Bitcoin Forum

In 2017 there was the last civil war in bitcoin. This civil war gave rise to the hard fork to whom that gave birth to bitcoin cash. The reason for the war is because of bitcoin scalability. One part of the network wanted the fork that will make bitcoin have upto 200 and above TPS. But the order part of the network believe that if the change is apply it will lead to centralization of bitcoin. The result is bitcoin cash from bitcoin.

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Some week after the civil war. Pieter Wuille came out with segregated witness. But this one is soft fork. What seg wit did is to technically increase 1mb size of bitcoin block to 4mb. He did this by separating the bitcoin signature data from transaction data. So that there we be more space in the block to accept more transaction. The reason for this soft fork is to solve the scalability too.

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Lightening network has be there before the 2017 war. But is adopting slowly. The Lightening network use second layer bitcoin protocol to process transaction fast and small transaction fees. This one is design to happen not on the blockchain but will be add to the blockchain after transaction. The reason for this too is to solve the scalability.

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On november this year. Important update was made in bitcoin protocol call taproot upgrade. This is design to aggregate the different signatures in one single batch and validate. This help to increase the number of transaction to be made on bitcoin network. This is brought to solve bitcoin scalability problem too.

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My question

• From Ln to sig wit to taproot.  Can we say that bitcoin scalability problem is solve
• is bitcoin TPS officially more than 7 now.

The scalability problem isn't solved. It'd only be solved if there were no fees and the chain could weight us all for free. It's just blunted.

Depends on which transactions you're talking about. Those that happen off-chain or on-chain? The former are obviously much more than just 7. Theoretically, as of November 2021, it can handle up to 40 million TPS (https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1456088664132440069). As for the latter, it depends on the median transaction size. Note that 7 TPS was the maximum. I suspect it hasn't changed much with Taproot.

Wrong. Signatures are still very much part of each transaction and are included in each block.

The reason for SegWit soft-fork was many things (malleability fix, opening room for easy future deployment of new soft forks, ...), one of which was scaling.

That is Schnorr signatures, Taproot is a lot more than that. There is already a lot of topics about it so I won't start explaining here.

Same with SegWit (witness version 0) this is doing a lot more than just scaling.

Scalability is not something you just solve once and be done with it. It is something you have to keep improving based on new development in technology and hardware.

Ok. Which means the scalability problem will not be solve for ever.
Also I mean the one that happens on chain. The ones that happens off chain are not suppose to be counted in my opinion so.

Please explain this well for me.

Signatures are the important part of the transactions, which means they cannot be thrown away because if it were otherwise we would end up with the whole bunch of transactions that could be spent by literally anyone in the network. Segwit doesn't separate signature data from transaction data, it simply moves actual signature data and other data that is used to verify a transaction (aka "witness data") to a special part of a transaction called "witness." Non-SegWit nodes don't know that this special field of SegWit transaction even exists, but they still consider these transactions valid if miners that had upgraded to SegWit included them in a block. So, in SegWit the actual signature data remains a part of the transaction, but it is not visible for older nodes. The fact that these non-upgraded nodes don't see witness data along with other data in transactions gives people an illusion that this data is somehow "separated" while in reality, it is not.

No, the scaling issue has not been solved yet. While Taproot and Segwit were both steps in the right direction, we still have a long way to go.

The lightning network itself still have scalability issues to solve when it comes to larger payments. Don't forget that while the lightning network is brilliant and will scale bitcoin tremendously, it is not the end-all-be-all for bitcoin's scalability issues.

After we give up on the idea that bitcoin is going to replace fiats (compete with visa) - 2017 bubble paradigm - and focus on "digital gold" "safe haven" "plan b" paradigm that is currently driving bitcoin price ... 7 tps is enough ... problem solved by changing bitcoin narrative/usecase. Current BTC transaction cost is below 1$, no one need less if your competitor is no longer Visa (24 000TPS and free for end user) but ... gold with 0 TPS, or rather 1 transaction per 2-10 working days via DHL/DPD/UPS/FEDEX for a fee of 2-50$ with shipping insurance XD.

You also forgot to add one big thing. Alternative chain solution (wrapped bitcoin) that is being used by arbitrage traders, traders, workers, and many more to move bitcoins from exchange x to exchange y faster with 0.0000055 withdrawal fee instead of 0.0005 BTC. Also average trader is no longer trading BTC/ALTcoins  (2014-2017 70-90% of altcoin trading volume was made by BTC/ALTcoins trading pairs) but rather USDT/Altcoins so he moves tether all around the exchanges rather than bitcoins.
I think it lower bitcoin onchain traffic a lot.

Thank you for this kind explanation.
Yes, is a big omission. WBTC deserve a place here for the role in solving bitcoin scalability problem. Especially in Defi and smart contracts. But my problem is some kind of centralization before you recieve WBTC

How does WBTC solve Bitcoin scalability again? If anything Ethereum is far more expensive to transact with; not to mention that WBTC doesn't inherit the security and decentralization of the Bitcoin network. You're simply not going to get scalability on the base chain without sacrificing security/decentralization.

WBTC is certainly not something we consider a scaling solution. WBTC is used to add liquidity to DeFi platforms on the Ethereum network. When you hold wrapped bitcoin, you are not holding bitcoin; you are holding an ERC-20 token.

Let's also not forget transacting on the Ethereum network right now is insanely expensive. While I can't say this will be the case in the future, it certainly doesn't look like a scaling solution now.

security?? um.. ASIC miners dont have hard drives, dont touch blockdata. it doesnt matter if a block is 1mb or 100mb. an asic just handles header data and a hash. (always the same size)

decentralisation?? um, we are not in the 1990's of dialup and floppy disk drives where by 1mb every 10minutes is unsustainable.

its 2021. we have 4tb hard drives and 900mb/s fibre internet.
seriously, why are you trying to push old outdated FUD propaganda to try making bitcoin appear to be useless to users.. are you really that much of a altnet fan and bitcoin hater?

