Topic: Is the Lightning Network centralized? - page 3. (Read 1981 times)

Having a huge block size is very bad for any cryptocurrency nowadays. It increases the level of spam attacks on the network and increases centralization as storage and bandwidth costs increase over time. As such, less nodes would be able to maintain the network, as most people won't be able to cover such high costs. The real deal, as you said earlier, is the verification process.

However, it is trivial to observe qualitatively that the network is quite centralized, and this is only the larval form. If a meaningful amount of capital was actually involved, it would be much more centralized.

There is a good analogon in physics. A  3 body problem is just solvable (very hard!)  - not  a  4 body problem!

And the BFT threshold of 33%

So having 4+ (equally) independent actors  is a good start.


And pls lookup Nash Equilibrium

Obviously, to be exact, one would have to calculate a number.

However, it is trivial to observe qualitatively that the network is quite centralized, and this is only the larval form. If a meaningful amount of capital was actually involved, it would be much more centralized.

There's a mathmetical measure for "decentralization", you can't tell how exactly centralized it is by looking.

Industrial style means scaling in all relevant / needed aspects. It is not about to runnig just more raspis - not if you want to leave the nichy romantics of BTC, sorry.

You need to see how the fintecs - not only big payment processors- scale, that's a different world and decentralization will be there as well, just under big guys - not little home users. I understand all the ranting Lukes - but world is changing and the result will be cheap cash for all.

Coding is just a very minor part in that. Its about hard product delivery and stability for world wide usage. No games and tries with unready insecure LN and 2nd layers.

And no, Bitcoin Cash cannot be compared to ETH - it's main task is cheap cash - not full retarded smart contracts coded in script langs.
BCH will enable ICOs in a different way now (see the Wormhole project or others), that needs some PoW from token emitters - not getting on-chain security for free. (That's my hope), and also forces emitters to check the laws, since only Bitcoin  on-chain will be SEC compliant.

LN and ICOs will get a hefty hit now here: https://news.bitcoin.com/us-government-to-aggressively-pursue-unregulated-services-around-the-world, and I expect more things hitting the romantic soon .

As do I. I see both coins having their own merits. But with Bitcoin having more than Bitcoin Cash.


I do not understand what you mean. Please explain.


But you do not see how Bitcoin Cash is following Ethereum's path to node centralization, scaling their network down? How would that be good for censorship resistance?

Due to long transaction verifiation processing time of bitcoin, lightning network is developed. This network processes bitcoin tansactions through its active nodes located around the world. These nodes make the processing time lesser by almost 50%.

But, the question if this network is centralized depends on these active nodes. Are these nodes come from independent miners or from few big companies? That would determine the degree of decentralization of lightning network.

Lightning Network is totally decentralized. It uses thousands of lightning nodes and channels to distribute transactions. The nodes are decentralized, no need for trusted third-party. Therefore, LN itself is decentralized.

Agree. The Lightning Network as a secondary layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain poses no threat to the cryptocurrency's decentralization whatsoever. If it were to fail, then there would be other layers or sidechains to make Bitcoin scale. The last option available would be the main chain, in case everything fails.

However, I doubt that would be the case since the Lightning Network will improve over time, to become the most decentralized scalable layer for Bitcoin yet. Therefore, I believe that the Lightning Network is the safest way to scale the Bitcoin blockchain, instead of increasing the block size over time which threatens decentralization. Just my opinion

I do not want to do finger pointing.
Yes core devs have done a good job at most of the time , that is not the issue. Core devs are doing a dev job, so what would anyone expect on top? Wanting to be business developers, requirement engineers, change managers or even operational risk managers?

No, I see now that these things will come to Bitcoin Cash in an industrial manner so that institutions (having exactly same setup internally to mitigate risks) will have only one option to move forward with crypto or none, because SEC will kill any other cryptos soon.

Bitcoin is a medium for censorship resistance for me than a "financial solution" for an electronic cash system. It's not an insignificant consumer payments product, but an independent financial system that should be kept secure, efficient and decentralized.

