Does lightning network really solve the scalability problem?

[figmentofmyass]

scaling a network by deburdening the network of utility (facepalm)

utility isn't declining. the network is drastically expanding. bitcoin is becoming exponentially more useful all the time. the on-chain micropayment niche might be dead, but why do think that is the only metric? maybe we need to find a better solution for micropayments than to alter bitcoin's economic design just for the sake of them?

you seem to be coming from the perspective that we can wait decades to raise fees. next year, the coinbase reward drops to 12.5% of the original reward. but you seem to think users should continue to pay nothing, doing nothing to replace the falling mining revenues, in order to bootstrap the network.

you really think that's a sustainable approach---to let users pay nothing for decades and then lower block sizes to jack up the fees when hash rate starts plummeting in response to no block rewards? i don't think users will have much interest in that. it's a tough pill to swallow but it'll be a hell of a lot easier to do it now with a fee market (especially since it requires no consensus change) than later.

[1714652063]

1714652063

[1714652063]

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[1714652063]

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[Wind_FURY]

I think that LN does not really solve the scalability problem at all.

It will scale the Bitcoin Network, but I believe no one knows by how much. 100x? 1000x? Or maybe less? Because of that unknown, then we simply cannot predict how much it will impact the volume of Bitcoin's usage.

if only windfury had a clue
its like he is saying "uber scales the new york yellow cab company"
.. um no. the yellow cab companies customer base is in DECLINE

Haha. That's cab companies, we are talking about Bitcoin. Usage has increased. Why, do you believe, are the fees high?

scaling a network by deburdening the network of utility (facepalm)
hint to windfury: more research, less echo chamber script reading

Deburdening on-chain, frees it, and eases the network to scale out.

scaling a network by deburdening the network of utility (facepalm)

utility isn't declining. the network is drastically expanding. bitcoin is becoming exponentially more useful all the time. the on-chain micropayment niche might be dead, but why do think that is the only metric? maybe we need to find a better solution for micropayments than to alter bitcoin's economic design just for the sake of them?

you seem to be coming from the perspective that we can wait decades to raise fees. next year, the coinbase reward drops to 12.5% of the original reward. but you seem to think users should continue to pay nothing, doing nothing to replace the falling mining revenues, in order to bootstrap the network.

you really think that's a sustainable approach---to let users pay nothing for decades and then lower block sizes to jack up the fees when hash rate starts plummeting in response to no block rewards? i don't think users will have much interest in that. it's a tough pill to swallow but it'll be a hell of a lot easier to do it now with a fee market (especially since it requires no consensus change) than later.

I believe franky1 really doesn't understand the game theory, and the present dynamic between the network, the miners, and the users/economic majority. Or he's trolling.

[franky1]

scaling a network by deburdening the network of utility (facepalm)

utility isn't declining. the network is drastically expanding. bitcoin is becoming exponentially more useful all the time. the on-chain micropayment niche might be dead, but why do think that is the only metric? maybe we need to find a better solution for micropayments than to alter bitcoin's economic design just for the sake of them?

you seem to be coming from the perspective that we can wait decades to raise fees. next year, the coinbase reward drops to 12.5% of the original reward. but you seem to think users should continue to pay nothing, doing nothing to replace the falling mining revenues, in order to bootstrap the network.

you really think that's a sustainable approach---to let users pay nothing for decades and then lower block sizes to jack up the fees when hash rate starts plummeting in response to no block rewards? i don't think users will have much interest in that. it's a tough pill to swallow but it'll be a hell of a lot easier to do it now with a fee market (especially since it requires no consensus change) than later.

gotta love your tone "plummeting"  you sound like over decades things are ok then sudden cliff edge... maybe worth you checking out some sustainable approaches/scenarios yourself that dont come from the echo chamber of certain devs that are paid by VC's that need LN to make ROI

you dont need to lower blocksizes to jack up fee's
jacking up fee's reduces how many people will want to use something
lowering blocksizes +jacking up fee's = even less wanting to use it

bitcoin utility is declining. even LN devs admit that.. its their whole sales pitch. they hope to gain merchants on the LN network because bitcoin is losing merchants

getting people off the bitcoin network is not scaling bitcoin.

its also not about zero fee.. its about useful fee. EG not an hours labour for 3rd world countries.
this can be implemented EASILY using a fee mechanism.