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that said. there are altnets, like sidechains and LN that have their niches. but they should not be considered as the only option people should be offramped, as a solution where people should avoid using the bitcoin network for months on end..
 as THE ALTNETS have their flaws and security risks and centralisation issues.
other networks, even if branded or sloganed as being bitcoin. are not bitcoin.

having to 'federate' the coin locks in either a side chain management firm or a conglomerate of corporate LN hubs in a hub/spoke model is more risky offchain, than actually having individuals with their single signer privkey independence on the bitcoin network.

i cannot believe in 2021 people are acting like kodak in 1999 saying that digital memory wont replace 35mm picture film "cos digital storage cannot scale"

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to answer the topic creators question

bitcoin even 4 years after SW and 12 years in total has not ever had a single day that has seen 604800 transaction (7tx/s)
7tx/s represents 4200tx every 10min. or 25200tx an hour. there has never been a single hour that has offered 25k tx.

however they have had blocks that are over 2mb but only containing silly amounts of transactions like 230tx
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/540107
(sarcastic thankyou(real facepalm) to segwit for that bad efficiency example)


this is not because its technically/physically impossible to increase the transaction count. but is due to politics of developers saying they dont want to allow it, because they can make more profit/income from selling alternate network solutions by hampering bitcoins ability
('we dont want people buying coffee or pizza using bitcoin' (facepalm))

A centralized exchange (ie. Binance) is not a good source of knowledge. Stick to reliable sources such as the bitcoin wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page) or forums such as this place or SE (https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/).

The explanation given by Binance Academy is very misleading. SegWit does NOT reduce transaction size, in fact in some cases the size is bigger. It also does NOT remove or separate signatures from transactions or blocks. You can not do that, otherwise anyone would create transactions without a signature and spend anyone else's coins.

What SegWit does is that it introduces a new concept called "weight" that is 4 MB and a new field is added in each transaction that can contain the "witness". This new field is NOT separate from transactions, it is still part of each transaction and is included in each block. The new nodes will use it to verify each transaction in a block.

The part that creates confusion that leads to wrong statements by those like Binance that you quoted is that "weight" of SegWit transactions can be lower than legacy tranasctions (not their size).
Also in order to let old nodes (that are no longer considered "full nodes") to continue to sync, the full nodes strip this new field before sending transactions or blocks to them.
This way block size was increased without needing everyone to upgrade, and that means more transactions can be included in blocks so bitcoin scalability was improved.

Can you then definitely say that Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin Cash SV has solved the “scalability problem” just by forking to larger blocks?

OP, onchain scalability will only be “solved” if the network’s transaction throughput can be increased WITHOUT sacrificing decentralization.

There are wrapped BTC tokens not only on ETH but also on BSC, KCC, SOL or even TRC20. And how does it help bitcoin scalability? It takes out all the load made by people who wants to transfer bitcoins from exchange x to exchange y without paying ~25$ fee (standard BTC withdrawal fee is 0.0005 BTC). You dont need security/decentralization for this purpose (transfer of value from risky place - exchange - to other risky place - other exchange). Who does that? Mostly arbitrage trader balancing their portfolio but also BTC/altcoin traders who does not touch stable coins.

https://bscscan.com/token/0x7130d2a12b9bcbfae4f2634d864a1ee1ce3ead9c
 I was looking at this adress a while and there is like ~20TX per minute - ~5% of BTC chain max traffic (7 TX/s) took off.

1. High BTC withdrawal fee is caused by exchange greed to earn more profit. In fact only small fraction of the fee is used to pay Bitcoin transaction fee.
2. WBTC require you to trust BitGo, read https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/100844 (https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/100844) for more info.

ad.1 I know and its very interresting ... why exhanges charge ~25$ fee for btc withdrawal while network fee is around 80 cents currently (24.2$ is pure exchange profit). And only .00001BTC - 0.47$ for BEB-20 BTC withdrawal (hotbit) or 0.0000055 - 0.25$ (binance) while network fee is ~10-20 cents (5-25 cents exchange profit, why not 20$?)

ad.2 Does it matter if all I use WBTC for is tranfer of value form one place where my money are exposed to exit scam 24/7 (exchange x) to second place where my money are exposed to exit scam 24/7 (exchange y). Safety of fraction of my trading portoflio during 30 sec transfer is not worth 25$ making it perfect solution for this purpose especially that rest of my portfolio is stored on bitcoin chain in cold wallet.

I won't answer to your post as I'm a little tired doing this constantly, but I'm going to say this:  The above works oppositely too. Didn't the miners want bigger blocks so they can increase their profit? Invalid argument.

We've said this repeatedly, increasing the block size isn't going to do anything in the long term. It can only satisfy temporarily...

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As for WBTC:  An IOU represented into block chain. Comedown...

This question and the arguments are irrelevant to the topic at hand. You are focusing too much on a very special use case in a very short duration of time whereas the topic of discussion is bitcoin scalability and how a centralized token on a centralized platform with many different risks has nothing to do with bitcoin scalability.
Otherwise you are right, there are altcoins that serve certain purposes for traders like Tether for example even though they are very risky.

Ok, but when will bitcoin be "scalable". It all depends on how we define its purpose. It will never be as scalable to outperform visa to serve as everyday payment solution for whole word (7.7B people). But if we are talking about bitcoin as "digital gold" "plan B" product ... 7tx/s may already be scalable enough at least for now (empty Mempool for last 6 months proves that). Because we need high decentralized, high secured chain for storing coins on coldwallets and to transfer them once per ... 1 moth - 10years ... depends how good hodler you are. We can use off-bitcoin-chain solutions (WBTC) for everything else. And it already started. As I pointed before. BEP-20 BTC is already offloading somewhere around 30k TX daily which is 5-10% of all transactions of bitcoin chain. Its aint much if you want btc to be as scalable as Visa, but it is enough to help BTC be <1$tx "digital gold" chain for a little bit longer.

And I agree that WBTC and other solutions that uses other, less secured, more centralized chains/products is the worse place to hodl your bitcoins, but they are perfect in some situation (one mentioned by me earlier - transfer bitcoins between exchanges) what offload traffic on main BTC chain which is ment to be used for much more serious stuff.

More then 7 tx/s would definitely be nice. But problem is going even to 500 would probably need a complete redesign. But without a redesign new chains will technologically  get better and better and the gap will widden. Not sure how long will the gold narrative last....

New chains are not technologically better. They are faster ... but less secured. They achive better scalability at en extend of decentralization. BSC for instance has only 21 validators. So 500 tx/s does not require complete redesign ... it needs bitcoin to resign from current level of decentralization (I hope to never see that because we need 1 super secured chain without compromises to store wealth in it).

