Concerns regarding SegWit + Lightning Network?

[marcelbit]

Dear bitcoin community,

I'm an ordinary user of Bitcoin and shortly I came across some information regarding Bitcoin vs. Bitcoin Cash and I kindly ask for your support to help me to better understand these issues.

It was this open letter which got my attention: https://theflippening.github.io/open-letter-to-bitcoin-miners-from-another-miner/

Some of the complaints of the author contra Bitcoin Core:

a) Bitcoin Core via the BlockStream team is too much influenced by investors like AXA. As a traditional insurance company AXA's interest may not be the best for the Bitcoin future.
Link: https://blockstream.com/about/#investors

b) The upcomming Lightning Network is patented software. The patent is held by BlockStream.
Remark: I have read BlockStreams explanation why they patent their software (https://blockstream.com/about/patent_pledge/). Which leads me to a sub-question:

b2) Wouldn't it then make sense for most Bitcoin devs and open-source devs in general to patent their software? Which I assume would not be compatible with the spirit of open source, would it?

c) The Lightning Network could impair the decentralisation of Bitcoin. Citation: "To reach anyone in a big network with a series of branching channel connections, you either need a large number of channels [-> users have to divide up their funds and can’t do anything except tiny purchases], or a large number of hops [-> everyone’s money will be tied up routing everybody else’s money]."
One conceivable solution: "the system depends on large centralized hubs"

d) The feature "Replace By Fee" broke the much more useful (for daily life transactions) feature "Zero-Conf". Zero-Conf would very quickly allow to see that a transaction is triggered. Instead with RBF a receiver of a payment needs to wait until a transaction is really processed by miners in order to be sure that the transaction will be made. Since with RBF a dishonest payer could overwrite a transaction and send it to a different address.

Further assertion of another author:
e) SegWit could decrease the security of transactions. (https://bitcrust.org/blog-incentive-shift-segwit)
As far as I understand with SegWit miners could be motivated not to verify transactions securely.

On the other hand:
f) In one video Andreas Antonopoulis explains that just increasing the block size (like Bitcoin Cash) is a too simple, short-term solution. If some day Bitcoin may have tens of thousands of transactions per second the blocks would be in the high gigabyte range - every ten minutes! Which could barely be processed by common nodes and lead to a centralisation trend as with mining today.


Ok, that's my amateurish summery. If anyone could reply to one or more of those issues and provide more insight I would be very thankful. Thank you very much!


Marcel

[1714714103]

1714714103

[marcelbit]

Any ideas?

[mda]

Any ideas?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2381234.0

[Carlton Banks]

Any ideas?

Sell your BTC.

If you believe everything you've said (despite it either not being true, or a selective representation of the truth), you should sell. There's alot of choice in the cryptocurrency market.


If you don't want to sell despite the development team being ostensibly against your interests, then you should support a hard-fork of Bitcoin from a different development team.

[marcelbit]

@mda: Thank you for the link. But for my understanding it doesn't really cover the aspects mentioned above.

@R_crusoe: Thank you for the tip. But is it related to any of the above issues? I don't think so.

@ Carlton Banks: Thank you, too, for your answer. "If you believe everything you've said" -> I didn't claim that any of these issues are true. It was just a brief summary of some aspects of the mentioned letter so that you (or other readers) don't necessarily need to read the original source by yourself.
I'm just doing some research to find out what is true. I would appreciate answers in the form like "No, issue d) is wrong because of ..." for example.  

[Carlton Banks]

In cases like this, I prefer not to refute things that are false or half-true.

The list of things that are false is endless, the only limit is the imagination of any person dreaming them up. It's a waste of effort to handle every false claim, especially if the claims have been refuted already before, as is the case for the list of claims in your post.

[marcelbit]

"claims have been refuted already before, as is the case for the list of claims in your post." -> Great, this is what I am looking for. Could you perhaps provide me a link or two? Thank you.

[Carlton Banks]

Since you're willing to entertain nearly every poor representation of Bitcoin's development, you really should do your own research. It's not a good use of my time to respond to every newbie on the forum coming up with old objections to Bitcoin development. You're just the latest in a large number of people highlighting concerns. I don't expect it to stop.

So if you're really interested, prove it. Do your own research, and present your conclusions publicly if you like. But this is old stuff marclebit, sorry

[marcelbit]

Ok, thank you. I wonder what this whole forum then is about in your opinion. I did search for answers but didn't find them yet. Yes, there is plenty of talk about LN and SegWit. But I didn't find specific information about the patent stuff, ZeroConf vs. RBF and so on.

[achow101]

Some of the complaints of the author contra Bitcoin Core:

This will be the millionth time I have to respond to the same completely false and fabricated ideas. All of these "complaints" are false.

a) Bitcoin Core via the BlockStream team is too much influenced by investors like AXA. As a traditional insurance company AXA's interest may not be the best for the Bitcoin future.
Link: https://blockstream.com/about/#investors

Blockstream does not "control" a majority of contributors to Bitcoin Core nor do they have any control over what goes into Bitcoin Core. The maintainers are all independent of Blockstream (MIT DCI or Chaincode labs). The only person who has commit access to Bitcoin Core that works for Blockstream is Pieter Wuille, and he has had commit access since long before he co-founded Blockstream.

b) The upcomming Lightning Network is patented software. The patent is held by BlockStream.
Remark: I have read BlockStreams explanation why they patent their software (https://blockstream.com/about/patent_pledge/). Which leads me to a sub-question:

The Lightning Network is not patented at all by Blockstream or anyone else. It is a free and open standard that is being developed by multiple development teams. In fact, a lot of development is led by non-Blockstream companies like Lightning Labs and ACINQ.

b2) Wouldn't it then make sense for most Bitcoin devs and open-source devs in general to patent their software? Which I assume would not be compatible with the spirit of open source, would it?

Patents are not really in the spirit of open source, and anyone who tells you that Blockstream or any Bitcoin Core developer has patented anything related to Bitcoin is lying to you.

c) The Lightning Network could impair the decentralisation of Bitcoin. Citation: "To reach anyone in a big network with a series of branching channel connections, you either need a large number of channels [-> users have to divide up their funds and can’t do anything except tiny purchases], or a large number of hops [-> everyone’s money will be tied up routing everybody else’s money]."
One conceivable solution: "the system depends on large centralized hubs"

In general, each user will have several open Lightning channels and that should all be handled by the client you are running. Even with several open channels, while each channel may not be able to make a single large purchase, it is possible for you to make a large payment by sending money through multiple channels.

While there may be several large hubs, it certainly does not introduce that much centralization. Hubs can't change the amount of money that you have and can't dictate anything that you do. If a hub is misbehaving, you can simply stop using them and use someone else or just not use LN.

d) The feature "Replace By Fee" broke the much more useful (for daily life transactions) feature "Zero-Conf". Zero-Conf would very quickly allow to see that a transaction is triggered. Instead with RBF a receiver of a payment needs to wait until a transaction is really processed by miners in order to be sure that the transaction will be made. Since with RBF a dishonest payer could overwrite a transaction and send it to a different address.

"Zero conf" was never a feature and unconfirmed transactions were never meant to be accepted. It was already fairly easy to double spend an unconfirmed transaction without it signalling RBF. Furthermore, RBF is node policy, not a consensus rule, so even if Bitcoin Core didn't implement it, miners could still enforce RBF by running modified software. With Opt-in RBF (which is what we have now), it is very clear whether a transaction is more likely to be replaced as it explicitly signals that it can be replaced. If you are a merchant, then you can look at such transactions and hold off on accepting the payment. Since Opt-in RBF is opt in, you can just make transactions that don't opt in, and keep in mind that such transactions are still easily double spendable.

Further assertion of another author:
e) SegWit could decrease the security of transactions. (https://bitcrust.org/blog-incentive-shift-segwit)

No. That is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how Segwit works.

As far as I understand with SegWit miners could be motivated not to verify transactions securely.

That does not matter. Nodes will reject invalid blocks. Nodes are enforcing the consensus rules (which includes Segwit). If a miner produces a consensus-invalid block because they failed to verify the transactions, then nodes will reject it and that block will not be added to the Bitcoin blockchain.

On the other hand:
f) In one video Andreas Antonopoulis explains that just increasing the block size (like Bitcoin Cash) is a too simple, short-term solution. If some day Bitcoin may have tens of thousands of transactions per second the blocks would be in the high gigabyte range - every ten minutes! Which could barely be processed by common nodes and lead to a centralisation trend as with mining today.

That is correct. Just increasing the block size limit is not a feasible long term solution. It is, effectively "kick the can down the road" and "let someone else later deal with it". Increasing the block size limit comes with a lot more consequences than you think it does and there is a whole lot more nuance to increasing Bitcoin's capacity than you think there is.

[ir.hn]

Segwit destruction will snowball.  One miner will figure out it is more profitable to skip verifying signatures.  Then two and three figure it out.  Then those who don't skip verifying signatures will notice their relative reward rate dropping.  Then someone will publish new bitcoin code that makes it more profitable to mine (by not verifying signatures).  The less people verify, then the less risk that skipping sig verification would result in the block getting rejected by the network.   Then more and more will join the bandwagon until those who verify signatures are a minority and at that point bitcoin gets majorly attacked and starts collapsing.

[Samarkand]

...
That is correct. Just increasing the block size limit is not a feasible long term solution. It is, effectively "kick the can down the road" and "let someone else later deal with it". Increasing the block size limit comes with a lot more consequences than you think it does and there is a whole lot more nuance to increasing Bitcoin's capacity than you think there is.

Could you list some of these consequences? I can think of the obvious reasons like
higher bandwidth and storage requirements, but maybe you have additional reasons why
increasing the blocksize is a bad idea.

Generally, I think that some of the big companies like Coinbase and Bitpay should have
introduced Segwit addresses by now. That would really decrease the current congestion on the
blockchain. Instead they are busy integrating BCH in their respective businesses...

[achow101]

Could you list some of these consequences? I can think of the obvious reasons like
higher bandwidth and storage requirements, but maybe you have additional reasons why
increasing the blocksize is a bad idea.

There are computational costs of larger blocks as they can be more computationally expensive to validate. Other considerations include the orphan rate, increased potential for fee sniping, larger attack surface for potential DoS attacks, etc.

Segwit destruction will snowball.  One miner will figure out it is more profitable to skip verifying signatures.  Then two and three figure it out.  Then those who don't skip verifying signatures will notice their relative reward rate dropping.  Then someone will publish new bitcoin code that makes it more profitable to mine (by not verifying signatures).  The less people verify, then the less risk that skipping sig verification would result in the block getting rejected by the network.   Then more and more will join the bandwagon until those who verify signatures are a minority and at that point bitcoin gets majorly attacked and starts collapsing.

Please stop spreading misinformation. This "attack" is not just limited to segwit; miners could have chosen to not verify signatures anyways before segwit activated. Regardless of whether segwit is activated, if a miner produces an invalid block because it contains a transaction that does not have a valid signature (again, regardless of segwit or not), other non-mining full nodes on the network will reject that block and the miner will be wasting his time and electricity.

[ir.hn]

Could you list some of these consequences? I can think of the obvious reasons like
higher bandwidth and storage requirements, but maybe you have additional reasons why
increasing the blocksize is a bad idea.

There are computational costs of larger blocks as they can be more computationally expensive to validate. Other considerations include the orphan rate, increased potential for fee sniping, larger attack surface for potential DoS attacks, etc.

Segwit destruction will snowball.  One miner will figure out it is more profitable to skip verifying signatures.  Then two and three figure it out.  Then those who don't skip verifying signatures will notice their relative reward rate dropping.  Then someone will publish new bitcoin code that makes it more profitable to mine (by not verifying signatures).  The less people verify, then the less risk that skipping sig verification would result in the block getting rejected by the network.   Then more and more will join the bandwagon until those who verify signatures are a minority and at that point bitcoin gets majorly attacked and starts collapsing.

Please stop spreading misinformation. This "attack" is not just limited to segwit; miners could have chosen to not verify signatures anyways before segwit activated. Regardless of whether segwit is activated, if a miner produces an invalid block because it contains a transaction that does not have a valid signature (again, regardless of segwit or not), other non-mining full nodes on the network will reject that block and the miner will be wasting his time and electricity.

