Topic: LN: Bitcoin could theoretically scale beyond VISA. - page 5. (Read 719 times)

It's great that developers already see this potential, I think in the next 10-15 years people will radically improve Bitcoin to the point were it will be the biggest threat to banks and other centralized systems. People often say that Bitcoin will be replaced by some new coin, but so far I see that Bitcoin is the only coin that keeps getting improved with every year, while altcoins are just vaporware. Bitcoin is still a great long-term investment now, and not only in monetary sense - people with Bitcoin-related skills and knowledge might be needed in the future.

lol
here we go again. the over promised hyped up LN utopia. and the many sheep thinking its the end goal solution to bitcoins woe's

i really hate it when people say theoretical because they have not ben bothered to do the physical act of using it in real scenarios of real bruteforce testing the system.
the 0.002 is based on a over promised statistic of a rout with minimal hops thats pre setup the route, the hops(channels) in the route are all fully funded and have the minimal fee set up and agreed on. everyone is online and then bam its then timed... in actual fact i dont think even that its 0.002seconds. decker probably just done some maths on validation of signature times to treat payment is accepted, rather than real scenario time

1. it cant do 500 tx a second regularly/everytime guaranteed. that 0.002 is only possible AFTER it has found its routes and only transacts through those routes theirafter.
yet to find a route and make a payment takes longer, because with each hop (channel) it has to pass through causes a payment to take longer. and finding a route that has funds available and an acceptable fee. takes longer

2. emphasis the theoretics are of if you had a active connection to a very nearby channel that is online and active and accepting payments

so imagine you set up a route to buy starbucks coffee. once that route is set up. then yes theoretically you can pay starbucks in 0.002 using an existing route(deckers 500/sec stat). but imagine one of the hops in the route does not have the funding reserve to hotpotato your payment through. you then have to find a new route. which means it wont be 0.002seconds. also this 0.002sconds is for a theoretical route with very minimal hops. as i said the more hops the longer it takes.

also imagine instead of wannting to buy coffee from starbucks you then want to buy groceries at walmart. this is not a 0.002second payment because you have not pre-setup the route and also its harder to find hops(channels) with more than $2 to guarantee payment flow.

3. because not all channels will have say $100 per participant/per channel to hot potato your walmart grocery payment. EG to be a reliable participant in a network of say 5000 users either requires a node to have 8 channels for it to take 5 hops to get end to end
in short to allow everyone just 1 payment. each node has to have $800($100 per channel) on reserve MINIMUM just to allow a few people to make that 1 payment. before some routes have to close

X[$100 - $100]A   A[$100 - $100]B   B[$100 - $100]C   C[$100 - $100]D   D[$100 - $100]WALMART
imagine X wants to buy $100 of groceries. above shows A xinging a healthy route. now each HOP(a,b,c,d) has just 2 channels for easy display
lets see what happens when the payment is made

X[$0 - $200]A   A[$0 - $200]B   B[$0 - $200]C   C[$0 - $200]D   D[$0 - $200]WALMART
X has now paid walmart. problem now is (a,b,c,d) dont have $100 on their side to make another X-> walmart payment.
infact A cant buy anything from walmart because (b,c,d) are empty
infact B cant buy anything from walmart because (c,d) are empty
infact C cant buy anything from walmart because (d) is empty

all that is able to be done is a refund backwards

this is why nodes end up needing more than a couple channels and needing even more funding than $200($100 per channel)
take D for instance if D wants to be a reliable route for walmart just for 4 participants D would need $500 just to allow each participant to buy their weekly shop once each. C would need $400 Bwould need $300 A would need $200 and X would need $100.. and thats without preloading the reverse channels

by reverse channels i mean both directions are not loaded and its treated as a one direction payment x->walmart.. as shown here
X[$100 - $0]A   A[$200 - $0]B   B[$300 - $0]C   C[$400 - $0]D   D[$500 - $0]WALMART
at this point walmart cant pay D anything. D cant pay C any thing. and so on. its not a walmart -> x direction route

anyway lets allow X to buy walmart groceries
X[$0 - $100]A   A[$100 - $100]B   B[$200 - $100]C   C[$300 - $100]D   D[$400 - $100]WALMART
now A can buy groceries
X[$0 - $100]A   A[$0 - $200]B   B[$100 - $200]C   C[$200 - $200]D   D[$300 - $200]WALMART
now B can buy groceries
X[$0 - $100]A   A[$0 - $200]B   B[$0 - $300]C   C[$100 - $300]D   D[$200 - $300]WALMART
now C can buy groceries
X[$0 - $100]A   A[$0 - $200]B   B[$0 - $300]C   C[$0 - $400]D   D[$100 - $400]WALMART
now D can buy groceries
X[$0 - $100]A   A[$0 - $200]B   B[$0 - $300]C   C[$0 - $400]D   D[$0 - $500]WALMART

ok so now all 5 users have bought 1 week of groceries. but now they cant buy next weeks groceries

hopefully this shows that with just being a route of 2 channels would mean that you would have to in a 5 hop system hold $500 to be able to be a route of 4 others and yourself for just 1 payment each.

now imagine having 4 channels, = more funds needed and pre participants routing through you... if everyone were only 4-5 hops away walmart .. then D would need $12100 just for him and 120 others to buy just 1 week of groceries

as this shows.