How long will gold narrative last? Well its not going anywhere. Inflation is going up, printers doing brrrr, cbds are about to be lauched. We never needed btc as much as we need now. Gold, as store of value narrative is here with as for millennia starting from antiquity. Now bitcoin presented more scarse, easier to transfer, simply better solution. I dont think it will change anytime soon.

Some people still compare Bitcoin (the network) to a payment processor such as Visa. However, they don't understand that Visa is a second layer, built upon currencies. Bitcoin is the first layer; it's the hard cash. Second layer solutions, such as the Lightning Network, make transacting go millions time faster.

Picture it as following; bitcoin is a type of metal and you ought to store it in a safe place. However, you can't pay with a metal for everyday transactions. Thus, you go to a guy who's willing to give you the option to give him a portion of your bitcoin in exchange for the ability to create agreements with other people who have also given their bitcoin this way. Now you can transact without touching your metal at all. It's faster, cheaper and smarter way to transact.

That being said, add that this guy cannot cheat or lie to you in any way. You've handed out your coins, but they can't steal them from you. You're free to withdraw their promise for BTC anytime you want without their permission. (Which means that, essentially, it's not a promise)

Fuckin' genius I'll say.

We already did outperform VISA when we introduced the second layer solution called Lightning Network.

All the security, centralization, etc. are true but another big problem with these "options" (not solutions) is that they have no link to bitcoin and they have absolutely nothing to do with bitcoin. Just because with some market dynamics in some centralized exchanges you can dump one of these tokens for 1 bitcoin that doesn't mean they represent bitcoin. You may some day face a problem where 1 WBTC is equal to 0.1 BTC and there is nothing stopping that from happening.

In technical view you can say that a second layer like LN depends on bitcoin and what you have there is directly linked to bitcoin and its chain. If bitcoin stops working, LN dies with it too. But if bitcoin stops working WBTC will still stay alive and vice versa meaning when the token platform goes away or maybe they do another roll back WBTC will vanish while bitcoin still remains intact.

i understand LN fangirls mindset is like saying
'we out performed bank wire transfers of dollar by introducing visa'
but remember visa is a separate payment network than bank wire and "visa" is not "dollar"

try calling LN a multi crypto fast payment network, to actually describe what it is and does (its actually good PR for you fangirls).. pretending visa is dollar2.0 is inaccurate.. as is calling LN, bitcoin2.0

oh and LN did not out perform visa by any metric
there are only under 32 thousand users on LN
(32k nodes, but multiple nodes owned by same people EG LG-BIG has over 40 nodes alone)

visa has done 188billion transactions in 2020 (transaction count not economic value)

Off-topic: I get you're trying to deride us, but what's so deriding about fangirls?

Neither is bank wire. They're intermediaries which give you IOUs.

Who called Visa dollar 2.0 and who the Lightning Network bitcoin 2.0?

Here's a metric: Currently, the Lightning Network can handle 100x of what Visa can. BTW, I don't care what millions of people do. Thousands of millions of people use Facebook. I don't. Same applies for my money; I know what's better and I choose to use it.

so need me to quote your "layer" stuff you say everytime. pretending LN is a thing fixed to bitcoin, and a solution, next gen offering of bitcoin.. sorry.. its a separate network that fits different blockchains. its not bitcoinL2 at all..

millisats are not a thing bitcoin understands.
millisats are a unit of measure signed into a "promise"(commitment) (IOU contract) on the other network that are not settled within that network, so very much an IOU . a completely different contract than the one that vaults and unvaults the real asset

but thank you for taking my post personal, its an admission you are one of the fangirls.

even the "liquid" teams are trying to untrain each other from calling liquid a bitcoinL2
here is an example of how they explain liquid
" Anyone can issue new assets on Liquid, including stablecoins and security tokens. Each asset can be traded freely within the network, taking advantage of Liquid’s privacy, speed, and secure trading features."

they even now say they transact "liquid bitcoin LBTC" rather than saying they are transacting bitcoin BTC. so they are trying to separate the differences to avoid confusion


picture it this way. you both lock up gold in a safety deposit box which has 2 keys.
add to this that the other guy can find different ways to open the box and take funds not promised to him by displaying to an auditor the wrong contract

and separately away from the safety deposit box you both sign unsettled IOU promises over who deserves what share of the box contents. requiring both to agree and each others permission..

he can also have this same setup with other partners. and so you all pass favours between each other, valued in this different unit of measure.. swapping value in the form of IOU, like pass the parcel

yes you can later create a formal request in gold value, that has rounded up-down the IOU promise value unit..  you both sign and both keep a copy as a more formal contract.
eventually to show the box auditor who deserves what using the more formal contract. but the auditor allowing you to take the contents does not know if the contract is number 5 minus 1, 10 minus 3 or 20 minus 7 and its then a fight over a punishment if one party showed the wrong formal contract to the box auditor.

not the LN payments (parcel swaps) are IOU. in every sense..
the settlement contracts are a different contract. not to be confused with the LN payment iou's

Literally, every time you change the subject of the topic just to make yourself seem right about one of your claims. And you're also being rude. I'm trying to understand and justify your hate about LN, but utterly fail. There's probably something wrong with you.

Millisats is a lightning thing, but the amount is rounded down when the channel is about to get closed and the commitments are signed in BTC. So, if you had 1mBTC and 1msat in the LN, you'd have 1mBTC funding commitment transaction ready to be broadcasted in the Bitcoin network whenever you wish to.

