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Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

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Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#131
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny to say ‘replacing’ bitcoin to me because we talk like it had a strong value and use in the past but really this has all just been speculation since the start. We all seem in agreement that blockchain as a technology is legitimate but none of these currency implementations float my boat yet because of how highly speculative the whole market is right now. Aside: last week up I looked it up and sure enough th…

I don't think the blockchain is a good technology. Traditional databases or something like Git solve the same problems better. I have an ideological desire to see more trustless and peer-to-peer systems and I think they'll take hold eventually, but at the moment blockchains are worthless.

It's a good technology if you agree with the goals of libertarians today which is that we should be able to do everything without trust. Having trust is such a huge shortcut of energy and enables you not to have to completely do everything yourself. It pretty much enabled civilization to begin with, but many people now have given up on trusting anything and don't think they have the agency to improve any sort of trusted authority.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#132
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take my not knowing what you mean as a confirmation that nobody in this space knows what you are talking about. I know the technical side somewhat well, and apparently have a thing for explaining the basics in layman's terms. I have a feeling I don't know what you mean by "threat modeling", but that doesn't mean nobody does. And your choosing to make sly comments instead of explaining yourself doesn't fill me w…

> Don't take my not knowing what you mean as a confirmation that nobody in this space knows what you are talking about. I don't take that. I'd go on a limb to say the majority of readers here are familiar with the concept of threat modeling. Since you don't want to look-up the term, instead slighting me for using it: What is called a threat model is in reality a vulnerability model created by a formal process. In sof…

I am not familiar with the term "threat model" to mean anything specific, which is why I asked (in other words, it's like asking for the "architecture model", it's ambiguous enough that it could mean any number of things).

But in that case, yes, there is a section of the whitepaper dedicated to risks and threats to the system, and throughout the entire whitepaper an attacker's perspective is taken when explaining most aspects of the system, as well as some "formal" dives into specific risks referenced.

>By the way, you come across as pushing for lightening partially not impartially

I am absolutely not impartial, I very much believe in this technology and want to help explain it. However I don't think that I have at any point mislead or misrepresented the technology.

That being said, i don't actually hold any BTC currently due to personal events in my life, however I most likely will in the relatively near future. (as a side note, I always laugh at comments like this. There is no way to prove if I own or don't own BTC, and I don't personally think it's very relevant to some comments on a forum. You may feel differently, but in my experience most "bias" isn't in the form of possible monetary gain, but from the need to be "right")

>you have danced around the two points I made in my first post

If you mean that the #1 makes LN "far from workable", I feel I spoke to that directly already in the direct reply.

As for the comment of:

> According to you own words, the answer to poor transaction times is to make transactions less reliable and to introduce centralization.

I didn't say that, and if I implied it, it was a mistake. i don't think I ever brought up blockchain times at all. Bitcoin transaction times (assuming you mean blocktimes) aren't "poor", they are long enough to reduce orphan blocks and short enough to allow transactions to complete in a reasonable amount of time. I never thought bitcoin (without LN) could ever replace money, but was instead a separate type of "money" that can be used in specific cases. LN expands the possibilities here, but as for what it will do or the impacts it will have, I don't know, and i don't pretend to know.

And I feel I spoke to the "reliability" and "centralization" directly as well, but didn't' explain myself.

LN transactions are just as reliable as blockchain transactions, more so in fact. A run-up of activity can cause blockchain transactions to be caught in the mempool out-bid by others for blockchain space unless RBF or CPFP are used, which are both cumbersome and in some cases impossible. LN has no such issues. You will know before you make your transaction if it will "complete", and you will know the max amount of time that you will need to wait for funds in the case of noncompliance, as well as how much you will get as a "bonus" in that case.

And the centralization aspect is also false, as the "network" part of LN makes it so that it's easy to route around a "centralized" hub if you need to for any reason, and the routing protocol increases privacy by making it impossible for the hub to know the source or destination of the transaction unless it is one of them. Fees are the incentive that make this whole network work, and for more information you can read some of my other comments in this post.

The questions you posed were based on false information that I didn't say, and were wrong in my opinion, which is why I didn't expand on my very direct answer of "Transactions in LN are just as "reliable", and don't introduce centralization in any meaningful way."

Anyway I feel this conversation is getting a bit more agressive than I'd like, so this will most likely be my last reply. You can read into that however you want.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#133
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't take my not knowing what you mean as a confirmation that nobody in this space knows what you are talking about. I don't take that. I'd go on a limb to say the majority of readers here are familiar with the concept of threat modeling. Since you don't want to look-up the term, instead slighting me for using it: What is called a threat model is in reality a vulnerability model created by a formal process. In sof…

I am not familiar with the term "threat model" to mean anything specific, which is why I asked (in other words, it's like asking for the "architecture model", it's ambiguous enough that it could mean any number of things). But in that case, yes, there is a section of the whitepaper dedicated to risks and threats to the system, and throughout the entire whitepaper an attacker's perspective is taken when explaining mos…

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Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#134
post #121
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I didn't know about #1. That is absolutely, categorically fatal. If that's true then lightning is DOA. Nothing to see here.

As long as you solve transaction malleability (segwit), #1 is a non-issue.

At that point haven't you just reinvented fiat currency?

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#135

Or perhaps replacing bitcoin with something that doesn't have fundamental flaws in its design. Hence why a lot of us think it has no inherent value into the future. Of course, those in on the ponzi scheme will disagree with this sentiment.

As I previously posted here in HN, this author suggests PGP for immutable database where Bitcoin is projected as serious use case http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/technology-predic...

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#136
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin Cash can’t even scrape together enough transactions to form 100kb blocks. It’s rather disengenuous to say it’s scaling better when it has a fraction of the users. Furthermore, larger block size is directly related to centralization. The bcash crowd hopes people forget decentralization is important.

It's a common misconception that block size is somehow related to decentralization. In fact you don't need a whole blockchain to verify transactions securely, you only need a few last blocks at max. Also full nodes add nothing to the network, they have no vote, only miners and actual users do.

Did you forget http://www.uasf.co/ ?

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically, it turns into a ridiculously complicated bank. That requires 42tWh of power waste (and growing) to function. I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed. Let's build a solution that scales better on-chain and uses a more power efficient mining algorithm.

> uses a more power efficient mining algorithm Thats axiomatically impossible. Its the amount of energy required, not nhashes/etc, that disincentivize an attacker from rewriting history.

Well, it's the financial cost required, which in PoW is a combination of energy and capital cost.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#138

Lightning appears to add more problems than solutions. It has a whole bunch of critical issues. Here is a short list. 1. You need to have a computer constantly online or your counter party can easily steal all your money. This leaves you vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. 2. The lightning network works by routing payments through a network to your destination. The issue here is that the routing for the lightning net…

5. With channel networking, you have to be online to receive funds. Unlike (1) you can't really outsource this, unless you're willing to trust someone else to hold your funds for you.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#139
post #12

Bitcoin Cash seems to be doing just fine with on-chain scaling. There are concerns about centralization on miners with it, but in my understanding the incentives planned in the original Bitcoin paper account for that.

The moment I used Bitcoin Cash myself, I was completely stunned why people keep supporting it. To give something to back me up, just look at the charts of BCH and it's main competitors: Litecoin and Dogecoin. total # transactions: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-bch-ltc-do... -> Litecoin does more than 2x the traffic of Bitcoin Cash and Dogecoin. Remark that Dogecoin sometimes handles more traffic t…

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Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#140
post #134
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you solve transaction malleability (segwit), #1 is a non-issue.

At that point haven't you just reinvented fiat currency?

I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion.
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