but
the whole 'free market' is not actually a free market because its a suckers buzzword to just say devs cant be assed to code something so leave it open for it to be unruled and wild west and out of control

here is some tips
fee mechanism: utxo confirm count = score. more confirms= better score= pay less. this then makes spammers pay more so spammers are more incentivised to use LN to save but still spam, and normal users are not penalised by spammers as fee rates are not based on everyone paying average. people can then use the score system to plan priority better too.

blocksize: transaction count increase onchain = more users. = less fee per user but the total combined fee of block adds up to MORE
(must have been fun at your birthday parties as a kid. instead of inviting 30 kids all with gifts, you preferred only 2 to come and they had to bring gifts worth 15x the normal gift value just to be allowed to stay at your party)

more users using bitcoin: more people= more opportunities for pools to sell coins. after all if no one is using bitcoin no one will buy it. thus pools wont get to exchange thus pools die. so again deburdening bitcoin does not help pools
(playing pass the parcel at a party is less fun and doesnt last long if you only invited your mom and dad, and there is only 2 gifts to play with)

[Yudhisthir]

I think that LN does not really solve the scalability problem at all.

It will scale the Bitcoin Network, but I believe no one knows by how much. 100x? 1000x? Or maybe less? Because of that unknown, then we simply cannot predict how much it will impact the volume of Bitcoin's usage.

Lightning network ofcourse solves the scalability problem. We can create a dozen of lightning networks if we need it. It's similar to something coinbase has been using within its platform. They were criticised at first for their model but now the whole bitcoin community is embracing the lightning network.

[Khaos77]

I think that LN does not really solve the scalability problem at all.

It will scale the Bitcoin Network, but I believe no one knows by how much. 100x? 1000x? Or maybe less? Because of that unknown, then we simply cannot predict how much it will impact the volume of Bitcoin's usage.

Lightning network ofcourse solves the scalability problem. We can create a dozen of lightning networks if we need it. It's similar to something coinbase has been using within its platform. They were criticised at first for their model but now the whole bitcoin community is embracing the lightning network.

You are confusing scaling with offloading.

Offloading:
Bitcoin Blocks can hold a Maximum of ~1.7MB [~7200 transactions] so ~12 transactions per second
LN Network [Thousands of IOUs per second] only limited by hardware & bandwidth of the hubs

Now let's say LN is only processing 50 million IOUs,
and
Bitcoin is maxed out at 12 transactions per second.

If only 1% of LN users wanted to cash out in the same block,
that would be 500000 transactions, which would need ~70 bitcoin blocks and take ~11.7 hours to complete.
Causing the Bitcoin Network to be useless for half a day and the onchain fees to skyrocket.

Scaling:
Imagine
Bitcoin Blocks were holding a Max of 8MB[~33600 transactions] so ~56 transactions per second
Now the 1% of LN users wanted to cash out in the same block,
that would be 500000 transactions, which would need ~15 bitcoin blocks and take only 2.5 hours to complete.

As you can see the 8mb block bitcoin achieves greater scaling than the 1.7mb block bitcoin.
The fact that LN's 3rd party network has higher IOUs transactions capacity , does not increase the onchain scaling. In Fact, If their is ever even a minor exodus from LN once it becomes mainstream , odds are high it drives onchain fees and onchain wait times to undreamed of levels.

If Bitcoin was a Bus and could hold 100 passengers,
and the bus was near capacity , and some of the passengers decided to get off at the bus terminal and take a cab for the majority of the trips, and then returned to the bus terminal for the final trip home.
All they are doing is not using the Bitcoin Bus as it was unsatisfactory and paying the cab operators additional fares. Which the Cab operators don't always go the full distance like the bus does, but require multiple cabs and multiple small fares to reach your destination.

Bitcoin Scaling was not increased (as it is exactly the same number of seats either way),
it's adoption/utility was decreased in favor of increasing LN's adoption/utility.  

Offloading transactions to LN , or even Altcoins by using Litecoin , Doge or Ethereum are the same thing.
All can take up the artificial transactions limitation imposed on bitcoin by it's core developers, which are more interested in LN than they are bitcoin.    

LN can use modern hardware and process thousands of IOU transactions per second,
while bitcoin using modern hardware is limited to ~12 transactions per second.
Kind of makes you wonder how stupid people are to believe that nonsense.