Leave liquid out of this. We're talking about the Lightning Network now.

this topic is about BITCOIN scalability..(not altnet advertising as bitcoin scaling)
when altnet fangirls confuse the topic pretending LN is bitcoin.. i turn up to explain the differences

i am the one explaining that LN is a millisat thing.. and a separate network thus not to do with BITCOIN SCALING
LN is more about removing bitcoin users and utility.. taking people away from using bitcoin daily

.. so why are you, (a person that says LN is a bitcoin thing), now correcting YOURSELF that its a LN thing. but wording it as if you are correcting me.. where since the start i have been separating the 2 things all along, and you havnt.

also you would not have a funding commitment ready to broadcast. you would have a settlement commitment
again different thing

funding = lock/vault/marriage into partnership/deposit into safety deposit box (sat measure)
ln payment=iou promise (msat measure)
settlement= unlock/unvault/divorce out of partnership/withdrawal from box (sat measure)

please notice the 3 separate types of contracts/commitments/agreements/promises.. and stop confusing by pretending its all the same, and definitely then dont make a later post correcting yourself but pretend your correcting someone else as that makes you double misguided

when married and agreeing to share certain amount of each others wealth in a prenup.
whats promised and altered in private when in bed with a partner playing around, is different to the end divorce contract when you separate.
worse case scenario. if the divorce agreement is not what is fairly agreed when you decide to separate. the prenup clause in instated. voiding out whatever bedroom promises you made to each other

a divorce is more linked to the pre-num at marriage, than it is to the private promises you make under the bedsheets during the marriage.

if you cannot tell the difference between the notarised fully audited and accountable contracts of marriage and divorce papers(bitcoin) vs the playful promises in private. then you might get royally screwed if you ever end up getting divorced

Number of nodes =/= number of users. It is not mandatory for nodes to advertise themselves publicly. Mobile wallets usually run either eclair or LND and they are not included in any metrics. They are also far more easier to use, so I wouldn't be surprised if 32 thousand users was a great underestimate.

You don't get to define or dictate what scaling looks like for everyone else.  

https://i.imgur.com/tC5uumk.png

You are welcome to your opinions, but they are only opinions.  Just because you believe that the only "true" Bitcoin scaling is purely on-chain, that does not mean everyone else has to recognise, agree with, or respect that belief.  If a majority of people decide that scaling does look like off-chain payments, then you don't have to respect our opinion either, but you will never stop us talking about it.  We clearly outnumber you.  Majorities are powerful in this space.  You find yourself in a weak bargaining position, yet you still choose to bark orders at us as though you had some sort of right.  Get over yourself.

Further, you can't achieve your goal of on-chain scaling without the agreement and cooperation of others.  Consider that you are already asking more of those who secure the network than they are willing to give you (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5378173.msg58859594#msg58859594).  You don't have a valid counter-proposal.  You've painted yourself into a corner and have no other avenues open to you.  You are isolated and powerless.  You sit there and whine about losing while others get on and actually build infrastructure that people are adopting and utilising.  

Given that you clearly don't play well with others and generally come across as an unbearable jackass, how do you ever expect to get anything accomplished?  This whole concept is collaborative.  People opt in to the parts they find useful.  And the more people who do that, the more useful it becomes.  Literally nothing you do is in any way useful.  You've been at the same decidedly abrasive and unsuccessful tactic since 2016.  Perhaps it's time for you to try another approach and stop being so insufferably tedious.  Constant repetition of your mindless soundbytes is not furthering your cause.  There are more constructive paths than incessant, petulant complaining.    

Btc has a scale that is limited.

Maybe one of the best definitions of Bitcoin.

common sense, defines what scaling bitcoin looks like

taking people off the bitcoin network by advertising another is not scaling bitcoin by any sense..
telling people that bitcoin should not grow in transaction count is not scaling bitcoin
telling people not to use bitcoin for daily spends is not scaling bitcoin

scaling bitcoin is about allowing more utility on the bitcoin network

something altnet fangirls will never understand or admit to understanding. because all they care about is offramping utility away from bitcoin and getting users to use their altnet and silly promise agreements that can be broken, defrauded and scam value away from people in many ways

well yes the usual dozen fangirls do equal more then me, one person.. you can do simple maths, weldone

but to think that because you are talking to me now. means i am the only person on the planet that wants bitcoin scaling, shows that you miss the basic common sense that it is not just me reading these messages.
i have always(even when writing to fangirls). explained my thoughts not just to those fangirls. but to the wider readers of this forum. i have always kept in mind its more then just you reading this.  you however write posts towards me as if its a private message meant only for me.

you forget that its a public forum. you forget there are other people. and although your clubhouse of buddies might have made many others shy away from correcting you lot, due to your own hostile tones and then pretending to play victim when you get hostility in return (the ol' 'poke the bear, cry when bit' tactic).

just because i dont fear you, and i have no issues correcting the altnet promoters. does not mean im the only one that see's the flaws in your rhetoric

i know im ruining your PR campaign which centers around stealing bitcoin loyalty and fame and brand recognition... but recently i actually tried to help guide you fangirls in how to actually advertise your altnet honestly and actually gain proper users.. (if you cared about actually explaining the differences between the networks to show the niche). but instead you fangirls just got angry. and wanted to continue confusing other readers by remaining in your ignorant stance of pretending LN is bitcoin2.0(bitcoinL2).

this topic is about BITCOIN scaling.. emphasis BITCOIN
so yea when i see people advertising other networks that use different unit of measure, not a blockchain and not even transaction format that bitcoin will use as "payments" where it involves taking people away from bitcoins network. i will call such people out and clarify why it has nothing to do with scaling BITCOIN

It isn't increased to 4MB. Best estimates in real world scenario puts it at about ~2MB, a little bit higher maybe.

Not really. Taproot does help to scale but it doesn't have as much impact as the others. Taproot is relevant in specific scenarios but doesn't bring about a scaling across all of the different uses.

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The thing about scaling is that it won't really be solved, just alleviates the problem at a certain stage. LN is not the solution that magically solves the problem with on-chain capacity, because it merely shifts to 2nd Layer settlement which still requires on-chain transactions. If you need scaling, then you have to either increase block size or reduce the size of transactions, for which the former is easier.

Again, for the record, using it solely to scale or viewing on-chain scaling as the only solution to our problem is not correct. You will hit the wall at a certain point which makes it infeasible to scale further.

taproot doesnt help scale bitcoin.
what it does is for those that produce bloaty transactions and even more so multisig transactions they can opt to put their value into a new multisig that can the reduce the 'weight' of the transaction.. thus may reduce some bloat.
but its not a thing everyone has already opted into or is on default to be a bloat reducer just by transacting normally. it involves changing the way you transact in a different transaction format, different address.

the 4mb 'weight' rule is not allowing 4x more transaction capacity. instead its a mis-count(bad math) method of ignoring certain data aspects of certain transactions to cause a block to appear as allowing more data(bytes) without breaking a 1mb rule the devs have yet to find the courage to remove.
if the rule was actually 4m of proper maxblocksize rule without the cludgy math, then more transactions could be allowed
best estimates of average blocksize is 1.3mb
https://api.blockchain.info/charts/preview/avg-block-size.png?timespan=3years&h=405&w=720&daysAverageString=7D


bitcoin was able to do blocks with over 2500tx a block before SW, but has still not really moved up much, if any. even a 1.3x increase would be 3250tx average.. but we are not seeing a 3250tx average
https://api.blockchain.info/charts/preview/n-transactions-per-block.png?timespan=3years&h=405&w=720&daysAverageString=30D


these features of SW are more gateway TX formats to lock funds up to be used on altnets. TR is being more used for altnets like liquid sidechain for their privacy tools.

yep the altnet girls have been demanding features for their networks while pretending it will benefit bitcoin.

as you might notice in the 2 charts..
transactions per block has decreased over 3 years but the data per block has gone up.. not helpful at all

Then start demonstrating some.  Common sense would suggest not every job demands a sledgehammer.  Sometimes a small hammer is more useful.  Not everyone needs to drive a bus when a small car or even a bicycle can sometimes be more practical.  Bigger isn't always better.  Same applies to blocks.

