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Weird to use Github for a simple list of hyperlinks. Anyways, this debate is extremely political as this is essentially a Bitcoin Cash viewpoint, and lightning

by mw888 5y ago

Weird to use Github for a simple list of hyperlinks. Anyways, this debate is extremely political as this is essentially a Bitcoin Cash viewpoint, and lightning makes BCH obsolete if it works, so from any dogmatic holder of BCH the motivated reasoning is obvious. That doesn’t mean issues can’t be true, but from following both the BTC and BCH communities for a long time I have trouble stomaching the same critiques about lightning over and over when it’s clear one community has never wanted it to work, and actively shit on progress or innovation. As soon as you see the monetary incentives posts like this start feeling like an insult to your intelligence, whether they fundamentally have a point or not.

skybrian 5y ago
Good to know that it’s a political minefield. It doesn’t help to understand whether it works, though? Maybe someone who has actually investigated will have something to say?
lawn 5y ago
At the same time, if LN doesn't work then BTC is completely and utterly obsolete. And finally, it's not just "a Bitcoin Cash viewpoint" and labeling it as such does the criticism a big disservice.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Not to say that you're making this point, but I would argue that if Bitcoin is obsolete and irrelevant than Bitcoin Cash most certainly is equally irrelevant and obsolete. The Bitcoin Cash approach to distributed database design is kind of like seeing a car with a 1kw engine, realizing that it will never be able to reach orbit, and putting a 100kw, diesel-electric hybrid engine in it instead. I think it's undeniably better, but in a direction orthogonal to what the protocol needs for long term usefulness - a more sustainable consensus mechanism with massively higher throughput.
eluusive 5y ago
"It's political" is true; but it's also true that it doesn't work as advertised.
- mraudiobook_com 5y ago
  Blockstream made a technical decision into a polital one when they hijacked the GitHub repo.
aww_dang 5y ago
Attempting to debunk critiques because they have political implications is political in itself. If the opposing view is political, then the proposition is political. Dismissing it out of hand because it is 'political' becomes nonsensical from this point. LN has been presented as a panacea to BTC usability issues. Are there no incentives in this promotion? Why would they be beyond critique? Yes, technologies deserve a chance to develop and stumbling blocks along the way can be expected. However LN has been a basket case of never ending issues. There are other platforms aside from BCH which are effective for transacting. I won't list my favorites in the interest of avoiding controversy.
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  You would make a good point, except that this post is not anything approaching an argument - instead its a list of links of other arguments that the reader has to independently go through and judge. The quantity of opinions says nothing of the quality of them, and the political angle explains why such a strange format was used.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    The premise of this discussion nicely encapsulates the problems with the cryptosphere, especially the advocates and maxis. The idea that you can't discuss technical issues because they might be political is the height of CC absurdity. A few years ago I wrote a browser based PvP rougelikelike. Just a hobby project. I wanted to add microtransactions. Payouts for NPC and player kills, along with a mechanism to bid into the game. The near religious devotion to different cryptocurrency ecosystems was off putting when looking for a solution. That, and the multitudes of projects with flashy landing pages, poor documentation, ridiculous tooling and loads of gotchas for implementation. In the end I found another altcoin that satisfied my needs for the project. No fees, decentralized and validated transactions in seconds or less. Simple to use, less gotchas and flashy marketing, but as with any coin there were plenty of maximalists. That