Bitcoin Layer 1 decentralization vs LN Protocol centralization
1155 sats \ 10 comments \ @millo 12 Dec 2022 bitcoin
Recently I had a chat with a friend of mine, Bitcoin enthusiast and maxi, but strongly against the Lightning Protocol. In practice he is saying that if LN will ever get mass adoption, then it will get centralized again.
This is an extract of the conversation and his ideas on the subject:
LN is BS... It will kill BTC if it ever gets mass adoption... The liquidity providers would be Visa, Mastercard and so on.. They only have to settle between them self and then they could get rid of the blockchain and miners as well... Just a new centralized fiat money then... Also fees via LN doesn't go to miners and fees are the only real income for miners once block rewards becomes too low...
The liquidity channels would be operated by the big banks/exchanges... No real reason to keep a blockchain then even...
1TB per day about in Blocks at 65k tx per second. I think miners making $390k per block can afford to add 1TB per day to their storage cluster Home nodes could still run with prune=550 = 4.4 TB + overhead so lets say about 6-8 TB in storage needed... I think home/hobby node operators can afford 8TB storage easily even more when PB disks will be standard by the time BTC would grow that big
Layer 1 could handle 1 TB today already... 10-100 GBIT connections in datacenters is not something unrealistic today already... But to handle 65k tx per second you "only" need 8gb blocks... All it would need is to remove the "temporary" 1mb block limit that was introduced to avoid spam when transactions did cost nothing...
I would be interested in knowing your opinion and comments? Is there anything that could help to change his mind on the subject? Or do you think he is right about this?
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935 sats \ 1 reply \ @rijndael 12 Dec 2022
Here are some not obvious problems with big blocks:
  • they take longer to propagate. This means that miners that are closer together or have better networking have a big advantage. You mentioned DC networking. If miners have to run in datacenters, you end up with s smaller number of very centralized miners. Easy to capture. Might as well just use a bank.
  • the only thing that keeps miners from colluding to change consensus rules (spending coins they don’t own, changing the supply schedule, mining more than 21M coins) is users running their own nodes. What does the initial block download (IBD) look like if you have 8GB blocks? It becomes impossible for anyone to validate the chain for themselves, so everyone just uses SPV clients which check for tx inclusion but doesn’t validate the whole block.
These ideas that your friend has are not unique. They’re basically the position of BSV. You can take a lot at the number of full node on bsv (and count them on two hands ) and you can look at what the market thinks of bsv by looking at its marketcap. Giant blocks don’t work. Layered scaling is the only realistic approach.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rijndael 12 Dec 2022
On the second point, I meant to say (but forgot to type) “and if you’re going to blindly trust miners to enforce the rules, why not just trust a bank?”
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613 sats \ 0 replies \ @ama 12 Dec 2022
The block size debate ended years ago. The proponents of increasing it forked Bitcoin into Bitcoin Satoshi Vicious and Bitcoin Crash. Increasing the block size is what leads to an increased centralization, and neither of the forks seem to be doing too well, or do they?
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101 sats \ 0 replies \ @ursuscamp 12 Dec 2022 freebie
I believe there is a very real possibility that LN will become centralized. A lot of people will dismiss this, but they shouldn't. I still think LN is the best scaling option we have, I'm not advocating against it, but let's go in with eyes wide open here.
The incentives of the network line up to centralize around large liquidity providers. These large providers are likely to be highly visible and targets of government regulation. If they can trap large liquidity providers in their net, the majority of the network might follow them into a garden that gradually walls up, like the current banking system.
We have another routing network to look at: the internet. It is largely cucked, fully KYC'ed (at least in the United States). Nevertheless, the scale and speed of innovation makes it actually very difficult to regulate, in reality. This is my main hope for the lightning network: that it will develop too fast for out of touch regulators to ever get a full handle on.
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48 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 12 Dec 2022
Always have in mind my warning...
Bitcoin onchain without LN will just die. LN without Bitcoin onchain, couldn't exist.
So both have to go forward. Any bitcoiner that want freedom MUST support both. Who said that LN is not necessary and we need only onchain, is a fucking moron. Otherwise we can close the doors and surrender to overlords...
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32 sats \ 0 replies \ @gandlaf21 12 Dec 2022
Block Size war II?
He can go use bitcoin cash then
useless debate
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404 sats \ 0 replies \ @Wumbo 12 Dec 2022
Two things come to mind:
  1. "Home" download limits would likely become a limitation. Many ISP appear to have monthly data caps under a TB. https://broadbandnow.com/internet-providers-with-data-caps
  2. Micro-transactions would not exist with out something like LN. Very few people would use stacker.news if they had to do a 200 sats on chain transaction fee to get off there 52 sats they received. 2.A. That would make @k00b very sad and we can not have that.
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60 sats \ 0 replies \ @hampus 13 Dec 2022
Sounds like Bcasher speech really...
Anyway LN being more centralized doesn't really matter as long as you can still trustlessly use the layer 1. It's more likely that 2 parallel networks will appear within the Lightning network. One that is more centralized and one that is a wild west. There will likely always be at least one linkage between them.
Regarding the big blocker talk, I'm too tired of this. 2014 was 8 years ago.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @brugeman 13 Dec 2022
It will kill BTC if it ever gets mass adoption...
How exactly could L2 kill L1? It's only the other way around. L2 would help tremendously with L1 adoption though.
The liquidity providers would be Visa, Mastercard and so on.. They only have to settle between them self and then they could get rid of the blockchain and miners as well... Just a new centralized fiat money then...
Don't connect to their nodes then, connect to mine. If somebody supposedly doesn't need a blockchain it doesn't mean you have to use that thing or that blockchain dies.
Also fees via LN doesn't go to miners and fees are the only real income for miners once block rewards becomes too low...
L2 must eventually settle to L1, which is when a part of L2 fees gets to L1. And since it's all properly designed and fee levels are market-driven, the precise proportions will fit properly for any future circumstance, even 100 years from now when fees are the only L1 income.
The liquidity channels would be operated by the big banks/exchanges... No real reason to keep a blockchain then even...
Big banks DO NEED a blockchain precisely because otherwise they end up with SWIFT and all it's mess.
1TB per day about in Blocks at 65k tx per second. I think miners making $390k per block can afford to add 1TB per day to their storage cluster
This whole big block nonsense ended long ago. I wonder how sw engineers could even argue for that if it's an obvious dead-end. The only way to scale is to avoid broadcasting everything to everyone, which is precisely what LN is doing.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @01xCc 13 Dec 2022
три банка открывают каналы.. 100 людей и магазинов открывают каналы между собой... зачем им соединятся ? из-за ликвидности??? это нужно большим переводам... которые будут только в основной цепи...
Не стоит нервничать...
из трех банков что запустит узел останется один. и его не нужно подключать к себе.
Все просто и надежно.. большие майнеры будут использовать енергию 0 цены. им не важен цена биткоина.
12-16-20 лет все сделает нормально! если нет то это сломается за год...есть предпосылки к тому что все ломается???нет... так что живем и наблюдаем.
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