Lets say all the non-mining full nodes reject the block.  Why would the miners care?  the miners are the one creating the blockchain.  You can cry foul all day long but unless you can vote with your hashpower on which chain is correct, you are yelling to the wind.

[achow101]

Lets say all the non-mining full nodes reject the block.  Why would the miners care?  the miners are the one creating the blockchain.  You can cry foul all day long but unless you can vote with your hashpower on which chain is correct, you are yelling to the wind.

Miners care because the businesses that accept Bitcoin run full nodes. Businesses will choose to run the nodes that the users are using otherwise they would not have any other customers and would thus be making no money from accepting a different chain. If no one accepts the miner's chain, then they are mining something has no value. Bitcoin is not ruled by miners.

[ir.hn]

Lets say all the non-mining full nodes reject the block.  Why would the miners care?  the miners are the one creating the blockchain.  You can cry foul all day long but unless you can vote with your hashpower on which chain is correct, you are yelling to the wind.

Miners care because the businesses that accept Bitcoin run full nodes. Businesses will choose to run the nodes that the users are using otherwise they would not have any other customers and would thus be making no money from accepting a different chain. If no one accepts the miner's chain, then they are mining something has no value. Bitcoin is not ruled by miners.

So you are claiming bitcoin is ruled by corporations?  If that were true then wow we should let everyone know!  The reality is if the corporations don't accept the longest blockchain then, well, I guess they would have to stop using bitcoin as that would be their only recourse.  The only power non-mining nodes have is boycott, but they don't have control over bitcoin, only the miners have that, and that is by design.

[hatshepsut93]

Lets say all the non-mining full nodes reject the block.  Why would the miners care?  the miners are the one creating the blockchain.  You can cry foul all day long but unless you can vote with your hashpower on which chain is correct, you are yelling to the wind.

Miners care because the businesses that accept Bitcoin run full nodes. Businesses will choose to run the nodes that the users are using otherwise they would not have any other customers and would thus be making no money from accepting a different chain. If no one accepts the miner's chain, then they are mining something has no value. Bitcoin is not ruled by miners.

So you are claiming bitcoin is ruled by corporations?  If that were true then wow we should let everyone know!  The reality is if the corporations don't accept the longest blockchain then, well, I guess they would have to stop using bitcoin as that would be their only recourse.  The only power non-mining nodes have is boycott, but they don't have control over bitcoin, only the miners have that, and that is by design.

Non-mining nodes have the power to change the rules to whatever they want - like for example changing PoW algorithm to render all legacy mining equipment useless. By default, if non-mining nodes would stop receiving blocks for a long time, the difficulty would drop low enough to mine blocks on GPU's and CPU's even without any forks - they are non-mining only because of difficulty. But this situation would usually mean that the miners have gone rogue, and since they can launch an attack on minority chain at any time, a hard fork to a new algo would be required.

Currently there are thousands of full nodes, some of them belong to big companies, but they are all peers - the protocol does not care how many BTC you have and how many transaction you do, you are connected with the network for as long as you agree with its rules.

[nullius]

Please stop spreading misinformation. This "attack" is not just limited to segwit; miners could have chosen to not verify signatures anyways before segwit activated. Regardless of whether segwit is activated, if a miner produces an invalid block because it contains a transaction that does not have a valid signature (again, regardless of segwit or not), other non-mining full nodes on the network will reject that block and the miner will be wasting his time and electricity.

Lets say all the non-mining full nodes reject the block.  Why would the miners care?  the miners are the one creating the blockchain.  You can cry foul all day long but unless you can vote with your hashpower on which chain is correct, you are yelling to the wind.

ir.hn:  You have no idea how Bitcoin works.  You have no idea how Segwit works.  Or at least, you are feigning gross ignorance.  In this thread and others, intelligent and well-informed people have attempted to educate you.  You shoot back with bare assertions and blatant misinformation.  Enough.

General point:  There is a common misconception about the role of miners.  Miners have one, only one, and exactly one job:  To provide the ordering of transactions in a Byzantine fault-tolerant manner (which in turn prevents double-spends).  That’s what miners do.  That is all miners do.  Granted, it is an important and resource-intensive job; that’s why miners get paid for it.  But that is the one and only security function of miners.

Of course, miners must validate each block they produce; if they didn’t, they would be unable to reliably produce valid blocks.  But miners are not the parties responsible for enforcing validation on the network.  Full nodes do that.  Each individual full node does that, so as to provide better security for its owner; and all full nodes collectively do that, thus providing validation security for the whole network.  Observe how here as everywhere, Bitcoin precisely aligns the individual’s selfish interest with the common good.

Full nodes do not blindly “follow the longest chain”.  They follow the chain independently validated by them which has the highest total POW.  A miner who produced invalid blocks would be wasting his hashrate, and likely risking widespread blacklisting of his IP address.  It doesn’t matter if the invalid blocks steal money from Segwit transactions, steal money from old-style transactions, create 21 billion new coins, or are filled with gibberish from /dev/random.  An invalid block is an invalid block, and shall be promptly discarded by all full nodes—period.

ir.hn is creating nonsensical non-arguments by exploiting the aforesaid misconception about the role of miners.  After all the attempts others have made to explain on this and other points, I cannot but conclude that ir.hn is maliciously spreading misinformation.  I write this post for the benefit of others.  I am uninterested in arguing with somebody who is a deliberate liar and/or so manifestly ineducable as to appear braindead.

[ir.hn]

Please stop spreading misinformation. This "attack" is not just limited to segwit; miners could have chosen to not verify signatures anyways before segwit activated. Regardless of whether segwit is activated, if a miner produces an invalid block because it contains a transaction that does not have a valid signature (again, regardless of segwit or not), other non-mining full nodes on the network will reject that block and the miner will be wasting his time and electricity.

Lets say all the non-mining full nodes reject the block.  Why would the miners care?  the miners are the one creating the blockchain.  You can cry foul all day long but unless you can vote with your hashpower on which chain is correct, you are yelling to the wind.

ir.hn:  You have no idea how Bitcoin works.  You have no idea how Segwit works.  Or at least, you are feigning gross ignorance.  In this thread and others, intelligent and well-informed people have attempted to educate you.  You shoot back with bare assertions and blatant misinformation.  Enough.

General point:  There is a common misconception about the role of miners.  Miners have one, only one, and exactly one job:  To provide the ordering of transactions in a Byzantine fault-tolerant manner (which in turn prevents double-spends).  That’s what miners do.  That is all miners do.  Granted, it is an important and resource-intensive job; that’s why miners get paid for it.  But that is the one and only security function of miners.

Of course, miners must validate each block they produce; if they didn’t, they would be unable to reliably produce valid blocks.  But miners are not the parties responsible for enforcing validation on the network.  Full nodes do that.  Each individual full node does that, so as to provide better security for its owner; and all full nodes collectively do that, thus providing validation security for the whole network.  Observe how here as everywhere, Bitcoin precisely aligns the individual’s selfish interest with the common good.

Full nodes do not blindly “follow the longest chain”.  They follow the chain independently validated by them which has the highest total POW.  A miner who produced invalid blocks would be wasting his hashrate, and likely risking widespread blacklisting of his IP address.  It doesn’t matter if the invalid blocks steal money from Segwit transactions, steal money from old-style transactions, create 21 billion new coins, or are filled with gibberish from /dev/random.  An invalid block is an invalid block, and shall be promptly discarded by all full nodes—period.

ir.hn is creating nonsensical non-arguments by exploiting the aforesaid misconception about the role of miners.  After all the attempts others have made to explain on this and other points, I cannot but conclude that ir.hn is maliciously spreading misinformation.  I write this post for the benefit of others.  I am uninterested in arguing with somebody who is a deliberate liar and/or so manifestly ineducable as to appear braindead.

Full nodes can have their ledger of blocks that they verified.  But who is using a non-mining node's ledger to mine on?  Miners mine on the last block that is in the blockchain.  The only way to get a block into the blockchain is to win the block by mining.  If you are not mining you simply cannot vote on what blocks make it into the actual blockchain.  The only person who's vote counts is the person who actually mined the block.  So even if you have 99% of the hashpower but are so unlucky that you never win a block, you never actually have any say as to what makes it into the blockchain.  the only way transactions are confirmed, is if they make it into the actual blockchain.  thus the only people who "verify" transactions and actually have authority to enforce their verification, are miners.

[nullius]

Full nodes can have their ledger of blocks that they verified.  But who is using a non-mining node's ledger to mine on?  Miners mine on the last block that is in the blockchain.  The only way to get a block into the blockchain is to win the block by mining.  If you are not mining you simply cannot vote on what blocks make it into the actual blockchain.  The only person who's vote counts is the person who actually mined the block.  So even if you have 99% of the hashpower but are so unlucky that you never win a block, you never actually have any say as to what makes it into the blockchain.  the only way transactions are confirmed, is if they make it into the actual blockchain.  thus the only people who "verify" transactions and actually have authority to enforce their verification, are miners.

What is so difficult to understand here?  Invalid blocks are not “in the blockchain”.  The only way to add a block to the blockchain, is to mine a valid block.  Those who produce invalid blocks “never actually have any say as to what makes it into the blockchain.”

...I cannot but conclude that ir.hn is maliciously spreading misinformation.  I write this post for the benefit of others.  I am uninterested in arguing with somebody who is a deliberate liar and/or so manifestly ineducable as to appear braindead.

[ir.hn]

What is so difficult to understand here?  Invalid blocks are not “in the blockchain”.  The only way to add a block to the blockchain, is to mine a valid block.  Those who produce invalid blocks “never actually have any say as to what makes it into the blockchain.”

Who can decide whether or not an invalid block makes it into the blockchain?  Who determines whether a block is valid or not?  Isn't it the miner who mines the next block?  They decided to mine on the last block so they say the last block was valid, no one else's say matters.  Then the only thing left is do is either the miners mine on that last persons block, or say it is invalid and remine the previous block.  No where in this process are non-mining nodes.  They are not part of the block confirmation process.

The problem with segwit is that the block will appear valid and can be validated in the blockchain without the signature being present.  This is the whole point of segwit, so that the signature is not needed in the blockchain.  In order to see if the signature is valid the miner would have to wait for the witness block before they start mining on the last block which takes extra time.

[nullius]

What is so difficult to understand here?  Invalid blocks are not “in the blockchain”.  The only way to add a block to the blockchain, is to mine a valid block.  Those who produce invalid blocks “never actually have any say as to what makes it into the blockchain.”

Who can decide whether or not an invalid block makes it into the blockchain?  Who determines whether a block is valid or not?  Isn't it the miner who mines the next block?  They decided to mine on the last block so they say the last block was valid, no one else's say matters.  Then the only thing left is do is either the miners mine on that last persons block, or say it is invalid and remine the previous block.  No where in this process are non-mining nodes.  They are not part of the block confirmation process.

The problem with segwit is that the block will appear valid and can be validated in the blockchain without the signature being present.  This is the whole point of segwit, so that the signature is not needed in the blockchain.  In order to see if the signature is valid the miner would have to wait for the witness block before they start mining on the last block which takes extra time.

“Who can decide whether or not an invalid block makes it into the blockchain?”  Full nodes, that’s who.  “They [full nodes] are not part of the block confirmation process.”  Wrong.  As has been explained to you numerous times in the past few days by several different people, full nodes validate blocks and decide which fully validated chain has the highest total proof-of-work.  Miners can never force full nodes to accept anything invalid.

By analogy, BCH miners could create 8MB blocks and try to entice Bitcoin nodes to accept them.  Could they force full nodes accept those blocks?  No:  Full nodes would reject those blocks, because they are invalid blocks.  A block missing witness data (signatures) would also be invalid.  A block containing invalid transactions is also invalid.

Contra what you say, in Segwit, there is no “witness block”.  Segwit witness data is included inside the same block as the rest of the transaction data.  Signatures are always present.  “This is the whole point of segwit, so that the signature is not needed in the blockchain.”  False.  You have not even the slightest idea of what Segwit is, or how Segwit works; you’re just spouting off nonsense which you evidently make up on the spot.

