awemany
You actually have to be able to say: "See, I found a route A-D through B and C: ABCD and all nodes are sufficiently funded to execute the payment."
And that's the big unsolved issue. Can you make an algorithm that will reliably do the latter while keeping the network decentralized?
I think this is very hard, as the channel states between individual nodes will change for each payment, and that's entropy that somehow needs to be synchronized.
Of course, simple centralized solutions like making B and C big enough ("banks") to deal succesfully with almost any payment are possible.
But solving this problem is pretty damn hard, and I have yet to see a satisfying solution to this. Note that satisfying absolutely must include being decentralized.
Because else, we can as well do the simple and sane thing and scale just on-chain, which also ensures that the miners get their fair share of the pie and makes it less likely that the bottom falls out because there's lots of layers, each taking a cut, to the system.
Now, don't get me wrong: I am fine with LN and I think it might have good use in the micro/nano-payment space. Regular, simple payment channels (like BCH and BTC have since the beginning) might fully cover that use case as well. Who knows. In any case, LN as the (and the only) solution to scaling is not going to work out.
No, I am quoting you, not reddit. Reddit didn't write that comment.
> Thus demonstrating that reddit vote brigading is occurring on yc?
That doesn't follow, at all.
> Bullshit. Whingeing shitheads that never contribute where it counts. Coinbase has done fuck all to contribute to bitcoin development except be cheerleaders for every asshole fail train driver who has tried to destroy it. If they gave a shit they would have contributed to lightning development.
The emperor has no clothes.
No that is not true. Each Lightning Channel needs UTXOs to be created before it can be used at all.
Its goal is rather to do trustless multi-hop off-chain payments on pre-opened channels.
Notice that Satoshi himself implemented simple payment channels in Bitcoin. (Without the multi-hop part)
It is all but clear that the much more complex LN contraption will help in the real world.
Furthermore, a case can be made that this going closer to decoupling Bitcoin from the economy on top. The "gold standard" argument hinted at above might be a too close historical parallel, really.
Because, eventually, the gold standard got abolished.
See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74mgka/why_bitfinexs_c...
How so?
That language is very revealing: It never belonged to 'the Core development group' in the first place.
They were invited but declined: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74ow7f/erik_voorhees_o...
> I don't think anyone, including Core, is against that (higher transaction throughput). But on-chain scaling alone can't get you very far, and it has large costs that need to be carefully considered.
Meanwhile, no one has yet provided a believable scenario how miners can get paid in the long term that isn't high transaction volume at low cost.
> The idea that another capacity upgrade should be rushed so soon immediately after Segwit is kind of silly.
This debate is ongoing since almost four years. I wouldn't call that rushed.
> The idea that it should be decided so soon behind closed doors by a few CEOs is sillier.
See above, regarding invitations.
> Let's be clear about the word "update": it means to switch their software to a fork that none of the active community Bitcoin developers contribute to and that none plan on contributing to.
And many others see 2x as the first real sign of the incentive system actually working.