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Bitcoin adoption was growing and working well for monetary transfer but its capacity was throttled to encourage use of an unproven technology, the lightning net

Bitcoin adoption was growing and working well for monetary transfer but its capacity was throttled to encourage use of an unproven technology, the lightning network. The claim, as far as understand it, is that Blockstream supported this plan, anticipating its failure, while working on its own replacement technology, Liquid. Ironically, both liquid and lightning appear to be failing. Nb, both grubles and nullc have some close relationship with Blockstream.

gruez 6y ago
That doesn't answer my initial question, how is blockstream supposed to monetize lightning, or anything for that matter? >The claim, as far as understand it, is that Blockstream supported this plan, anticipating its failure, while working on its own replacement technology, Liquid. I took a quick skim of blockstream's materials on liquid, and it sounds like it's something totally different to lightning? They describe it as some sort of ripple-like network for transacting in tokens? eg. >Liquid uses an approach to consensus called Strong Federations. A Strong Federation removes the need for costly Proof of Work mechanisms and replaces it with the collective actions of a group of mutually distrusting participants called functionaries.
- FreeTrade 6y ago
  The claim is not that Blockstream intended to profit from Lightning. Rather they used the promise of Lightning to throttle Bitcoin, in order to profit from Liquid.
  - kallewoof 6y ago
    Nonsense. Liquid is directly dependent on Bitcoin's success. And as has been stated before, Blockstream employees got a chunk of their pay check in bitcoin. Do you really think they'd try to "throttle" their own livelihood?
  - gruez 6y ago
    Okay, how are they profiting from liquid? Moreover, what's liquid's "moat"? What's stopping me from copying liquid's software (seems to be open source) and making a clone that charges 0% fees?
nullc 6y ago
> Bitcoin adoption was growing and working well for monetary transfer but its capacity was throttled to encourage use of an unproven technology, the lightning network. What? Bitcoin's capacity has been limited its entire life, the limits were coded in by Bitcoin's creator. The limits are integral to protecting Bitcoin's decentralization, and have nothing in particular to do with lightning. Alternative blockchains without functional limits such as "BSV" are so bloated that it is practically unreasonable to run nodes, leaving participants blinding trusting third parties. These trade-offs were well understood long long ago (e.g. https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Scalability&action=historysubmit&type=revision&diff=14273&oldid=14112 https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Scalability&action=h... or https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3118.msg44789#msg44789 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3118.msg44789#msg447... or https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2500.msg34211#msg34211 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2500.msg34211#msg342...). Liquid isn't some replacement technology for Bitcoin, it's something it's a distributed-centeralized (federated) system that can do things Bitcoin and other completely decenteralized systems cannot do like offer instantaneous settlement. It trades off decentralization to for latency. When users have funds in exchange they've already substantially lost their decentralization benefits, for for e.g. rapid arb between exchanges this tradeoff is probably a good one. Bitcoin gives people the freedom to use their money in a bunch of different ways. > nullc have some close relationship with Blockstream. I haven't have any relationship at all with blockstream for over three years now.
- FreeTrade 6y ago
  >Bitcoin's capacity has been limited its entire life, the limits were coded in by Bitcoin's creator. I researched this and found that Bitcoin had no initial capacity limit and that one was added as a temporary spam measure, not as a design choice. When I see misrepresentations like that, I'm more suspicious of everything you've written.
  - nullc 6y ago
    > I researched this and found that Bitcoin had no initial capacity limit That is simply untrue. From the very first version it had two capacity limits, an explicit one (https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src/main.h#L17 https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src...), and a smaller implicit and unintentional one (of about 500k) owing to the maximum locks that could be grabbed in a single BDB transaction. Satoshi later reduced the explicit limit further and provided no explanation for doing so ( https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/a30b56ebe76ffff9f9cc8a6667186179413c6349 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/a30b56ebe76ffff9f9... ). However, there was no issue with spam at the time or previously, nor mention of spam, and the network already had a separate and highly functional spam limiting mechanism. Had he intended to make the limit simply temporary he could have trivially programmed it that way-- e.g. as we did when we discovered the ~500kb limit, we wrote a rule that limited blocks to 500kb and then expired a few months later. The claim that it was a "temporary anti-spam limit" is a novel construction that I don't believe I saw ever claimed until many years after that change. At least by the time Satoshi went inactive he was well aware of the trade-offs: "Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices." ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg28917 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg289... ) Perhaps you should consider conducting "research" by having an open discussion with an actual expert rather than just reading manipulative tracts designed to sucker people into buying alternatives? :) I'm happy to direct you to primary reference material even though you continue to treat me rudely and disrespectfully.