[ir.hn]

Miners can never force full nodes to accept anything invalid.

Right.  But can full nodes force miners to reject anything?  If not then what full nodes think is valid or not doesn't effect the blockchain.

Contra what you say, in Segwit, there is no “witness block”.  Segwit witness data is included inside the same block as the rest of the transaction data.  Signatures are always present.  “This is the whole point of segwit, so that the signature is not needed in the blockchain.”  False.  You have not even the slightest idea of what Segwit is, or how Segwit works; you’re just spouting off nonsense which you evidently make up on the spot.

If this is so then why not just hash the signatures into the transaction?  Then it would be the same as we have now yet it would be a block size increase to 4mb.  Segwit signatures are not hashed into the UTXO transaction and thus cannot be verified via traditional means.  As far as I understand segwit is done to save space in the UTXO.

[codewench]

Right.  But can full nodes force miners to reject anything?  If not then what full nodes think is valid or not doesn't effect the blockchain.

Full nodes can't force the miners to do anything. But full nodes (and their users) can reject anything the miners do.

In your scenario, the miners will be working away on their invalid blockchain, but the valid blockchain will stop growing. At that point all it takes in one miner doing CPU mining on an old Celeron to resume growing the valid blockchain. It may take several difficulty adjustment periods before the single miner can produce a block on schedule, but valid transactions will eventually resume. Meanwhile, the rogue miners will be unable to turn their BogusCoins into value.

[ir.hn]

Right.  But can full nodes force miners to reject anything?  If not then what full nodes think is valid or not doesn't effect the blockchain.

Full nodes can't force the miners to do anything. But full nodes (and their users) can reject anything the miners do.

In your scenario, the miners will be working away on their invalid blockchain, but the valid blockchain will stop growing. At that point all it takes in one miner doing CPU mining on an old Celeron to resume growing the valid blockchain. It may take several difficulty adjustment periods before the single miner can produce a block on schedule, but valid transactions will eventually resume. Meanwhile, the rogue miners will be unable to turn their BogusCoins into value.

One thing I have learned in the altcoin space is that value follows hashpower.  A coin with high hashpower will have a higher value on average, and as a coins hashpower increases, so does the value.  If the majority of Bitcoin miners start mining InvalidCoin fork, then that is the new Bitcoin.  Could a node point out that there was an invalid transaction and that miners should stop on their chain and restart on that old block?  Sure, but remember "One CPU one Vote", if the majority of miners just continue mining InvalidCoin, then the "CPU's" have spoken.

Forks happen all the time on altcoin chains and what it does is make it so the cartel is the only one who can mine and all other miners are out of luck.  The minority miners can't convince anyone that they are actually the ones mining the real altcoin.  Value follows hashpower.

[nullius]

Miners can never force full nodes to accept anything invalid.

Right.  But can full nodes force miners to reject anything?  If not then what full nodes think is valid or not doesn't effect the blockchain.

Miners are perfectly free to mine invalid chains, if they want.  As I’ve said elsewhere, they can mine chains of blocks filled with the output of /dev/random in lieu of transactions, if they want.  But those invalid chains will not exist to the Bitcoin network.  “What full nodes think is valid or not” absolutely does affect the blockchain:  Indeed, that determines what the blockchain is.

Right.  But can full nodes force miners to reject anything?  If not then what full nodes think is valid or not doesn't effect the blockchain.

Full nodes can't force the miners to do anything. But full nodes (and their users) can reject anything the miners do.

In your scenario, the miners will be working away on their invalid blockchain, but the valid blockchain will stop growing. At that point all it takes in one miner doing CPU mining on an old Celeron to resume growing the valid blockchain. It may take several difficulty adjustment periods before the single miner can produce a block on schedule, but valid transactions will eventually resume. Meanwhile, the rogue miners will be unable to turn their BogusCoins into value.

One thing I have learned in the altcoin space is that value follows hashpower.  A coin with high hashpower will have a higher value on average, and as a coins hashpower increases, so does the value.  If the majority of Bitcoin miners start mining InvalidCoin fork, then that is the new Bitcoin.  Could a node point out that there was an invalid transaction and that miners should stop on their chain and restart on that old block?  Sure, but remember "One CPU one Vote", if the majority of miners just continue mining InvalidCoin, then the "CPU's" have spoken.

Forks happen all the time on altcoin chains and what it does is make it so the cartel is the only one who can mine and all other miners are out of luck.  The minority miners can't convince anyone that they are actually the ones mining the real altcoin.  Value follows hashpower.

You have it precisely backwards:  Hashpower follows value.  In the altcoin space, I’ve been fascinated to watch as an ASIC-resistant, GPU-mined coin’s mining difficulty rises and falls immediately following fluctuation of the ratio of its value to the value of other GPU-mined coins.  Of course, many big mining farms have the switch set to occur automatically.

Bitcoin does not derive its value from mining hashpower.  Bitcoin’s value incentivizes and indeed, pays for hashpower.  As codewench says, if all the ASIC miners started churning out invalid blocks, Bitcoin could proceed with “an old Celeron”—but of course that would not happen, because miners want to make money.  Some miners such as Jihan (Bitmain) may have a long-term profit strategy driven by ulterior motives, and/or security exploits (substantially fixed by Segwit) which give them a profit advantage on a forkchain; and some may simply be fools, in the sense of bad businessmen.  But the rest will run to mine the coin with the highest value.  That is Bitcoin.  And to get their profits, the miners need their blocks to be accepted by full nodes—rejection by full nodes means no mining profits!  That’s one important part of what you keep missing.

More generally, you need to understand the purpose of mining.  I have repeatedly tried to explain that to you in these various different threads.  Look up Byzantine fault tolerance, the Byzantine generals problem, and the double-spend problem.  Start learning.

Contra what you say, in Segwit, there is no “witness block”.  Segwit witness data is included inside the same block as the rest of the transaction data.  Signatures are always present.  “This is the whole point of segwit, so that the signature is not needed in the blockchain.”  False.  You have not even the slightest idea of what Segwit is, or how Segwit works; you’re just spouting off nonsense which you evidently make up on the spot.

If this is so then why not just hash the signatures into the transaction?  Then it would be the same as we have now yet it would be a block size increase to 4mb.  Segwit signatures are not hashed into the UTXO transaction and thus cannot be verified via traditional means.  As far as I understand segwit is done to save space in the UTXO.

What you just said is such a long string of disconnected non sequitur that I don’t even know where to start.

The bird’s-eye overview of how Segwit actually works:  Segregated Witness transactions are serialized in such a manner that the “witness data” (public keys and signature) is dealt with separately from the input/output/script data, within the same block.  This permits witness data to be omitted in communications with old, non-upgraded nodes, and only with them.  Segwit nodes receive all transaction data, including signatures, within the same block.  None of this has anything to do with the UTXO set.

The principal purpose of segregating the witness data was to permit changing the blocksize without a hardfork.  Segwit doesn’t just change the blocksize limit:  It gets rid of the blocksize limit entirely.  Instead, Bitcoin now has a block weight limit of 4000000 bytes.  Transaction data in the old serialization format is weighted (much) more heavily; Segwit witness data is measured with much lighter “weight”, byte for byte.  The upshot is that old, non-upgraded nodes will continue seeing blocks with a maximum size of 1000000 bytes; whereas upgraded nodes can take advantage of larger blocks.  Instead of a hardfork which suddenly and totally breaks old nodes, we have a gradual transition which lets old nodes continue minimal function until their owners get around to upgrading.

That is the block capacity part of Segwit.  In my opinion, the most important parts of Segwit are that it also includes bugfixes for transaction malleability and the quadratic sighash scaling problem; and it includes a script versioning system, for forward-compatibility with future new features.  I’m not Litecoin user, but I do concur with what Charlie Lee said in favour of Segwit (as I just quoted in one of these other threads you started).  The block capacity upgrade was the smallest part of Segwit, so to speak.

Now unless you have something new to say, other than rehashing the same drastically incorrect bare assertions, or unless somebody else pipes up with something interesting, I will bow out of these threads for now so as to stop bumping them—and to not become this guy:

[Witrebel]

Bitcoin does not derive its value from mining hashpower.  Bitcoin’s value incentivizes and indeed, pays for hashpower.  As codewench says, if all the ASIC miners started churning out invalid blocks, Bitcoin could proceed with “an old Celeron”—but of course that would not happen, because miners want to make money.

This has always struck me as possibly the biggest realistic attack vector for the network, the lack of emergency difficulty adjustment.   The Celeron would work great, provided you get through 2016 or so blocks, but depending on how much hashpower you've lost, that could take a prohibitively long time?   Is the solution here pretty much "we can hardfork if the time ever comes"

[nullius]

Bitcoin does not derive its value from mining hashpower.  Bitcoin’s value incentivizes and indeed, pays for hashpower.  As codewench says, if all the ASIC miners started churning out invalid blocks, Bitcoin could proceed with “an old Celeron”—but of course that would not happen, because miners want to make money.

This has always struck me as possibly the biggest realistic attack vector for the network, the lack of emergency difficulty adjustment.   The Celeron would work great, provided you get through 2016 or so blocks, but depending on how much hashpower you've lost, that could take a prohibitively long time?   Is the solution here pretty much "we can hardfork if the time ever comes"

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forum—theymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).  I do not endorse that proposal; I think it’s interesting, but I have no desire to see collateral damage made of all the fine folks who invested their lives’ savings in SHA-256 hardware, and swore they would mine Bitcoin or nothing.

Thus far, Bitcoin has successfully stared down threats and active attempts to cause exactly what you describe.  Anti-Core/anti-Segwit/pro-BCH/2X/whatever watering holes have been perpetually filled with talk of “the flippening” and “killing off the legacy chain” (i.e. Bitcoin), amidst much bravado.  At one point just last month, there was a serious contest of hashpower accompanied by market manipulations which pumped-and-dumped BCH, whilst knocking down Bitcoin down 30% for all of a few days.  This was timed carefully, so that the desertion of malicious miners would hit right after a 2016th-block difficulty adjustment.  Bitcoin got kind of slow, as its hashpower plummeted; BCH supporters were jeering that Bitcoin would grind to a halt, predicting that hashpower would drop low enough that it would take months to reach the next difficulty adjustment.  That situation lasted for approximately 48 hours, until miners flocked back to where they could make the biggest profits.  The end of that battle was that Bitcoin’s hashpower stabilized, little guys who threw their money into BCH at its peak got wiped out—and Bitcoin’s exchange rate rebounded to a new all-time high within a week or so, thus giving miners all the more reason to stay with Bitcoin!

The more often Bitcoin faces such attacks, the worse it crushes its attackers; and thus, the more of a reputation it gains for being “anti-fragile” and a “honey badger” (or “money badger”).  From a public relations perspective, attempts at “flippening” away Bitcoin by draining its hashpower have made those who try such things look ridiculous.

The war isn’t over, of course; and I myself am worried about miner centralization as a matter of principle.  It is most worrisome that the world’s biggest vendor of SHA-256 ASICs is actively pro-BCH/anti-Bitcoin, and currently accepting payment in BCH instead of Bitcoin.  I want to see commodity SHA-256 ASICs sold cheaper than GPUs, and as readily available.  I think that’s probably the best solution, long-term.  Too bad I am not a hardware guy.

[marcelbit]

@ achow101: Thank you so much for your effort to cope for my questions! I very much appreciate that and have sent you a small donation. 

(Perhaps it will take quite long until the donation gets to you since I've set the fee to only 75 satoshi per bytes. My hardware wallet suggested a fee at approx. 600 s/byte which would have resultet in a much higher fee than the actual donation. By the way, at 60 s/byte I've got the error mesage "mempool min fee not met". I didn't know there is a minimum fee.)

A big thanks also to nullius for the very enlightening additions! 

By the way, I also run a Bitcoin full node on a VPS. 

Thank you for this very informative posts guys.

I wish you peaceful holidays.
Marcel

[Carlton Banks]

Who can decide whether or not an invalid block makes it into the blockchain?  Who determines whether a block is valid or not?  Isn't it the miner who mines the next block? 

After a miner mines an block, they send that block to other full nodes on the Bitcoin network. This includes miners and non-miners, there's no difference.