Scaling can only be done Onchain,
Offloading occurs when you transition to any other network because bitcoin can't fulfill your transactions needs.

FYI:
To increase scaling on a Bitcoin Bus with 100 seats.
Either add 100 extra seats so the Bus has 200 seats
or
Drive the Bus twice as fast , so you can get people to their destination in half the time.

Calling Taxis because you refuse to upgrade your Bus capacity ,
is a sure sign that one day all anyone will do is call the taxis and ignore the Bus.

[Wind_FURY]

scaling a network by deburdening the network of utility (facepalm)

utility isn't declining. the network is drastically expanding. bitcoin is becoming exponentially more useful all the time. the on-chain micropayment niche might be dead, but why do think that is the only metric? maybe we need to find a better solution for micropayments than to alter bitcoin's economic design just for the sake of them?

you seem to be coming from the perspective that we can wait decades to raise fees. next year, the coinbase reward drops to 12.5% of the original reward. but you seem to think users should continue to pay nothing, doing nothing to replace the falling mining revenues, in order to bootstrap the network.

you really think that's a sustainable approach---to let users pay nothing for decades and then lower block sizes to jack up the fees when hash rate starts plummeting in response to no block rewards? i don't think users will have much interest in that. it's a tough pill to swallow but it'll be a hell of a lot easier to do it now with a fee market (especially since it requires no consensus change) than later.

gotta love your tone "plummeting"  you sound like over decades things are ok then sudden cliff edge... maybe worth you checking out some sustainable approaches/scenarios yourself that dont come from the echo chamber of certain devs that are paid by VC's that need LN to make ROI

More social drama from franky1. Stop, you always include your replies with FUD that has nothing to do with the debate.

I think that LN does not really solve the scalability problem at all.

It will scale the Bitcoin Network, but I believe no one knows by how much. 100x? 1000x? Or maybe less? Because of that unknown, then we simply cannot predict how much it will impact the volume of Bitcoin's usage.

Lightning network ofcourse solves the scalability problem. We can create a dozen of lightning networks if we need it. It's similar to something coinbase has been using within its platform. They were criticised at first for their model but now the whole bitcoin community is embracing the lightning network.

You are confusing scaling with offloading.

Offloading:
Bitcoin Blocks can hold a Maximum of ~1.7MB [~7200 transactions] so ~12 transactions per second
LN Network [Thousands of IOUs per second] only limited by hardware & bandwidth of the hubs

Now let's say LN is only processing 50 million IOUs,

What?? Confusing "scaling with offloading"?? Hahaha.

Plus what a disingenuous way to slip in that IOUs in Lightning are a fact.

[Khaos77]

What?? Confusing "scaling with offloading"?? Hahaha.

Plus what a disingenuous way to slip in that IOUs in Lightning are a fact.

Go play with your crayons, grown ups are talking.  

[bob123]

You are confusing scaling with offloading.

Troll or stupid ?  

Bitcoin Blocks can hold a Maximum of ~1.7MB [~7200 transactions]

No, you can't even calculate your numbers correctly.

A maximum of 12.195 transactions fit into one block.


Go and get some math lessons.

As you can see the 8mb block bitcoin achieves greater scaling than the 1.7mb block bitcoin.

Yes, absolutely.

Doubling something is called scaling..  

You guys amaze me each time, how narrow-minded people can be. That's hilarious.

If Bitcoin was a Bus and could hold 100 passengers,
and the bus was near capacity , and some of the passengers decided to get off at the bus terminal and take a cab for the majority of the trips, and then returned to the bus terminal for the final trip home.
All they are doing is not using the Bitcoin Bus as it was unsatisfactory and paying the cab operators additional fares. Which the Cab operators don't always go the full distance like the bus does, but require multiple cabs and multiple small fares to reach your destination.

A cab has nothing to do with the bus.

So.. you are saying the LN has absolutely nothing to do with BTC ?  Please just agree on that and everyone will instantly see that you don't have ANY clue at all.

Bitcoin Scaling was not increased (as it is exactly the same number of seats either way),

You can not 'increase scaling'.
Do you even know what scaling means ?

Or do you just use it as a buzzword ?

Offloading transactions to LN , or even Altcoins by using Litecoin , Doge or Ethereum are the same thing.

Absolutely.

LN is protected by bitcoins security mechanisms and some shitty altcoin is not protected at all.

Absolutely the same.