take a good look at that image.. imagine that after the first week D done the groceries. now everyone needs to refill (close open channels) all over again and the main route A,b,C,D would need to have the big extra buffer reserves for all the connections.. ABCD cant just have $100 in the route reserve. even if they only personally spend $100 on themselves
and this is only amounts for 120 users only wanting to spend $100 a week..
i dare anyone to start running scenarios of a decentralised (non factory hub/node) where by it doesnt require people to have more than 8 connections and doesnt need to be more than 8 hops away.. where by everyone can be connected up to 1 billion people.

do the maths people how many hubs/hops/channels and funding pr channel would be needed for a reliable network of
20,000 people
100,000 people
1million people
100million people
1billion people

you will be shocked at how a decentralised system wont work.

take banks. in america there are 95,000 banks serving 300mill people. imagiine that like each bank branch having 3157 channels (customer accounts)
and each bank has to communicate. there would need to also have
~95000 connections to be 1 hop from another hub(bank)
~308 connections to be 2 hop from another hub(bank)
~46 connections to be 3 hop from another hub(bank)

so work out how many channels each individual person would need to not be in a bank branch hub situation
and how much funding per channel that individual would need.
and how many hops away (degrees of separation) to be connected to everyone

then look at the banker branch situation of hubs with ~4000 channels where each individual is only atmost 4 hops away

youll soon se a decentralised hop model does not work, due to reliance of multiple hops all bing online funded. by the cost to each individual to be funded and the time to route and make payment.

LN's utopia only works in a bank branch (hub) model where your multisig counterpart has authorisation over thousands of users

LN's model/niche/ appeal is not as a scaling solution for everyones needs. it should be treated as a 3rd party srvice managed by hubs(paypal2.0) and used for those making regular paypnts to a regular end recipient..
not a pay anyone anywhere anytime instantly..
but a pay regularly to known recipients service

It is good to see that it can scale + because of the fact that it adds up an extra layer of privacy which is not perfect but at least I am positive about bitcoin since it is moving in that direction. The problem LN can face is slow integration within various wallets and services out there. Because if we are looking at today not many have support even for SEGWIT addresses that begins with bc1.

The concept of LN which stands for Lightening network is pretty amazing. I am hopeful that this will help Bitcoin and other cryptos to flourish even more. This is what we actually need to compete with biggies like like visa,paypal etc.

Bitcoin itself isn't private. It is partially anonymous, your indentity still can be easily revealed. The whole point is that Lightning Network allows for even more decentralised payments. The only thing we need to send a transaction is a connection between your node and the one that is accepting the payment. It can be easily achieved by routing your payment through other participants of the network. Technically, it's more anonymous since no one except nodes which route your payments knows that you are the sender of the transaction.

Thanks for such post. It's a useful one to the newbies or people who harly knows about bitcoin. It shows bitcoin is privately transacted. It safe and secured than other coins. People can have full trust on it. It won't hamper your security issue.

Yes its highly possible that btc may be used as the same option like visa for payments methods and all. Btc has got a lightning speed and a good network as well and also the technology is strong enough to capture the high volume of transactions in real time. May be we may see the same thing in the future and alternative will be ready for making payments mode even more competitive.

Nowadays we all know about bitcoin and this bitcoin is helping us in many ways it gives us that facility to buy restriction free trading. If we want to see our bitcoin in vast area so bitcoin authorities should mutual with visa and paypal system so that everyone can use this frequently. I think bitcoin authority already trying to solve this issues.

This is true, and this is what bitcoin needs to go into the next level of being accepted. If we don't do such a thing, then we're not going to be able to compete in the real world with big merchants such as visa, paypal, etc. If we're unable to get to this point, then we're going to have problems when the network is congested (such as high fees, long wait times for confirmations, and a holdup of the entire network)

I'm really hoping for large-scale LN adoption once it's ready.

lightning network is impressive though, yes the first start and entry was a lil tacky but seem now it's fine.

Nice issue posted for people having lesser knowledge about bitcoin how it works; and how more inventions are being made to make the bitcoin faster, anonymous, and faster as is evident from the following statement provided in the link above post;

Following statement indicating the safety and security of bitcoin;
"In layman terms, Lightning works by opening off chain channels between different participants. A bunch of transactions are grouped together and then added to the blockchain in one large group. The money is held in the meantime and can’t be spent elsewhere".

Fast movement of bitcoin is stated in the statement given below
"According to Decker, each channel can process about 500 transactions per second. With thousands of channels being utilized at once, Bitcoin could theoretically scale beyond not only any other cryptocurrency but any other payment method, including VISA."

Bitcoin will become more and more privately transacted currency:-
"Decker also explained that the Lightning Network will provide more privacy than on-chain transactions. With the transactions being grouped together it would be impossible for blockchain analysts to track who sent what to who"

So we see that not only the present but the future of the bitcoin is more and more bright.

We already know LN or other 2nd layer are the good solutions for cryptocurrency (and some decentralized blockchain) scaling while maintain decentralization and ensure people can run full nodes without very high cost, even though most people haven't realize this yet.
But without user-friendly wallet/client/nodes, LN isn't really useful. But some developer already make one, even though i think it's not friendly enough.

But the part of news that i like is :

Great news from LN: According to Decker


In addition to the talk about scaling, Decker explained that using the lightning network would be impossible to track sending/receiving bitcoins, as long as the user has more than one open channel.
After all this, Bitcoin Cash fans are still surprised by all the positive about the lightning network.

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Read more and source https://coinjournal.net/scaling-layer-2-and-cryptographic-innovations-discussed-at-consensus-2018/ *
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