If the block breaks the rules, no other node will add it to their blockchain. The miner of a block can decide only on what their node accepts, not what everyone elses node accepts. Invalid blocks will be rejected


You're exploiting the way that decentralised networks are understood, and it's not very smart.

Every node has their own copy of the blockchain, there is no "the" blockchain. Bitcoin is designed to make all nodes agree on what the blockchain contains in the past, but the newest block is always in contention. So sure, a miner can add any total garbage non-conforming block to their own copy of the blockchain. And when that miner broadcasts non-compliant garbage, everyone else running the consensus rules will not add that to their version of the blockchain.

This is the beauty of the blockchain design, you're arguing as if it's still 2008 and you don't get it yet. Even the corporate and government mis-information services like Bloomberg or the BBC understand what you do not about how a blockchain works.

[nullius]

@ achow101: Thank you so much for your effort to cope for my questions! I very much appreciate that and have sent you a small donation. 

(Perhaps it will take quite long until the donation gets to you since I've set the fee to only 75 satoshi per bytes. My hardware wallet suggested a fee at approx. 600 s/byte which would have resultet in a much higher fee than the actual donation. By the way, at 60 s/byte I've got the error mesage "mempool min fee not met". I didn't know there is a minimum fee.)

A big thanks also to nullius for the very enlightening additions! 

By the way, I also run a Bitcoin full node on a VPS. 

Thank you for this very informative posts guys.

I wish you peaceful holidays.
Marcel

You’re welcome, and thanks for the kind words!  May I suggest you try running a node on your own hardware, in your physical possession.  Core has made great effort to keep requirements accessible; no big server or datacentre backbone connection is required.  Your keys, your hardware, your security, fully decentralized and in your control.  It all just fits together.

Peaceful holidays likewise.

Aside, the mempool minimum fee is a per-node rule, not a consensus rule.  (Of course, most will go with the default.)  That makes sense, because selection amongst consensus-valid transactions is in the discretion of miners; and:

There is no such thing as “the mempool” (and if there were, then we wouldn’t need miners).  Each and every node has a mempool [...]

Hmmm; compare and contrast the node’s view of data it has received without any attempt at Byzantine fault-tolerant ordering, and Satoshi’s decentralized BFT database in action:

Every node has their own copy of the blockchain, there is no "the" blockchain.

Excellent point, for obtaining a proper perspective in this particular discussion.

[...]

[...]

This is the beauty of the blockchain design, you're arguing as if it's still 2008 and you don't get it yet. Even the corporate and government mis-information services like Bloomberg or the BBC understand what you do not about how a blockchain works.

That’s because corporate and government mis-information services consist of misinformation professionals.  Also, disinformation professionals—a subtle distinction in the field of mass-scale lying.

[cellard]

In general, each user will have several open Lightning channels and that should all be handled by the client you are running. Even with several open channels, while each channel may not be able to make a single large purchase, it is possible for you to make a large payment by sending money through multiple channels.

While there may be several large hubs, it certainly does not introduce that much centralization. Hubs can't change the amount of money that you have and can't dictate anything that you do. If a hub is misbehaving, you can simply stop using them and use someone else or just not use LN.

The problem I see with the "just not use LN" argument, is that once Lightning network is widespread and we have channels all over the world filling flocks with all these microtransactions, the overall on-chain fee will be higher than ever, at some point it will be non-viable for most people to transact on-chain. For people using LN, it wouldn't matter, as their transactions will eventually go into a block mixed with the rest of LN transactions (btw, who sets the fee for an "LN-tx filled block"?) but for people that want to transact on-chain, it will be extremely expensive, unless im missing something here.

PS: Im not saying "make blocks bigger as soon as they get filled" and such nonsense are a solution, im just pointing out at how widespread LN usage could lead to unusable on-chain transactions.

[achow101]

The problem I see with the "just not use LN" argument, is that once Lightning network is widespread and we have channels all over the world filling flocks with all these microtransactions, the overall on-chain fee will be higher than ever, at some point it will be non-viable for most people to transact on-chain. For people using LN, it wouldn't matter, as their transactions will eventually go into a block mixed with the rest of LN transactions (btw, who sets the fee for an "LN-tx filled block"?) but for people that want to transact on-chain, it will be extremely expensive, unless im missing something here.

PS: Im not saying "make blocks bigger as soon as they get filled" and such nonsense are a solution, im just pointing out at how widespread LN usage could lead to unusable on-chain transactions.

What? No! That is not how LN works. There won't be "filling blocks with all these microtransactions" because the microtransactions are happening off chain. LN moves transactions off chain so there will be more block space for other transactions. Fees should be lower with LN, not higher.

[Witrebel]

What? No! That is not how LN works. There won't be "filling blocks with all these microtransactions" because the microtransactions are happening off chain. LN moves transactions off chain so there will be more block space for other transactions. Fees should be lower with LN, not higher.

During adoption, there will be a fee in the form of the on chain transaction to stake your coins and open a channel? So basically we are asking the userbase to endure a one time "adoption fee" in the name of lowering overall fees long term.  When lightning network is operational, and transactions are largely off chain, then the on chain demand is reduced creating the fee reduction.  That seems to be the biggest barrier to adoption, the requirement for "paying a fee to reduce fees". 

[achow101]

During adoption, there will be a fee in the form of the on chain transaction to stake your coins and open a channel? So basically we are asking the userbase to endure a one time "adoption fee" in the name of lowering overall fees long term.  When lightning network is operational, and transactions are largely off chain, then the on chain demand is reduced creating the fee reduction.  That seems to be the biggest barrier to adoption, the requirement for "paying a fee to reduce fees". 

Not everyone is going to suddenly start using LN at the same time. Some people will suck it up and be the first people to open a channel and pay higher fees. As their transactions move off chain, the fee will decrease, and more people will then join. That will happen so on and so forth; the fee will decrease gradually as more people use LN and more people will begin using LN as it becomes more widely accepted and the barrier to entry (i.e. the funding transaction's transaction fee) decreases.

[cellard]

The problem I see with the "just not use LN" argument, is that once Lightning network is widespread and we have channels all over the world filling flocks with all these microtransactions, the overall on-chain fee will be higher than ever, at some point it will be non-viable for most people to transact on-chain. For people using LN, it wouldn't matter, as their transactions will eventually go into a block mixed with the rest of LN transactions (btw, who sets the fee for an "LN-tx filled block"?) but for people that want to transact on-chain, it will be extremely expensive, unless im missing something here.

PS: Im not saying "make blocks bigger as soon as they get filled" and such nonsense are a solution, im just pointing out at how widespread LN usage could lead to unusable on-chain transactions.

What? No! That is not how LN works. There won't be "filling blocks with all these microtransactions" because the microtransactions are happening off chain. LN moves transactions off chain so there will be more block space for other transactions. Fees should be lower with LN, not higher.

No, I may not have been clear with my post.

I am obviously aware that LN transactions are happening off-chain, but then these off-chain transactions converge within a block and get settled blockchain. So what im claiming is: when LN gets widespread, the rate at which these blocks get filled with off-chain transactions will be faster.
Also, people opening and closing LN channels will lead to on-chain usage too.

Eventually I don't see how this wouldn't lead to higher fees for those using on-chain.

Sure, we'll have a period of lower fees once segwit + people using LN for smaller transactions kick in, but eventually the current block space wouldn't cut it for those wanting to transact on-chain.

How far are we from that? who knows. With the fake spam it's hard to evaluate actual usage. We will just need to wait and see how the mempool looks like with a widespread LN and segwit I guess.

[nullius]

What? No! That is not how LN works. There won't be "filling blocks with all these microtransactions" because the microtransactions are happening off chain. LN moves transactions off chain so there will be more block space for other transactions. Fees should be lower with LN, not higher.

No, I may not have been clear with my post.

I am obviously aware that LN transactions are happening off-chain, but then these off-chain transactions converge within a block and get settled blockchain. So what im claiming is: when LN gets widespread, the rate at which these blocks get filled with off-chain transactions will be faster.
Also, people opening and closing LN channels will lead to on-chain usage too.

LN transactions do not “converge within a block and get settled blockchain”.  No record of them ever reaches the blockchain.

The only LN use of the blockchain is channel maintenance transactions, “people opening and closing LN channels” as you said.

Imagine that you and I make an agreement to trade between each other, and track our trades in a private ledger.  We create an entry in a global public ledger, devoting funds to our private ledger transactions.  When we’re done and we want to settle accounts, we record our respective final balances from our private ledger in the global public ledger.  All else in the private ledger stays there, nowhere else.

Of course here, our “private ledger” is magical.  It provides each of us a unilateral recourse to force the current balances into the global ledger, in case of cheating; so there is no counterparty risk.

[savushkinTA]

You should do your own research because asking that directly in an open forum will only result in trolls swarming all over the place.

[nullius]

You should do your own research because asking that directly in an open forum will only result in trolls swarming all over the place.

Ouch.  I jumped into the middle, replying to a user who was making the same blatantly incorrect assertions about Segwit in many different threads simultaneously.  I somehow missed that this thread started with talk of “the flippening”, that link we’ve all seen, and blah blah blah about Blockstream.  Oops.  I should be more careful.

Well, OP here got useful replies; and he seems to have responded graciously enough.  For every troll, shill, and professional liar hawking a tall tale, there are n newbies being sincerely misled—for an uncomfortably large value of n.  Your advice to them is sound, savushkinTA; but how is a newbie to know that he’s tumbling down a rabbit hole, one wherein all the rabbits have been killed and eaten by poisonous snakes?

[cellard]

What? No! That is not how LN works. There won't be "filling blocks with all these microtransactions" because the microtransactions are happening off chain. LN moves transactions off chain so there will be more block space for other transactions. Fees should be lower with LN, not higher.

No, I may not have been clear with my post.

I am obviously aware that LN transactions are happening off-chain, but then these off-chain transactions converge within a block and get settled blockchain. So what im claiming is: when LN gets widespread, the rate at which these blocks get filled with off-chain transactions will be faster.
Also, people opening and closing LN channels will lead to on-chain usage too.

LN transactions do not “converge within a block and get settled blockchain”.  No record of them ever reaches the blockchain.

The only LN use of the blockchain is channel maintenance transactions, “people opening and closing LN channels” as you said.

Imagine that you and I make an agreement to trade between each other, and track our trades in a private ledger.  We create an entry in a global public ledger, devoting funds to our private ledger transactions.  When we’re done and we want to settle accounts, we record our respective final balances from our private ledger in the global public ledger.  All else in the private ledger stays there, nowhere else.

Of course here, our “private ledger” is magical.  It provides each of us a unilateral recourse to force the current balances into the global ledger, in case of cheating; so there is no counterparty risk.

Right, so the only on-chain activity that happens with LN is in the opening of a channel?

So I create a channel with 1 BTC, and now I can send instant cheap transactions out of that 1 BTC to any other open LN channel and none of that is ever recorded anywhere but it's still non gameable?

In any case, have simulation models of lightning network been performed to somehow predict what fees will be like once people all over the world are opening channels? like at what rate will people be opening channels? (from what I understand, closing a channel is irrelevant, on-chain transactions only happen when opening)

Let's say people load up $1000 bucks a month worth of BTC in a channel for the month to spend from... how do we know this will be viable and for how long?

What about spamming the LN? as in attackers opening and closing channels just like they do now to spam the network with regular spam.

[nullius]

LN transactions do not “converge within a block and get settled blockchain”.  No record of them ever reaches the blockchain.

The only LN use of the blockchain is channel maintenance transactions, “people opening and closing LN channels” as you said.

Imagine that you and I make an agreement to trade between each other, and track our trades in a private ledger.  We create an entry in a global public ledger, devoting funds to our private ledger transactions.  When we’re done and we want to settle accounts, we record our respective final balances from our private ledger in the global public ledger.  All else in the private ledger stays there, nowhere else.

Of course here, our “private ledger” is magical.  It provides each of us a unilateral recourse to force the current balances into the global ledger, in case of cheating; so there is no counterparty risk.

Right, so the only on-chain activity that happens with LN is in the opening of a channel?

