520 sats \ 3 replies \ @niftynei 18 Dec 2023 \ on: Liquid is not a scaling solution bitcoin
The first Ark prototype will be launching on Liquid. It’s designed to scale blockchain accounting methods.
Sure it’s different than ecash but it’s good proof that there are benefits to sidechains for pioneering new scaling solutions.
They’re able to build the prototype there precisely because Liquid is a blockchain. They’re doing it on Liquid and not on the mainchain because Liquid supports more opcodes than the mainchain, specifically ones that allow for spend commitments (covenants).
good proof that there are benefits to sidechains for pioneering new scaling solutions
Just like litecoin huh? Or eth, solana, etc. It's funny watching everyone come full circle from the 2016/2017 days of shitcoins.
Ark has to launch somewhere not on bitcoin because they'd be completely rekt trying to make a transaction every 5 seconds to give the illusion that it's "instant".
reply
Biggest reason it’s not “just like X” is the covenant opcodes that have been added (plus the utxo model for most modulo litecoin)
It’s true, Ark requires capital burn until escape velocity (usage hits cost effectiveness). We had a good convo about this on Vlad’s podcast that Calle + I recorded back in October. It’ll be a real bet on bitcoin transaction volume for whoever funds its bootstrapping phase.
reply
Also don't forget that Ark tx has to be in every single block if there was at least one tx between them. So yeah, if everyone uses it then it might scale well (infinite number of txs squashed into just one), but if only few people use it the ASP would pay enormous fees to keep it all running. See the current fees and estimate how many transacting people it needs to split the anchor tx fee between them, cover the cost and maybe earn some extra? And if we want this thing to be decentralized, we need multiple such ASPs, and each will be sending their transactions trying to get in every block or else the whole vUTXO trick becomes unreliable.
In LN you only pay twice per channel, no matter if it's used or not.
For some reason this little technical quirk isn't highlighted on their website arkpill.me. Maybe I misunderstand something, but this is what I got from the twitter discussions.
reply