check out the unconfirmed
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size?daysAverageString=7&timespan=1year

apart from a blip in june/july (ill get to this later)
mempool size was 2mb-3mb..

then in october. (around the 10th october) it started to get into 4mb.. and started rising...and rising. and rising.. hmmm i wonder what new feature was introduced in october that needed the community to get frustrated and delayed to "sell" the community into thinking this feature being the promise to fix the issue..

hmm.. oh yea.. segwit.

as for june july. (CLTV+CSV)

what a coincidence.. spam attacks right around the times blockstream devs want pools to think certain features need to be added to be stepping stones to something that (may) eventually fix spam attacks..

what if i told you LN is buggy  (remember the one-use address issues where signing a tx using the same key multiple times could reveal said privkey)
what if i told you CLTV if you read what it does is AFTER the close channel transaction confirms. funds are unavailable to spend and in a maturity bubble like blockreward 100confirm (real world feel of the 3-5day bank delay spending of funds)
what if i told you CSV if you read what it does is AFTER the close channel transaction confirms. while maturing. the other party(cosigner) can revoke the payment to themselves(real world feel of paypal/credit card chargebacks)

LN is not intended for everyone. LN is intented for people that spend micro amounts multiple times a day. (faucet raiders) and thats its niche.
LN wont see satisfaction from regular users that just want to spend once or twice a month to pay rent or take a salary

---

what if i told you its not permissionless.. because you cant simply send funds to a person. you need the person your in contract with to authorise (remember its a multisig)
and if using hops. you need each hop to AGREE(permission) to use them as a hop.
and if its a hub you need the hub to agree(permission)

its then no longer just peer to peer permissionless, but needing other people to sign off on YOUR funds

please forget the 20 second elevator sales pitches that have lead many to kiss blockstream ass, and go look at the fine details.
think about the net work topology. how blockstreams creations are at the UPSTREAM (closest to pools) and how the data filters down to the hodge podge of nodes that are down stream that are not
full archival 100% validation 100% relay nodes.

FIBRE

---

Fibre coded by Matt corallo and released with bitcoin(segwit) core.
matt was an employee of blockstream at the time f helping them make FIBRE (secretly still is but as a 'technical advisor')

segwit coded mainly by sipa and released with bitcoin core.
sipa is an employee of blockstream

LN coded by rusty russell and released under blockstreams github https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning
rusty russell is an employee of blockstream

for an old node to get blockdata aftr activation it needs to connct to a segwit node because the segwit node needs to filter it to the native node.
gmaxwell calls it a upstream filter.

thats where FIBRE was invented to ring fense the pools with segwit nodes.
here it is explained in segwits own user guide
https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/10/27/segwit-upgrade-guide/

the even have an image

link of image to show its not a reddit propaganda creation https://bitcoincore.org/assets/images/filtering-by-upgraded-node.svg

---

also old nodes cannot sync TO new nodes.
pruned nodes cannot sync to ANY nodes
no witness new nodes cannot sync to full archival new nodes

making the downstream nodes a mess/hodgpodge of nodes that are not fully part of the network and relient on the upstream nodes filtering them down the data

segwits initial promise was to fix issues...... result it cant. it just disarms the voluntary (ur words 'opt-in') key users. not the entire network
they then said 'wait its a tx count boost' but thats only if significan use of the keys. not an instant boost at activation.. result not gonna reach expectation
next they saying look it can add schnorr. and other things.. but..
but schnorr and other things requires future soft fork events anyway.. so just wait for schnorr code to be ready and do the soft fork then.. or dare i say it hard consensus then..

this segwit soft gesture is not a stepping stone. its just an empty promise to hide the ability blockstream want to be upstream centralised filters for the network.

