But is it malicious segwit or not?
Is it a Trojan horse segwit or not?
Will other(old) nodes be able to function if not upgraded to segwit or not?
Are you joking about a currency with growing blockchain size to Terabytes then how could normal users run a full node after say 4 years from now?
I already suggested a method but I don't know if that is actually possible or can be achieved;
Instead of thousands of full nodes can we have 1000 nodes containing and storing/validating first %10 of blockchain data then another 1000 nodes going with the next %10 of the data and so on to the end, could we treat 100 computers as a single super computer if we were to write the protocol for it?
How come we are accepting the current protocols as the only central authority of network I'm sure we'll do the same with that kind of protocols.
My current own understanding of bitcoin is the following: it has *economic* incentives that centralize it, into a separate industry of "block chain providers" (miner pools / miner hardware owners) and its customers (bitcoin users that want to transact).
The customers need the block chain providers to be able to use bitcoin (that is, to transact) ; while the chain providers sell the chain to the users who pay for it by buying the coins that these chain providers can obtain or invent (fees and block rewards).
This is not very different from a central bank + commercial banks providing payment services to their customers, but there ARE notable differences, nevertheless: there's no organized decision hierarchy amongst the industrials, and as such, these competing entities are for the moment locked in into an immutability of the protocol they use to make the block chain. None of them, individually, can deviate from it ; and there's no global decider for them (for the moment). There's no "board of governors" of the industry of block chain providers.
As a whole, this system works quite reliably. The customers send their transactions to the industrials, who have some incentive to include it in the block chain they provide to the customers and it is almost impossible for any one to deviate from the established rules of functioning, without risking to lose a lot of money. The customers use the transactions to obtain value, to speculate amongst themselves and so on, and this establishes a market price of the tokens they transact ; this market value is what the industrials can obtain from their customers by selling them back the coins they obtained from them or they were allowed to invent from thin air.
This split between industrials and customers is a basic design "feature" of bitcoin, which I consider a big mistake. The other feature, which I also consider a big mistake in bitcoin is its emission curve which turns it into a speculative asset, and doesn't allow it to become a genuine currency. But who am I to consider these features "mistakes" ? They are only mistakes if we wanted to make a decentralized currency. They are not a mistake if we wanted to make a highly speculative asset: in fact, the design for that is near perfect.
However, the distinction between "currency" and "speculative asset" plays a huge role if one were to change bitcoin's protocol. If one doesn't change it, whatever the "original idea" was, doesn't matter, it will do whatever it will do (it IS a highly speculative asset and nothing indicates it won't stay that). If we want to modify it, however, we would need to know where we are heading.
I think that if we want to turn it into a genuine currency, there's no point in twiddling the technical aspects of it, as long as the two basic aspects, industrials vs customers and emission curve, aren't modified to turn it into something that might look more like a decentralized currency: no more "industrials selling block chain", but
users making their own block chain (say, something like PoS) ; and a
flexible coin emission that stabilizes the coin's value. But this is entirely against the religion of bitcoin. So this is not possible.
As long as that is not possible, bitcoin cannot turn into a genuine currency and will remain a speculative asset.
I haven't fully studied all aspects of segwit, but it contains a lot of very smart improvements in the technical details of transaction processing. Purely on the technical side, segwit is a good improvement.
However, segwit got entangled with something totally different, which is the LN. The LN can be a smart idea too. It is however, a totally different concept of transaction, with a totally different trust model. What has screwed up the whole story, is the fact that segwit proponents are LN proponents who seem to want to FORCE bitcoin usage onto the LN, and for that, OFF the main chain. But that is fundamentally problematic in my eyes. The fact that one uses a totally bogus argument, namely the "importance of the non mining full node in Joe's basement", while one ignores entirely the actual semi-centralized true power structure of bitcoin, which is industrials making block chain versus customers using the block chain and paying the miner's tokens, and *keeps a tight limit on on-chain transactions* on the basis of this bogus argument, sounds strange.
Because in order for the LN to be trustless, one needs to be able to settle easily. If not, if ever the on chain settlements are *not in principle capable of settling the entire LN quickly at any moment*, the LN is like "fractional reserve banking" but not in coins, but in transactions. In principle each one of us can settle, but we can't, all of us. In a fractional reserve bank, each one of us can withdraw his money, but not all of us.
In other words, the LN is only trustless, if at any moment, it can settle FULLY on chain. Like full banking: at any moment, EVERYBODY can withdraw their money.
I would be entirely favorable for the LN, if the possibility to settle, for everyone, at any moment, were possible.
