After this post I'll exclusively continue discussing about topics treating centralization dangers in Bitcoin. For the big block and "Lightning good/bad" topics you seem to like so much there are other threads.

1) Lightning providers: Again, the service providers can offer you a credit model if they want to, but this is not like LN was designed. You're confusing the technology with a particular way some providers use it. LN was designed as a prepaid system. I personally don't approve the "credit" business model too much but such models emerging are inevitable, like people holding BTC on Binance (and even "staking" them, lol). I also heavily doubt that 99% of LN users use a "credit" based model.
2) Block size: First, of course, storage is NOT the problem. RAM/Bandwidth/CPU capacity for validation is. My reference is still the Bitfury study from 2015, where the block size which would lead to centralization (where standard commercial hardware would already not be enough) was estimated to be about 4 MB, above all because of RAM usage (if all blocks were 4 MB, RAM usage was estimated to be 16 GB). Yes, 9 years have passed since then, but commercial PC hardware still has mostly 16 GB RAM or less. There are of course high end gaming PCs with 32 GB now but this would barely be enough for a full node when blocks are at 8 MB and not many people have the money to dedicate such a machine to Bitcoin. Thus it leads to .... drumroll ... centralization!
3) Code is beautiful, yes, but please give me a concrete example how you would penalize someone bloating the blockchain with Stampchain NFTs, which look exactly like payments and additionally bloat the UTXO set.
4) Your "evaluate spam by UTXO age" would not work. It would exactly benefit Ordinals/Stampchain-type spam, because people hold these NFTs for a while.
5) I don't say everybody has to migrate to a particular subnetwork, but it will be increasingly beneficial for users to migrate to one of many, or at least to use them for small payments.
6) Full nodes: The idea is that these nodes could provide full validation without full storage. There are for sure challenges but we're talking about future tech here. And I actually would agree with you that while such "ZK nodes" could be attacked in some way full nodes can't, they're not full nodes. This method however seems also promising even if its not using ZK.

4.1mb is not big blocker..
heck we are 8 years passed the cries that 2mb was big. we are even 7 years passed where core devs thought(admitted) that 4mb was not detrimental to the network
thing have moved on since (moores law), even 6mb 8mb today is not "big blocker" detrimental to the network. but dev politics are not ready to change their roadmap

hard drives of 4TB are not $thousands, heck they are not even multiple $hundreds. heck they are not even sing $hundred any more..
a 4TB hard drive that can store ANOTHER ten more years* of block data for the whopping hard drive purchase price of 2tx fee's of 2 months ago congestion rate rate or just 20 tx fee minimum whilst no congestion

i find it funny how people think a $50 hard drive for 14year of old data +10 years* of future data is a economical threat to bitcoin.. but a $25 fee for 1 tx is in their silly minds not a threat but a expectation for the future (facepalm)
funny part is more people have avoided bitcoin due to the fee. not due to hard drives..

so hard drives are not the problem so please do the actual maths and realise those idiots you copy screaming "big blockers" are not talking about 4.1-8mb blocks.. they are talking about GB blocks.. as their exaggeration to their exaggeration of how they want to make bitcoin scaling feel like a non-option by the idiot screamers you copy words of pretending when others talk about scaling (small progressive adjustments via many methods, efforts) are in the minds of the screamers you copy words from pretend scaling is GB network threatening blocks just to try to get the scaling talk to stop. so that the only solution talk is of migrating everyone to subnetworks, because they want to promote the faulty subnetwork as the only option, plus its free promotion if they can get people to not offer other options

by them screaming exaggerations of 'blockchain cant cope with 'big blocks' (exaggerated GB size leaps).. its their attempt to try to quash people from even discussing or making proposals for actual rational SCALING(which is not just increasing blocksize but scaling tx count within blocks via many option),.. the silly idiots want to pretend the only bitcoin options was GB or migrate people offchain..
they dont want people talking about the multitude of rational options.. and just want to pretend those wanting scaling must belong in some GB group of threat.. (facepalm, tut, laugh, shakes head)

(*<600gb so far plus 10years of 4mb(4*525000) = <2.7TB)


do you know whats great about code.. code creates rules, creates formulaes and creates policy
code can limit how many op returns can be used. to ensure tx stay lead.
code can do alot of things..


bloat is detectable by bytes not part of the input output of value
spam can be detected by the UTXO age being spent to often
EG someone with a 1 confirm can be set as a 144x fee to attain priority
someone with a 144 confirm only needs to pay 1x fee to attain priority


and you think dev politics cant be gamed...