Same question as above:
Troll or stupid ?

Kind of makes you wonder how stupid people are to believe that nonsense.

That's EXACTLY what everyone (except for your franky troll) is thinking about you.

Scaling can only be done Onchain

If that's what you really believe, you are beyond help.

FYI:
To increase scaling on a Bitcoin Bus with 100 seats.
Either add 100 extra seats so the Bus has 200 seats
or
Drive the Bus twice as fast , so you can get people to their destination in half the time.

Calling Taxis because you refuse to upgrade your Bus capacity ,
is a sure sign that one day all anyone will do is call the taxis and ignore the Bus.

That's really the most retarded comparison i have ever seen.


LN to BTC is not like a cab to a bus, but more like teleporting to a bus.
You can drive each route with the bus.. or you drive once to a teleporter, teleport as much as you want for nearly no money in nearly no time.
And at the end, you drive back with the bus.


You are delusional if you compare BTC/LN with a bus/cab. This literally makes 0 sense.



I understand why you got red trust for shittalking.
Your account here is worthless, and so is your opinion.

Instead of complaining "bla bla bla Lauda is abusing DT bla bla bla" and "omf omf omf forum giving red trust for truth omf omf omf", you should at least TRY to understand that everything you say and think is completely wrong.
Work on yourself. Work on your understanding of BTC / LN.




BTW, regarding your signature:

Lauda is an Idiot abusing the DT System because she is too stupid to actually win an argument based on Logic. Beware Lauda & anyone supporting her.

I had quite a big argument with Lauda regarding security of operating systems.
We had completely different opinions. And we didn't find a common ground.. but somehow.. i didn't receive red trust  

So, instead of blaming everyone else, start looking for the reasons in yourself  

[bob123]

FYI: This info is for others , Bob123 is too stupid to understand it.

Bitcoin Blocks can hold a Maximum of ~1.7MB[~7200 transactions]

https://www.svpool.com/tag/segwit-fork/

However, Segwit’s true capacity increase which is only expected to provide a mere 1.7-1.8MB on average effective blocksize

Before Segwit , BTC 1MB blocks topped out at ~7 transactions per second.
After Segwit , increase was only 1.7 X 7 tps = 11.9 tps, which I rounded up to 12
12tps *60 seconds = 720transactions per minute
720 transactions per minute *10 minutes = 7200 transaction per Block, since 1 block is due ~ every 10 minutes.
Too Bad Bob123 is too stupid to understand it.  

You are still wrong.

I don't care what a random site says.

You were talking about the MAXIMUM amount of transactions a block can hold.

Bitcoin Blocks can hold a Maximum of ~1.7MB[~7200 transactions]

Now, since you obvoiusly can't calculate it yourself.. let me help you:

The maximum amount is reached if the transactions are the smallest (Is very obvious to everybody, just not for you).
A smallest transaction has the properties:

• being SegWit
• having 1 input and 1 output

A SegWit transaction with 1 input and 1 output has a size of 85 bytes (non-witness part).
With 1.000.000 Bytes per block, we have 1.000.000 / 85  transactions at a maximum. That's 12.195.


Wasn't that hard, was it ?


In the future you might want to stop posting nonsense / superficial knowledge which you got from somewhere without even thinking about it.


You can, of course, now start arguing like "bla bla a block never has only 1 input 1 output segwit transactions bla bla".. But it doesn't matter..
YOU started talking about the maximum a block can hold. And your statement was wrong.

And instead of accepting it and calculating it yourself, you started justifying yourself. Which obviously just backfired, because you are simply wrong.

And this is not the only statement of you which is plain wrong. Most of the stuff you are mentioning is nonsense.
I don't know whether it is because you misunderstood things, or because you are not capable of understanding it.. and it doesn't matter. Wrong is wrong.



Just saw this:

Not thinking that would work.
I think the generated private keys would be different.

How would the private key be the exact same, between the BTC & LTC network for the public address?

How do you even dare to talk about LN if you don't understand the very basics of cryptography / cryptocurrencies / BTC 

Now, do yourself a favor and first learn the basics. Then educate yourself about the advanced stuff.
THEN start discussing LN and its pros/cons.

[Wind_FURY]

You are confusing scaling with offloading.

Bob123 is stupid ?  

