Bitcoin Forum

Ive been hearing and reading rumors that lightning network could lead to a layer 2 centralization? But at times i can't believe what others call Centralisztion.

Yes I Know a bank or company can open a payment channel but in my eyes, that doesn't make it centralized. I think certain people throw the centralization word around loosely because they have never really experienced true centralization.

any thoughts?

It won't be centralized in the sense of traditional banking centralization. Even if LN is dominated by most people connecting to just a few large hubs, those hubs don't have the level of control that a bank does. You as a user will still be in control of your money, and you can close a payment channel at any time you want. And you don't even have to have a channel with those hubs if you don't want to; LN lets you create payment channels with anyone else.

It won't. If it's true someone can copy their code and make decentralized. Just hope the best for LN

exactly i dont feed into the fud we have alot of crazies in bitcoin

In the very essence lightning is a barrage of hundreds of thousands of unconfirmad transaction and a ledger that keeps updating user's balances within an environment while payment channels are open. If you store your balance sheet and balance sheets of people you interact with and also look for activity of your peers on block chain you will be fine and nobody will have tools to screw you over (i.e. if someone post one of those tx to the block chain you will instantly post your "hostage" tx and will be fine in the end). This will obviously lead to some centralization (i.e. at some point someone will inevitable loose their ledgers and have to trust their peers)

However everyhting changes if you suddenly lose access to your pc or to ability to monitor blockchain for significant amount of time (comparable to lightning channel lifetime). In case of such event you will lose the ability to control transactions and leave yourself for the possible fraud from your peers. The probability of this sort of an attack is tiny and probably will require to hold you hostage till payment channel close, but it exists. This, however should not scare you because hassle required to mess with your lightning node is far greater then just to come to your house and physically take your cash at gunpoint (because it's pretty much same thing, but attacker had also posses certain IT skills).

Another thing, leading to centralization is inability to transfer more funds then you posses. I. e. If your balance is 1BTC nobody can't use your node to transfer more then 1BTC. This will lead to creation of hubs, that will be capable to transfer loads of cash through them. Closer your channel to the hub, easier it get's for your transactions to find their destination. So instead of mesh lightning will probably more look like a stars constellation