So I create a channel with 1 BTC, and now I can send instant cheap transactions out of that 1 BTC to any other open LN channel and none of that is ever recorded anywhere but it's still non gameable?

Close.  You can send and receive with a party with whom you’ve established a channel.  Well, what if you’re connected to Alice, and you want to send money to Bob?  If Alice has a channel open with Bob, then you can have Alice “route” your payment for a small fee—essentially letting Alice be a mini-Visa network for you.  These routes can be extended with multiple hops, potentially (but not necessarily) passing through large hubs; did you ever play “six degrees” style games?  Developers with a focus on privacy have also been working on onion-routing Lightning transactions; think of a Tor which routes money, instead of routing stream sockets.  (PSA: This message is posted through Tor.)

Conceptually, roughly, the reason why the system can’t be gamed is that you send Lightning payments by providing your counterparty with sufficient information to slam the channel closed with the updated balance, and claim all their money on-chain.  Cheaters can’t do much mischief, in those conditions.  That’s a sketch of the system’s general shape.  The Lightning whitepaper (PDF) provides a good technical overview of how it really works under the hood.

In any case, have simulation models of lightning network been performed to somehow predict what fees will be like once people all over the world are opening channels? like at what rate will people be opening channels? (from what I understand, closing a channel is irrelevant, on-chain transactions only happen when opening)

Let's say people load up $1000 bucks a month worth of BTC in a channel for the month to spend from... how do we know this will be viable and for how long?

On-chain transactions also happen when closing the channel; that’s how final balances are settled on-chain.

You ask an excellent question about simulations.  I would appreciate more information about that, myself.

A related question is of how many global users Lightning could handle, and what tps it could reach, with the current capacity of the blockchain.  Back of the envelope, if on average a channel handles x LN transactions, and an on-chain block can hold y transactions, then the upper bound of Lightning capacity (ignoring other Bitcoin use) is about x*y/2 transactions per average 10-minute Bitcoin block.  I recently came across a neat little chart giving some numbers here; sorry, I can’t seem to find it at the moment.  The numbers looked fairly impressive, even given my desire to see orders-of-magnitude scaling of the Bitcoin ecosystem’s transactional capacity.

In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

What about spamming the LN? as in attackers opening and closing channels just like they do now to spam the network with regular spam.

Well, spurious opening and closing of channels would simply be a matter of spamming the blockchain with spurious transactions.  We have that problem already.  I don’t immediately see how Lightning itself could be problematically spammed, given that it’s relatively low and symmetric in resource use (spam needs highly asymmetric costs), and channel participation is by voluntary mutual agreement; but I do not yet have sufficient Lightning expertise to say authoritatively that it couldn’t happen somehow.  Another interesting question I shall need to think about.  Any takers here?

[cellard]

On-chain transactions also happen when closing the channel; that’s how final balances are settled on-chain.

You ask an excellent question about simulations.  I would appreciate more information about that, myself.

Im asking mostly because Peter Rizun and Andrew Stone claimed on (I think it was) Scaling Bitcoin 2017, that they had simulations of bitcoin working with 1GB, or even 1TB blocksizes, and I was curious about what and how these "simulations" were being done and how legit are those.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M

If they can do simulations to test how the system behaves at a certain scale, I guess simulations with LN could somehow be done.

Also, I remember hearing about how you could make money by having an open channel with a certain amount of BTC (kind of PoS for BTC through LN). What are the details on this? (I guess it's the fee that you mentioned), how would the profit that you could make depending on your stake be calculated? and what are the implications of this game theory wise.

[RNC]

This will be the millionth time I have to respond to the same completely false and fabricated ideas. All of these "complaints" are false.

I would argue with you but you keep waving that moderator stick and banning people that won't agree or you remove the posts
so why not pop over to zero-hedge and try having a chat Andrew because I don't like fighting with one hand tied behind my back

Yes you have been reported for your bias moderation and should not post here if you cannot control yourself.

[RNC]

In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

That didn't take a page to make the point did it now !

[DooMAD]

This will be the millionth time I have to respond to the same completely false and fabricated ideas. All of these "complaints" are false.

I would argue with you but you keep waving that moderator stick and banning people that won't agree or you remove the posts
so why not pop over to zero-hedge and try having a chat Andrew because I don't like fighting with one hand tied behind my back

It's a tad presumptuous to claim someone is going to delete a post before you've made it.  How about you just make the argument and we'll decide if it holds any water.

In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

[nullius]

Code:

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         |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:           
         |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:          
         |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='          
         |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )             
         |       Management  |              /`-vvv-'\             
         +-------------------+             /         \            
                 |  |        @@@          / /|,,,,,|\ \           
                 |  |        @@@         /_//  /^\  \\_\          
   @x@@x@        |  |         |/         WW(  (   )  )WW          
   \||||/        |  |        \|           __\,,\ /,,/__           
    \||/         |  |         |          (______Y______)          
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\//\/\\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
==================================================================

In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

You raise an excellent point, DooMAD.  I myself try to do what I can, e.g.:

I would also recommend that you steer clear of Coinbase altogether - they are a very shitty company and have banned my account for a rather trivial reason. Just don't use them. Get a private key and lock it in a fireproof safe, there's your vault.

This.  If you don’t have private keys, then you’re not using Bitcoin.  Coinbase is a bank.  Be your own bank.

Staking Bitcoin address? Well, sorry that I don't have a permanent one. All my Bitcoin addresses are given to me by exchange sites so there would be no point.

If you don’t control your own private keys, then you are not using Bitcoin.  Forgive me if I am underwhelmed by your opinions about the Bitcoin Forum.

However, please realize that the people who attack Lightning with such vitriol are not acting in good faith.  Ulterior motives readily explain why they spread malicious disinformation misrepresenting Lightning as if it “consists of banks” (quoted above), whereas they ignore the issue of exchanges which are banks in any sensible definition of the word.

Lightning is like an off-chain P2P private wire transfer network connecting people who adhere the Bitcoin motto, “Be your own bank.”  Settlements for Lightning-wire consist of on-chain, armoured-car transfers of bit-bullion.  This analogy is intended to be roughly conceptual, not technically rigorous.

(I also find it curious that known troll account #1801074 “RNC” dug up and quoted a post of mine from when I had just passed from Newbie to Jr. Member.  I can hear the gnashing of teeth over how e.g. there is now a Meta thread titled, “Who the hell is ‘nullius’ the guy is too smart around here :)”.  I am also involved in some long-term running flamewars over there.  But in Development & Technical Discussion, I try to avoid such things due to my respect for the moderator’s policy of maintaining a high S/N ratio for technical discussion.)

[LtMotioN]

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

That didn't take a page to make the point did it now !

I like how we can actually go onto Github and see these things ourselves; where the developers are that is. Below are some stats for the last 30 days.

Bitcoin cash Github
https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc/pulse/monthly 0 Merges 2 Proposals 6 Closed 4 New

Bitcoin Github
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulse/monthly - 101 Merges 61 Proposals 68 Closed 54 New

BitcoinXt
https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/pulse/monthly 28 Merges 1 Proposal 2 closed 1 New

Bitcoin Unlimited
https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimited/pulse/monthly - 27 Merges 7 Proposals 4 Closed 3 New

I welcome you to support your flavour of Bitcoin you wish to, I am happy we have freedom of association in cryptocurrency. But it's best if we can keep things to fact as much as we can. Looking at those stats it seems to me that Bitcoin is evolving rapidly. The misc forks seem to be getting much more development love than bitcoin cash too(although I think these other githubs work together on bcash to be fair, I'm not sure). The point still stands though.

I myself have begun reading the LN whitepaper, trying to understand as much of it as I can and I really love the technology, the only issue I have with it is offline payments. But I am sure that will be sorted out, Rome wasn't built in a day. And as for centralization; you would be very dumb to try make a lightning hub and run 100k channels funded with 50k BTC. You are begging to get hacked and the fees you collect would not justify the risk at all.

[RNC]

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

You have not taken the time to read the white paper and you are free to call lightning hubs what ever you like
but they charge both transaction fees and interest on BTC loaned out and the rest of the world tends to call these
"Banks"

Nothing about these bank/hubs is decentralised and if Bitcoin is so safe then maybe you won't want to read this
https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
or watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g




 

[RNC]

However, please realize that the people who attack Lightning with such vitriol are not acting in good faith.  Ulterior motives readily explain why they spread malicious disinformation misrepresenting Lightning as if it “consists of banks” (quoted above), whereas they ignore the issue of exchanges which are banks in any sensible definition of the word.

Lightning is like an off-chain P2P private wire transfer network connecting people who adhere the Bitcoin motto, “Be your own bank.”  Settlements for Lightning-wire consist of on-chain, armoured-car transfers of bit-bullion.  This analogy is intended to be roughly conceptual, not technically rigorous.

I tend to think that people who won't address the obvious truth have a vested interest and never act in good faith and the motto “Be your own bank.”
must also be printed on all VISA cards if this claim of yours was true when it comes to Bitcoin because fees + interest != “Be your own bank.” and
you can argue as much as you want but this remains a fact.

Truth is treason around here so I am happy to be called a troll by you.

[pebwindkraft]

You have not taken the time to read the white paper and you are free to call lightning hubs what ever you like
but they charge both transaction fees and interest on BTC loaned out and the rest of the world tends to call these
"Banks"

yadda, yadda, yadda - we already had other people posting about "banks" in exactly the same constructed,weird messages. At the end they somehow disappeared for good reasons.
Fundamentalistic behaviour in a religious manner - waste of time...

[RNC]

yadda, yadda, yadda - we already had other people posting about "banks" in exactly the same constructed,weird messages. At the end they somehow disappeared for good reasons.
Fundamentalistic behaviour in a religious manner - waste of time...

Comments vanish around here due to censorship and vested interests but Lightning fans are free to
argue with the white paper because this is where my facts come from so "yadda, yadda, yadda" that one
in search of a few more merits

[DooMAD]

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

You have not taken the time to read the white paper and you are free to call lightning hubs what ever you like
but they charge both transaction fees and interest on BTC loaned out and the rest of the world tends to call these
"Banks"

Nothing about these bank/hubs is decentralised and if Bitcoin is so safe then maybe you won't want to read this
https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
or watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g

While people have erroneously compared it to "interest on loans" in their attempts to understand all this, that's categorically not what's happening in Lightning.  "Loans" and "interest" imply fractional reserve and there's none of that in LN.  If that's the impression you were left with, perhaps it's you who needs to take another look at the whitepaper.

I don't see the relevance in your linked article about Craig Con-Man Wright.  There was no weakness exploited in Bitcoin itself.  Dave Kleiman was sadly just friends with someone he evidently didn't realise was a scumbag.  If you do business with disreputable people, no choice of financial medium will save you.  Whether it had been PayPal, credit card, crypto, precious metals, cash, or whatever, Wright still would have stolen it.  Also, none of that has anything to do with Lightning.

Still yet to hear any compelling arguments about how payment channels are banks.  I mean, sure, Bitcoin has definitely been marketed as a way to "be your own bank", but that's about as far as the analogy can go.  That phrase was always more to do with highlighting the importance of removing the reliance on centralised banks, not coming up with a highly elaborate and convoluted way of creating new centralised banks.  If you think that's what we're doing here, then no wonder you think we're crazy.  We'd think that's an insane thing to do, too.  So it's a good thing Lightning definitely isn't an attempt to create centralised banking.  Try to understand that, or if you still can't, then maybe just give it some time, wait and see.

Banks rely on creating money out of thin air to lend at interest.  Lightning will rely on source-routed payments of existing funds, with no magical money creation.  Completely different concepts.

[RNC]

While people have erroneously compared it to "interest on loans" in their attempts to understand all this, that's categorically not what's happening in Lightning.  "Loans" and "interest" imply fractional reserve and there's none of that in LN.  If that's the impression you were left with, perhaps it's you who needs to take another look at the whitepaper.

fractional reserve banking stopped working years ago with main stream banks and they no longer need money on deposit to print new notes but your argument is like
saying that because a street light is left on at night that it's not night time because you can see in the dark.

Interest + fees = Banks and not only is this centralized in the case of hub-banks going down but it is also off-chain so may I suggest that perhaps you
need to read the white paper again instead of letting them pull the wool over your eyes.

