Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DCPOS_Anthony 3825 days ago
> I can assure you, the CS understanding of the people who disagree with you (like Chris, Gavin, myself and Satoshi) is just fine

Speaking for Satoshi is a bit presumptuous, yes? It does make me question who else you're supposedly representing.
1 comments
mike_hearn 3825 days ago
Go read Satoshi's first announcement of Bitcoin on the crypography list. The very first question ever is about scalability and he states quite clearly that he thought about it extensively and it would never be an issue in practice. He uses Visa as an example to illustrate his point.

Now go read the Lightning white paper. They also use Visa as an example and state that Bitcoin cannot scale. They directly contradict Satoshi on literally the first Bitcoin topic ever discussed.

So I am not speaking for Satoshi in my post above: I am pointing out that he strongly disagreed with Poon & Dryja's reasoning right from day one.

As you can see above, Joseph uses the same language some of the other Bitcoin Core folks use ... they like to say "our understanding is much better now". They do not like to explain exactly what this "better understanding" actually is, given that computers haven't got any slower. They just assert that it could never work. That's unfortunate.

link
kanzure 3825 days ago
> They do not like to explain exactly what this "better understanding" actually is, given that computers haven't got any slower.

Scalability isn't only about going fast/slow. Scalability is about growth in performance, reliability, guarantees, etc. What counts as better (or worse)? And what are the tradeoffs? And which tradeoffs can we reliably make without breaking the system's guarantees, if indeed it makes any guarantees at all? It's easy to see how Satoshi may not have been omnipotent. Indeed many programmers don't always know all performance characteristics of all the software they write; too, we see programmers taking up opinions on system performance even when their opinion is wrong (some are even known to recognize when they are wrong and update their opinions based on new better knowledge).

link