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That's not what happened. Bitcoiners defended decentralization over throughput. The argument back then was that we should first experiment with scaling with oth

by Geee 4y ago

That's not what happened. Bitcoiners defended decentralization over throughput. The argument back then was that we should first experiment with scaling with other solutions and try to innovate as far as possible, and after that see how much actual L1 block space is needed. Now we are starting to see that it was the right choice.

cowtools 4y ago
How is LN the right choice for decentralization? you need central relay nodes with a ton of liquidity. Besides there is nothing stopping you from setting up LN over a L1 that isn't cramped, you have a limited throughput of settlement transactions. Satoshi himself even suggested a blocksize increase. It is really a no-brainier when the cost of storage and bandwidth will continue to decrease over time, especially in a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin where the vast majority of the hashrate is from ASIC farms that can bear the cost of a single node while the rest simply use SPV wallets.
- Geee 4y ago
  Well, the idea is that most people should be able to run a full node. Even now, you need a quite large SSD to sync and store the blockchain. Ideally, you'd want to run full node on a mobile device. Block size can be increased in the future when it's reasonable to do so. Even with larger blocks, there's still the issue of latency and throughput. LN offers trustless instant settlement with very high throughput. Everyone is able to run their own node and open channels, so it doesn't really depend on any central third parties, even if there's some degree of concentration of liquidity. There should always be multiple routes and it should be possible to circumvent any bad actors. And obviously, L1 is still available for everyone. In addition, there are other L2 solutions such as fedimints and statechains. The beauty of layered architecture is that there can be multiple competing solutions on L2, and L1 can be kept simple, secure and decentralized. Here's a good article on the problems of scaling with big blocks + SPV: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/07/30/could-spv-support-a-billion-bitcoin-users-sizing-up-a-scaling-claim/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/07/30/could-spv-suppor...

by Geee 4y ago

cowtools 4y ago

How is LN the right choice for decentralization? you need central relay nodes with a ton of liquidity. Besides there is nothing stopping you from setting up LN over a L1 that isn't cramped, you have a limited throughput of settlement transactions. Satoshi himself even suggested a blocksize increase. It is really a no-brainier when the cost of storage and bandwidth will continue to decrease over time, especially in a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin where the vast majority of the hashrate is from ASIC farms that can bear the cost of a single node while the rest simply use SPV wallets.

Geee 4y ago
Well, the idea is that most people should be able to run a full node. Even now, you need a quite large SSD to sync and store the blockchain. Ideally, you'd want to run full node on a mobile device. Block size can be increased in the future when it's reasonable to do so. Even with larger blocks, there's still the issue of latency and throughput. LN offers trustless instant settlement with very high throughput. Everyone is able to run their own node and open channels, so it doesn't really depend on any central third parties, even if there's some degree of concentration of liquidity. There should always be multiple routes and it should be possible to circumvent any bad actors. And obviously, L1 is still available for everyone. In addition, there are other L2 solutions such as fedimints and statechains. The beauty of layered architecture is that there can be multiple competing solutions on L2, and L1 can be kept simple, secure and decentralized. Here's a good article on the problems of scaling with big blocks + SPV: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/07/30/could-spv-support-a-billion-bitcoin-users-sizing-up-a-scaling-claim/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/07/30/could-spv-suppor...