3 ms·

It's different than TCP/IP in that every transaction changes the topography of a payment channel network, by changing the maximum amount that can be sent across

It's different than TCP/IP in that every transaction changes the topography of a payment channel network, by changing the maximum amount that can be sent across various channels. This is a fundamental difference. Moreover, even if LN worked as a full substitute for on-chain transactions (all indications point to only a very centralized hub and spoke LN model working efficiently), Bitcoin's three transactions per second limit makes the maximum proportion of the global population that could participate in a LN very limited. Afterall, LN payment channels do still need on-chain transactions to set up, and do need to be replaced from the time to time. Given every user would need, at the very least, a few payment channels, the math for global adoption of the LN with a 3 tps limit doesn't work.

gammateam 8y ago
Yes this is something I'm following too. So although Bitcoin has a low transaction per second limitation, the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. This is what batching does. Segwit further helps lower the size of Transaction objects. And further proposals also lower that further.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  >>the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. Can you elaborate or provide a link? If you're referring to off-chain transactions through LN that are 'batched' on chain: these cannot set up payment channels. On-chain transactions for payment channel set up are the necessary minimum for the LN, and even to do just this, Bitcoin's block size limit doesn't come close to being adequate. As for Segwit, it's a one time limit increase to something like 1.67 MB per 10 minutes (~2 KB/s). The limit needs a couple order of magnitude increase to make Bitcoin viable as a global currency.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    A "transaction" on the bitcoin blockchain can contain many peer to peer actions which are also colloquially called transactions. I'm not referring to lightning. This is basic day-one functionality of bitcoin. I don't feel compelled to provide a link to this at this point. Many popular services' implementation of bitcoin wasn't doing this, and now they are, this is called batching.

gammateam 8y ago

Yes this is something I'm following too. So although Bitcoin has a low transaction per second limitation, the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. This is what batching does. Segwit further helps lower the size of Transaction objects. And further proposals also lower that further.

CryptoPunk 8y ago
>>the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. Can you elaborate or provide a link? If you're referring to off-chain transactions through LN that are 'batched' on chain: these cannot set up payment channels. On-chain transactions for payment channel set up are the necessary minimum for the LN, and even to do just this, Bitcoin's block size limit doesn't come close to being adequate. As for Segwit, it's a one time limit increase to something like 1.67 MB per 10 minutes (~2 KB/s). The limit needs a couple order of magnitude increase to make Bitcoin viable as a global currency.
- gammateam 8y ago
  A "transaction" on the bitcoin blockchain can contain many peer to peer actions which are also colloquially called transactions. I'm not referring to lightning. This is basic day-one functionality of bitcoin. I don't feel compelled to provide a link to this at this point. Many popular services' implementation of bitcoin wasn't doing this, and now they are, this is called batching.