FTFY,
 

I explain it to you why you are wrong , but you're are too stupid,
so there is no need to waste either of our time due to your lack of understanding.
Ask Wind_Fury, maybe he would share his crayons with you.

Your explanation is a disingenuous way to make it look that Lightning is an IOU system, it's not. Plus we don't know if Lightning will scale Bitcoin to the amount in your example.

I can accept that LN is a software experiment that can fail, but there are no IOUs in Lightning. Stop eating those crayons. Hahaha.

[franky1]

average of 7 channels per active node.[...] so if your funding 7 channels (onchain data minimum 1 in 7 out) then the close sessions needed at the end of 2in 2out X7(14in 14out)[...]
so if someone is only transacting once a week. they are not really benefiting if they are using monthly channels(4 a month)

First, the median value would be more relevant for an analysis, because big hubs may be distorting the picture (the last time I checked the network structure it was a mix of the hub-and-spoke and the decentralized model, and there were definitively some big nodes with hundreds of channels).

firstly median is just a single number in the middle of a range
1,1,1,1,1,6,7,7,7,7,7
5,5,5,5,5,6,70,70,70,70,70
median is 6. yet using your own analysis of separating users vs hubs.
users only have 1 connections and hubs have 7.
users only have 5 connections and hubs have 70.

making 6 meaningless statistical error. its just some single use case sat amungst more meaningful data
median does not actually provide anything meaningful. as 6 has no relevance to the other numbers. the number 6 has not been derived from calculations nor from analysing other stats. its just a number that exists


when you say hubs have hundreds of channels. who do you think that those hubs are connecting to.....
when you say users have few of channels. who do you think that those users are connecting to.....
hint for each channel there are 2 sides. meaning for every 2 nodes with active channel between them thats a channel.
so adding up the nodes and adding upthe channels and averaging it out is fairer than your 'median'

I don't think that the average person needs more than 2 or 3 channels, often one alone will be sufficient.

Second, why should you open channels monthly if you only transact once a week? Remember that also average persons can receive money via LN, and that's where the potential lies. People would be most likely directly be connected with an exchange so they can "refill" easily, e.g. with their salary.

people pay rent once a week but they get a wage once a month. most live paycheque to paycheque and can only plan/budget one month at a time.
having one channel to an exchange means one channel is funded with the wage. but what about the other channels.
oh and if you think everyone will just have 1 channel with an exchange. then watch that exchange get DDoS'd and
watch the exchange have to lock in a months value with every user.. bank2.0 centralisation i hear you scream.
oh and need i forget not everyone wants their whole wage in bitcoin. because bitcoin cant buy you everything. so then throwing a whole salary into LN is not helpful
oh and if people are locking to one channel with an exchange. watch the exchange ramp up their fee, because they only have the exchange as the only route.

think about scenarios. not the one time utopian perfect experience.
EG did you know when they done the LN pizza promotion, there was only a 10% success rate. not due to any pizza or delivery or settling fiat issues. but the channel issues of LN

the fee war is not some technology limit.

It is actually if you want to keep the network decentralized and secure

actually 32mb was a technical based limit of networking related to packets. but 1mb is a arbitrary limit of human imposition
fee war is a wild west zero control human decided imposition that solves nothing but used to avoid real solutions.

It will scale the Bitcoin Network, but I believe no one knows by how much. 100x? 1000x? Or maybe less?

It depends on "usage patterns", but we can at least do a basic estimation.

Let's say we define an "user persona" that wants to transact one time per day. He normally refills his channel via LN one or two times per month, but each 3 months he needs a "refunding" via an on-chain channel opening transaction.

This would give us approximately x50 scaling (up to roughly about 300-500 tx/s or 25-30 million tx/day): we have about 100 LN transactions each 3 months (3 x 30-31 plus LN refills) and need a new channel opening, whose size approximately doubles a "normal" 1-in-2-out transaction.

With channel factories and taking into account the same "usage pattern", we could reach about ten times more, so we get a potential of hundreds of millions of transactions per day.