Forcing everyone to accept bigger blocks is not sensible.  There are consequences which you never admit.



If we accept your premise that larger blocks offer more utility, then you should have no problem explaining why everyone hasn't switched to BCH.  It's everything you claim Bitcoin should be.  They are doing everything you want us to do.  Why should we copy their approach when it isn't working for them? 

I take the stance that having a choice between on-chain and off-chain unequivocally offers more utility versus not having that choice.  That's common sense.  I would also posit that if off-chain transactions didn't offer more utility, people wouldn't be using them.  But they are.  People find this technology useful.  More useful than larger blocks.  Acknowledge this fact.  Learn to accept it.



Believe me when I say that I absolutely would not waste my time responding to you if this were a private message.  It's precisely because other people can read this that I choose to challenge your hard-line fundamentalist dogma.  I want people to know that you are an authoritarian wingnut and you wish people didn't have the freedom to transact in a manner you don't personally approve of.  I want other people to have a better understanding of consensus than you do.  It's also important people understand the consequences of a diminished node count if people ever became disincentivised to run full nodes because the distributed ledger which underpins our network became prohibitively costly to distribute.  You believe that only large corporate entities need to run full nodes and I want everyone to realise and understand the threat that would pose to decentralisation.  But you will never be honest about any of that.

It turns out common sense isn't that common.

It does. With only two transactions they can make nearly unlimited transactions. Thus, it saves up space from the Bitcoin network as those transactions would happen on-chain.

Bullshit. You just derail the threads with nonsense we can't understand and that's why we give up after a certain point. You don't shut our mouths with strong arguments. You keep saying the same things, “LN is not btc”, “millisat is something btc doesnt understand”, “LN is an IOU”, “LN fits another blockchain”.

I find the following accurate;

Be aware, franky, that this kind of behavior is against the project you're supporting a decade now.

yawns at the two LN fangirls desperate to cling on to their beloved altnet projects utopia,

heres the funny thing. as the reward dicipates miners rely on fee's more. if the blocks are stuck at a sub 3000tx, guess what
when miners require more then $800k of income to keep the difficulty up per block. that means each transaction needs to cost $300.
if people are being forced to pay $300 to transact on chain. they will just stop using bitcoin. and instead invest their wealth in altcoin assets with cheap onchain fee.. meaning if they are not using the bitcoin blockchain regularly they wont be full nodes for the bitcoin network also. thus a snowball effect.

its actually the transaction fee that will decrease full archival node counts decentralisation, more so than the 1990's fake fears of storage limits of hard drives

its not a case of their exaggerated propaganda of "bligblockers want 100mb blocks by tomorrow". the real idea of SCALING is progressive periodic increases

why is this important to altnet fangirls to populate their altnet and drive people away from bitcoin.. well its the old gold-bank note economics

people deposit gold(btc) in the early day into vaults(contract locks), get to play with a payment system of IOU banknotes (millisat promises). then when trying to settle the promises for assets(blockchain coins), they are told it would cost them $300 to settle to gold(btc), or they can have these nickle and copper coins(altcoins) instead for a settlement cost of $1.. and guess what happens. people stop taking their gold(btc) back and just play with nickles and dimes(altcoins) when they dont want bank notes(ln millisat promises)

its not a new or innovated economic model, its the oldest economic model there is.
and the LN fan girls know it.

they dont care about bitcoin. they dont care about:
maintaining the bitcoin network with archive nodes. they are prune node lovers
reasonable fee's per transaction, they want fee's to be high per transaction.
helping the network keep the difficulty difficult to attack
more tranasction onchain to keep the individual fee per transaction cost down

they want those running LN 'full nodes' to prune the blockchain after IBD and pretend they are supporting the bitcoin network even when they are not.

they want to convince people that bitcoin cant scale

they want to convince people that LN is the only option to spend their wealth on retail products and items

completely shameful these fangirls are. all they care about is steering people away from bitcoin and the btc asset, just so they as LN hubs(banks) can take the btc off people at settlement and swap it for altcoins.

the only reason why these fangirls think they have a valid mindset for their actions is the same dozen groupies merit each other to pat each other on the back.. which is a form of cabin fever, and 'special boys club' mentality.

Classic, classic franky. Keep repeating the same things... All over again, and again... Until his interlocutors stop talking. Pretending like we don't exist, like our arguments are completely invalid. This is known as phychological projection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection).

You're so convinced to be right that you've gone stone-deaf over the years. Well guess what: I'm not gonna give up this time. I'll say the last word.

This is another thing we've said gazillions of times. First of all, the existence of LN doesn't disappear on-chain transactions. It just makes it work more efficiently.

Secondly, you don't know what the price will be. Even if you increased the block size, if the price remains the same they'll stop gathering $800k at some point in the future. Only if the price got doubled on every halving they'd retain their income. Time has shown this never happens. The block size is neutral to security. The factor that affects the security is the market value which is essentially the incentive of the miners.

However it may be a good idea to increase it in the far future as even the closing and opening channel transactions will cost a lot. All I'm saying is that we should not rely on it. It's clear enough that you can't fit the entire population in a decentralized system. You need off-chain solutions.

With a very significant difference:  There's no trust. In those days you're referring I had to trust the bank, that they'll do what they say with the IOUs. At the moment, I don't have to trust anybody. I'm the bank. I can broadcast my force-closing channel transaction with none's permission any time I want.