If Bitcoin Cash wants to re-enable and add new OPcodes and increase to unlimited blocks, good. But leave Bitcoin alone. The Core developers have been doing a great job by being conservative and careful.

I think Lightning Network is not centralized? Because of the idea of the Lightning Network, not all transactions have to be recorded on Blockchain. if not recorded on the blockchain. then how do the block strings validate.
No negation of the use of the Lightning Network makes the cost and transaction time shorten, but more research is needed to ensure that it does not affect the block chain.

that thing is too old. here is a better link: https://www.smartbit.com.au/blocks?sort=size&limit=100
so far we have had 17x 2+MB blocks and nearly 100 above 1.5 MB blocks.

Sure? I've still the Bitfury study in mind, where >8MB blocks would need powerful computers with more than 8 GB RAM.  Or has this been debunked? Most computers today still have between 4 and 8 GB, and a LN node with a Raspi has even less.

But anyway, if LN on a light Bitcoin node like Neutrino is secure enough for a full LN node, then the centralization risk I mentioned for a Bcash-based LN does not exist, and I was simply wrong

I'll probably try out Neutrino soon (on testnet) so I at least get an impression how it works.

We had already blocks of more than 2 MB, if I'm not wrong. While Segwit transactions are far from 100% the percentage is increasing, and the Bitcoin services I use regularly now almost all operate with Segwit addresses.

As far as I know lightning network is called to develop the usage of blockchain bitcoin and a lot of regular users will be able to use it more comfortable than before. Miraculous somebody needs to be in charge.

there is more transactions on altcoins but these aren't bitcoin users going there to use altcoins because bitcoin fees were high temporarily. and merchants didn't suddenly decide lets drop bitcoin and go to unsafe cryptocurrencies that nobody has tested or used for payment before that are getting hacked, 51% attacked,... left and right.
these transaction increase was due to the pumps that occurred last year and nothing else.

checking the merchants they are doing the same thing as before. those that were accepting bitcoin are still doing so, those that had additional options like litecoin still do and those which dropped it like Steam never chose another  cryptocurrency they just exited this scene.

and as i said before nothing is solved on BCH. just having bigger blocks is not preventing congestion and higher fees unless you have unlimited blocks or blocks bigger than 1 TB

yes but first of all it is about a decentralized electronic...

there is no argument about the goal but the way to that goal is important because the consequences of choosing different routs are different. some worse than others. increasing the block size is one of those terrible ways that ends with centralization needing middle men in form of centralized servers running the nodes controlled by certain people opening way for regulation attacks and government interference and censorship.
next thing you know you have to use a VPN to be able to hide your IP when connecting to that node to push your tx because that node is blocking your IP because US ordered them to sanction these IP ranges and they obeyed.

well one solution is more decentralization of mining and more spread of these mining pools so that reduces the risk of them cooperating with each other for evil purposes. but also you should keep in mind that miners are also making profit as long as bitcoin is working healthy and strong. such actions are not just damaging bitcoin, they also damage their long term profitability.

yeah i mainly meant the base size of the block without SegWit. that's the real restriction since we will never have 100% SegWit usage in blocks. just like even after all these years there are still people using uncompressed public keys despite them being double the size.

That is where we differ, BTC does not need it any more (today) because many txs happens on other chains

BCH wants them all in the end, and in such a manner, that there is never such a congestion than we had in 2017 in BTC.

Bitcoin is about electronic financial solution, a system for electronic cash and of electronic store of value if you want to highlight that in a separate sentence...

Anyway - no financial participant is interested in congestion if it come to real live usage - that's a no go for small or big participants.

To keep things up and running as stable and secure as possible AND free of regulation attacks and middlemen - there is only one correct way to go.

KISS

Then I believe it would also prove that the Core developers of Bitcoin made the correct design decisions all along. The Bitcoin Cash community did not need to hard fork from the main chain. Bitcoin also does not urgently need bigger blocks now like many of them said 3 years ago.


No latency, block propagation is the real issue, not "more powerful hardware needed".


I agree, a hard fork in Bitcoin is very dangerous. There are too many attackers waiting to take advantage of it.