Lightning Network / Bitcoin scaling question

[Kogs]

I don't see how. Please explain how consensus around increasing the blocksize is ever going to happen? Because again, it will only lead to 2 things:

1) Bitcoin will continue with 1MB as there will still be people mining and transacting on it
2) There will be a 2MB or whatever blocksize hardfork, which companies and exchanges will claim it's Bitcoin, even if Core team agrees, it doesn't make it Bitcoin

So you will have the legacy chain existing and the new chain existing, and we already have this (Bcash).

The blocksize cannot be increased, it will always lead to a new altcoin, which some may call Bitcoin. Bitcoin is basically impossible to hardfork at this point (without again, ending up with 2 coins).

Consensus means, that the majority of the participants are willing to follow those rules.
And I'm quite sure that at some point in time the majority will agree with a block weight increase.

Let me think about the different roles who are part of the bitcoin network.
The following list is just my opinion of what the different roles could think. I might be wrong, so feel free to correct or extend this list.

• Miners
  Most miner would be for an increase of the block weight as they could pack immediately more transactions into one block which would increase their collectable fees.
  Some miners with a bad internet connection might be against it, as they would have a disadvantage as bigger blocks would get broadcasted a bit slower which means they have a bigger delay to start mining a new block.
• Full Nodes
  Depending on how big the increase will be, the people who run full nodes will need to check if their current CPU power is high enough to be able to validate incoming transactions and blocks in time, if they have enough disk space to store the blockchain and if their bandwidth is high enough to be able to download and propagate received blocks to connected peers.
  The CPU power will not be a limited factor as even with a x4 block weight increase a Raspberry Pi could still easily handle this load.
  Also disk space is not a problem today with an increased block weight.
  The bandwidth is usually the limiting factor. Not the download speed, it's more the upload speed.
  So, if the increase would be too high this could mean that some people could stop or limiting providing their full nodes.
• Users
  Normal users usually only want a good experience. With increased block weight, transactions would get confirmed faster and that's what is important for them.
• Companies
  Companies, as seen in the past with support of the 2X will be happy with an increase of the block weight. I don't see that they would be against it.
• Core Developers
  Core developers want to keep the network as secure and as decentralized as possible. When they see that an increasing of the block weight does not have a big impact on security and decentralization, the majority will also be for an increase.
  As the infrastructure (CPU power / bandwidth / hard disk storage) increase over time, so they will allow also an increase of the block weight with about the same rate. This will more or less guarantee that the network don't get more centralized

When a fork for increasing the block weight is agreed, I think there will be not only an increase of the block weight but also some other new features which require a hard fork.
As a hard fork is always dangerous, you should get the most out of it to avoid another hard fork after a short time.

Combined with also new features a hard fork might be more interesting also for those people who are against a block weight increase on it's own.
Such a hard fork will also need a preparation from I guess about 1 year. So there is time that everybody get notified about the hard fork and have time to update their software.

But of course there is a big chance that a chain split happens as it's hard to get everyone on board.

There will be a legacy chain and a forked chain. But if the majority was for a consensus change, the most value will be on the forked chain and just a small part will stay on the legacy chain. Maybe the legacy chain will die after some time, maybe it will continue like Ethereum Classic or maybe it keeps the most value. This decision will then be made by the market.

BCash was a fork without overall consent, that's the reason why it just become an alt coin. If BCash would had the majority on their side or if the Segwit2X would have been successful with the majority on their side (which would also be represented by the market value), this winning fork would be the new bitcoin in my eyes.

[cellard]

I don't see how. Please explain how consensus around increasing the blocksize is ever going to happen?

This is circular reasoning.

If a majority can agree not to increase the blocksize limit, then that is a consensus decision by definition. The logic wasn't "no increase, because Bitcoiners say no to everything, always". The logic was "no increase, because it's the wrong decision at this point in time, for design reasons".

My point is that there will always be people that don't want to do X, which means the result will be getting an altcoin, and the legacy chain will go on.

When a case is made that makes sense to the majority of Bitcoiners, they'll accept a blockweight increase. For instance, Segwit was an increase in blockweight, and Bitcoiners accepted it. So it's already happened, saying "it's never going to happen" is a difficult argument to sustain given this reality.