A Funding Transaction may have multiple outputs with multiple Commitment
Transactions, with the Funding Transaction key and some Commitment
Transactions keys stored offline. It is possible to create an equivalent
of a “Checking Account” and “Savings Account” by moving funds between
outputs from a Funding Transaction, with the “Savings Account” stored
offline and requiring additional signatures from security services.

It stinks of banks, face up to the facts.

[DooMAD]

While people have erroneously compared it to "interest on loans" in their attempts to understand all this, that's categorically not what's happening in Lightning.  "Loans" and "interest" imply fractional reserve and there's none of that in LN.  If that's the impression you were left with, perhaps it's you who needs to take another look at the whitepaper.

fractional reserve banking stopped working years ago with main stream banks and they no longer need money on deposit to print new notes but your argument is like
saying that because a street light is left on at night that it's no night time because you can see in the dark.

Interest + fees = Banks and not only is this centralized in the case of hub-banks going down but it is also off-chain so may I suggest that perhaps you
need to read the white paper again instead of letting them pull the wool over your eyes.

A Funding Transaction may have multiple outputs with multiple Commitment
Transactions, with the Funding Transaction key and some Commitment
Transactions keys stored offline. It is possible to create an equivalent
of a “Checking Account” and “Savings Account” by moving funds between
outputs from a Funding Transaction, with the “Savings Account” stored
offline and requiring additional signatures from security services.

It stinks of banks, face up to the facts.

Yes, apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times, there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact, there's no interest, there's no overdraft, there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed, there's no junk mail asking you to sign up for a credit card or to tell you about other products and services, there's no "know your customer" crap requiring every company you've ever transacted with storing and likely losing your personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers, there's no AML, there's no money printed from thin, there's no supporting a $1.2 Quadrillion Bankster Derivatives Market, there's no central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency, there's no PPI, there's no LIBOR, there's no hyperinflation, there are no "banker bonuses", there's no "too big to fail", there are no bail-ins or bail-outs.

But yeah, other than all that, it's just like banking.  

[RNC]

Yes, apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times, there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact, there's no interest, there's no overdraft, there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed, there's no junk mail asking you to sign up for a credit card or to tell you about other products and services, there's no "know your customer" crap requiring every company you've ever transacted with storing and likely losing your personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers, there's no AML, there's no money printed from thin, there's no supporting a $1.2 Quadrillion Bankster Derivatives Market, there's no central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency, there's no PPI, there's no LIBOR, there's no hyperinflation, there are no "banker bonuses", there's no "too big to fail", there are no bail-ins or bail-outs.

But yeah, other than all that, it's just like banking.  

Well most of this won't stand up to debate so lets start
"apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times"
Like taking 3 days to settle an account that is in dispute your talking about.
"there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact"
Bank/hub is down = no transaction, it not working
"there's no interest, there's no overdraft"
No overdraft (YET) but call it what you like but bank charges money for keeping BTC in the ledger and most people call this "Interest"
"there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed"
Banking hubs are a single point of failure, network down = bank holiday
"personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers"
Read today's news and then answer your own question https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
"central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency"
So printing fake USDT to then buy BTC must be the new way to go
"there's no PPI"
No instead we have fees that for all you know could reach as high as $50.00 per transaction like we have already seen

if it looks, talks and sounds like a bank, it's a bank and yes you have financial freedom with main stream banks and
can always move branch but that's not to say the system is like or is working is it now.

[ToTheMoon_XOM9IK]

Mathematical Proof That the Lightning Network Cannot Be a Decentralized Bitcoin Scaling Solution:

https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800

[pebwindkraft]

Mathematical Proof That the Lightning Network Cannot Be a Decentralized Bitcoin Scaling Solution:

https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800

As a big blocker it is not surprising critique on lightning, just that this was already discussed here

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2854596.msg29325656#msg29325656

 - no need to pick it up again.

[DooMAD]

"apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times"
Like taking 3 days to settle an account that is in dispute your talking about.

Assuming you aren't foolish enough to spend from anything but the most recent commitment transaction, there won't be any disputes.  Once the software is more user-friendly, chances are it won't even give you the option to mess it up. 

"there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed"
Banking hubs are a single point of failure, network down = bank holiday

Your logic is the only single point of failure here.  There isn't one single hub that controls everything.  There will be many channels.  Lightning will never "go down", just like Bitcoin itself never will.  You'll simply take another route through different channels and probably won't even notice.

"there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact"
Bank/hub is down = no transaction, it not working

Again, not an actual issue if you understand how it works.

"there's no interest, there's no overdraft"
No overdraft (YET) but call it what you like but bank charges money for keeping BTC in the ledger and most people call this "Interest"

There are no "banks" charging "interest" for "keeping BTC in the ledger".  Most people would struggle to fit that much wrongness into a single sentence.  If you genuinely want to gain an understanding of how fees and revocation in LN work (but I'm starting to suspect there's nothing genuine about your posts at all), there are plenty of resources available.  I strongly recommend stackexchange. 

"personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers"
Read today's news and then answer your own question https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/

What part of my earlier post did you fail to comprehend?  Either Kleiman and Wright had a joint business venture together, or Wright defrauded someone into giving away a controlling interest of the company after Kleiman died.  Whichever it turns out to be, it's completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand.  If you think Lightning works like a joint business venture or defrauding someone out of a controlling share in a company, I'm afraid there's not much we can do for you here.

Well most of this won't stand up to debate so lets start

Start what, exactly?  Making shit up?  That's not how you debate.  You need to educate yourself about the subject you want to debate first.  Then you might be able to make some valid points.

[pebwindkraft]

...
There are no "banks" charging "interest" for "keeping BTC in the ledger".  Most people would struggle to fit that much wrongness into a single sentence.  If you genuinely want to gain an understanding of how fees and revocation in LN work (but I'm starting to suspect there's nothing genuine about your posts at all), there are plenty of resources available.   

You seem to have your fun in responding to the fud.

I was always wondering, why lightning nodes should be banksters and centralization (cause they take fees! Chorus of outrage), where miners are not.

The ideology of these people is hard to be discussed at a non emotional level, and always has some Monthy Python elements. I stopped to argue with fundamentalistic people. They appear to be too many levels below scientific levels. And in these discussions they pull you down to their level of (non-)understanding, and beat you there with experience. Waste of time?

[DooMAD]

You seem to have your fun in responding to the fud.

I was always wondering, why lightning nodes should be banksters and centralization (cause they take fees! Chorus of outrage), where miners are not.

The ideology of these people is hard to be discussed at a non emotional level, and always has some Monthy Python elements. I stopped to argue with fundamentalistic people. They appear to be too many levels below scientific levels. And in these discussions they pull you down to their level of (non-)understanding, and beat you there with experience. Waste of time?

Sometimes things have to be confronted head-on before they snowball.  All it takes is a few impressionable newbies to come into the thread, read the FUD and go away with completely the wrong idea.  Then they go around the boards spreading the same FUD because they don't know any better.  Hell, I was probably guilty of it myself a few times in the past back when I was a newbie.  It's so easy for this sort of thing to get out of hand.  It can't be quietly swept under the carpet either, or people start to think it's some sort of conspiracy and post it even more.  It's best to catch it early before it becomes more serious, even if you have to be a bit blunt in the process.  And a little humour always makes it less of a chore for everyone else to read.  At the risk of sounding too cornball about it, it's never a waste of time to educate and inform.

[RNC]

Assuming you aren't foolish enough to spend from anything but the most recent commitment transaction, there won't be any disputes.  Once the software is more user-friendly, chances are it won't even give you the option to mess it up.  

I don't think that the exodus wallet will offer these option let alone would anyone understand input/outputs
unless they have taken years to learn about Bitoins.

Your logic is the only single point of failure here.  There isn't one single hub that controls everything.  There will be many channels.  Lightning will never "go down", just like Bitcoin itself never will.  You'll simply take another route through different channels and probably won't even notice.

Your rudeness shows that you have lost the debate and if a user only pays to open a channel to one banking hub at a time
because these things cost money then if the banks goes down then the user is stuck. Words smith will not change this fact
and is known in technical terms as "Centralization"    

Again, not an actual issue if you understand how it works.

Maybe it is because I have taken the time to look at how it works instead of looking for candy.

There are no "banks" charging "interest" for "keeping BTC in the ledger".  Most people would struggle to fit that much wrongness into a single sentence.  If you genuinely want to gain an understanding of how fees and revocation in LN work (but I'm starting to suspect there's nothing genuine about your posts at all), there are plenty of resources available.  I strongly recommend stackexchange.  

Again I can only refer you back to the lightning white paper, specifically the part about bi-directional channels needing BTC from both
parties in the ledger or do you think that some nice man you don't know is going to tie up his money for you free of charge inside a ledger.

If you think Lightning works like a joint business venture or defrauding someone out of a controlling share in a company, I'm afraid there's not much we can do for you here.

$5bn missing in Bitcoin did seem like big news but I am sure fraud is never involved when it comes to Bitcoins because we have the block-chain
to protect us right.

Start what, exactly?  Making shit up?  That's not how you debate.

Mr Angry Bird is now trying to give out advise on how to debate but was he to read the white paper
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
and to do a word count on the term "Fee" or "Fees" then he might notice that it is mentioned forty five times
in the document and then lets see who's "Making shit up" here.

[DooMAD]

Your rudeness shows that you have lost the debate and if a user only pays to open a channel to one banking hub at a time
because these things cost money then if the banks goes down then the user is stuck. Words smith will not change this fact
and is known in technical terms as "Centralization"

If, of your own volition, you only use one channel when multiple channels are available, it's wholly unjustified to then complain about centralisation.  It's your choice.  Use as many channels as you need.  If you only had the choice of using one hub, then yes, that would be centralised.  I would be right there with you saying what a terrible idea it is.  But there isn't one hub.  So it isn't centralised.  So it's fine.  I don't know who 'Words Smith' is, but he won't change this fact.  

Again I can only refer you back to the lightning white paper, specifically the part about bi-directional channels needing BTC from both
parties in the ledger or do you think that some nice man you don't know is going to tie up his money for you free of charge inside a ledger.

Still not the same thing as "banks charging interest", but if you want to continue to harm your own credibility by calling it that, be my guest (but I'll continue to point out you're wrong).  Plus, anyone who actually understands Lightning isn't going to believe you, so you're only doing yourself a disservice in the long run. 

Mr Angry Bird is now trying to give out advise on how to debate but was he to read the white paper
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
and to do a word count on the term "Fee" or "Fees" then he might notice that it is mentioned forty five times
in the document and then lets see who's "Making shit up" here.

Yes, there are fees.  If the fees with LN are smaller that using a standard on-chain transaction, then use it.  If not, don't.  No one is saying you have to use Lightning 100% of the time.  Just use it when it's cost-effective for you.  But the more you use Lightning, the more advantageous it will become to you.  If you don't want to take advantage of it, by all means use something else.  If you don't like having fees at all, go use DogeCoin or some other altcoin entirely.  Everything about this is 100% optional.

But what's definitely not an option is thinking we're going to sit here and accept you taking a steaming shit all over Lightning by cherry-picking the parts of the whitepaper that sound negative based on your limited comprehension of it.  Troll harder.

[RNC]

If, of your own volition, you only use one channel when multiple channels are available, it's wholly unjustified to then complain about centralisation.  It's your choice.  Use as many channels as you need.  If you only had the choice of using one hub, then yes, that would be centralised.  I would be right there with you saying what a terrible idea it is.  But there isn't one hub.  So it isn't centralised.  So it's fine.  I don't know who 'Words Smith' is, but he won't change this fact.  

Well when i first started looking at Lightning the cost of on-block transactions was $40 and more so yes I would assume people would only want to open
one channel and you are making assumptions if you think they won't rise that high again and a words smith FYI is someone that plays with words.

Still not the same thing as "banks charging interest", but if you want to continue to harm your own credibility by calling it that, be my guest (but I'll continue to point out you're wrong).  Plus, anyone who actually understands Lightning isn't going to believe you, so you're only doing yourself a disservice in the long run. 

