Second-tier networks such as Lightning Network (which relies on SegWit) cannot be considered as a block scaling solution. LN transactions are NOT equal to Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer on-chain transactions and most Bitcoin use scenarios are not applicable with Lightning Network. LN will also lead to big payment “centers”, and this is against Bitcoin’s initial design as a peer-to-peer payment system. It can be a good method though for frequent and small Bitcoin transactions in certain cases. But we cannot rely on it as a cure for Bitcoin scaling.
source:
https://medium.com/@ViaBTC/why-we-dont-support-segwit-91d44475cc18"ViaBTC" aren't competent enough to have a solid opinion on the lightning network. They are just miners, they don't have the brains and experience on the field.
Let's look at a reputable expert opinion with decades of experience on this very particular field:
http://bitcoinist.com/nick-szabo-bitcoin-censorship-resistance/Now, do you trust ViaBTC and franky1, or Nick Szabo? Choose wisely.
PS: No, normal people outsource this stuff to expert and don't pretend to "read code" and figure it out themselves. All experts agree on segwit being the best solution, there's no conspiracy theory, don't be a child.
I have a background in computer science and I'm able to understand the issues.
Nick Szabo is smart obviously and has a long history of digital currency involved but I find he is becoming politicized in this debate. For example
Bitcoin blockchain itself cannot possibly come anywhere near Visa transaction-per-second numbers and maintain the automated integrity that creates its distinctive advantages versus these traditional financial systems.
These 'distinctive advantages' are subjective. You have to ask questions like:
- How big of a node cost is too big?
- Is Szabo really addressing the topology of the LN and real life use cases for p2p cash? (If so where, I haven't seen it)
- Why isn't Szabo addressing the elephants in the room like 1mb is ridiculously small and can be raised and raising is required for LN anyway?
But to address a bigger issue, its a bad thing to start believing that Bitcoin is so hard to understand than only
a few select individuals should be making decisions. That kind of centralization decision making is antithetical
to Bitcoin.
We all have different levels of understanding and all of us are relying on others to some degree.
- Some know nothing about how Bitcoin works but see enough evidence in the world to trust it.
- Some understand only the basic idea of a distributed ledger secured by incentived nodes
- Some understand many of the Bitcoin components like assymetric cryptography, hash functions, merkle trees, etc
- Some understand the broader concepts like distributed consensus, hard forks, soft forks, orphans, etc
- Some understand related details like coinbase transactions, issuance, etc
- Some understand mining, pools, network hashrate, difficulty adjustments, etc
- Some understand finer details like sigops, UTXO pruning, etc
- Some understand opensource software development, code library management, pull requests, etc
- Some have a deep understanding of the codebase itself through working on it
- Some have expertise in cryptography
etc
We all rely on others, but nothing is beyond understanding, and the more you know, the more
you understand who can make intelligent points about a certain level of Bitcoin. You do not
have to be a core developer to question the blocksize.
To say that a major mining pool doesn't know enough about Segwit to make the arguments
it does, tells me that you probably don't know enough about the various layers of knowledge
that are at play here.