all other things like schnorr, and other things can be implemented without segwit in many different ways. soft or hard. (pool or node&pool)

but when was bitcoin bitcoin

2009.
2013 pre sipa leveldb bug
2013 post sipa level db bug
2014 migration from satoshi-qt to core
2014 buyout of the main devs into blockstream and pushing other devs out of core

why is today out of 8 years.. the day that bitcoin is bitcoin and should remain in the exact form it is today without any other changes for the next couple centuries.

what is significant about this week that is getting the OP and others such as yourself so hopped up and endlessly ranting that bitcoin should stop all development right now

LN can work without segwit. segwit it doesnt lay out foundations for scaling.
(segwit is just 'sold' as a needed thing as a way to tempt people to push it, they are scrapping the bottom of the barrel for any small excuse they can to undersell its limitations and oversell its half promises. while pretending it also does things it cant do. but people have run scenarios and seen it never meets expectations)

secondly you cannot segwit a segwit

thirdly it does not stop native key functionality. so it doesnt fix problems. infact it introduces new problems.

please spend  abit of time reading beyond the 'elevator speach' of segwit. and read the code or read the full documentation. and dont let ur eyes glaze over the issues. be concerned about the issues. in short. read the small print

1. segwit DOES NOT FIX THE ISSUES
it only disarms people who voluntarily use segwit keys... its like having a gun problem and then only taking the guns away from those who voluntarily walk into a police station and hand their guns in..

2. a hard consensus was on the cards. mentioned in 2015 that by summer 2017 the hard consensus will be rolling.. but blockstream paid coders backtracked their commitment early 2016 breaking the roundtable commitment. plus segwit doesnt solve the issues it promises. segwit is an empty gesture. not a 100% promise

3. 2016 has been a waste of a year for a feature that wont meet expectations.

1. X pools vote for segwit X vote for BU........... but 60% are undecided either way

2. pools are not the boss. they are secretaries.. NODES are the boss.. and devs are just employees. if pools do something nodes dont like. into the orphan trashcan(metaphorically) goes the secretaries work

3. its blockstream that want to halt onchain natural growth with their empty gesture of broken promise. purely to get their nodes as upstream filters and centralise the network so they cn control what transactions get to and from the pools.

4. its blockstream that have done the fee war tweaks to the code to try to push it further and get people to cry out for the need of LN, purely so they can grab fee's to repay their VC. blockstream are in DEBT to a tune of $70-90mill.. they are getting desparate to make income to make investor returns.


yep its just relaunching the pool marathon again


you mention the VISA-tier blah.... seriously. your talking as if its a visa by midnight doomsday.
be rational we wont get a billion users over night. think logically and rationally about NATURAL growth. and ofcourse dont use the growth as a foolish reason to be against growth. as thats illogical
(illogic: dont grow blockchain because blockchain needs to grow)
(illogic: lets go back to 1996 and tell activision to not work on project: call of duty, because COD:MW needs 60gb but 1996 hard drives are 4gb)

and could be introduced as part of a proper hard consensus

as shown by gmaxwell and his flock of merry men

but to get that. satoshi would need to be involved..
he left.

so taking someone out of the project doesnt magically make who they take out suddenly be brainwashed into changing anything.. coz they are out.
however those IN can be brainwashed

schnorr is something else.
schnorr could be added as part of a proper organised hard CONSENSUS event. again schnorr isnt dependant on and only implementaable due to the soft segwit event.

imagine this

alice makes a tx.. and malleates it..
bob looks at alices signature and see's something doesnt look right compared to what bob is signing. .. bob doesnt sign
thus transaction cant be added to a block and alice cant do anything.
LN works without segwit, due to mutually assured destruction. funds cannot move unless both agree not to cause issues. if one causes issues it destroys their own effort because the other side recognises the attack.

