LN improves transaction speed and fees, and that is great. However it doesn't not solve the core issue of scalability, only diminishes it. The causes are all still there.

People often like to talk about scalability an how important it is (rightfully so) but at the same time I don't think we often see anyone acknowledging what holds scalability back.
Earlier a friend sent me this article; https://medium.com/@0xluminous/the-future-of-open-source-software-7c77592f8f24
It offers an interesting solution; actually paying for the work the network needs and the implications of this.
Couldn't something like this be implemented in Bitcoin?

The fact that something is legal doesn't make it moral and I don't think we should be looking at legislation to solve 51% attacks, considering it would be putting the issue on the hands of a bunch of people that don't understand the problem to begin with.
Instead, we should seek to make these attacks unprofitable to begin with. I very partial to the solution offered here, it's a very interesting read.

Definitely the Saito Network. Basically, instead of taking a technical approach to scalability, they take an economic one. Instead of paying just miners or stakers, the network pays nodes providing value to it, be it by providing infrastructure, hosting dapps people want to use and a lot more. The end result is a truly decentralized network that not only is scalable without the need for external markets to step in (things like Infura), but that is also more secure and invulnerable to things like 51% and sybil attacks. The team is really active and super transparent to boot.
I'm leaving some links here for those interesting in having a deeper look into it:
Litepaper
Whitepaper
Blog

When you talk to a Socialist and tell them it doesn't work and point examples to them their response is always, "that wasn't real socialism" and "that's silly, there's no way that will happen here". Then the same happens wherever they are, which is similar to how people are responding to this. True, BSV has made itself a joke, but what happened to them can very well happen to anyone else, since as you've said, all PoW networks have this weakness and no one seems interested in addressing it.

Well, yeah which is kind of my point and even then, if think about it one or two million to attack Bitcoin or Ethereum may be a trivial amount, seeing as how things are moving towards centralization more and more.

So, BSV gets a 51% attack. Most of the hashing power was already coming from a TAAL, and other miners start leaving, making subsequent attacks easier. Then outsiders claim it can never happen to their blockchain of choice and that 51% attacks are not real. Am I understanding this correctly? Is this not kind of like socialism? Shouldn't we take this as a warning to take this more seriously?

The pandemic almost feels too convenient for cryptos, then again isn't this what BTC is all about? not having to worry about governments just printing money and fucking the people over in the process.

Not sure about next month, and even disregarding the bull market, I feel like it's going to keep going up, given everything going on both on the US and globally. Can't think of anything short of an international ban that would prevent that, as unenforceable as that would be.

I'm not so sure about that, I feel like it would depend on whatever happens on the Georgia runoff or maybe supreme court shenanigans, but ultimately I don't think it's gonna get done or that they care about it for anything other than having something to grandstand about.

Yeah, no need to deposit anything. The devs have stated interest in helping anyone willing to bring other tokens to the site to implement those for gambling in games like poker. So far you can only get tokens from using the Saito arcade, as it's not being traded yet, look at this as an opportunity to get on board earlier and have a head start for when it is traded.

That's a fair point, I should probably clarify that this is not so much about running a gambling site, but rather to show off the project's capabilities to run these apps. One of the things we are looking to do is create a community of people creating their own modules on Saito, not just games, but anything they may find useful, for instance one of the apps that's running on this right now is a medical supply distribution database that was built because of the covid-19.
I know it's probably not what you want to hear, but if you want to gamble other crypto, any crypto really, you could make a module for that, the devs would be very happy to help you move that along. Or you could also see it as an early adoption opportunity, since launch's later this year.


Yes, house never joins the games, all games are player to player, there's really no chance of maliciously manipulating games, but don't take my word for it, come over and see it for yourself c:

Games are always free, can't offer you rewards, but by playing you generate tokens and those will be worth something in the future, no bots at the moment, games are only player to player. There's usually someone around most of the time so you shouldn't have to wait long, or better yet, bring your friends over.

There's no registration really, the prompt you get is merely a suggestion and even if you decided to register, it will only ask for the username others will see instead of your public address when you speak on the chat.

For now it's only Saito tokens, but if someone wants to make an implementation to gamble something else the devs would be more than happy to help with that. This is actually something that came up talking to them a while ago.

No restrictions, you can read on how we deal with 51% attacks as well as a detailed answer to the first two questions here https://saito.tech/saito-whitepaper.pdf and here https://org.saito.tech/

No one can see your hands other than you, since it's all running on the blockchain and all, you can check the individual transactions on each block here and see for yourself https://saito.io/explorer/

That's odd, there have been times we've had slowdowns before, but recently everything's been near instant, however I would like it if you can elaborate on your second point so that we can work on improving. We are aware thar right now presentation is not our strong suit, so I would really appreciate this kind of feedback.

Hey, I'm part of a blockchain project that has an arcade build on top as a proof of concept,
and one of the games on it's Texas Hold 'Em. Since it runs on the blockchain there's no centralized server, so it's not succeptible to DDoS attacks, on top of also being immune to 51% attacks due to the nature of the project, as well as being Provably Fair.
We just wanted to invite everyone to come over for some games and check it out and give us your feedback on how to improve the Poker app.
You can find the arcade here: https://saito.io/arcade/
You can learn more about the project here: https://saito.tech/
Our Discord server: https://discord.gg/m4whuj
Our Telegram server in case you are interested on the more technical side of things: https://t.me/joinchat/BOSYOk_BR8HIqp-scldlEA

Even "most countries" had, banning things when you can't enforce the ban is a fool's errand. You may even argue it would help adoption.