However, we have to take into account that we need some space on the blockchain for 1) normal non-LN transactions, and 2) channel closing transactions in the case of scams. I would estimate roughly that this would takes to a capacity of a third to half of the number I wrote above.

funny part of your maths there is that to avoid onchain refills each fortnight would actually require factories to re balance channels without onchain usage.
so you cant say using factories after already describing a offchain factory scenario would further 10x up the scenario.

also even if there was a one channel user. with only a one onchain setup and one onchain settle.
the 1LN payment a day would be a ~88 deburdening of the bitcoin network.(90 payments done in ln instead of onchain. but then discounting the 2 setup/close onchain)
so not sure where you are getting the whole other random numbers you quote. especially 25-30million a day

but lets take a guess and say that a 3rd of a block is LN reserved. as your scenario suggests
average block ~3k tx so call it 1k LN users a block = 144k a day
but because those users are not transacting onchain on day 2 a fresh set of LN users can use the 1k = another 144k a day,
same for day 3-90=  ~13mill users a quarter before they repeat

where as the 144k a day transactors if doing 1 tx a day onchain. is just 144k which again is ~90x

so based on 1 tx a day with LN sessions of 3 months using only onchain bytes of lean measure (not that many channels)
LN

but if a LN user has 3-5 channels, the onchain bloat means less than the 1000 a block/144k a day.
but if a LN user sessions close sooner than 90 days, the onchain bloat means less than 13mill before ln users refresh

now. to get to the point of transaction numbers.
UTXO stats do not any large percentage of spends happening daily. most bitcoin users are once a week-every couple years
the percentage of daily spenders is low percentile.
so until / unless LN provides access to merchants where people can buy absolutely everything (toilet roll, car fuel, bread)
dont expect many to take advantage of daily activity.
apart from day traders/mixers/spammers

so if you think out of say ~500k transactions a day it some how will equate to 144k users moving over to LN a day.. forget it.
the amount of users desiring LN for daily use would be less.

oh and check visa stats. even when you can buy most things with visa, even they only have their customers do less than 2 tx a day average
so cool down on thinking everyone will jump into LN.
so cool down on thinking everyone will be doing dozens/hundreds of tx a day

[ABCbits]

Bitcoin Blocks can hold a Maximum of ~1.7MB [~7200 transactions] so ~12 transactions per second

Wrong, check those blocks :
1. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/block/566575

Size (bytes)	2,377,364
Weight (weight units)	3,993,179
Stripped size	538,605

2. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/block/367853

Transaction count

12,239

making 6 meaningless statistical error. its just some single use case sat amungst more meaningful data
median does not actually provide anything meaningful. as 6 has no relevance to the other numbers. the number 6 has not been derived from calculations nor from analysing other stats. its just a number that exists

We could use Box plot in this case

[squatter]

blocksize: transaction count increase onchain = more users. = less fee per user but the total combined fee of block adds up to MORE

That sounds nice, but can you explain the economics behind it?

Users aren't paying a fixed fee, so we can't simply assume that more transactions = more fees.

If block size limits > demand for block space, then fees will drop close to 0 -- why would anyone pay when there is free space? Miners will include your transaction anyways.

Without fixed fees or a fee market based on full blocks, there is no basis for you to say that increased adoption alone will increase fee revenue for miners. You've suggested keeping a "buffer" between block size limit and observed usage, meaning no one would ever need to pay fees at all. With inflation dropping to nothing and fees dropping to nothing, you must expect miners to secure the network out of charity!

[Khaos77]

Bitcoin Blocks can hold a Maximum of ~1.7MB [~7200 transactions] so ~12 transactions per second

Wrong, check those blocks :
1. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/block/566575

Size (bytes)	2,377,364
Weight (weight units)	3,993,179
Stripped size	538,605

2. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/block/367853

Transaction count

12,239

My Bad,  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsUXAEzaC3Q

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/59408/with-100-segwit-transactions-what-would-be-the-max-number-of-transaction-confi

A corresponding non-segwit transaction would have a size of 192 bytes,
which, together with the 1MB size limit brings us to 5208 transactions per block,
compared to 12195 max segwit transaction per block.

@ETFbitcoin,
Interesting enough your reference block exceeded the max of even all segwit only transactions in the above quote and according to the block height was years before segwit was even activated.  
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ail257/interesting_fact_the_most_number_of_transactions/

Most of these transactions were tiny. The average transaction size in that block was 81.7 bytes. Many (like this one) were 62 bytes. These were unsigned transactions. The scriptsig for these transactions was just "1". A single byte. No ECDSA, no pubkey hash. No security. The output scripts that these transactions were spending were literally empty.