You don't care about bitcoin as the only thing you're trying to do is to force us agree with you. You don't want dialogue, you don't want consensus. Haven't you yet understood what's the purpose of bitcoin after all?

This is not true. The LN exists for micro-payments only.

ding ding, i think he is starting to get it.. oh wait, lets read on
ok that lasted 2 seconds i guess he missed it
(point being whether LN exists or not. if bitcoin fee's are $30+ a time, the amount of people using bitcoin daily declines as do those users desire and need to run fullnodes daily)
and even if LN did exist people wont want to spend $30 with bitcoin if they can just convert their fiat to an altcoin and still access LN cheaper. again making people avoid using bitcoin as a asset and avoid being a full node for bitcoin

LN is not the solution to make bitcoin more useful and scale up. its actually a way to take people away from using bitcoin via many motivations/tactics.


again you are confusing the LN payments (private playful conversations in bed with the wife) vs the settlement contracts..(divorce papers)
please try to learn the different contracts.


funny part is that im not the one telling people to f**k off to other networks. thats not consensus.. thats exodus.
your buddy group are the ones that are authoritarian, wanting devs to do mandatory forks and implement gateway features to exodus people off the network by multiple tactics. get people to use other networks because you dont want bitcoin to scale any time soon.

other funny part is i agree LN is a niche use-case.. for micropayments. .. it is not however the payment network solution for all bitcoin daily use which is what you and your chums advertise it as. and LN is not bitcoin.


says the guys that endless call their other network bitcoin2.0, bitcoin2 bitcoin solution.
funny that, because in the same post you then admit its not a solution but just a niche for micropayments only

so heres the thing LN is not a bitcoin solution is a bitcoin exodus ploy. LN is not fit(flaws bugs) to offer as a solution. nor is its use-case solving bitcoins issues.
bitcoins issues are not technical, they are socially political motivated. hindering bitcoin scaling purely to promote a bitcoin exodus to other networks. even when those other networks cant deal with peoples rents, furniture, grocery values of daily use.
need i remind you that Rath_ a LN dev had a 70% payment fail rate with amounts way under 0.009($500)
need i remind you that LNPizza experiment in 2018 had a 90% payment fail rate for pizza value

LN is in no way a 'solution'.. its just a way to get people to stop using bitcoin, and put them into locked contracts for months on a network with bugs, flaws and no 100% guarantee of keeping what they deserve.

you have yet to learn why bitcoin (the actual network not your delusional altnet pretence) was such a beautiful system compared to the old banking 'promise' flaws of fiat.. and no dont confuse the LN promises as being the same as the bitcoin settlements

Well I understand where your question is going but in a certain way the scalability of bitcoin is possible and is what is really important, it has been shown that there are alternatives that can and make the use of bitcoin possible to the new times and in fact they must continue in the measure of its use, it is necessary to clarify then that bitcoin works correctly as it was conceived and of fact is adapted to the objections of some users.

Ethereum fees are more than that and the amount of users increases. So, I guess it doesn't work exactly like that.

There's no reason to increase the block size, 'cause they don't have to pay right now $30 to open channels and make regular on-chain transactions. Also, Litecoin is cheaper with or without LN, but people prefer Bitcoin, so once again, it doesn't work like that.

Just-your-opinion.

Please learn to read and respond properly. This is not what I said. I showed you that there's a difference between gold and the banknotes of 20th century in contrast with Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

I never told you to fuck off or that I screw your solution. Again, this is one of the indications of psychological projection. I recommend you to see a psychiatrist.

Nothing was mandatory. What you just described happened in a democratic way. We didn't use any kind of cunning propagandas to accomplish this, people just appeared to be agreed with our solution.

Daily, I only make micro-payments. If I want to buy a car, yeah, I won't use the LN.

I never did. However, I agree that you may think I did.

I never said it's beyond micro-payments.

I'll leave @Rath respond to this himself as it's not my business.

Rath already did respond (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5378173.msg58827879#msg58827879), but sociopath1 continues to phrase things in a manipulative fashion to make it sound like LN fails to send payments 70% of the time when that's not true:

(bold emphasis mine)

Just because Rath didn't route those particular payments, doesn't mean no one else did.  

Also, there's no requirement for people to route payments at all.  It's more accurate to say Rath successfully helped 143 transactions go through despite having no obligation to do so.  It's quite possible that sociopath1 (being a sociopath and all) isn't capable of altruism and finds it a really difficult concept to grasp.  No wonder they're so confused about all this.   :D



No, that one is definitely aimed at me.   :D

See this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5378173.msg58880527#msg58880527) and about a dozen others I've made over the years which follow a similar theme (but he still doesn't get it).  I keep pointing out that other networks would give him the so-called "scaling solution" he desires.  And it's true.  He can have bigger blocks and be part of a network where those who secure the chain are willing to carry that cost.  Yet, for reasons that even he can't explain, he keeps whining at us to give him the same thing he can get somewhere else, despite a clear demonstration that the users on this network don't want that.  Consensus mechanisms are great for resolving ideological disputes like this.  You want different rules?  Create a fork and do it.  So others did exactly that.  And the matter is now resolved for everyone else.  Just not for him, it seems.  The war is still raging in his head, but everyone else went home and got on with their lives.  He doesn't understand that it's over.

But yes, he should definitely see a psychiatrist.   :D

I also responded to his pizza experiment (https://decrypt.co/5321/folds-bitcoin-lightning-pizza-turns-out-to-have-been-a-success) argument here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5376568.msg58702682#msg58702682), but it looks like we have a different understanding of what a "failed payment" and "payment success" are.

im still laughing.

389 fails is still 389 fails.

imagine you made 200 bitcoin transactions waiting to confirm. and 140 just never got confirmed.. people would call that a failure.

