No big reduction in full node operation cost under Lightning Network future

[Peter R]

[1715222615]

1715222615

[1715222615]

1715222615

[1715222615]

1715222615

[1715222615]

1715222615

[1715222615]

1715222615

[BillyBobZorton]

The only way to scale anywhere notable at a global level and provide a fast service for cheap fees is through Lightning Network. Trying to achieve this task by raising the blocksize is objectively a losing game, and only leads to node centralization.

That's why we need Core to continue doing a good job, segwit activated as recommended by all experts to fix several problems and not only to improve scaling, and then a small blocksize increase eventually following the conservative plan that guarantees bitcoin's network will not become centralized (the tradeoff for a decentralized network is higher fees for onchain transactions, for anyone with a brain this shouldn't be a problem because it's worth it, decentralized networks aren't cheap, that's what layer 2 is for)

Bitcoin Unlimited is a failure, if the fork-disaster actually happens it will only get exposed further.

[franky1]

LN benefits

1. good for people who need to transact multiple times a day (faucet raiders, adsense, speed gambling)
2. reduce SOME amount of ethical minded transactions being onchain
3. 'payments' agreed and accepted as fast as both parties can agree
4. lower fee per transaction compared to onchain
5. hops concept 'feels' like its 'decentralized permission' and hoppers get paid
6. payments can be settled at any time


LN drawbacks

1. not good for people who only transact once every few days (hoarders, normal people just paying rent once a month, groceries once a week)
2. intentional /malicious spammers wont use LN, because it wont solve their goal
3. needs both parties to agree(permission)
4. if onchain wasnt held back onchain fee's can get cheaper
5. hops cost more due to needing to pay each hopper to accept involvement. leading to preference to try hubs to cut cost which is centralising 'permission'
6. payment even AFTER confirm are still unspendable for days due to CLTV maturity period, and have risk of funds being charged back using CSV revokes


segwit benefits

1. one time gesture boost to tx count, max potential ~2.1x
2. using segwit removes malleability/linear quadratics issues

segwit drawbacks

1. tx count increase IF people use p2wpkh keys instead of traditional p2pkh. dont expect everyone to use p2wpkh, so dont expect 2.1x boost
2. using p2wpkh keys cant abuse malleability/quadratics. but malicious entities wont use p2wpkh. they will stick to p2pkh. solving nothing


general statements known to be false about onchain scaling:

1. "data center nodes by next year"
2. "gigabyte blocks by midnight"
3. "cant scale to visa"
4. "cant cope with being one world currency overnight"
5. "2mb blocks are bad due to data/bandwith"
6. "LN is secure"
7. "LN is the end solution to scaling"
8. "LN is fantastic solution"

why general statements known to be false about onchain scaling:

1. NODES choose what they can cope with and pools form blocks which nodes can happily cope with, otherwise blocks get rejected
2. NODES choose what they can cope with and pools form blocks which nodes can happily cope with, otherwise blocks get rejected
3. NODES can scale, at a natural, logical rational rate over decades, afterall we wont have billions of users overnight (rational: 20-30year natural growth)
4. dont expect 100% of world adoption otherwise bitcoin becomes no longer a free open choice. expect 5% world adoption over next few decades
5. those saying 2mb doomsday, admit 8mb capable but prefer time gesture of CONDITIONAL 2.1mb and another 1.9mb for bloated future features
6. LN has issues. such as the 'address-reuse' attack vector
7. LN has a limited niche/usecase for SOME users but the CLTV locks and the n-locktime and the settlement fee's penalties are not always of benefit
8. LN is a niche voluntary side service only beneficial to a few, should not be thought of as the end goal for everyones utility.

[unamis76]

OP's graphic is a reminder of what we need: ways to transact more, on-chain, cheaply (or free if possible) and occupying less resources. All of this goes in hand with the ideas Bitcoin was conceived with.

[Peter R]

The only way to scale anywhere notable at a global level and provide a fast service for cheap fees is through Lightning Network. Trying to achieve this task by raising the blocksize is objectively a losing game, and only leads to node centralization.

Lightning Network might help scale transactions per user (assuming it can be made to work); it doesn't really help scale the user base.  That's the point of the graphic.

Imagine the small-block super success scenario where we soon have 500 million people using bitcoin and a 1 MB block size limit.  Each of those 500 million people need at least one unspent output and probably more like ten or fifty or so to achieve acceptable privacy.  