Also interesting , is this block was useless in clearing the backlog.  2015-08-01 01:06 (4 years ago)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fd2a9/f2pool_setting_a_new_record_most_transactions/

This is a bit complicated...but they are cleaning up zero-valued UTXOs that F2Pool themselves created in their last spam cleanup.

To elaborate: See this Example. Notice the input is 0.0BTC from a F2Pool UTXO created on Jul 10th. During the last spam cleanup F2Pool attempted to save a byte by sending 0.0BTC to the empty script, rather than OP_RETURN'ing it. However, this creates a spendable zero-valued UTXO which bloats the UTXO-set. It appears that F2Pool are now clearing aways these UTXOs.
This does nothing to help the current backlog.

 

FYI:
@Bob123,
You're still Stupid.  


FYI2:
https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/n-transactions-per-block?timespan=all
*Average Number Of Transactions Per Block has always been below 3000 transactions per block,
so the max is no where near the average.*  

[Wind_FURY]

blocksize: transaction count increase onchain = more users. = less fee per user but the total combined fee of block adds up to MORE

That sounds nice, but can you explain the economics behind it?

Users aren't paying a fixed fee, so we can't simply assume that more transactions = more fees.

If block size limits > demand for block space, then fees will drop close to 0 -- why would anyone pay when there is free space? Miners will include your transaction anyways.

Without fixed fees or a fee market based on full blocks, there is no basis for you to say that increased adoption alone will increase fee revenue for miners. You've suggested keeping a "buffer" between block size limit and observed usage, meaning no one would ever need to pay fees at all. With inflation dropping to nothing and fees dropping to nothing, you must expect miners to secure the network out of charity!

Plus there are externalities. The costs to keep the network going would transfer to the miners, instead of from the users. The people demanding "big blocks" either never considered it, or know about it but wanted their hard fork anyway because "Satoshi said P2P cash".

[BitUsher]

There is a false narrative that is always presented about lightning that it is intended to be the only solution to scaling which is false.

Bitcoin must scale in many ways -

1) Onchain with efficiency improvements like MAST and Schnorr sig aggregation

2) Lightning and other payment channels

3) Eltoo

4) statechains

5) sidechains like liquid / bakkt

6) and yes a future HF to increase the blocksize beyond the current 4MB of weight

[squatter]

6) and yes a future HF to increase the blocksize beyond the current 4MB of weight

From a technical/scalability perspective, I am more open to this than I was years ago. But when I consider the social/political issues around it, I'm skeptical a non-emergency hard fork would ever be easy to pull off at this point. You think broad consensus is possible? What kind of timeline and activation process are we talking about, and how would we gauge the risks of a network split?

[d5000]

firstly median is just a single number in the middle of a range
1,1,1,1,1,6,7,7,7,7,7
5,5,5,5,5,6,70,70,70,70,70

Even if it's completely irrelevant, because it's an extreme case you're fabricating here - in both cases the median is nearer of the "typical" usage.

people pay rent once a week but they get a wage once a month. most live paycheque to paycheque and can only plan/budget one month at a time.

Okay, here we have distinct usage patterns in mind. If you want to use LN for a significant part of your wage/salary, then you very likely would transact more than once per week. For me, LN is more comparable with a prepaid card which you would charge once every few months and then use the credit several times a week.

having one channel to an exchange means one channel is funded with the wage. but what about the other channels.
oh and if you think everyone will just have 1 channel with an exchange. then watch that exchange get DDoS'd and
watch the exchange have to lock in a months value with every user.. bank2.0 centralisation i hear you scream.

The most "sane" way would be to avoid too big hubs.
1-channel-users (which are very likely to be connected with a hub) would be the typical PayPal/Coinbase user. Not those caring about decentralization. The risks of LN and Coinbase/PayPal are similar in these cases.

My guess is that you would have two big classes of "send-only" LN users: the "PayPal-type" users which would be only connected to an hub, and the "prepaid card-type" users, which would fill their LN channel via on-chain transactions to make online payments, but considerably less than once per month.
Then you have a smaller third class, the "sender/receiver" type, for example, freelancers that are spending money and receiving honoraries for their work. This one would be the most useful for the network, but I completely agree that it will be a relatively small class (maybe 10% of the total).
You have also the "receivers-only", which will be also a smaller class.

oh and need i forget not everyone wants their whole wage in bitcoin. because bitcoin cant buy you everything. so then throwing a whole salary into LN is not helpful

Correct, but where did I write that?

funny part of your maths there is that to avoid onchain refills each fortnight would actually require factories to re balance channels without onchain usage.
so you cant say using factories after already describing a offchain factory scenario would further 10x up the scenario.