Rath_ might call it a 'test of mempool' or a attempt to see what acceptable fees are. but just having a system that doesnt make 70%-90% of payments shows its not the 'instant payment' system

Rath_ knows that the 'network gossip' part of route path finding is completely different to the invoice/payment things. so i truly laugh that he wants to pretend the fails are 'route finding gossip'.

as for my wording of my explanations.. just because i dont use the altnetters silly buzzwords in their silly PR campaign format, and instead i use average joe analogies. does not mean i am flip flopping anything i say.. nothing i say is contradictory from one of my messages to another of my messages.. however altnetters contradict themselves and flip flop all the time.

if you want to cry because i dont call channels 'edges' and instead i use joint-bank-account analogies, then go buy yourself a warehouse of tissues. or grow up.
i dont try bigging up my ego to pretend to be elite by using special words of a boysclub.. i explain my thoughts using words average people can understand.
so keep crying if i dont speak your buzzword language. its not proof i dont know the language, its proof i learned the language and can think outside of the box to translate it into normal-speak. i dont play the ego game you guys are obsessed with

oh.. and by the way.. the 90% fail pizza experiment.. was where the pizza recipient got X amount of orders but x-90% of payments
it was not a case of re-routing and paid seconds later in full via different middlemen. it was pizza orders but no funds to pay for it.

as for Rath_'s 70% fail. Rath_ admitted he has no clue why they failed. but he assume, presumes, guesses possible causes. and has then took an extra step off a cliff to use a guess to try selling the utopian dream cause. rather than being honest and tell people that LN has many causes for fails

You don't like it when others post wall of texts against you, do you? What a noise... Dude, franky must be a so annoying person in real life. Thankfully you don't make a lot of sense and newbies just pass you over when they're reading your replies which is what worried me the most.

Imagine you appeared in every thread related with the Lightning Network and say the same nonsensical bullshit every time, all over again, for the millionth time. Now that's a failure, if ever there was one.

imagine anytime hundreds of people want to talk about BITCOIN scaling.
idiot altnet fangirls turn it into an advert for their altnet, trying to convince people to stop using bitcoin and start using their altnet..
.. well no need to imagine it.. it happens every time.

a funny part is that altneters think i am the only one that wants BITCOIN scaling and even funnier that maybe 12 people of the altnet variety keep patting each other on the back thinking the whole community of bitcoin want altnets..
even in topics made by hundreds of people that want to discuss BITCOIN scaling (not LN)

there are thousands of topics regarding BITCOIN scaling and only dozens of topics about LN development

and its funny to see how angry the altnetters get when they get called out and their advert opportunity is wasted. they really hate it when they fail to convert people. and their PR campaigns get ripped apart.

its funny that even now you think this topic thread is related to lightning network.. maybe try to read the title

edit: to reply to below
well you prove the opposite. its obvious you beat yourself every night.
its not an insult to your manhood. its an observation of your flip flopping contradiction that end up debunking yourself

You can't beat the idiot. The idiot is the strongest among all.

I have seen many unconfirmed transactions drop from the mempool. Does it mean that Bitcoin is a failure too?


If the payment eventually goes through, the path-finding algorithm might as well be blamed. Those algorithms could favour larger nodes, which usually have enough liquidity, to speed up payments, but that would eventually lead to centralisation. Still, large payments usually take only a couple of seconds to complete.


Liquidity is not advertised through gossip. So, the path is chosen based on its length and cost. As I have already said, I keep my fees fairly low which encourages wallets to include my node in the path. They don't know if I have enough coins on my side to forward the payment. If my node fails the payment due to no liquidity then they have to try another route.

the path finding gossip. does not 'lock' invoice amount
there has never been or ever will be a 'payment fail' at the path finding gossip stage
a 'payment' attempt is not part of the path finding.

the route finding stage as you have just admitted does not show the active balance(available liquidity) of each channel along the proposed routes, it only shows the amount the channel had when it began. this amount never changes.

if it was able to lock funds at the path finding stage with no intent to pay.. then this would be an attack vector people would abuse to lock up all value on the network and never pay out.

the path finding protocol does not in any way set aside value in each hop of the route at the path finding stage.

what happens is a number of possible routes are found, where by recipient (pass the parcel hops) see how much is wanting to be sent. and they respond if they can deliver.. WITHOUT LOCKING THEIR OWN VALUE by passing the request on.
if they cant deliver they dont pass on the request. and so they don not become a viable route.

when viable routes are discovered, where origin payers software decides the cheapest fee route to follow. and then separately, then a payment is attempted. through that route it decided on.

no "payment fail" is caused by not choosing YOU as the route at this stage.
 payments dont fail at the path finding stage, because funds are not locked at the path finding stage.

as for the established route the payer does decide on. it begins a separate process of locking funds along this route. getting a return message of "funding locked" and then sending the channel_update after that.
channel_announce is completely different than channel_update
the path finding messages do not include any HTLC stuff, so no funds are locked, a response to a path find is not going to include a "funding_locked" message.

you are trying too hard to make it sound like (using bitcoin analogy) that bitcoin transactions in a pools mempool fail to confirm because peers failed to peer-handshake at the relay stage.

sorry but thats not why bitcoin transactions fail to confirm when in a pools mempool.

its now very clear that you dont know why payments fail (your admission).. but atleast admit that payments are not 100% successful every time. be a man

Yes the market doesn’t work that way, because if the market really works as some people thinks that it does, then by now there would have been a really huge change in the market. A lot of things would have changed by now and there would have been a lot of cryptocurrencies that would have overtaken the top cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and ethereum.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have had this issue of having a high transaction fee for quite a long time now, and there have been a lot of other options that have been provided in the market that offers lower transaction fees and also a faster rate of transaction.These alternatives were believed to overtake the major cryptocurrencies as soon as they came out, but this never happened. So that goes to show that this is not how it works in the market and you are right for that, 100%.

What kind of messages in your opinion nodes use to signal that they are able to route a payment? funding_locked (https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/02-peer-protocol.md#the-funding_locked-message) is used only to signal that the funding transaction has reached enough confirmations for the channel to operate safely.

The "path finding gossip" is used to maintain an up-to-date local graph of the network which is then used to construct (not test) possible routes. Path-finding is implementation specific; it is not standardised in any way.

You need to offer an HTLC via update_add_htlc to learn if your peer has enough liquidity to forward your payment.

How do I know that? Well, I can clearly see what's going on in my node's debug log. Here's what happens when my node does not have enough liquidity to forward someone's payment:


03562bdcf00fe0cf44e8a491a8c9b26f31c4e45c9a88cdfd6a2f0f2550a304c73e asked me to forward a payment to 037659a0ac8eb3b8d0a720114efc861d3a940382dcfa1403746b4f8f6b2e8810ba, but I didn't have enough coins on my side in the outgoing channel. The rest of the log is much longer than that, but it mostly consists of signature generation and exchange.


I can tell when a payment fails due to no liquidity in one of my channels, but I can't tell the exact reason if the payment fails at some further point in the route.