(500 x 10^6 users) x (10 outputs/user) * (40 bytes / output) = 200 GB UTXO set size

Don't you think it would be bizarre to worry about "1 MB blocks" making it difficult for people to run nodes on low-cost hardware if that same hardware needs a UTXO database at least 200 GB in size?

Personally, I want to allow Bitcoin to continue to grow freely like it did for the first seven years of its life.  But for those of you who think we need to "constrain" it to keep the cost of running a node low, at least be consistent: if you're going to worry so much about the size of blocks, shouldn't you be even more worried about the size of the UTXO set?  Don't you think it's odd that LN is being promoted as a solution to allow bitcoin to scale its userbase when the truth is that it (assuming it can be made to work) really only helps scale the number of transactions per user?

[franky1]

The only way to scale anywhere notable at a global level and provide a fast service for cheap fees is through Lightning Network. Trying to achieve this task by raising the blocksize is objectively a losing game, and only leads to node centralization.

Lightning Network might help scale transactions per user (assuming it can be made to work); it doesn't really help scale the user base.  That's the point of the graphic.

Imagine the small-block super success scenario where we soon have 500 million people using bitcoin and a 1 MB block size limit.  Each of those 500 million people need at least one unspent output and probably more like ten or fifty or so to achieve acceptable privacy.  

(500 x 10^6 users) x (10 outputs/user) * (40 bytes / output) = 200 GB UTXO set size

Don't you think it would be bizarre to worry about "1 MB blocks" making it difficult for people to run nodes on low-cost hardware if that same hardware needs a UTXO database at least 200 GB in size?

Personally, I want to allow Bitcoin to continue to grow freely like it did for the first seven years of its life.  But for those of you who think we need to "constrain" it to keep the cost of running a node low, at least be consistent: if you're going to worry so much about the size of blocks, shouldn't you be even more worried about the size of the UTXO set?  Don't you think it's odd that LN is being promoted as a solution to allow bitcoin to scale its userbase when the truth is that it (assuming it can be made to work) really only helps scale the number of transactions per user?

to summarise this post.

imagine alice has 2btc in a standard p2pkh address unspend (1AliceAddress : 2btc -unspent)
imagine bob has 2btc in a standard p2pkh address unspend (1bobAddress : 2btc -unspent)

when going into LN
all that changes is the address holding it.

thus alice has 2btc in a LN p2wsh address unspend (3AlicebobmultisigAddress : 2btc -unspent)
thus bob has 2btc in a LN p2wsh address unspend (3AlicebobmultisigAddress : 2btc -unspent)

its still 2 unspents whether on people own personal permissionless addresses or in a multisig permissioned address


rationally we are not going to get 500million people over night, nor 7billion people.
today we only have 0.026% of the population. rationally we should be thinking that 5% of the world population may use bitcoin (making bitcoin one of the top 5 nations) but this wont happen over night, expect natural slow adoption over DECADES.

even if we get to less, say 0.05% of world population. knowing that there are 200 countries in the world still makes bitcoin as good as a nation.

but if we have 5% in a few decades thats more like 500mill(total world pop gets to 10bill) at most realistic TOP expectation.

remember. there are old people in the 99% club that are going to just stick to fiat. because they cant cope with technology
remember. there are children that are just not old enough to have a bank account.make an income
remember. there are unemployed/disabled people that are reliant on fiat social security so they dont have any disposable income to throw at bitcoin

so only expect 5% at most world adoption. which is still higher than world adoption of gold as a asset store, emphasis happening over DECADES, not night.


in short we should not halt natural growth now. using fake fear of 'billions by midnight' . allow natural onchain growth to begin so that it can scale over DECADES, naturally, rationally. and done so by the node consensus. not dictatorship king devs spoon feeding

[ImHash]

What exactly is the problem here now? are we debating only about 2 options here LN & segwit?
@franky1, seems like you are not even sure which side to pick or which option is the answer.
Could you tell me the final solution and not list pros and cons?

[franky1]

What exactly is the problem here now? are we debating only about 2 options here LN & segwit?
@franky1, seems like you are not even sure which side to pick or which option is the answer.
Could you tell me the final solution and not list pros and cons?

LN as a SIDE service. much like using coinbase merchant tools, bitpay merchant gateway, xapo or bitgo multisig/escrow store...
it has a niche but we should not be considering LN as the solution to scaling.