Charges on BTC needed from the counter party to finance a bi-directional channel is interest on the money and as for understanding Lightning I gave you
the link to the white paper so argue with that and see who's losing credibility here.

Yes, there are fees.

YES YES YES Both unfixed Tx fees and interest or noddy fees if you want to call it that instead of interest and if those that host the block-chain
can push fees up to $55 by acting as a cartel then what do you think they are going to do here. Yes miners host these banking hubs and here is a map
lnmainnet.gaben.win

Alice now has 2,000 friends and $200,000 to finance all of the channels needed for each of her friends and poor old Bob has to pay a banking hub
(guessing) $10 a month even if he no longer wants a cup of coffee from Alice anymore.

If the fees with LN are smaller that using a standard on-chain transaction, then use it.  If not, don't.  

Not an option for us to pay $1.00 for a coffee and $0.10 in fees on-block because it won't scale and I am not about to pay
some miner/banker $10 per month to keep my channel open in case I buy 50 cups a month but only purchased one and I didn't
change the game from a year ago where pay-as-you-go was possible.

We have been feed problem-reaction-solution and I am not buying it with no blank guarantee like we had before when fees
hit $55 just to send $10 and see the block-chain itself becoming more like a central bank leaving the mini-banks to do what they
please by tweaking the so called "Smart Contracts" that allows them to up the fees just like we see now with near zero base rates
from central banks but borrowing money cost you or me 10% plus and it's our own money in the first place to make maters worse.

But what's definitely not an option is thinking we're going to sit here and accept you taking a steaming shit all over Lightning by cherry-picking the parts of the whitepaper that sound negative based on your limited comprehension of it.  Troll harder.

Mr Angry Bird I give you logic and reason along with facts but it seems you have "steaming shit all over" your ears
and need to clean them out because your gutter talk only shows that you have lost the debate and have no answers.

[DooMAD]

If, of your own volition, you only use one channel when multiple channels are available, it's wholly unjustified to then complain about centralisation.  It's your choice.  Use as many channels as you need.  If you only had the choice of using one hub, then yes, that would be centralised.  I would be right there with you saying what a terrible idea it is.  But there isn't one hub.  So it isn't centralised.  So it's fine.  I don't know who 'Words Smith' is, but he won't change this fact.  

Well when i first started looking at Lightning the cost of on-block transactions was $40 and more so yes I would assume people would only want to open
one channel and you are making assumptions if you think they won't rise that high again

Let's assume the fee is $40.  Which option is cheaper?

• Option 1:  Sending 4 standard Bitcoin transactions to the same person over the course of a few weeks and spending $40 in fees each time
• Option 2:  Paying $40 to open a channel, sending 4 transactions for free because it's a direct channel, then paying a second $40 to close the channel
• Option 3:  Because you've used Lightning regularly and already paid to have a channel open with someone else for a completely different transaction, but they also happen to have a channel open with the person you need to pay, you don't have to pay $40 at all, and just pay a few satoshi for each hop along the way for each of the 4 transactions you need to send.

Hmm... Is it possible that both of the options involving LN are cheaper?  But by all means, continue to be completely obstinate, don't learn anything, use Option 1 and keep telling us that Lightning is a bad idea.

[Kenneth.Wise]

I think it's really important for bitcoin to scale in a secure way. This is very important. However the ultimate survival of the coin would be my primary concern and with the fees we saw over Christmas bitcoin needs some improvement otherwise the incoming masses will look at bitcoin like some old artifact. The lightning network does have some centralisation issues but compared to everything else out there it's stillbhead and shoulders above

[pebwindkraft]

... But by all means, continue to be completely obstinate, don't learn anything, use Option 1 and keep telling us that Lightning is a bad idea.

Yes, but tomorrow all people on the planet will open a network channel at the same time, the fees will go through the roof, up to 10000 US dollars, making only the banksters rich, and the centralized servers cannot manage the volume, because the banking hubs have a connection problem with the blockchain, and this can change the values of the FIAT world, and, and, and... people like to throw shells to predict the future, with any type of assumptions in their limited understanding.

@DooMAD: This whole gibberish is exactly the tone and voice of Anti-Cen and dinofelis. Even the low level newbies here in the forum can make a text comparison on the posts, and understand that there is the same incentive, just under different names.

Don‘t loose your time :-)

[RNC]

Let's assume the fee is $40.  Which option is cheaper?

Let's not assume and lets consider that we have other options and don't need to be held to ransom by the miners come bankers
and make a purely logical financial decision based on facts.   

Go on, you can go first ?

[RNC]

@DooMAD: This whole gibberish is exactly the tone and voice of Anti-Cen and dinofelis. Even the low level newbies here in the forum can make a text comparison on the posts, and understand that there is the same incentive, just under different names.

You are right, 100% right and indeed I am anti-cen which is short for anti censorship but here i met a nazi in the form of a moderator
who dare not allow open debate which I have reported and advise him to return back to 1930's Germany so that he can burn a few more books.

Yes please laugh by exposing a banned account but really the joke is on you if you need the service of a bias PR officer to protect you from a
few home truths around here.

The "newbies" here would be the ones your trying to convert into harden gambling addicts with the loaded propaganda that is being pumped out
here and this is why you fear me and ban number two is coming up so credit for spotting the obvious but i did not try to hide it anyway but your not that
smart because no one writes like me and you now need to apologize to dinofelis because your witch hunt lead you to an innocent man.

Would you like me to PM you a list of the bottom sniffers I have compiled here, paid thugs they send in since we are exchanging names not that your on the list and
I don't even hold it against you for exposing my real name that I would like back anyway.

Holly shit batman, RNC is Anti-Cen in disguise so I wonder why he's is having to do that Batman



 

[DooMAD]

Holly shit batman, RNC is Anti-Cen in disguise so I wonder why he's is having to do that Batman

It's beyond precious that you think anyone cares who you are.  More humorous still is that you think you're helping make the forum a better place with your inane flawed reasoning and paranoia.  Where the mods see mindless drivel and FUD, they remove it.  If you don't want your posts (and accounts) to be removed, try not to meet that criteria every time you hit "post".  

[desmodiAN]

>>Segwit destruction will snowball.  One miner will figure out it is more profitable to skip verifying signatures.  Then two and three figure it out.

you forgot the risk, that a mined block is invalid. because nodes will check signatures and might not accept the mined block as a proper block.
even if a miner finds a block, but accidentally a non verified sig is inside, this block will not be the main chain.

the already low chance of finding a block will be accompanied by the risk of having found an invalid block.


Remember:
The sender shows the pubkey when spending from whatever address the bitcoins are in. As part of the verification, the receiver (actually, every node in the network), can verify that the pubkey hashes to the address given and then and only then verifies the signature
 

[RNC]

It's beyond precious that you think anyone cares who you are.  More humorous srill is that you think you're helping make the forum a better place with your inane flawed reasoning and paranoia.  Where the mods see mindless drivel and FUD, they remove it.  If you don't want your posts (and accounts) to be removed, try not to meet that criteria every time you hit "post". 

As the record shows you cannot debate me or others about the Lightning Network because we have our
facts right and you are left with talking FUD and name calling

"Where the mods see mindless drivel and FUD, they remove it"

Yes I know, truth has become treason around here in many cases and members defending the faith (Lots of fake merits)
are allowed to be rude around here because we get banned even if we don't dish it back to them but as a developer I have
every right to be here so maybe you need to check you own criteria when you hit post.

[RNC]

you forgot the risk, that a mined block is invalid. because nodes will check signatures and might not accept the mined block as a proper block.
even if a miner finds a block, but accidentally a non verified sig is inside, this block will not be the main chain.

You make a good point and hopefully the development team coded around this issue but all open source code can be
changed and I am guilty of using a very short, quick and fast bit of encryption code that would be hard to crack was
it not for the code being open-source.

Segwit seem like a good fix to buy some time for me if only they didn't break existing wallet code or if they did then
converting to a 03 address should had been free from miner fees.

[DooMAD]

As the record shows you cannot debate me or others about the Lightning Network because we have our facts right and you are left with talking FUD and name calling

If you're so good at presenting a factual and coherent argument, you wouldn't have deliberately evaded that question about Options 1, 2 and 3 when I asked.  So here's the challenge:

Whatever the standard fee happens to be at the time, if you are capable of explaining why paying for 4 standard Bitcoin transactions, SegWit or otherwise, to the same person (Option 1) is cheaper than opening a Lightning channel and only paying two of those standard fees (Option 2), I will stop calling you names, whatever alias you happen to be using to avoid your latest ban.

I'll even make it easy for you and let you forget all about "Option 3" (even though it's clearly devastating to your dismal attempt at an argument).  However, if you can't answer that question without lying or twisting the facts (and you'll struggle, because paying 4 fees is clearly going to cost more than paying just 2 fees), you have to concede that you're just trolling and that Lightning is perfectly capable of saving users money.  I eagerly await your response.

but as a developer I have every right to be here

I literally can't wait to see what you're working on if you honestly believe you can do better than the three separate teams of developers working on Lightning.  Please enlighten us with your infinite wisdom and knowledge how you're going to create something better.  How are you going to help with the scaling issue?  

[RNC]

If you're so good at presenting a factual and coherent argument, you wouldn't have deliberately evaded that question about Options 1, 2 and 3 when I asked.  So here's the challenge:

The argument that using LN is cheaper than on-block transactions that you present is fictional even if it does
save me money and the point I was making is that I am free to use another alternative means of payment to make
much bigger saving.

I won't pay main street banks $20 per month to keep an account open when I am in credit and I am not about to
start now by paying LN hub bankers a penny for a second rate service that is "off-Block"

No dispute about it, (coherent argument) that the development team are in bed with the miners or else tx fees
would never had got as high as they did so forget the theory about market forces and competition keeping a lid
on fees being charged by banking hubs because the president has already been set.

The LN hubs are a patch up for a badly designed system but if it was a free service then I would say it was quite
a good short term solution for something that should had been fixed eight years ago but as it is we are being feed
problem-reaction-solution and you don't have a clue how high these LN fees will be in a years time so why are you
trying to defend the indefensible.

[nullius]

Ban evasion is a permanban offense.  I am now gathering evidence for a new thread I will start have started in Meta.  For the sake of sanity, I ask everybody to stop replying to “RNC”.  I also ask the moderator to not delete anything until I get all the evidence.  Thank you.

@DooMAD: This whole gibberish is exactly the tone and voice of Anti-Cen and dinofelis. Even the low level newbies here in the forum can make a text comparison on the posts, and understand that there is the same incentive, just under different names.

Nailed it, pebwindkraft.  Big merit will be coming your way.  I noticed the same thing, long ago.  I don’t always immediately speak out on what I see; I await the right moment; and it seems you hit exactly the right moment!  Thank you.

@DooMAD: This whole gibberish is exactly the tone and voice of Anti-Cen and dinofelis. Even the low level newbies here in the forum can make a text comparison on the posts, and understand that there is the same incentive, just under different names.

You are right, 100% right and indeed I am anti-cen which is short for anti censorship but here i met a nazi in the form of a moderator
who dare not allow open debate which I have reported and advise him to return back to 1930's Germany so that he can burn a few more books.

Yes please laugh by exposing a banned account but really the joke is on you if you need the service of a bias PR officer to protect you from a
few home truths around here.

The "newbies" here would be the ones your trying to convert into harden gambling addicts with the loaded propaganda that is being pumped out
here and this is why you fear me and ban number two is coming up so credit for spotting the obvious but i did not try to hide it anyway but your not that
smart because no one writes like me and you now need to apologize to dinofelis because your witch hunt lead you to an innocent man.

Would you like me to PM you a list of the bottom sniffers I have compiled here, paid thugs they send in since we are exchanging names not that your on the list and
I don't even hold it against you for exposing my real name that I would like back anyway.

Holly shit batman, RNC is Anti-Cen in disguise so I wonder why he's is having to do that Batman

Archived:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180302172447/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2617240.msg31377296#msg31377296

[Anti-Cen]

I noticed the same thing, long ago.  I don’t always immediately speak out on what I see; I await the right moment; and it seems you hit exactly the right moment!  Thank you.