The double-spend attack is not the same as the 51 percent attack. It is strange to have to make this point in 2020, but it is true: while having 51 percent control of a blockchain makes double-spend attacks free, that is only because it makes ALL economic attacks free. The vulnerabilities are distinct (you don’t even need 51% to pull off double-spending), and fixing the 51 percent attack requires far more than addressing double-spending.


So what exactly is the 51 percent attack? To pin it down, look at exactly what changes when a coalition goes from controlling 49 percent to 51 percent of a blockchain. Before this point anyone that spends a dollar on “work” will earn roughly a dollar of profit. After this point some block producers are “more equal” than others and can influence how and to whom funds are allocated. What is lost is the economic property of equal-pay-for-equal-work (1-CPU-1-VOTE).

This distinction is important, because while people talk about doublespend attacks as if they are the same thing as 51 percent attacks, this isn’t the case at all. In fact, it is unclear that double-spending is even a problem that will happen in majoritarian conditions. Given that a coalition with 51 percent of a network can do whatever it wants with network fees, the last thing any half-sensible coalition will do is start attacking the users paying it those fees. Why manoeuvre into position to reap a financial windfall and then squander it all to reverse a single payment?


Once attackers can break the principle of 1-CPU-1-VOTE, there are far easier attack vectors that let attackers goose their profits at the expense of their peers. Getting a little bit extra from one’s investment in mining can be done in many ways, such as by selectively orphaning the occasional block to discourage newcomers entering the market or reduce the profitability of competing pools. There is no reason to believe users will notice or care about these problems, which can be explained away as laissez-faire capitalism at work.


Want more ways to take advantage of majoritarian control? Once attackers have majority hash they can force smaller miners to share their inbound transactions to ensure their blocks propagate quickly, while withholding their own transactions as they face no serious risk of block orphaning. Unequal access to transaction fees constitutes a tax the majority can impose on the minority. And majoritarian pools can also charge higher fees-per-kilobyte for network processing to further goose profits. All of these attacks are possible without even needing to reveal that they have majority control.


For those wondering where this leads, ask yourself what happens to a network where one miner or staker is more profitable than all of its peers. Is what emerges a trustless network? Will companies trapped in a Red Queen race refuse to take easy-money?

Like the railroad monopolies in the 19th century, or the information-megaliths of the dot-com era, what will emerge is a monopoly. And so there will be no practical difference between these networks and Facebook Libra. In both cases, the amount of competition will depend on how much the incumbent permits. As the economic incentives switch to encourage collusion, market forces which had previously protected the network now switch to undermine it. The loss of 1-CPU-1-VOTE destroys the most important property of the public blockchain, and morphs it what is effectively a permissioned chain.


In our experience, POS developers don’t talk about these problems because they have no solutions. Instead of focusing on these economic attacks, POS developers talk about doublespending because they can address those far more trivial problems with things like Lamport-style voting rings and “finality” guarantees. Nevermind that all of their guarantees fall apart under majoritarian conditions and are thus effectively meaningless. And meanwhile POW ideologues keep trying to turn the 51 percent attack into a feature instead of a bug, raving about “blockchain governance” and “user-activated hard forks” as if what Satoshi invented was a democratic voting system instead of a financial system explicitly designed to avoid politics. Do they seriously not know the Federal Reserve is subordinate to Congress?


As of today we are starting to see 51 attacks emerge as majoritarian coalitions and consortiums start to form at the economic weak-points of most chains: the economic hubs that connect block producers with those routing money into the network. In Ethereum this is the Infura hub. Within the Bitcoin networks we are seeing clusters form around the oligarchs backing each distinct chain. Within a few years these will be recognized as the Achilles Heels of those networks.


In the meantime, because you’ve made it this far, it’s time for the payoff. And that is that as of today, Saito is the only blockchain with a guaranteed solution to the 51 percent attack: the ability to enforce “equal-pay-for-equal-work” under all network conditions, including majoritarian control of any and all network resources. If you’re interested in checking out how this is possible, a good starting point is our article on how to solve the 51 percent attack. For those that just want to experience the future first, we warmly welcome you to join our community at the Saito Arcade. You will be glad you did.

Source: https://org.saito.tech/the-double-spend-attack-is-not-the-same-as-the-51-percent-attack/

I think it's more about the financial establishment recognizing how much of a threat cryptos are to their status quo and joining in because they know they can't defeat them.

I don't like this trend of companies/governments dumping money to try and get into this space and control it one bit, since as you said, what's even the point of it if it's going to be yet another centralized "service". What a fucking joke.

This may just be me, but it feel like it's only a crypto "spring" to them when a bunch of big tech companies decide to get their own blockchain projects to get on the hype/not lose their position rather than making anything better.

What do they even mean by crypto spring, where's this even coming from?

I take issue with just accepting it because "that's just the way it is.",  but I agree it is still more reasonable that Paypal's existence as a whole, and that people are overreacting to this.

Except, you do? For any realistic use you want to give to it. You can't just have people wait up to two weeks for a confirmation or normies to just accept this. Your help to get around this is issue is greatly appreciated, but you could do without the attitude.