---

yes segwit is another way and solves things in a different way. but its just not needed. people can make safe LN contracts right now
this whole segwit debate is over selling features that are not needed.
this whole segwit debate is over selling features that do not fix the network and only disarm those that use segwit keys (not those using native keys). meaning the problems inside the network/blocks will still occur because malicious people will just use native keys and continue doing their malicious stuff

all segwit will permanently cause is that segwit nodes being UPSTREAM filter nodes, selectively filtering down what it desires to non blockstream nodes. in essence centralised gatekeepers of the network.
(hint: FIBRE)

typical "gigabyts by midnight" scare story..

be rational
NATURAL GROWTH OVER YEARS/DECADES where nodes announce what they are capable of and pools only make blocks to what nodes can cope with. other wise nodes simply orphan the block thats too excessive...
over time nodes will cope with more because technology moves forward. growing naturally without the stupid "servers by midnight" fake doomsdays

we are not in the days of computers having a 4gb max hard drive (1990's) or internet being 56k... things have moved on.
and will move on.

by the time we get to "visa populous" (by the way we wont get visa populous by midnight, it takes time for user adoption) tech will grow.

EG
rasperry Pi3 and current bitcoin efficiency gains allow a raspberry pi3 to handle 20-50x more bitcoin capability than older stats of older tch worries in 2012.

inshort even CORE.. yes your kings know that bitcoin is 8mb safe. but are happy with 4mb bloat.
the issue is core dont want to expand the REAL native block of 1mb NOT because it then risks data loss,  network issues.. but risks the desire of using a LN hub for blockstream to get some cash back in from fee's to repay their VC's.

PS LN has a niche, for certain user types, and should exist as a VOLUNTARY side service for those niches. but should not be seen as the sole solution to scaling. because LN has limitations and issues which not everyone will need to use LN for.

LN is just a 2-in 2out tx
segwit isnt needed because malleability can be sorted simply by 'bob' not signing if 'alice' malleated. and alice wont sign if bob malleated

and they then wont sign the same tx again unmalleated where funds end up elsewhere.
in short malleation is removed simply by needing a second pair of eyes looking at a tx before signing.. which is a fundemental feature of LN. thus malleation is solved just by being done through a multisig

netflix is your answer

the issue with bitcoin and these adhoc tv boxes is that it becomes harder to validate the bitcoin address is linked to a service that will pay the source without things getting centralised and organised.

yes 'universal studios' could publish a public key and people can make a payment that is X to the addon Y to universal studios. whereby the show/movie only streams if it sees the 2 outputs. but due to the open source nature of these tx boxes and addons.. they can be hacked

it would require a central 'manager' to API out a activation key to allow a stream to roll and a mechanism to prevent it without such recognised payment

unbiased clarity


NO IT DOES NOT
when segwit 'activates' NOTHING scalable changes..
WEEKS after activation a new release is made public that includes segwit key wallets.
scaling then ONLY OCCURS IF people move funds to segwit keys and then move funds between segwit keys.

meaning if 1% of users use segwit keys expect only a maximum "BUMP" of 1.01mb
meaning if 100% of users use segwit keys expect only a maximum "BUMP" of ~2.1mb

do not expect 100% segwit key utility. and dont expect it to happen instantly at activation


lightning network can aggregate transactions and help. but again there are users that dont need, want and wont use LN. so dont expect LN or schnorr to be the cure.

also dont confuse lightning with segwit. they are 2 different things. lightning does NOT need segwit.

mimblewimble as a sidechain via LN service great. but not as a bitcoin mainnet onchain feature where it has control of EVERYONES privky to move their TX and mix the funds together onchain.. think long and hard about that risk of a mimble manager just grabbing your unspent to mix without your consent!!!
mimble should be offchain to be used by those that volunteer to hand their funds across to a mimble manager.

segwit doesnt disarm the network. it just disarms users who voluntarily choose to use segwit keys
meaning malicious people will continue using native keys and still sigop quadratic spamming and bloat spamming and malleating tx's
segwit does not fix the things it promises. its not needed and was 'oversold' 'over promised' and under delivers

what would they gain.

the code is public.

its like trying to stop a train by getting rid of a VIP passenger.. the train still continues