Segwit was not "accepted by bitcoiners", it was accepted by some bitcoiners (again my point, total consensus is impossible), others didn't accept it, which resulted in BCash being created, but this was a soft fork. If a way to get segwit via soft-fork was never found, it would have either never happened, or we would have Bitcoin and Bitcoin-segwit in a separate chain (which some would claim to be Bitcoin), and so on.

[Carlton Banks]

Segwit was not "accepted by bitcoiners", it was accepted by some bitcoiners (again my point, total consensus is impossible), others didn't accept it, which resulted in BCash being created, but this was a soft fork. If a way to get segwit via soft-fork was never found, it would have either never happened, or we would have Bitcoin and Bitcoin-segwit in a separate chain (which some would claim to be Bitcoin), and so on.

There's an abundance of evidence to suggest that Bitcoin Cash was a small minority of original Bitcoiners, not least the way the exchange rate of BCH has dived and dived. 95% acceptance or thereabouts is the best that could be expected realistically, and that's about what happened. Saying "100 people out of several 100,000's didn't agree" is not much of an argument.

[cellard]

Segwit was not "accepted by bitcoiners", it was accepted by some bitcoiners (again my point, total consensus is impossible), others didn't accept it, which resulted in BCash being created, but this was a soft fork. If a way to get segwit via soft-fork was never found, it would have either never happened, or we would have Bitcoin and Bitcoin-segwit in a separate chain (which some would claim to be Bitcoin), and so on.

There's an abundance of evidence to suggest that Bitcoin Cash was a small minority of original Bitcoiners, not least the way the exchange rate of BCH has dived and dived. 95% acceptance or thereabouts is the best that could be expected realistically, and that's about what happened. Saying "100 people out of several 100,000's didn't agree" is not much of an argument.

It's difficult to measure these things, "100 people out of several 100,000's didn't agree" is not much of an argument, but what im sure is, if segwit wasn't done as a soft fork, and it activated, there would be people mining the original chain, and we would have a 2-coin situation.

Also, it's not so much the amount of people, but the skin in the game, namely, people owning a ton of coins ready to dump their share on your chain, crashing the price, and thus forcing miners to mine back on the legacy chain.

[desmodiAN]

one piece of what Bitcoin needs to scale?
For scaling lightning can help a lot. But its not enough, biggest issue is not the transaction number that can be confirmed per minute.

whats even more needed for bitcoin is to be more intuitive and easy to use in real life scenarios.

in the background such random numbers and adresses like=645E0A030230232302032 can be used, ok. but dont let people interact with such.
learn from the internet.

people want to send money to people/businesses/e-commerce shops/vending machines.
they want to be able to easily pay things or get payed.
maybe involve new possibilities with mobiles: near field sensors. btc amounts lower 10 dollar can be directly transferred by pressing one button, if mobile is next to nearfield chip.
Or you can send btc to email adresses (confirmed n registred ones through eth distributed network registry).

etc.
THIS is needed to change our current world to the new money.
otherwise its a technology for tech childs, for holders, for visionary, for traders, for believers. but not for all.

[HeRetiK]

It's difficult to measure these things, "100 people out of several 100,000's didn't agree" is not much of an argument, but what im sure is, if segwit wasn't done as a soft fork, and it activated, there would be people mining the original chain, and we would have a 2-coin situation.

Maybe, but not necessarily. This would still have required a dev team to continue maintaining the legacy chain (ie. non-SegWit, non-blocksize-increase), especially since 2-way replay protection would still be a requirement for both chains to survive on the open market -- otherwise one chain would get cannibalized by the other rather sooner than later, as exchanges wouldn't be able to reliably support both chains. Either way such a scenario would have likely meant that neither chain would have implemented replay protection, leading to a blockchain fight to the death.

Also, it's not so much the amount of people, but the skin in the game, namely, people owning a ton of coins ready to dump their share on your chain, crashing the price, and thus forcing miners to mine back on the legacy chain.

The amount of people for the most part directly translates to skin in the game though, doesn't it? Dumping your coins on the chain you disagree with only moves power from you to people that actually believe in said chain. It follows that in the long run its more a question of fiat flowing in, rather than coins being dumped.

whats even more needed for bitcoin is to be more intuitive and easy to use in real life scenarios.

Fully agreed. But first Bitcoin needs to get its scaling problem in order, otherwise all would be for nil. Great user experience accounts for nothing if the underlying fundamentals are not ready.