subnetworks (next gen not the current flawed sandbox offerings) will have niches.. but to presume every needs to migrate away from bitcoin into the singular flawed subnetwork you promote and idolise.. thats where you lose me and i laugh at you

as for your other assumptions... ill just tut and laugh.. ill give you some more time to actually think about a proper rebuttal rather then the one you gave
hint: recently conjestion was 2500 average tx per 4mb cludgy bloated block paying $20 each last month is where people give up using bitcoin daily and just didnt bother using bitcoin for months.. which leads to centralisation via avoidance
however
(in a congestion scenario of blocks of~ 8mb best case (if things got fully efficient, lean where every byte counts again)

30,000 tx (of lean tx, uncludged block format, de spammed, debloated) $2 per tx during congestion is more for a mining pool then the 2500 x $20 current congestion.. but users pay less
.. its economics. more space for more tx(and more erognomics of the space, and other things) means people pay less.. but total fee becomes more

again ill give you time to come up with a better rebuttal then you just said, and just laugh and tut
the presumptions you make of me are more laughable of the ones i make of you
i have never even said anything that sounds like "lukes way" yet i can quote you many times sounding like the idiot brigade that promote off-ramping everyone over to the single subnetwork they call "solution" and your other sily buzzword you repeat without independent thought


nodes without FULL storage..
nodes without FULL verification..
are not.. wait for it.. [drum role]..... FULL nodes
they would be considered pruned, stripped, bridged, downstream nodes

ill give an example
in the 2016-2017+ era of node versions

a 0.11 (presegwit node) peer connecting to a segwit activated node.. has the segwit active node strip the witness and hands the pre segwit node a stripped block where it does not have the (witness)signatures/scripts/bloat of segwit/taproot ..  but BLINDLY passes them as valid due to the opcode trick segwit/taproot uses to deem data after opcode should be passed without inspection, even if missing signature witness)

these older nodes are not full nodes as they dont validate all data and dont store all data.. so they cant then act as IBD seeds for other FULL node peers to leach blockchain data from

those older nodes then due to how peerconnect works become a under layer of nodes at the bottom of the tier system of network peers
even gmax and his team called these nodes downstream, bridged, stripped nodes

i NEVER said they GIFT you 'free liquidity promotion'.. i said they credit you liquidity(give you a credit limit) which you have to pay back + a fee(interest) for the amount you use
they just call it 'renting' to hide the game of credit

as for you managing your own channel using upfront funds locked by you:
(a) then offer someone balance(renting your balance out) from your channel output which you then need to settle later where they need to pay you for "rent"
or
(B)you want them to equally offer their side balance to you..

you are in (a) a loan manager or (b) each offering mutual loans to each other and settle later

if you just use your balance for you to buy goods or services(no renting out balance).. you are doing a buy now settle later of the goods. where you IOU them. (you took out a loan that settles later)
..if the goods supplier is a hop+ away
you are taking out a credit line with your channel partner so you owe him. and he takes out a pay later loan with good supplier he needs to settle later. where you gets the goods before settling the credit/loan
..
and in all cases of using LN... the payments are not confirmed on the blockchain and terms(states/commitments) can change before settlement . meaning they are all IOU where the IOU agreement can change, until channel is closed and everything is settled.. the only question is who owes who whilst channels are open

so yes LN is a credit scheme, where 99% people are the borrower and only a lucky few get to independently open channels with their own coin locks to be a loan officer

Your analogy is wrong. If I buy liquidity on a Lightning Service Provider, I'll have to pay them. If they provide me some free liquidity at the start as a promotional measure, this is completely independent from Lightning's concept.
If I manage my Lightning channel by myself then I also do an upfront payment to create the channel.
Where is the "credit"?
You can use LN in a "centralized" way "trusting" a third party but that's not the way it was designed. It's like holding your BTC on Binance ...

Everything above 4 MB is "big blocks" in my opinion.

You actually contradict yourself here. If you try to "penalize" spammers then you'll get even more difficult to cleanup spam like Doginals or Stampchain, which are more difficult to detect because they use transactions resembling ordinary "payment" transactions. OP_RETURN was created to prevent that.
The witness discount has its reasons.

Again, how do you want to detect spam not using a known scheme like Ordinals, but another obscuranted method?

In general I'm not against this idea, I have supported it actually multiple times. It could however be quite challenging to find a formula which can't be gamed.

And I guess if you're against L2 solutions then I guess your formula would be quite elastic, i.e. reacting fast to congestion. But as you can't distinguish spam from legit transactions (it's impossible, believe me) then you invite the spammers to spam the network even more with such a formula -> and then you're again helping centralization (Yeah! We're back on topic!). The formula thus would have to be extremely conservative, also to ensure a fee market can develop (fee market does not mean $100 fees though, but it should be able to go significantly over $0.10 in times of high demand.)

