Scaling Bitcoin. Is consensus achievable?

[Meuh6879]

Isn't it time now to listen to each other, understand and come to a compromise?

You don't work on full node, isn't it ?



No compromise.
Bitcoin network is made to work at home.
It's a decentralized network.
Miners are not the network.

If professionnal want a lightining network, they must build their server over the Bitcoin timelined blockchain.
With Segwit hub.




Bandwidth, time and ... storage.

Remember ... ?

[1714648639]

1714648639

[1714648639]

1714648639

[Quickseller]

IMO:
1) [...]Contentious hardfork isn't an option it would be disastrous.

The more I think about this, the more I disagree with this statement.

For the most part, Bitcoin related companies will adopt whatever the network adopts. Even if a Bitcoin related company does not actively wish for a particular change to the protocol, if there is a significant enough chance that a change will be made, then the Bitcoin related companies will prepare to accept such changes. If a change to the protocol is made and a Bitcoin company is not prepared, then such companies will be unable to use Bitcoin until they can adopt to the new protocol, and miss out on potential business in the meantime.

I suspect that the majority of Bitcoin related companies wish to stay neutral in the scaling debate, and will not have a strong opinion one way or another, or at least not a strong public opinion.

As we saw with the ETH HF, many exchanges will likely support both branches of a HF to allow them to reap additional trading fees for trades between the two branches. There are however certain technical aspects of Bitcoin that will likely result in the failure of a minority branch of a HF that does not exist with ETH -- long difficulty recalculation time, long block maturity, and currently full blocks.

Also, I do not think that I have seen any Bitcoin related company (with the exception of blockstream) that opposed any of the major HF proposals (XT/classic/BU/ect.) -- the only *real* opposition to any of XT/classic/Bu that I have seen has been from blockstream, and their employees, and the majority of the Bitcoin economy did show their support for XT (via their support for BIP101).

[Carlton Banks]

I suspect that the majority of Bitcoin related companies wish to stay neutral in the scaling debate, and will not have a strong opinion one way or another, or at least not a strong public opinion.

What, the same way that Xapo, Coinbase, Circle, Bitpay and all the other bankster affiliated companies pushed as hard as they could for XT and Classic? Please

As we saw with the ETH HF, many exchanges will likely support both branches of a HF to allow them to reap additional trading fees for trades between the two branches. There are however certain technical aspects of Bitcoin that will likely result in the failure of a minority branch of a HF that does not exist with ETH -- long difficulty recalculation time, long block maturity, and currently full blocks.

How is that in any way relevant? The Ethereum hardfork(s) didn't program the fork in a way that literally commandeers the whole ETH network. Classic, XT and BU all programmed their fork in an "all or nothing" fashion. Your point is pointless.

also, I do not think that I have seen any Bitcoin related company (with the exception of blockstream) that opposed any of the major HF proposals (XT/classic/BU/ect.) -- the only *real* opposition to any of XT/classic/Bu that I have seen has been from blockstream, and their employees, and the majority of the Bitcoin economy did show their support for XT (via their support for BIP101).

You're absolutely full of it.

If support from real Bitcoin users was in favour of BIP101, then what happened? And if real people don't support the Bitcoin Core roadmap, how is it that Bitcoin Core consistently gets such overwhelming adoption when a new version is released, and when these so-called "user supported" forks are released, they get overwhelmingly drubbed?


You're a liar, Quickseller, as has been pointed out on many occasions by others

[franky1]

seems someone is mentioning the bankers and XT, classic and blockstream

hmm..


hint: "bait and switch"

i require no interaction from that person nor response. i will just leave this here for anyone to work out in their own time what it is hinting

i will just mention that tarring BU with the same brush is a bit pathetic right now. because strange as it is. its actually been blockstream, employee's and fans that have been demanding BU fork off.

if only people learn what consensus meant. they would understand the debate better.

[stdset]

This stopped being a technical battle (and became a political battle) long ago.

We live in a profit driven world, and politics is no exception. So what profit, if any, could big blockists derive from blocking segwit?
What profit could core team derive from insisting on segwit acceptance without increasing blocksize?