LN's technical issue preventing public release is not actually the need for segwit. LN's issue is the 're-use address dilemma', which still needs to be solved

we NEED onchain natural growth for the majority of users to appreciate the true meaning of bitcoins ethos


sidenote if LN does fix its address re-use bug(main concern)
then we can start thinking about the whole how do we get people to be rational. EG if they are wanting to spend more than once a day, they can use LN. but if using it infrequently they stick to the bitcoins mainnet. without being hit by huge costs. for the rare once a day/week/month use

im currently running scenarios about different 'priority' formulae that favours lean transactions and transactions that dont spend often
some scenarios/formulae im looking into including using CLTV maturity as a way people gain 'priority points' if they CLTV maturity lock their funds for ~24 hours to show they dont want to spam every block. where costs are incurred if they want to bypass a once a day spend without using LN.
thus mitigating most spam and costing people if they are desperate for that odd occasion of needing to spend a couple times a day without using LN

[Wind_FURY]

OP's graphic is a reminder of what we need: ways to transact more, on-chain, cheaply (or free if possible) and occupying less resources. All of this goes in hand with the ideas Bitcoin was conceived with.

But wasn't a transaction layer built on top of Bitcoin in the cards? Well there it is. Segwit will make it possible for a layer to be built on top of Bitcoin and make it better. Now they are trying to block it? Read the pros and cons franky1 posted. You may agree or disagree with it but what LN gives the users is a choice to go for offchain or onchain transaction depending on their needs.

[franky1]

But wasn't a transaction layer built on top of Bitcoin in the cards? Well there it is. Segwit will make it possible for a layer to be built on top of Bitcoin and make it better. Now they are trying to block it? Read the pros and cons franky1 posted. You may agree or disagree with it but what LN gives the users is a choice to go for offchain or onchain transaction depending on their needs.

LN should be a voluntary service for those who NEED to spend multiple times an hour/day/week.
but keep in mind.
malicious spammers will
1. avoid using LN when repeat spending every block, because their obvious intention is to spam onchain so why use LN.
2. avoid segwit p2wpkh tx's when they make bloated quadratic tx's because their obvious intention is to spam onchain so why use segwit keys.
3. avoid segwit p2wpkh tx's when they want to malleate because their obvious intention is to spam onchain so why use segwit keys.

so segwit and LN is not solving malicious user spam. it is just solving ethical users to have a service to help the network.

in short intentional spammers will still do what they do. and so segwit and LN does not solve malicious users

the reason people are blocking it. is because it doesnt stop malicious users. but blockstream are doing this crap under false pretenses to try pushing ethical and honest people into their centralised commercial public permissioned hubs. (because they know private permissioned LN hops are more expensive). because blockstream need to start generating revenue to make returns of $90m+ to investors

halting true onchain growth to force ethical moral people into LN hubs is not good for ethical/moral people if the real intention is just about blockstream messing with bitcoin for financial gain

[franky1]

anyway back to the topic at hand.

here is another possible thing.. if we imagine a high take up of people wanting to be locked into LN for genuine reasons

imagine you are a multiple spender and you want to use LN.
you are not going to rationally see any benefit to run a full node all day long.

you will end up using a possible LN lite-node. that just holds the utxo of the addresses you are part of (you and counterparty)
diluting the full node count because less people use/touch mainnet 24/7 anymore


bitcoin core. meant to be a full node.. but offers pruned, no witness and selective black/whitelisting of nodes including turning on/off listening mode.

meaning instead of just running with full data. they are allowing nodes to cut off supply to other nodes, thus diluting the amount of full nodes to seed/sync data from. because they either refuse to connect or they dont hold all the validatible data.

which again is another failure of all these features causing less real full nodes.. and just a mis-tangled network of 'relay' nodes downstream from the upstream FIBRE network as the real full auditors (blockstream centralised network)

which itself can cause less people to want to be full nodes because although their pc can cope with it. they dont see the real gain/need

[sportis]

From my point of view, as some members above with bigger experience than mine they posted that, LN does not solve the problems of spam and malicious users; franky1 highlighted it. On the other side as OP mentioned the LNs more or less will reduce the on-chain transaction per user. But LN like as any other solution, good or bad is a choice and not an obligation; again franky1 stated. Therefore, some people maybe will never use the LNs, for any reason they want; but is a choice for them who want to use it knowing their pros and cons which nowadays is unavailable. Therefore, without many theories, if we want to count the reduction cost we must see it practically in everyday real time usage.