(buzzwordatory:)the path finding gossip is not part of invoice exchange messages
(laymans speek:)finding routes is not part of payments

(buzzwordatory:)
pathfinding gossip uses
"node_announce" message which reveal which channels it owns.
    type: 257 (node_announcement)
    data:
        [signature:signature]
        [u16:flen]
        [flen*byte:features]
        [u32:timestamp]
        [point:node_id]
        [3*byte:rgb_color]
        [32*byte:alias]
        [u16:addrlen]
        [addrlen*byte:addresses]

"channel_announce" which reveals the partners of the node
    type: 256 (channel_announcement)
    data:
        [signature:node_signature_1]
        [signature:node_signature_2]
        [signature:bitcoin_signature_1]
        [signature:bitcoin_signature_2]
        [u16:len]
        [len*byte:features]
        [chain_hash:chain_hash]
        [short_channel_id:short_channel_id]
        [point:node_id_1]
        [point:node_id_2]
        [point:bitcoin_key_1]
        [point:bitcoin_key_2]

"channel_update" which reveals the fee's of the channels

    type: 258 (channel_update)
    data:
        [signature:signature]
        [chain_hash:chain_hash]
        [short_channel_id:short_channel_id]
        [u32:timestamp]
        [byte:message_flags]
        [byte:channel_flags]
        [u16:cltv_expiry_delta]
        [u64:htlc_minimum_msat]
        [u32:fee_base_msat]
        [u32:fee_proportional_millionths]
        [u64:htlc_maximum_msat] (option_channel_htlc_max)

htlc_maximum_msat is not the live available liquidity left. its the first 'state' value of the channel creation without revealing anything about liquidity/payments performed to adjust the balance available.

none of these three messages have anything to do with the payment. but everything to do with route discovery and choosing the cheapest route.

there are no payment fails at route discovery as no payment is 'locked' temporarily at route discovery

when building the route graphs its just a spam of "node_announce" and  "channel_announce" and "channel_update" messages back and fourth. and the software then looks at the possible routes that lead to the desired node

(laymans speek:)
like building a map of a road network and finding out the toll fee's along certain roads
the software then makes a decision about which route has the cheapest total(combined) fee of the route.

your debug log has nothing to do with the process i have mentioned about about the path finding stage..
so lets now explain the nest stage.. (separately)

SEPARATELY AND SECONDARY
then it performs the invoice exchange telling the route how much the payer wants to push forward including a public key(htlc) that requires a secret.(buzzword: update_add_htlc)
then the channels along the route lock up the value into this public key and send back a funding_locked response to say their LN iou msat promises are set..
 
when the payer receives the "funding locked" response(in regards to the LN iou promises) meaning everyone else along the route has also had the same, its deemed a valid route to complete a payment. and the payer sends the "secret" and this pass the parcel forward until the destination gets it.

an error at this stage IS a payment fail

as for your other comments in your post:
do not confuse the 'payment' temporary iou promises of LN with the open/close channel contract of bitcoin format when you try to refer to your version of understanding of the use of "funding_locked"

the open/close session contracts measured in sat are a different format to the temporary LN payment locks measured in msat.
"funding_locked" is used by both the open/close contract... and the temporary LN iou promises. but dont pretend they are the same thing or that the LN payments dont do this because you only know about the bitcoin open/close contract part

i know you cant tell.. but one thing you should learn. and understand. is that the fail is not due to the route discovery/path finding gossip stage. and not due to a payer just not choosing you because your fees are too high

it is not the case of "payment failed because they simply chose a different route"
the LN pizza example in 2018 was not scenario of 150 pizza orders with a spam of 1500 'payments' that never complete.

FOLD actually said they had 1500 food orders through dominos portal. but only got 10% payment
meaning 1350 pizza's were not delivered to peoples mouths. who had made a pizza order.

they DID NOT have 150 domino's orders and 1350 spam payments (10x the payment attempts than domino order requests)


a payment failure is not due to:
not establishing a full route to destination (meaning those intermediaries, halfway through map get forgotten)
deciding to try route A (meaning B is declared fail due to simply not taking that route) for reasons of less hops
deciding to try route A (meaning B is declared fail due to simply not taking that route) for reasons of less fees

a payment failure is a fail due to:
delays in messages expiring
   such as not sending the secret before htlc expiry
liquidity issues
   such as the liquidity being 'spent' by other pending payments before the current payment completes
wallet errors
   peer communication issues. loss of keys, going offline. bugs, faults with nodes, ddos

Using OP_CHECKMULTISIG(VERIFY) is not "bloat" it is a normal and a very common usage that has existed from the day bitcoin was created and a large number of bitcoin users are using this OP code specially some of the services that make a lot of transactions.
With them switching to new OP code their transaction size and weight will both be reduced significantly.

multisig did not exist since the day bitcoin was created
it started as a Bip in 2012 and not introduced into wallet software until 2013. bitgo was the first wallet to embrace multisig


but my point was about.. taproot is not a thing that makes existing multisig/transaction formats smaller. its not a thing that make all transactions smaller

its a thing where people have to move their current bloaty multisig and bloaty 'scripts' and bloaty 'smart contracts' over to a new tx format only activated november 2020. whereby after putting funds into this new format. when they then want to move funds again after that. the transactions bloat would be less bloat than its previous tx format counterpart

meaning taproot doesnt make all transactions smaller, meaning peoples very next transaction will not be smaller.
it just makes people that usually use bloaty smart contracts/multisig have a option where they can move funds to a new format (same bloat next transaction) to lock into a special contract which has a smaller signature/script area for future movements, after that.. as long as the movements stay in the new format.

EG there is not much point moving funds from a legacy multisig, to a taproot if the taproot just then pays back out to legacy. because although that 1 TR->legacy was less bloat..  the legacy->TR was not.. and the future legacy there after wont be.

it only has a significance to overall bloat of blocks if a significant amount of users move into TR multisigs and stay in them when transacting.

it means people that used to post their mail in A4 envelopes. can decide in the future to start folding their contracts to fit into smaller envelops. it does not mean all A4 envelops are suddenly smaller. it just means for those that decide in the future to fold their contracts to fit into a smaller envelope. will get to pay smaller postage. as long as they keep folding their contracts up into smaller envelopes. and the postage saving only really works with contracts(transactions) that usually have more then one signature in the first place