Who can profit from deadlocking Bitcoin community in current state?
And (a rhetorical question) how many orders of magnitude of profit (how many zeros) could all parties gain from resolving this dispute one way or another?

[franky1]

What profit could core team derive from insisting on segwit acceptance without increasing blocksize?

Who can profit from deadlocking Bitcoin community in current state?
And (a rhetorical question) how many orders of magnitude of profit (how many zeros) could all parties gain from resolving this dispute one way or another?

segwit is to push for offchain, which is where LN hubs (bank2.0) make profit from permission transactions (hub dual-authorises with customer and takes a fee for the privilege)

those coding LN are already conceptualising a 0.0006($4+) prepay buyin/deposit just to use LN to ensure the hub gets paid. even if the customers dont use it theres a penalty fee, if the customer closes channel early theres a penalty fee.

all explained here (cant be bothered to repeat it all)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1686040.msg16925401#msg16925401
basically $4 buyin and only works out cheaper if in a 10day lockin the user does hundreds-thousands of transactions

[kiklo]

After closer look at LN,

LN is Offchain Transactions ,

Whether anyone believes it or not , LN will open the door to Fractional Reserve Banking with BTC.
Not at 1st , LN will not dare use FRB in the beginning , however as time progress and their use grows, it will become too temping to resist.

They will monitor the network and calculate how many BTC are kept off the blockchain at a given time
to come to a ratio like LN holds 3 Fake BTC verses 1 real BTC or even a dynamic ratio that changes with market conditions.

Looks like Snidely Whiplash has made his inroads into BTC with LN.  


Sidenote:
LN could increase the fees needed to go on the block chain as a way, to make sure the majority never cause a Bank Run.

A bank run (also known as a run on the bank) occurs when, in a fractional-reserve banking system (where banks normally only keep a small proportion of their assets as cash), a large number of customers withdraw cash from deposit accounts with a financial institution at the same time because they believe that the financial institution is, or might become, insolvent; and keep the cash or transfer into other assets, such as government bonds, precious metals or stones. When they transfer funds to another institution it may be characterised as a capital flight. As a bank run progresses, it generates its own momentum: as more people withdraw cash, the likelihood of default increases, triggering further withdrawals. This can destabilize the bank to the point where it runs out of cash and thus faces sudden bankruptcy.[1] To combat a bank run, a bank may limit how much cash each customer may withdraw, suspend withdrawals altogether, or promptly acquire more cash from other banks or from the central bank, besides other measures.

A Bank Run on BTC as it is now is impossible because their is no fractional reserves, everyone owns the full amount of their balance.
With LN , a bank run in the future becomes a real possibility.

BTC was an escape from fractional reserve banking, LN will end that.  


 

[DannyHamilton]

We live in a profit driven world, and politics is no exception.

Sometimes it seems like it.  However, we live in a world full of humans, and unfortunately humans are very good at making financially horrible decisions for emotional reasons.  I see it happen all the time.

[stdset]

Whether anyone believes it or not , LN will open the door to Fractional Reserve Banking with BTC.

I don't see any relation between LN and fractional reserve banking. What prevents fractional reserve banking from working with plain old BTC?
Let's consider a simple example, tomorrow you open a Fractional Reserve Bank which borrows and lends BTC. You don't use LN. To attract investors you offer them a small interest.
Say Alice lends 100 BTC to your bank. The next day you lend that 100 BTC to Bob, who spends them to buy something from Carol. Carol in turn lends that 100 BTC to your bank again. Another day Dave borrows the same 100 BTC from your bank and buys something from Eve, who again lends them to your bank. Now you have 300 BTC of liabilities but you have priv keys to only 100 BTC. If for example Alice decides to close her deposit ahead of time, you will be able to pay her, but if Carol or Eve decides to do the same, and your debtors didn't yet return most of their debt you are bankrupt.

[kiklo]

Here you go.  

Others have also made this connection.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/56ehi1/fractional_reserve_on_lightning_network/

But if the LN is deployed, it will almost certainly be based on a small number of big hubs.
These big hubs could mutiply the money in circulation in the same way that banks multiply the amount of dollar bills.
Namely, they would start issuing bitcoin IOUs and lend them to people, backed by a fractional reserve of bitcoins.
That is, the hub has 1000 actual BTC, but issues IOUs worth 5000 BTC.

