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>Bitcoin lightning makes higher throughput blockchains irrelevant. Lightning is a UX disaster that is not easily solvable as the headaches are part of the prot

by Qasaur 6y ago

>Bitcoin lightning makes higher throughput blockchains irrelevant. Lightning is a UX disaster that is not easily solvable as the headaches are part of the protocol itself (opening/closing channels with nodes etc.). I've used some of the various apps that have been released and I find it very difficult to see how "normal" people are going to understand and use it at all. Instead of trying to innovate with new blockchain designs, there is a significant amount of minds trying to hack together bandaids for Bitcoin, a protocol and blockchain that has already been crippled by Blockstream and the scaling debacle. If one steps back and takes stock of the ecosystem, I find it very difficult to see what value proposition BTC has other than reputation and being a first mover. Store-of-value is something that Monero can do better as it guarantees privacy which I'm sure a lot of people would like. Instant transactions is something that NANO has solved on the protocol/blockchain layer (and without using clunky hacks like Lightning) whereby transactions are settled almost instantly and at zero cost. Quite frankly, the only thing BTC has going for it is brand value - technically it has already been superseded by other protocols, but BTC maximalists (such as the author of the article) are ignoring this reality likely due to sunk-cost fallacy. So no, I disagree strongly with the author. There is a lot that can be built within the cryptosphere, and I think trying to gatekeep innovation by limiting it to the BTC protocol is extremely disingenuous.

poontang1 6y ago
> Lightning is a UX disaster Lightning absolutely was a UX disaster, but things are improving quickly. There are wallets now that manage your funds completely without the notion of channels, and thats how it should be for most users. You don't even care whats going on under the hood, because it's all automatically managed. > Store-of-value is something that Monero can do better Monero has worse scaling issues than Bitcoin and is even harder to use for most people. > Instant transactions is something that NANO has solved Every design decision is a trade off. Something free and instant is also infinitely spammable. If every transaction requires a PoW, its not actually free, and if it's easy enough for a phone to do, its 1000x easier for an ASIC to do, and still doesn't prevent spam. No one wants to actually store spam data forever, and a lot of blockchains have the issue no one one is actually incentivized to store the crap forever, and _someone_ has to. I completely agree Bitcoin, at it's base layer could be a better protocol, but nearly every other protocol you'll encounter has made design trade offs that make it less decentralized in the long term
- tromp 6y ago
  > nearly every other protocol you'll encounter has made design trade offs MimbleWimble makes pretty good tradeoffs. It improves on both privacy and scalability, while sacrificing transparent supply auditability. It also does away with all the bitcoin script complexity while still supporting most functionality with "scriptless scripts" including multisig outputs, atomic swaps, discreet log contracts, and even payment channels.
  - poontang1 6y ago
    Agreed. I like MW a lot, it's just far from usable for normal people at this point. On the downside, I don't see any path for such privacy centric projects getting any regulatory support whatsoever, and sadly I think this is needed to become a mainstream thing. I still think MW has immense value, it just may be relegated to niche usage.

by Qasaur 6y ago

poontang1 6y ago

> Lightning is a UX disaster Lightning absolutely was a UX disaster, but things are improving quickly. There are wallets now that manage your funds completely without the notion of channels, and thats how it should be for most users. You don't even care whats going on under the hood, because it's all automatically managed. > Store-of-value is something that Monero can do better Monero has worse scaling issues than Bitcoin and is even harder to use for most people. > Instant transactions is something that NANO has solved Every design decision is a trade off. Something free and instant is also infinitely spammable. If every transaction requires a PoW, its not actually free, and if it's easy enough for a phone to do, its 1000x easier for an ASIC to do, and still doesn't prevent spam. No one wants to actually store spam data forever, and a lot of blockchains have the issue no one one is actually incentivized to store the crap forever, and _someone_ has to. I completely agree Bitcoin, at it's base layer could be a better protocol, but nearly every other protocol you'll encounter has made design trade offs that make it less decentralized in the long term

tromp 6y ago
> nearly every other protocol you'll encounter has made design trade offs MimbleWimble makes pretty good tradeoffs. It improves on both privacy and scalability, while sacrificing transparent supply auditability. It also does away with all the bitcoin script complexity while still supporting most functionality with "scriptless scripts" including multisig outputs, atomic swaps, discreet log contracts, and even payment channels.
- poontang1 6y ago
  Agreed. I like MW a lot, it's just far from usable for normal people at this point. On the downside, I don't see any path for such privacy centric projects getting any regulatory support whatsoever, and sadly I think this is needed to become a mainstream thing. I still think MW has immense value, it just may be relegated to niche usage.