Hash Time Locked Contract (HTLC) payment networks including Lightning Networks and the Layer 2 and 3 technologies have three major problems:
1. They force centralization onto hubs. Those who think this is not true, I can defeat you in a debate even though I will not expend my time on that debate now. Because of this centralization, they destroy the security of both the off-chain transactions, and they weaken the security of the on-chain Nash equilibrium because they create large hubs that hold economic control of the network. Remember as the block reward decreases, Nakamoto proof-of-work looses incentives compatibility to converge on a single longest chain and will fork off into innumerable forks unless there’s a stable oligarchy cooperating. See the Decentralization section of
my blog post. This off-chain crap is the antithesis of the utmost priority on the security of the game theory of the chain which is what gives Bitcoin its status as the reserve currency of crypto (and eventually of the world). So there is no way that shit is going to be allowed on Bitcoin. That stuff will end up pushes off on a Core fork or other fork off from Satoshi’s protocol where the $billionaire economic majority will remain steadfast.
2. None of that shit scales because it drives up the need for larger blocks. Yet larger blocks are not a scaling solution (not the in correct mathematical) definition of scalability.
3. The transaction fees will become too high for users to open a payment on channel on-chain (as they will be competing against the hubs who dominate the available MBs per block), thus LN is going to be a fractional reserve system where users open accounts at hubs as they do with exchanges today.
I explained some of this is more detail at the following linked post (including my critique of layer 2 proposals):
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/limits-of-pow-4435201I figured out a long time ago that on-chain transaction volume scalability is going to come from an altcoin. And that is what I have been working on. If I successfully mitigate the nothing-at-stake, censorship, liveness, and economic capture vulnerabilities of proof-of-stake, then what I will have is far superior to that off-chain crap. Bitcoin will remain the reserve currency. So I hope you understand I need to STFU and work.
I don’t have enough time to get involved in another long argument. I might not reply even if someone thinks I’m incorrect and even if I possess a correct rebuttal. So take this FWIW to you. I’m don’t claim to be omniscient, yet I’m reasonably well studied/researched on technological, game theory, and political-economics issues of consensus ledgers. I roughly guess that I have more specific knowledge on this than Andreas, but I haven‘t spoken with him nor watched all of his videos.
P.S. I’m late to enter this discussion because I was stranded overnight on a two-lane asphalt in the thick of the jungle somewhere in Agusan del Sur with a busted radiator (at 4pm on way back). In the Philippines ever since Duterte was infuriated that some older man with poor eyesight plowed into some teenagers who were probably walking (perhaps even loitering) in the middle of the unlit highway at night (because the government can’t afford streetlights), individuals who are blinded in one eye as I am are unable to receive a driver’s license without a night time driving restriction (or at least not without significant hassles of bribing an optometrist the outcome being up to the whim of the LTO doctor). Seems like rampant discrimination to me. I was told by LTO doctor in Davao to hire a full-time driver. Pfft! Yeah like I need to catch Tuberculosis again (from a driver who has enough money in his pocket to spend at bars with ladies of the night) like I need another hole in my head. So to side-step the restriction, I had to meander some 6 hours drive over to a very isolated provincial Land Transportation Office (LTO) where grease money still works in spite of Duterte’s anti corruption campaign. My year 2003 model SUV is on its last legs. Time to make some money and get a new vehicle and moreover to GTFO out of this backwater place.
Wow bcashers spinning up FUD lately, somethings in the making?
You can’t possibly be referring to my post, wherein I just wrote that block size increases are not a scaling solution. And I wrote that Satoshi’s protocol will win. I hope you understand that BCH is a fork and is not Satoshi’s protocol. Yet I repeat myself as I already wrote this a couple of days earlier in this thread.
Do you Core supporters have only a one track mind?
I've been reading anonymint's writings for the past week or so, which also prompted me to dive into some other rabbit holes.
I'm more convinced now of the dangers of segwit. Don't mistake that for being a promotion of bcash.
I have been following his arguments for years. He tends to predict doom a lot.
Can you argue with
sunspot activity charts and the fact that recently scientists have been able to develop a model of sunspot activity that back tests correctly. It predicts we are entering another Mini-Ice Age. The last one frozen the Thames.
1. You have no clear grasp of what lightning network is and how it works and you dont understand the code behind it.
2. no sense to go further.
get a life.