The hubs would extend the LN protocol to let clients use those IOUs for payments (much as people today use checks and bank wires as equivalent alternatives to cash).
Clients would even be able to redeem the IOUs for real BTC; the hubs would be betting that only a small fraction of the clients would redeem at the same time.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2015-December/000400.html

If we could lower the capital requirement, we'd lower the barrier for
people wishing to run a Lightning Network node.

Here are some thoughts:
   - The trust-based system you're proposing looks like a
   fractional-reserve banking system.
   - Such fractional-reserve hubs will provide lower transaction fees
   (because of lower capital requirements) — so the idea is worth pursuing.

http://www.wallstreettechnologist.com/2016/10/03/lightning-network-will-it-save-bitcoin-or-break-it/

for instance, if you are a large hub, with lots of capital but with many many connections to individual users and businesses, this means that everyone would want to route payments through you because less hops means less fees. If you had to open up channels by putting matching amounts of your money in with every other user, then this would be a limiting factor. (as you would have to have 100% reserve amounts for all your channels) and inefficient as a whole as the network would require 2 dollars locked up in order to send every 1 dollar.

Instead you only open up channels where the depositor puts in funds. The hub then credits their account balance with that amount. When they are paid money by other parties, the hub just increases the balance by that amount, they don’t actually move the money through a LN channel. This can be done as long as the payee is also another client of the same hub. When a client wants to withdraw, only then do they open up a withdraw LN channel to the client which they can pull money back out. This way the hub only locks up their own funds only when clients withdraw, which most of the time, will be minimal as long as people continue to use the same hub.

When a hub grows large enough, it will start opening bidirectional channels to other large hubs. If they trust each other enough, then they start crediting each other in IOUs instead of real payment channels.
You can end up with a fractional banking system existing as long as hubs trust each other to make good on their promises to pay each other back, and no crisis of confidence happens that causes a bank run.

 

FYI:
If you open a bank , everyone knows you are doing a fractional, BTC was created to get away from those shenanigans, and defaults that occurs
because of the way fractional reserves operate.  At some point their will be a bank run, it is never an if , but a when.
Latest example of fractional reserves in Crypto was Cryptsy and you see how well that worked out.  

FYI2:   http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-23/fractional-reserve-banking-pure-fraud-part-i

This is a commentary which should never have needed to be written.
What is euphemistically called “fractional-reserve banking” is obvious fraud, and obvious crime.
By its very definition, it transforms the banking sector of an economy into a leveraged Ponzi-scheme, and as with all Ponzi-schemes, there is no possible “happy ending” here.

Fractional-reserve banking evolved literally based upon the temptation of all bankers to perpetrate fraud.
Empirically it has always been observed, down through the centuries, that under normal circumstances, only a tiny percentage of depositors will come to claim their cash/wealth at any one time.
Thus the temptation is for bankers to “lend” more funds than they actually possess, i.e. they are “lending” what does not even exist: “fractional-reserve banking” – the ultimate euphemism of banking and fraud.

It goes without saying that anyone or any entity which endeavours to “lend” something which does not exist is perpetrating fraud.
But before examining this inherent fraud more closely, it is important to back-up, and look at the Law.
Note that even when banks “lend” the money which they actually do hold on deposit (as trustees for the depositors) that this is already wholly/totally illegal.
It is the crime known as“conversion”.

Criminal conversion:
A person who knowingly or intentionally exerts unauthorized control over property of another person commits criminal conversion.

When your bank lends-out money you deposited, which it claims to be “holding” for you as trustee, does it seek your prior authorization before lending-out your property and thus putting it at risk? Of course not. The banks get around the naked criminality of their lending operations through general authorization. In the small-print of any/all bank deposit contracts is a clause whereby the depositor “authorizes” the bank to lend-out their property to Third Parties.

[stdset]

But if the LN is deployed, it will almost certainly be based on a small number of big hubs.
These big hubs could mutiply the money in circulation in the same way that banks multiply the amount of dollar bills.
Namely, they would start issuing bitcoin IOUs and lend them to people, backed by a fractional reserve of bitcoins.
That is, the hub has 1000 actual BTC, but issues IOUs worth 5000 BTC.

