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110 sats \ 8 replies \ @elvismercury OP 18 Oct 2023 \ on: _Broken Money_ book club, part 2 bitcoin
Lyn describes the hawala network in a way that seems to have some deep similarities with features of the btc lightning network: balances flowing through channels, money changing hands but in another sense not moving at all.
Does this metaphor suggest anything about the future state of payments over lightning? For instance, about where lightning might find more natural adoption, and where it might struggle?
Highlighting the similarities seemed intentional on Lyn's part:
Collectively, these hawaladars form a decentralized ledger and channel-based payments system, which normal users of the network can access through their local hawaladar.
Does this metaphor suggest anything about the future state of payments over lightning?
If it is, it's suggesting a non-pure hub and spoke network rather than a mesh network. The lightning network has evolved this way with LSPs making up the hubs in many cases.
For instance, about where lightning might find more natural adoption, and where it might struggle?
More adoption: cross border payments, long term trade partnerships
Less adoption: intra-nationally among privileged and fee insensitive people
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You're right, it does seem intentional, now that you mention it.
From a 'deterministic' perspective, I wonder what configuration the lightning network 'wants' to be. I agree that hub and spoke seems the most likely, and I don't think that's bad -- nature is full of power laws for a reason. So if you believe that, I guess LSP becomes a growth industry? And then how can one support that growth?
It makes me think Maller's model -- bridging currencies using btc as the intermediate layer -- has more legs than I used to believe.
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So if you believe that, I guess LSP becomes a growth industry
@MaxAWebster uses a transportation system analogy to describe the eventual layout of the lightning network and I can't fault it.
Much like our collection of railways, highways, and roads, channels on the lightning network:
- have unavoidable and high fixed costs
- the payload capacity scales in some proportion to fixed costs
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It's interesting to consider what other types of L2s might look like, and how different tradeoffs would produce different architectures w/ different consequences. At some point, "layers" and "institutions" start to blur together -- in a way, a bank is a layer, where transactions between bank customers update its internal ledger but don't produce final settlement -- a kind of scaling.
Some of these instutions/layers are starting to pop up in btc w/ Fedimint, Liquid, etc. I think that these will be really crucial in the end, and the ultimate means by which most people interact w/ btc.
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Some of these instutions/layers are starting to pop up in btc w/ Fedimint, Liquid, etc. I think that these will be really crucial in the end, and the ultimate means by which most people interact w/ btc.
When we do AMAs, I always ask the Theilism, "what's something you believe about bitcoin that no other bitcoiner believes?" The one answer I heard the most was "most people will use custodial forms of bitcoin."
Completely unrelated but the most surprising answer came from @ODELL which was something to the effect of "bitcoin will be used to pay for armies of autonomous drone assassins."
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This has me wondering what are bitcoin's boats and airplanes.
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I looked around for the "transportation system" source of @MaxAWebster that you mentioned, because I want to think about this boats / airplanes thing. I read a couple but didn't see one that was obviously what you referring to. Do you have a link?
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I'm not sure he's every written about it publicly yet. It was something he shared with me in conversation.
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