4 ms·

> none of the proposed scaling methods so far come even close you sure? what happened to the estimates related to payment channel proposals: http://diyhpl.us/w

> none of the proposed scaling methods so far come even close you sure? what happened to the estimates related to payment channel proposals: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/hong-kong/overview-of-bips-necessary-for-lightning/ http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/hong-kong/o...

simias 9y ago
It'll help but it's really untested and nobody knows for sure how the network will react when you change the topology and incentives like this. In general it's a pretty complex technology that introduces a big number of new variables in the mix. Look at the example in your paper: >You're probably buying a coffee only once, right? Well, maybe the coffee is $5, and you put $50 into the channel and leave it open. Then someone else comes to the coffee shop and she does the same thing. But she has a channel with the grocery store. There's me, coffee shop, Alice, grocery store, they all have channels. When I go to the grocery store next time, I don't have to open a channel. Payments are routed. [...] >I am guessing the mean is going to be 3, but it will probably be an exponential distribution. Most people will probably have 1 channel, and then some might have 100s of channels open. Note the use of "I am guessing". And what happens if I'm not willing to put $50 in the channel to leave it open because it's a one time thing and there's no point for me to do that? I'd say that most of ebay and other "peer to peer" purchases are like this. Would you put 10 times the amount of the transaction in a channel to some alibaba seller just for the sake of being a good bitcoin-izen? In general I find the idea of people opening only 3 channels a year to be a tad optimistic if bitcoin is to replace Visa. So it remains to be seen how well it'll work in practice. Maybe it'll work great, but maybe it'll be a huge mess. At any rate I wouldn't say that bitcoin scaling is a solved problem.

simias 9y ago

It'll help but it's really untested and nobody knows for sure how the network will react when you change the topology and incentives like this. In general it's a pretty complex technology that introduces a big number of new variables in the mix. Look at the example in your paper: >You're probably buying a coffee only once, right? Well, maybe the coffee is $5, and you put $50 into the channel and leave it open. Then someone else comes to the coffee shop and she does the same thing. But she has a channel with the grocery store. There's me, coffee shop, Alice, grocery store, they all have channels. When I go to the grocery store next time, I don't have to open a channel. Payments are routed. [...] >I am guessing the mean is going to be 3, but it will probably be an exponential distribution. Most people will probably have 1 channel, and then some might have 100s of channels open. Note the use of "I am guessing". And what happens if I'm not willing to put $50 in the channel to leave it open because it's a one time thing and there's no point for me to do that? I'd say that most of ebay and other "peer to peer" purchases are like this. Would you put 10 times the amount of the transaction in a channel to some alibaba seller just for the sake of being a good bitcoin-izen? In general I find the idea of people opening only 3 channels a year to be a tad optimistic if bitcoin is to replace Visa. So it remains to be seen how well it'll work in practice. Maybe it'll work great, but maybe it'll be a huge mess. At any rate I wouldn't say that bitcoin scaling is a solved problem.