The hubs would extend the LN protocol to let clients use those IOUs for payments (much as people today use checks and bank wires as equivalent alternatives to cash).
Clients would even be able to redeem the IOUs for real BTC; the hubs would be betting that only a small fraction of the clients would redeem at the same time.

Elaborate please. How exactly a hub could start issuing IOUs on LN? Don't be afraid to go deep in technical details. Your links lead to questions from technical unsavvy users, which are afraid of LN because they don't understand how it works.

[kiklo]

But if the LN is deployed, it will almost certainly be based on a small number of big hubs.
These big hubs could mutiply the money in circulation in the same way that banks multiply the amount of dollar bills.
Namely, they would start issuing bitcoin IOUs and lend them to people, backed by a fractional reserve of bitcoins.
That is, the hub has 1000 actual BTC, but issues IOUs worth 5000 BTC.

The hubs would extend the LN protocol to let clients use those IOUs for payments (much as people today use checks and bank wires as equivalent alternatives to cash).
Clients would even be able to redeem the IOUs for real BTC; the hubs would be betting that only a small fraction of the clients would redeem at the same time.

Elaborate please. How exactly a hub could start issuing IOUs on LN? Don't be afraid to go deep in technical details. Your links lead to questions from technical unsavvy users, which are afraid of LN because they don't understand how it works.

You Do understand that LN is offchain?
So whatever tokens is transferred around on LN is not really BTC.

 

FYI:
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-summary.pdf

Scalability.
The bitcoin network will need to support orders of magnitude higher transaction volume to meet demand
from automated payments. The coming increase in internet-connected devices needs a platform for
machine-to-machine payments and automated micropayment services.
Lightning Network transactions are conducted off the blockchain without delegation of trust and ownership, allowing users to conduct nearly unlimited transactions
between other devices

[stdset]

You Do understand that LN is offchain?
So whatever tokens is transferred around on LN is not really BTC.

Do you understand, that micropayment channels of which LN consists are opened by broadcasting an onchain transaction that locks BTC in the channel? So BTC transfered over LN are very real.
Moreover, LN requires users to freeze a lot of funds in channels. To be able to use a channel one needs to freeze much greater amount of funds than each payment. Therefore it's quite the opposite to fractional reserve banking.

[kiklo]

You Do understand that LN is offchain?
So whatever tokens is transferred around on LN is not really BTC.

Do you understand, that micropayment channels of which LN consists are opened by broadcasting an onchain transaction that locks BTC in the channel? So BTC transfered over LN are very real.
Moreover, LN requires users to freeze a lot of funds in channels. To be able to use a channel one needs to freeze much greater amount of funds than each payment. Therefore it's quite the opposite to fractional reserve banking.

Geez ,

Freeze 1 BTC and Loan out 5 Fake BTC on the LN network.
(Funny everyone in all of those articles can see it but you can't, maybe you should remove those rose colored glasses.)

No it is exactly like fractional reserve banking when we were on the gold standard.
Cash was directly exchangeable at any bank for gold in the 1920s.
Banks used to have to keep a little gold on hand to pay out the very few that asked for it.
Updated for our time
LN=Bank
LN Token=Cash
BTC=Gold

Same game just a new batch of dumb asses to fall for it.  

 

FYI:

So BTC transfered over LN are very real.

LMFAO,    I don't think so ,
those BTC that are frozen on the Active BlockChain are Real, that Crap on the LN Offchain network are LN tokens only.

[stdset]

Geez ,

Not Jeez, but FSM. It's only FSM who can freely issue IOUs on LN. And not only that, FSM can also instantly derive private keys from public ones, calculate preimages of any hashes and so on. So better start to worship FSM, before it's too late.

Now seriously. Not only you don't understand how LN is supposed to work. It's OK to not understand it. Even among cryptocurrency enthusiasts most people don't understand it.
But do you believe that so many people (including cryptocurrency experts) are so stupid, that they can't distinguish IOUs from BTC?
Why do you think system so complex, that you can't even understand it, needed, if the purpose is just to exchange IOUs?