I suppose that you have good intentions for BTC, but you're simply unrealistic if you think spamming can be stopped "the Luke-Jr way", i.e. with a hard-coded "spam control" like Ordisrespector.

PS: My personal hopes on how spam could be stopped or at least made less attractive is ZK tech like in this thread, which would allow full nodes to ignore arbitrary data.

Who the heck is Gary Gensler? Is he Satoshi Nakamoto himself? Nope. This is why I find it silly when some people care about some random person's opinions instead of using their own heads properly.

Fact is that BTC itself is decentralised, but some stuff related to it like exchanges etc that require KYC are centralised. They are different.

analogy
bitcoin is the debit card bank account you own for your funds, takes a bit of time to confirm minutes-one day
LN is the IOU game of buy now settle later.. basically credit card.. you need to settle up at end of month-year
majority of LN services offer instant balance.. (meaning no funding lock created to take in your funds to be in your control)
where you then have to pay down that IOU balance at a separate time.. yep LN is mostly more resembling credit card

when over 75% of that 4600 capacity is held by only a dozen services... its definitely more centralised than funds on the bitcoin network


oh here you go again repeating crappy old narratives of a group promoting stupidity and you just blindly repeating it
im not a "big blocker" because the group that push the term "big blocker" are pushing it to mean GB blocks asap extremes

my actual opinion is:
a. de cludging the 4mb block code to not be 1mb base 3mb witness and instead a open 4mb space that can be fully utilised by even legacy and or the other tx formats
    thus allowing more transactions, rather then junk unrelated to transacting
b. penalising the spammers and bloaters(not everyone) so that less spam/bloat = more room for genuine transactions
c. re-implementing hard validation code that counts and validates all bytes to have a purpose and lean preference = more transactions
d. not LEAPING blocksize, nor moving blocksize via core dev politics, but SCALING in adjustments based on fill rate and fee of a math formulae that if reaching a threshold of prolonged congestion, then the blocksize can increase at a set milestone all nodes know the formulae of(much like node know difficulty formulae), a rule in nodes to be in consensus to agree on. without dev politics(god mode) decisions

emphasis scaling not leaping.. (and no dont mis interpret it as "big blocker" narrative of quick climbs to extremes via words you heard from the idiot brigade which you seem to be repeating your many points from
there is more to it then the silly narrative of leaps to GB blocks your crew suggest as the only alternative to LN


funny thing is the idiot brigade group you got most of your talking points from.. are the ones that want the blockchain bloated up with hundreds of millions of unspendable dust utxo with a meme attached, which they dont want stopped
YET
then want real purchases of real goods and services to be removed/stopped from utilising bitcoin and instead done on their preferred(flawed) subnetwork of middle men taking a fee per routed payment

if you had a level head. and a actual inclination to think for yourself about whats best for bitcoin
you would not be following the idiot brigade diatribe of trying to get everyone else off bitcoin and whilst saying that the junk should not be stopped

and yes they want bitcoin to have high fee's because they dont want bitcoin to be used everyday by people, they want people to leave bitcoin and be locked into partnerships on the other system you falsely think is the only solution

You're funny (...not). I suggest you to read my posts in this thread again
For me LN is the equivalent of a prepaid card in Bitcoin's world. It's good enough for small payments. Sounds lame, but small payments are 99% of all payments.
It is not centralized per se, although of course as it's a neutral technology it could happen that its topology is centered in some big hubs, but that can be fixed as barriers to enter LN are quite low.
The solution you seem to be obsessed with, however, has just this problem: big block coins have extremely high barriers for new node operators, due mostly to bandwidth requirements.
And legiteum is completely right about that not every payment has to be recorded by the whole network forever, even if the solution he proposes is ... even more lame than big block coins in my opinion.

(btw, the solutions I'm probably most "OBSESSED" about are sidechains, rollups and similar tech. )

Compare this sentence with my conclusion in my answer to @legiteum, finally something we (almost) agree

Indeed, his confusion is almost certainly intentional and possibly just faked, so he can confuse others.
I completely agree that his statement is in line with his interest, not with the reality. I've said it many times that we should never trust personalities' declarations.

Oftentimes people confuse decentralization with distribution, or maybe I would say fair distribution in this case. Let's also not forget that his final intent is to discredit and take bitcoin down, and this type of declaration are pretty smart because they can actually confuse people when you think about.

I'm pretty sure that he knows exactly what he's doing and saying, he's just saying stuff in his own interest, that is the difference.

What I want to say with that is that they've been working on LN for a very long time--might as well be centuries in the realm of technology--and yet it doesn't come even within several orders of magnitude of being able to handle worldwide transaction volume.

First, it does solve "something": [...]