didn't stop users from asking, "Why didn't you use [favored coin]?" Technical merits were of no concerns for maximalists, who continually emphasized, "number go up" or some imagined impending price action. Nobody seemed to care what was actually delivered, but everyone was constantly espousing the technological virtues of their preferred ecosystem. If cryptocurrency is to be taken at face value, as a mechanism for transacting, one would expect that usability would be a concern. LN is a good example of this. There are simply too many steps and potential failure modes. Yet that isn't a concern for advocates. They're more interested in the valuation and their own sunk costs. This is why cryptocurrency isn't taken more seriously. Yes, there is the potential to transact and do things with it, but the community is more interested in speculation. Critiques about 'politics' are a good illustration of where speculative mania overtakes the actual value proposition. Hope you can appreciate the irony.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dkobia 5y ago
Considering the author seems to be committed to BCH gives this list a somewhat jaundiced perspective. The LN vs BCH arguments are quite fervent mostly because it is likely a zero sum game - the bitcoin purists vs the pragmatists.
- mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  I feel I have to defend Bitcoin a bit here - its not like the Bitcoin fork most popular today, "Bitcoin," is the result of just purism - there are legimitate reasons for stick with small blocks, namely, optimizing for decentralization which is pretty important for the pilot run of crypto in a world where corps would love to have control over these protocols. Of course BCH folks would say that corps have hypnotized the BTC community and convinced them that small blocks are good, when in reality they just want to cripple it so it can't compete with traditional payment methods. The main issue I take with BCH folks is they act like smaller blocks are worthless - if they at least addressed the merits with some earnestness it would be easier to see them as rational in their reasoning.
  - mraudiobook_com 5y ago
    I'll bite. In 2021 what is the benefit of a 1mb block over a 10 mb block? Of course there is none I can think of. Any miner big enough to put a $20k+ into mining hardware needed to be competitive wouldn't blink at the $100 hard drive needed as well. The Blockstream/Core people convinced many of the lie that non-mining nodes "secure the network" which is not true of course.
freeAgent 5y ago
“If it works” is kind of important to determine, though. From what I’ve seen, LN frequently doesn’t work and transactions fail for unknown reasons (offline nodes, no route, liquidity issues, inability to open new channels with peers, etc.). The “solution” to LN’s problems right now appears to be custodial, centralized wallet providers, but that defeats the purpose of using Bitcoin. For example, Twitter is using Strike for tipping, but that wallet is custodial and requires KYC to use. That’s not aligned with what Bitcoin is supposed to be, IMO.
- lottin 5y ago
  This is because "peer-to-peer digital cash" is incompatible with features that consumers definitely want, such as, reversibility, legal protection and customer support.
  - _red 5y ago
    Well, the nuance is not every consumer desires every transaction to have those things. Trying to make blanket statements leads to incorrect conclusions...there are a myriad of cases where consumers prefer classes of transactions to be digital-cash like.
  - thefounder 5y ago
    >> such as, reversibility, legal protection and customer support. Most crypto holders just want digital cash...not another paypal. We already have paypal. I don't want "customer support" when I put my cash down...neither reversibility or "legal protection(whatever that means). There are legal agreements that can be set for different types of transaction but I definitely don't want paypal, visa or some random bank to decide whether it likes my transaction or not or put it on hold for "my own protection".
  - anonymoushn 5y ago
    My impression is that Strike is not providing these features, it's just inserting a central hub in the LN path used by its users.