I recommend you reading this article. BTW I always enjoy reading Aaron van Wirdum's articles, he's a great author.

And here is my description of bidirectional micropayment channel. LN works over these channels.
For those who prefer not to puzzle over what is written below, here's a short summary. LN transactions transfer knowledge necessary to redistribute funds locked in multisinature outputs. It's important: bitcoins are first locked and only after that they can be transacted over LN. It even would be wrong to say that LN bitcoins are "backed" 1to1 by real bitcoins, because LN bitcoins are the same bitcoins that everybody transacts today onchain.

Bidirectional payment channel.

Opening the channel.
1) Alice and Bob create transaction tx1 which sends 5 BTC from Alice and 5 BTC from Bob to a multisignature 2of2 output o1, neither party signs this transaction yet.
2) Alice and Bob create secrets Sa and Sb, and exchange hashes of those secrets (Ha and Hb): Ha goes to Bob, Hb goes to Alice. Alice and Bob will need those hashes to create transactions tx2 and tx3 at steps 3 and 4.
3) Alice creates transaction tx2 which spends o1 and creates 2 new outputs: 5 BTC go Alice (o2), 5 BTC go to output o3, which can be spent in 2 different ways: a) Bob can spend it himself, but only after significant timeout of say 1000 blocks; b) Alice can spend it herself, but only if she provides preimage of Hb i.e. Sb. Alice signs tx2 and sends it to Bob.
4) Bob creates transaction tx3 which spends o1 and creates 2 new outputs: 5 BTC go to Bob (o4), 5 BTC go to output o5, which can be spent in 2 different ways: a) Alice can spend it herself, but only after significant timeout of say 1000 blocks; b) Bob can spend it himself, but only if he provides preimage of Ha i.e. Sa. Bob signs tx3 and sends it to Alice.
5) tx1 is signed, broadcast and confirmed.
The channel now is considered open. 5 BTC from Alice and 5 BTC from Bob are now locked in output o1. Both parties however are safe. If Alice disappears, Bob only needs to sign and broadcast tx2 (Alice already signed it), then wait some time, and get his refund from o3. If Bob disappears, Alice can do the same thanks to tx3. Under normal circumstances tx2 and tx3 aren’t broadcast.


Updating the channel (conducting payments).
1) Alice wants to pay 1 BTC to Bob. Both parties create new secrets S2a, S2b, and exchange hashes of those secrets: H2a and H2b.
2) Alice creates transaction tx4 which spends o1 new way: 4 BTC go to Alice (o6), 6 BTC go to output o7, which can be spent in 2 different ways: a) Bob can spend it himself, but only after significant timeout of say 1000 blocks; b) Alice can spend it herself, but only if she provides preimage of H2b i.e. S2b. Alice signs tx4 and sends it to Bob.
3) Bob creates transaction tx5 which spends o1 similar way to tx4: 6 BTC go to Bob (o8), 4 BTC to output o9, which can be spent in 2 different ways: a) Alice can spend it herself, but only after significant timeout of say 1000 blocks; b) Bob can spend it himself, but only if he provides preimage of H2a i.e. S2a. Bob signs tx5 and sends it to Alice.
4) Alice sends Sa to Bob.
5) Bob sends Sb to Alice.
Now the channel is updated. If either party disappears, remaining party will receive his/her refund thanks to tx4 or tx5. But what prevents Alice from broadcasting tx3 which indirectly pays her 5 BTC, instead of her current share of 4 BTC? Tx3 doesn’t immediately pay 5 BTC to Alice, it immediately pays 5 BTC to Bob and creates o5 which Alice can redeem only after waiting 1000 blocks. But Bob now has Sa, and if he sees tx3 on the chain, he can immediately spend o5, because now he possesses Sa, thus taking all 10 BTC from the channel. Please note, that despite tx3 was created by Bob, his version of this transaction lacks Alice’s signature. Normally only tx1 is broadcast yet. This way the channel can be updated many times. After each update, only the last pair of transactions can be safely broadcast to close the channel and receive proper share of channel funds, because all previous secrets are known to respective counterparties.


