4 ms·
> No, that is completely inaccurate. > First of all, with current parameters that would mean that you need a good few hundred years to process a few seconds of
by xur17 5y ago
> No, that is completely inaccurate.
> First of all, with current parameters that would mean that you need a good few hundred years to process a few seconds of world-wide transactions.
If you settle everything onchain, maybe (I haven't done the math on this, so I honestly don't know), but storing every transaction for a cup of coffee in a datastore that persists across tens of thousands of computers for the rest of time is absurd.
Long term Bitcoin layer 1 (onchain) is likely to be the settlement layer for large transactions, and other layers (lightning network, etc) will be used for every day activities like buying coffee, sending funds to a friend, etc.
- simiones 5y agoBut the total amount of data stored in the Lightning network is even more absurd. Not only do we store "A has paid B 1 SAT" for all time, we actually store "A is paying C 1SAT for B; C is paying D 1SAT for B; E is paying F 1SAT for B; F is paying B 1SAT".
- SamPatt 5y agoNot everyone is forced to store it though. You don't need consensus about the state of the entire network on layer 2 like you do on layer 1. So it's not really a problem.
- xur17 5y agoMore specifically, only the channel participants have to store it, and only as long as the channel is open.
- datadata 5y agoThe transactions within an open channel are only stored by the two owners of the channel. The entire network does not need to store, nor does it even get to see these transactions. They can even be private. When the channel is closed none of the channel transactions need to be committed to the blockchain, only the final balances of the channel between the two participants. A lightning channel does require an onchain bitcoin transaction both to be opened and closed, but while open it supports unlimited transactions within the channel while it is open without increasing the onchain storage burden on the network validation nodes further beyond the two transactions to open and close the channel.
- modo_mario 5y agoI'm a layman when it comes to this but doesn't that mean the amount of "channels" is still severely limited? Someone mentioned 220million transactions annually. Even if those channels only open and close the balance once a year that's very little it seems. Or can there be more than 2 owners of a channel?