No I don't think you did and as you can see I am back to my old self now and will see you in your next thread where you
keep deleting posts that don't agree with you in an effort to make yourself seem smart.

Not being one of "the boys" here I don't have many merits to give away but I too will send pebwindkraft a merit

Ban evasion is a permanban offense.  I am now gathering evidence for a new thread I will start have started in Meta.  For the sake of sanity, I ask everybody to stop replying to “RNC”.  I also ask the moderator to not delete anything until I get all the evidence.  Thank you.

Shut up drama queen, send the link and I will join in too   and stop begging for donations in your footer because I am sure that
is also against the terms and conditions here too.

[cellard]

Im ok with people questioning segwit and lightning, hell even Peter Todd recently pointed out at how LN is weak at the moment. Any ideas in how to kill bitcoin are welcome since that is how it gets stronger.

What I at this point consider straight trolling and even terrorism against bitcoin is the anti-full node agenda. Namely, these that think only corporations should run full nodes. After having debated this for years I just don't see any rational argument for defending this nonsense.

[Anti-Cen]

What I at this point consider straight trolling and even terrorism against bitcoin is the anti-full node agenda. Namely, these that think only corporations should run full nodes. After having debated this for years I just don't see any rational argument for defending this nonsense.

100% with you on keeping the corporations out but "full nodes" won't scale as Bitcoin has been implemented and they need to
move towards DNA to spread the load across the nodes instead of having to patch it up with 'off-block' lightning and I am not
phased by introducing specialist cluster type nodes to Bitcoin.

 

[bob123]

>>Segwit destruction will snowball.  One miner will figure out it is more profitable to skip verifying signatures.  Then two and three figure it out.

the already low chance of finding a block will be accompanied by the risk of having found an invalid block.

You do realize that 'finding blocks' isn't like flipping stones to find something below it?
You describe it as you were searching for those blocks in the woods and sometimes find a broken one.

If a miner publishes an invalid block, it won't get accepted. The next valid block will be added to the chain (and is going to be used for the work of the next block).

I suggest you lookup what a block [1] and a transaction [2] is. You might also read the bitcoin whitepaper [3].


[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block
[2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transactions
[3] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

[pebwindkraft]

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forum—theymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).  
...

We have sidechains/drivechains/Alpha Elements, where new concepts can be tested. I wouldn't expect something being "the right thing" from the very beginning, but the more development we have, the better it secures bitcoin future. And everything which looks at things that are more than low-level increase of blocksize or amount of coins should benefit future work.
There are many people worried about miner centralization(three countries: Canada, Island and China...), unhappy situation with ASIC miners and BCH support, and possibly growing size of blockchain... And then we learned, hard forkes are probably a "no-go". Further development is necessary.
So if UASF inspired hardforks are a no-go for MR POWA (wow, what a combination of buzz words!) is not visible, we should encourage ongoing research from many areas, and not only Altcoins, also sidechains can be used.

I want to see commodity SHA-256 ASICs sold cheaper than GPUs, and as readily available.  I think that’s probably the best solution, long-term. Too bad I am not a hardware guy.

Yes, in principle I agree. Economies of scale in the manufacturing environments have shown centralization. So even if we find new ASICs with independency from the evil ASIC provider of today, I would guess, that after finding a new cheap SHA256 ASIC cheaper as GPUs, we'd do the race again and find centralization of manufacturer of these new devices, and maybe they implement then a hidden function to flood the blockchain with invalid blocks, bringing new attack vectors to light... Decentralization (to keep independency) is a very, very hard topic. Economically and especially at sociological level...

[nullius]

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forum—theymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).  
...

@pebwindkraft, sorry, you were responding to a plagiarist who copied one of my old posts (and also a post by bob123), as reported by BitCryptex.

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forum—theymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).

Replying to you, with corrected attribution:

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forum—theymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).

We have sidechains/drivechains/Alpha Elements, where new concepts can be tested. I wouldn't expect something being "the right thing" from the very beginning, but the more development we have, the better it secures bitcoin future. And everything which looks at things that are more than low-level increase of blocksize or amount of coins should benefit future work.
There are many people worried about miner centralization(three countries: Canada, Island and China...), unhappy situation with ASIC miners and BCH support, and possibly growing size of blockchain... And then we learned, hard forkes are probably a "no-go". Further development is necessary.
So if UASF inspired hardforks are a no-go for MR POWA (wow, what a combination of buzz words!) is not visible, we should encourage ongoing research from many areas, and not only Altcoins, also sidechains can be used.

First, I wish to highlight my critical next sentence, which you cut—here in boldface:

I do not endorse that proposal; I think it’s interesting, but I have no desire to see collateral damage made of all the fine folks who invested their lives’ savings in SHA-256 hardware, and swore they would mine Bitcoin or nothing.

Sidechains/drivechains/etc. which you mention are irrelevant to concepts such as the MR POWA proposal—or total POW change.  These are aptly described as “nuclear options” for the main chain, in case certain ill-intended large centralized miners become an existential threat to Bitcoin.  But nuclear war is not a desirable prospect; it always has collateral damage, and it could be MAD.  Consider that in recent months, certain evil miners have tried to seriously compromise Bitcoin—and they failed, because other miners kept their own ASICs mining Bitcoin, and the network is much more resilient than some people expected.

I want to see commodity SHA-256 ASICs sold cheaper than GPUs, and as readily available.  I think that’s probably the best solution, long-term.  Too bad I am not a hardware guy.

Yes, in principle I agree. Economies of scale in the manufacturing environments have shown centralization. So even if we find new ASICs with independency from the evil ASIC provider of today, I would guess, that after finding a new cheap SHA256 ASIC cheaper as GPUs, we'd do the race again and find centralization of manufacturer of these new devices, and maybe they implement then a hidden function to flood the blockchain with invalid blocks, bringing new attack vectors to light... Decentralization (to keep independency) is a very, very hard topic. Economically and especially at sociological level...

Imagine you could get ten million devices each doing a modest 800 GH/s out on store shelves at a moderate price—made plug-and-play, and advertised as the hot new thing.  Just make sure the thing runs quietly, and has sleek industrial design.  Congratulations, you just added 8 EH/s—somewhere around (waves hands) doubling the global hashrate, with half of the global hashrate now spread amongst computer enthusiasts, gadget fetishists, people who want a show-off conversation piece, finance people, maybe even gamers (many of whom have a gadget fetish, and want to show off to their friends).

I know that there have been previous attempts to create something along these lines.  What is needed is for a well-established, competently managed Bitcoin company with in-house brains and leadership who cares about Bitcoin to take a serious interest in making hardware happen for miner decentralization.  I know that the whole process from ASIC development to fabbing, to device design, to manufacturing, to (sometimes most difficult for engineers) distribution would be a challenging task.  It is not a project which some genius lone-gun could pull off by himself.

(In my dreams:  Where’s a Blockstream conspiracy when you need one?  If they could do a satellite feed, they’re adept at the sorts of contracts they would need to arrange.  They are already hated by Jihan & Co.  Go for it.)

As for this:

and maybe they implement then a hidden function to flood the blockchain with invalid blocks, bringing new attack vectors to light...

Behold the power of nodes:  Invalid blocks do not exist, insofar as the blockchain is concerned.  Malicious miners can try to make all the invalid blocks they want, whether via “hidden functions” or otherwise; they’d only be wasting their electricity.  Malicious hardware manufacturers who added such “hidden functions” would be criminally defrauding their customers, but could not thus damage the Bitcoin network.  This is a non-issue.

[pebwindkraft]

@pebwindkraft, sorry, you were responding to a plagiarist who copied one of my old posts (and also a post by bob123)

And while reading I already thought, that someone mentioned this...

... concepts such as the MR POWA proposal—or total POW change.  These are aptly described as “nuclear options” for the main chain, in case certain ill-intended large centralized miners become an existential threat to Bitcoin.  

yup.

Imagine you could get ten million devices each doing a modest 800 GH/s out

I just did some math here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/64920/how-does-bitcoins-power-consumption-compare-to-other-financial-institutions-exch
We are currently at ~23mio Terahashes. The "dream" 800 GH/s fancy adapter would compete with the power of ~1.7mio Antminer S9. An Antminer does 13TH/sec. So need a times 10 better device, possibly USB, for sure fancy design, and not too expensive (250 US Dollar range?). But wouldn't the nonce calculation just explode, and even more power would be required? I currently can't see, where this ends... 

and maybe they implement then a hidden function to flood the blockchain with invalid blocks, bringing new attack vectors to light...

Behold the power of nodes:  Invalid blocks do not exist, insofar as the blockchain is concerned.  Malicious miners can try to make all the invalid blocks they want, whether via “hidden functions” or otherwise; they’d only be wasting their electricity.  Malicious hardware manufacturers who added such “hidden functions” would be criminally defrauding their customers, but could not thus damage the Bitcoin network.  This is a non-issue.

gosh, what am I saying here?  I know "wrong blocks" don't make it into the network. Must have been the red wine... I don't go any further on this speculation. 

[amishmanish]

Imagine you could get ten million devices each doing a modest 800 GH/s out on store shelves at a moderate price—made plug-and-play, and advertised as the hot new thing.  Just make sure the thing runs quietly, and has sleek industrial design.  Congratulations, you just added 8 EH/s—somewhere around (waves hands) doubling the global hashrate, with half of the global hashrate now spread amongst computer enthusiasts, gadget fetishists, people who want a show-off conversation piece, finance people, maybe even gamers (many of whom have a gadget fetish, and want to show off to their friends).

I know that there have been previous attempts to create something along these lines.  What is needed is for a well-established, competently managed Bitcoin company with in-house brains and leadership who cares about Bitcoin to take a serious interest in making hardware happen for miner decentralization.  I know that the whole process from ASIC development to fabbing, to device design, to manufacturing, to (sometimes most difficult for engineers) distribution would be a challenging task.  It is not a project which some genius lone-gun could pull off by himself.

(In my dreams:  Where’s a Blockstream conspiracy when you need one?  If they could do a satellite feed, they’re adept at the sorts of contracts they would need to arrange.  They are already hated by Jihan & Co.  Go for it.)

A little clarification about Meriting you and other famous members:
You have more merit than you need but its so hard to not give it away when you post stuff like this. I like to think that I'll keep it for some of the lower ranked members who are making good posts.
Then I come across one of such posts and its like, Should I merit it? Would he feel bad if i didn't..LOL..Theymos replied to one of my posts and I couldn't bring myself to merit it thinking it'll look like adulation more than anything else.. I am still trying to figure out what to think of it. You can help by letting me know what you think of it.


I vehemently agree that we need the hardware part of the ecosystem to change for decentralization. I even have a small hope that the electricity shortages for large farms would be a step in this direction as i mentioned in a post here.  The big manufacturer right now has all the incentive to sell their ASICs in huge batches rather than to individuals.

A policy in this regard would probably accomplish this in one stroke but then we'd be asking the government/ regulator to do it for us.

Elon Musk made the rockets. How hard could it be to make ASICs? Maybe we should start some sort of open hardware project for this? This is the perfect use case for our eagerly awaited Bitcoin champions.

Also, I request that you take these and similar thought threads to the Ivory tower page. You should also collect some of your better posts so anyone can take a look at them in Serious Discussion/ Ivory tower. If you allow, I'd like to do that myself. We can include other great past discussions.

[Anti-Cen]

So you are claiming bitcoin is ruled by corporations?  If that were true then wow we should let everyone know!

Well yes and I agree with him and I offer this link as proof https://blockchain.info/pools that shows eight big pools control 90% of the
network and if this so called competition between miners was true then fees would have not reached $55 per transaction because
a few miners would have had the brains not to try to hold a knife to users throats whilst asking for donations to cover the transaction costs
and as a result this crashed the price from $19k to about $10k and now we are trading sideways.

This situation is only going to get worse since the miners are going to be also running the lightning network banking hubs
I feel so yes I am letting everyone know and I even contacted the LN project manager but he was unavailable for comment and
won't even reply to emails.

ETH had a similar problem that was a result of Crypto-Kitties but the miners had a meeting and decided to remain responsible
and didn't pump fees up so no it's not a democracy and given that bankers pump and dump who's says what pockets they own.