Closing the channel.
Both parties know, that they can’t cheat each other. So when they decide to close the channel, one of them (let it be Alice) creates a transaction that spends o1 according to the latest state of the channel, signs it, and sends to Bob. He checks that funds are split fairly, signs it and broadcasts it. This transaction is the second and the last to hit the chain, for the whole lifetime of the channel.

LN adds a third output to intermediate transactions like tx3, tx4, but gist remains the same: transactions transfer knowledge necessary to redistribute funds locked in multisignature outputs created when channels are opened.

It's a good exercise to think what would happen if either party starts to misbehave at any step. If you find any flaw in my description of the protocol, let's discuss it.

[kiklo]

Now seriously. Not only you don't understand how LN is supposed to work. It's OK to not understand it. Even among cryptocurrency enthusiasts most people don't understand it.
But do you believe that so many people (including cryptocurrency experts) are so stupid, that they can't distinguish IOUs from BTC?

If you use LN and think it is anything more than a representative trade value of BTC / IOU for BTC, then you are stupid. 

Let me put it this way , the BTC network itself is an energy waster due to ASICS,
if your Delusion was true , then why don't we just shut down the entire BTC network and move all of the BTC to LN and only use LN for everything.
That way we don't even need the miners.

Reason why that won't happen.
1.  BTC never actually leaves the blockchain, (Notice they use the word Frozen or Locked On the blockchain)
2.  BTC design makes sure no one can counterfeit coins or run a fractional reserve from the BlockChain.
3.  LN network design requires that you trust their network, not to counterfeit coins and not to work as a fractional reserve
4.  If we could trust everyone then we would not need BTC, but sadly enough people are untrustworthy that they will take advantage of others.

LN=Bank
Wishin & Hopin & Prayin it is not true , won't make a difference.
Sorry no way around it.

 

[stdset]

if your Delusion was true , then why don't we just shut down the entire BTC network and move all of the BTC to LN and only use LN for everything.

It's clear from the protocol which you apparently don't even try reading, that LN needs onchain transactions, it can't work without them. Normally each channel produces 2 onchain transactions during it's whole lifetime.

[franky1]

if your Delusion was true , then why don't we just shut down the entire BTC network and move all of the BTC to LN and only use LN for everything.

It's clear from the protocol which you apparently don't even try reading, that LN needs onchain transactions, it can't work without them. Normally each channel produces 2 onchain transactions during it's whole lifetime.

yes LN needs bitcoins mainnet. and we should increase transaction capacity ONCHAIN due to that need.

however if you read the stuff core and LN devs are saying. they are overselling LN as a system where channels never need to close.
which brings up the issues/concerns. about immutability, trust, permissioned transactions, loss of bitcoins ethos.

if we went with LN's rhetoric of never needing to close channels.. then bitcoins mainnet is never needed once funds are deposited.
can you atleast see the twisting of mindsets about the importance of bitcoins mainnet.

rationally LN should regularly close channels. thus ONCHAIN capacity IS important. aswell as the security of users funds

[Carlton Banks]

If you use LN and think it is anything more than a representative trade value of BTC / IOU for BTC, then you are stupid. 

Let me put it this way , the BTC network itself is an energy waster due to ASICS,
if your Delusion was true , then why don't we just shut down the entire BTC network and move all of the BTC to LN and only use LN for everything.
That way we don't even need the miners.

Reason why that won't happen.
1.  BTC never actually leaves the blockchain, (Notice they use the word Frozen or Locked On the blockchain)
2.  BTC design makes sure no one can counterfeit coins or run a fractional reserve from the BlockChain.
3.  LN network design requires that you trust their network, not to counterfeit coins and not to work as a fractional reserve
4.  If we could trust everyone then we would not need BTC, but sadly enough people are untrustworthy that they will take advantage of others.

LN=Bank
Wishin & Hopin & Prayin it is not true , won't make a difference.
Sorry no way around it.

There's a problem with your argument. Do you know what it is?

[kiklo]

There's a problem with your argument. Do you know what it is?

This should be good , show off that imagined superiority complex you got going for you. 
Waiting to be dazzled.