I see. And what's the incentive to run a Bitcoin full node (incl. pruned ones I mean)?
For example running a CLN node requires one to run a Bitcoin Core node talking to the network and knowing what is the bestblock. The incentive to not track any other but only the bestblock chain is that when you want to stack more (or do business with it) you need to be on the chain which is alive, which has the most mining power. There your stack just holds, but in time it becomes more and more valuable. What's the difference when LN node runs alongside Bitcoin Core?
Another example. What's the incentive to run a Tor node? When anyone runs a Tor node, they are routing onions for free.
The incentive to run a Bitcoin full node is enjoying complete privacy plus access to the Bitcoin network without censorship nor permission.
A Lightning node might be run simply because the node runner wants to interact with the Lightning Network. In that case, fees are irrelevant because it's not a Routing node. A Routing node needs significant amounts of capital and a way more active management than a node that simply exists because the operator wants to send and receive sats in the Lightning Network. Again, I doubt people will commit millions in $ value and all the human effort it takes to maintain a Routing node to altruistically route for the network.
As for the Tor network, the only incentive is having an interest in the network being alive. That could explain why there are so few exit nodes.
Do you run a Lightning Routing node?
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Thanks. I see your point better now and it fully makes sense. Reminds me of my historical chats with @ZeroFeeRouting.
Yes, I run a lightning node. On mainnet since 2020. And I run with zero fees. But as you correctly point out, I do not have much stake in it and even in times when I had ~10 channels, it was not very busy. CLN, always latest master branch. I do it mostly for CI-reasons to see it compiles and is in working condition (on musl-libc based system).
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Running core and tor don’t involve a scarce asset. Spread the existing bitcoin across the entire planet and then have everyone open a lightning channel. If it was today, that’s 225,000 sats per person. Miners will be running mainly on fees in the future. I disagree with @pillar I think fees go up and LN moves to centralization. The average family will not have this many sats and with a planet running on bitcoin they certainly couldn’t afford opening up a channel each. We’d likely share channels or some larger entity with resources would let you pay to access.
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The key is that the LN is an open market. The same way you don't need permission on-chain, you don't in the LN.
If LN gets centralized and the big nodes get greedy, their too-fat-margins become an incentive for other players to enter the network and set slightly lower fees. Competition is just brutal, since every node that wants to send a transaction is the most disloyal customer you can have: the minute the Routing node next to you has a fee 1ppm lower, routing will abandon your channel and move to his.
If you study perfect competition markets, you will realize that the routing services market is very close to a perfect one. Thus, we can predict that the average routing fees in the network will tend to match the cost of running a routing node (that's the human and equipment capital plus the opportunity cost of locking the sats in the node).
How high do you think fees will go? I have a hard time picturing anything above 0.01% long-term (10-15 years).
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The number of bitcoin is increasing right now with block rewards, but eventually the destruction of bitcoin will roll numbers the other direction. Satoshi's wallet, deaths, dust, sends to incorrect addresses...21 million gets reduced significantly. Distribute what's left to the entire population of Earth. Now have them all open LN channels. In 2015 Credit Suisse calculated the value of everything at $250 trillion. That's $2.5 million per satoshi not calculating lost satoshis and assuming Bitcoin has become the world currency. Only the wealthy can afford to open a channel and they will charge you to use it because it's a free market and they need to make back the on-chain fees then make a profit. You either need more layers than LN, or you need adoption to never go hyper and instead reach an affordable middle ground. Sure they can compete, but why would they if there are only a few players that run the market and you must use them? I think you're 10-15 year prediction may be spot on...but I try to look at this in 100-500 years and see if our model breaks.
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Again, I repeat my competition argument. I understand your point that opening a channel won't be a thing for the average Joe in the future, but if the "channel opening" class is still in the thousands or more, they will compete with each other and drive (and keep) fees down in a fee war.
I also agree with the need for more layers. The same idea of bigger but more expensive transactions that we are discussing with on-chain will also happen with the LN. I can picture a future of large Fedimints using LN to settle between them and users mostly using minted tokens for their day to day interactions.
But I still think that LN will remain cheap because of competition. To be honest, I don't think the price of Bitcoin doesn't have that much influence in what LN Routing fees look like.
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после выхода более нового оборудования все 2016 блоков до перерасчёта сложности будут решены очень быстро. что увеличет сложность сети в 10х раз. пойми,майнить в будущем блок в котором 1000 биткоин выгоднее чем сейчас.
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See #100759 (a comment to this post but in a new thread).
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