A channel factory rebalancing would not add no transactions nor kB to the blockchain.

also even if there was a one channel user. with only a one onchain setup and one onchain settle.
the 1LN payment a day would be a ~88 deburdening of the bitcoin network.(90 payments done in ln instead of onchain. but then discounting the 2 setup/close onchain)
so not sure where you are getting the whole other random numbers you quote. especially 25-30million a day

That number was obviously a maximum number if the behavior of the one-channel user with 1 LN tx/day and 1 onchain tx/3 months was the average and the whole block space was used for LN channel openings and closings. So it's actually even more conservative than you estimation (a third of the block space/13 million LNtx per day).

In theory it could be even higher, if the typical user would use it for "micropayments" several times a day.

but if a LN user has 3-5 channels, the onchain bloat means less than the 1000 a block/144k a day.

That would only be the case if the user refills all his 3-5 channels each 90 days. You could also refill one of your 3-5 channels each 90 days.

but if a LN user sessions close sooner than 90 days, the onchain bloat means less than 13mill before ln users refresh

Yeah. That's pretty obvious, but then we would have another average "user persona"

so if you think out of say ~500k transactions a day it some how will equate to 144k users moving over to LN a day.. forget it.
the amount of users desiring LN for daily use would be less.

Also pretty obvious, but that's not the point I was talking about which was a rough estimation about "maximum scalability".
But I, for example, am currently not using LN, but if fees went up again like they did in 2017, I would do that, even if I transact only roughly 5 times per month. Because LN would allow me to open the channel at a weekend or at night, when fees are almost zero, and then transact in the moment I want, even at 12 o cklock a wednesday when average fees even currently are at 100+ sat/byte.

This possibility to avoid fee volatility, combined with a faster confirmation, is actually very likely a major factor which will drive people to LN. Not massively at first, but gradually.

oh and check visa stats. even when you can buy most things with visa, even they only have their customers do less than 2 tx a day average
so cool down on thinking everyone will jump into LN.
so cool down on thinking everyone will be doing dozens/hundreds of tx a day

Haven't I wrote here in this thread that I guess that 1 tx/day per household is actually the maximum demand I estimate for Bitcoin? It may have been at another LN thread, but I never wrote about hundreds or dozens per day per person.

[pereira4]

actually 32mb was a technical based limit of networking related to packets. but 1mb is a arbitrary limit of human imposition
fee war is a wild west zero control human decided imposition that solves nothing but used to avoid real solutions.

Just like 21 million coin limit is also an arbitrary limit of human imposition. The idea behind it being a simulation of gold's supply is irrelevant, what matters for all intended purposes is that it became an immutable trait of Bitcoin due the game theory involved, just like 1 MB blocksize has become an immutable trait of Bitcoin due the game theory involved, this is called protocol solidification.

At it's inception, any values would have cut it, since satoshi was calling all the shoots. Once the creature was alive, he disappeared, and im sure he was smart enough to know (either planned or in retrospect) that those values would never change. It couldn't go any other way if the project is indeed decentralized. This is the fact only for Bitcoin, no altcoin meets the criteria, which is why all altcoins are overpriced and Bitcoin is undervalued, at any rate.

[bones261]

Just like 21 million coin limit is also an arbitrary limit of human imposition. The idea behind it being a simulation of gold's supply is irrelevant, what matters for all intended purposes is that it became an immutable trait of Bitcoin due the game theory involved, just like 1 MB blocksize has become an immutable trait of Bitcoin due the game theory involved, this is called protocol solidification.

At it's inception, any values would have cut it, since satoshi was calling all the shoots. Once the creature was alive, he disappeared, and im sure he was smart enough to know (either planned or in retrospect) that those values would never change. It couldn't go any other way if the project is indeed decentralized. This is the fact only for Bitcoin, no altcoin meets the criteria, which is why all altcoins are overpriced and Bitcoin is undervalued, at any rate.

    I'm don't think satoshi planned for the 1mb size to be immutable. When Garzik suggested a patch to increase block size, satoshi stated this can be phased in later. I'm not certain the segwit work around was quite what satoshi had in mind. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.0