11 sats \ 4 replies \ @pillar OP 1 Dec 2022 \ parent \ on: Will small UTXOs become a problem in a mempool-collapsed future? bitcoin
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).
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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