Article seems to quickly call "Lightning Network" a "sidechain". Not only is this wrong, it's similar to calling "zero-confirmation Bitcoin transactions" a "sid

Article seems to quickly call "Lightning Network" a "sidechain". Not only is this wrong, it's similar to calling "zero-confirmation Bitcoin transactions" a "sidechain". It's not anything like a sidechain. Examine the evidence yourself, sidechains: http://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf http://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf Lightning Network stuff: http://lightning.network/ http://lightning.network/ like http://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf http://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf For a high-level overview of Bitcoin scalability proposals, see my 2015 scalingbitcoin.org Montreal presentation: http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/bitcoin/scalingbitcoin-review.pdf http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/bitcoin/scalingbitcoin-review.pd... Lightning Network and Bitcoin payment channels are more like restrictions around the permissible possible undefined behavior of zero-confirmation transactions (which otherwise have more broadly undefined behavior), which are inherently unconfirmed in the Bitcoin system. By using an initial committed transaction, rules around the behavior of zero-conf transactions spending the UTXOs can be locked down, while still using Bitcoin transactions, not a separate consensus system and not a sidechain. For an overview of criticism regarding the "consensus" mechanism in non-fuggerian Ripple (aka Ripple 2?) and Stellar, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342348 and https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/msg/36135395/ https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/msg/36135395/ For an overview of why proof-of-stake doesn't sem to be secure, see https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf and https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf and https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/asic-faq.pdf For an overview of what Bitcoin Core developers are working on regarding capacity increases, see the recent https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq which is regarding https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015...