by mw888 5y ago

skybrian 5y ago

Good to know that it’s a political minefield. It doesn’t help to understand whether it works, though? Maybe someone who has actually investigated will have something to say?

lawn 5y ago

At the same time, if LN doesn't work then BTC is completely and utterly obsolete. And finally, it's not just "a Bitcoin Cash viewpoint" and labeling it as such does the criticism a big disservice.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
idiotsecant 5y ago
Not to say that you're making this point, but I would argue that if Bitcoin is obsolete and irrelevant than Bitcoin Cash most certainly is equally irrelevant and obsolete. The Bitcoin Cash approach to distributed database design is kind of like seeing a car with a 1kw engine, realizing that it will never be able to reach orbit, and putting a 100kw, diesel-electric hybrid engine in it instead. I think it's undeniably better, but in a direction orthogonal to what the protocol needs for long term usefulness - a more sustainable consensus mechanism with massively higher throughput.

eluusive 5y ago

"It's political" is true; but it's also true that it doesn't work as advertised.

mraudiobook_com 5y ago
Blockstream made a technical decision into a polital one when they hijacked the GitHub repo.

aww_dang 5y ago

Attempting to debunk critiques because they have political implications is political in itself. If the opposing view is political, then the proposition is political. Dismissing it out of hand because it is 'political' becomes nonsensical from this point. LN has been presented as a panacea to BTC usability issues. Are there no incentives in this promotion? Why would they be beyond critique? Yes, technologies deserve a chance to develop and stumbling blocks along the way can be expected. However LN has been a basket case of never ending issues. There are other platforms aside from BCH which are effective for transacting. I won't list my favorites in the interest of avoiding controversy.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago
You would make a good point, except that this post is not anything approaching an argument - instead its a list of links of other arguments that the reader has to independently go through and judge. The quantity of opinions says nothing of the quality of them, and the political angle explains why such a strange format was used.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  The premise of this discussion nicely encapsulates the problems with the cryptosphere, especially the advocates and maxis. The idea that you can't discuss technical issues because they might be political is the height of CC absurdity. A few years ago I wrote a browser based PvP rougelikelike. Just a hobby project. I wanted to add microtransactions. Payouts for NPC and player kills, along with a mechanism to bid into the game. The near religious devotion to different cryptocurrency ecosystems was off putting when looking for a solution. That, and the multitudes of projects with flashy landing pages, poor documentation, ridiculous tooling and loads of gotchas for implementation. In the end I found another altcoin that satisfied my needs for the project. No fees, decentralized and validated transactions in seconds or less. Simple to use, less gotchas and flashy marketing, but as with any coin there were plenty of maximalists. That didn't stop users from asking, "Why didn't you use [favored coin]?" Technical merits were of no concerns for maximalists, who continually emphasized, "number go up" or some imagined impending price action. Nobody seemed to care what was actually delivered, but everyone was constantly espousing the technological virtues of their preferred ecosystem. If cryptocurrency is to be taken at face value, as a mechanism for transacting, one would expect that usability would be a concern. LN is a good example of this. There are simply too many steps and potential failure modes. Yet that isn't a concern for advocates. They're more interested in the valuation and their own sunk costs. This is why cryptocurrency isn't taken more seriously. Yes, there is the potential to transact and do things with it, but the community is more interested in speculation. Critiques about 'politics' are a good illustration of where speculative mania overtakes the actual value proposition. Hope you can appreciate the irony.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dkobia 5y ago

Considering the author seems to be committed to BCH gives this list a somewhat jaundiced perspective. The LN vs BCH arguments are quite fervent mostly because it is likely a zero sum game - the bitcoin purists vs the pragmatists.

mattwilsonn888 5y ago
I feel I have to defend Bitcoin a bit here - its not like the Bitcoin fork most popular today, "Bitcoin," is the result of just purism - there are legimitate reasons for stick with small blocks, namely, optimizing for decentralization which is pretty important for the pilot run of crypto in a world where corps would love to have control over these protocols. Of course BCH folks would say that corps have hypnotized the BTC community and convinced them that small blocks are good, when in reality they just want to cripple it so it can't compete with traditional payment methods. The main issue I take with BCH folks is they act like smaller blocks are worthless - if they at least addressed the merits with some earnestness it would be easier to see them as rational in their reasoning.
- mraudiobook_com 5y ago
  I'll bite. In 2021 what is the benefit of a 1mb block over a 10 mb block? Of course there is none I can think of. Any miner big enough to put a $20k+ into mining hardware needed to be competitive wouldn't blink at the $100 hard drive needed as well. The Blockstream/Core people convinced many of the lie that non-mining nodes "secure the network" which is not true of course.

freeAgent 5y ago

“If it works” is kind of important to determine, though. From what I’ve seen, LN frequently doesn’t work and transactions fail for unknown reasons (offline nodes, no route, liquidity issues, inability to open new channels with peers, etc.). The “solution” to LN’s problems right now appears to be custodial, centralized wallet providers, but that defeats the purpose of using Bitcoin. For example, Twitter is using Strike for tipping, but that wallet is custodial and requires KYC to use. That’s not aligned with what Bitcoin is supposed to be, IMO.

lottin 5y ago
This is because "peer-to-peer digital cash" is incompatible with features that consumers definitely want, such as, reversibility, legal protection and customer support.
- _red 5y ago
  Well, the nuance is not every consumer desires every transaction to have those things. Trying to make blanket statements leads to incorrect conclusions...there are a myriad of cases where consumers prefer classes of transactions to be digital-cash like.
- thefounder 5y ago
  >> such as, reversibility, legal protection and customer support. Most crypto holders just want digital cash...not another paypal. We already have paypal. I don't want "customer support" when I put my cash down...neither reversibility or "legal protection(whatever that means). There are legal agreements that can be set for different types of transaction but I definitely don't want paypal, visa or some random bank to decide whether it likes my transaction or not or put it on hold for "my own protection".
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  My impression is that Strike is not providing these features, it's just inserting a central hub in the LN path used by its users.