gruez 6y ago

That doesn't answer my initial question, how is blockstream supposed to monetize lightning, or anything for that matter? >The claim, as far as understand it, is that Blockstream supported this plan, anticipating its failure, while working on its own replacement technology, Liquid. I took a quick skim of blockstream's materials on liquid, and it sounds like it's something totally different to lightning? They describe it as some sort of ripple-like network for transacting in tokens? eg. >Liquid uses an approach to consensus called Strong Federations. A Strong Federation removes the need for costly Proof of Work mechanisms and replaces it with the collective actions of a group of mutually distrusting participants called functionaries.

FreeTrade 6y ago
The claim is not that Blockstream intended to profit from Lightning. Rather they used the promise of Lightning to throttle Bitcoin, in order to profit from Liquid.
- kallewoof 6y ago
  Nonsense. Liquid is directly dependent on Bitcoin's success. And as has been stated before, Blockstream employees got a chunk of their pay check in bitcoin. Do you really think they'd try to "throttle" their own livelihood?
- gruez 6y ago
  Okay, how are they profiting from liquid? Moreover, what's liquid's "moat"? What's stopping me from copying liquid's software (seems to be open source) and making a clone that charges 0% fees?

nullc 6y ago

> Bitcoin adoption was growing and working well for monetary transfer but its capacity was throttled to encourage use of an unproven technology, the lightning network. What? Bitcoin's capacity has been limited its entire life, the limits were coded in by Bitcoin's creator. The limits are integral to protecting Bitcoin's decentralization, and have nothing in particular to do with lightning. Alternative blockchains without functional limits such as "BSV" are so bloated that it is practically unreasonable to run nodes, leaving participants blinding trusting third parties. These trade-offs were well understood long long ago (e.g. https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Scalability&action=historysubmit&type=revision&diff=14273&oldid=14112 https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Scalability&action=h... or https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3118.msg44789#msg44789 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3118.msg44789#msg447... or https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2500.msg34211#msg34211 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2500.msg34211#msg342...). Liquid isn't some replacement technology for Bitcoin, it's something it's a distributed-centeralized (federated) system that can do things Bitcoin and other completely decenteralized systems cannot do like offer instantaneous settlement. It trades off decentralization to for latency. When users have funds in exchange they've already substantially lost their decentralization benefits, for for e.g. rapid arb between exchanges this tradeoff is probably a good one. Bitcoin gives people the freedom to use their money in a bunch of different ways. > nullc have some close relationship with Blockstream. I haven't have any relationship at all with blockstream for over three years now.

FreeTrade 6y ago
>Bitcoin's capacity has been limited its entire life, the limits were coded in by Bitcoin's creator. I researched this and found that Bitcoin had no initial capacity limit and that one was added as a temporary spam measure, not as a design choice. When I see misrepresentations like that, I'm more suspicious of everything you've written.
- nullc 6y ago
  > I researched this and found that Bitcoin had no initial capacity limit That is simply untrue. From the very first version it had two capacity limits, an explicit one (https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src/main.h#L17 https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src...), and a smaller implicit and unintentional one (of about 500k) owing to the maximum locks that could be grabbed in a single BDB transaction. Satoshi later reduced the explicit limit further and provided no explanation for doing so ( https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/a30b56ebe76ffff9f9cc8a6667186179413c6349 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/a30b56ebe76ffff9f9... ). However, there was no issue with spam at the time or previously, nor mention of spam, and the network already had a separate and highly functional spam limiting mechanism. Had he intended to make the limit simply temporary he could have trivially programmed it that way-- e.g. as we did when we discovered the ~500kb limit, we wrote a rule that limited blocks to 500kb and then expired a few months later. The claim that it was a "temporary anti-spam limit" is a novel construction that I don't believe I saw ever claimed until many years after that change. At least by the time Satoshi went inactive he was well aware of the trade-offs: "Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices." ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg28917 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg289... ) Perhaps you should consider conducting "research" by having an open discussion with an actual expert rather than just reading manipulative tracts designed to sucker people into buying alternatives? :) I'm happy to direct you to primary reference material even though you continue to treat me rudely and disrespectfully.