There is probably scenario's where a temporary blockchain can solve some synchronization issues but the idea that a single static blockchain will replace traditional dynamic structures for organizing the economy is basically not viable.
That's a good point. If nothing else, the stupid money caused more practical exploration of ZKP and other exotic math constructs than we'd seen in decades previously.
I'd like to see more "toy" exploration of this stuff as the money drains out. That's where interesting things are going to come from, for a while. Time for a zero-knowledge app to select lunch destinations, a dating matcher that doesn't leak before the reveal, secret agent spy communicators for kids...
Lightning is not viable, because it requires "watchtowers" to check for early state commit attacks. Not everyone will be able to run such a server.
But, for instance, Bitcoin Cash has larger blocks (the reason for the first fork of Bitcoin). However, in spite of its technical advantages, adoption severely lagged compared to Bitcoin. I wonder why that is.
Security isn't/wasn't the concern, the trade-offs exist to ensure verifiability in the most trustless way possible (low hardware and bandwidth requirements). This enables a decentralized system which is open to any participant and keeps miners accountable. If running a node is limited to miners and exchanges and requires a renting a server rack there is just no point.
> Lightning is not viable, because it requires "watchtowers" to check for early state commit attacks
This is inaccurate. LN has shortcomings currently but this isn't one. Without watchtowers your peer in a channel can force close one it while you are offline by publishing an outdated state on-chain, but if at any point before the end of the grace period (usually ~2 weeks) you are online and produce a more recent state you get the whole balance of this channel back (this is how dishonest peers are punished). This is one channel mechanism (Poon-Dryja), another mechanism (Eltoo) which doesn't require as much monitoring/penalties will eventually come but depends on changes to Bitcoin protocol which are still pending.
Secondly theses optional watchtowers which automate this process minimize trust a lot as they can only publish the most updated state IF and ONLY IF the counterparty in your channel published their outdated state. So they have no real custody of your funds.
Lastly solutions like local federations (Fedi to name one) can address your concern of people not being able to run servers, if the users aren't content with the public offers of existing watchtowers.
> But, for instance, Bitcoin Cash has larger blocks (the reason for the first fork of Bitcoin). However, in spite of its technical advantages, adoption severely lagged compared to Bitcoin. I wonder why that is.
Because having larger blocks is not a technical advantage if your goals are the principles mentioned in the first paragraph. If you intent to compromise on these then just build a centralized database, it will be more efficient and at least you won't lie to people pretending that your system is open/decentralized (like Bcash supporters do).
I can not thank you enough. I was under a wrong impression, and you have provided me with easy-to-search-for terms where I can get more info.
I see now there is a larger-than-I-thought grace period (which I thought was ~3 days) as well as penalty for fraud attempts.
2 weeks is a reasonable time to be away, like going on vacation.
Bitcoins scalability issue should have killed off al notions that it could ever gain widespread usage as an alternative to traditional currency for regular payments and after that it became yet another speculative derivative without any real backing in real world assets.
It was never actually going to replace fiat currencies for most people and the industry is absolutely dominated by exotic financial instruments(mostly of the ponzi variant), run by a mixture of fools and scammers.