[rawtxapp]

It's L2, but you can have different types of L2s. With lightning network, you're opening and closing channels with a counterparty using on-chain transactions, so each channel can be tied back to an on-chain transaction.

Before someone points out that it would require tons of on-chain transactions to onboard everyone onto it, you can batch thousands of channel open/closes into a single transaction with new protocol upgrades.

[idiotsecant]

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherently can't (and shouldn't) do. There is some amount of optimization that could take place using common graph routing algorithms like OLSR or others but those represent foundational changes to the protocol which historically LN is allergic to for whatever reason and wouldn't entirely solve the problem in any case.

Simply put - it can't scale to that kind of throughput for a combination of cultural and technical reasons.

[keymone]

Sigh. Quick, go tell UPS and DHL and others that they must file for bankruptcy because traveling salesman problem or whatever is hard to solve.

This is just nonsense because, for instance, each LN hub can configure how much processing it wants to take on by focusing on most profitable subgraph.

In the end, LN will be processing more and more payments and you will keep ignoring that fact and claiming that it can’t scale. This has been happening for years already.

[suyjuris]

> the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has

I assume you are using “exponentially” in its informal meaning of “somewhat quickly” ? At least I am not aware of any routing issues that scale exponentially with the size of the graph.

To the contrary, if you can pick the graph structure then routing is not very difficult at all.

[rawtxapp]

Most end-users won't be acting as payment gateways, they'll all have private channels, so they won't appear in the routing graphs. The number of routing nodes would be many magnitude smaller than total number of LN users. It's working fine for now with growing adoption (1ml.com) and I believe it'll only get better with time.

[idiotsecant]

Sure, but in order to accommodate more users you need more routing nodes. Exponential scaling is a funny thing- systems work perfectly right up until they catastrophically fail. That's why it's important to understand these kinds of problems ahead of time, which LN is determined not to do.

[rawtxapp]

Look at it this way, if x = number of total users, routing nodes will grow O(log x), not O(c^x). The users can grow exponentially, the routing nodes won't because the marginal cost of processing an extra transaction from an end-user is very close to 0.

[jimmydorry]

I thought the routing node was putting up some amount of Bitcoin per channel. Each channel would therefore have a non-zero cost (and each user requires a channel).

I would need to go back and refresh my understand as it's been quite a while since I read the LN whitepaper, much less kept abreast of developments in that space.

[rawtxapp]

When you fund a channel, the Bitcoin is still yours, you're not giving it away.

With batched channel open/closes, it'll be super cheap to open and close channels. The only cost you'd pay is the opportunity cost if your counterparty isn't sending transactions, so you're not collecting routing fees. If that's the case, you can just close the channel if you need to fund another channel and don't have spare Bitcoin for it, but that's about it.

[jksmith]

>> which LN is determined not to do.

What's the source of your opinion?

[simias]

Unless things have changed recently the big issue with LN is that it's fundamentally a centralizing force. The idea that everybody is going to open a million channels with every single counterparty (locking coins in the process) is ridiculous. Instead people would just open a couple of channels with big, centralized nodes but that's just Visa with cryptobabble on top.

[thebean11]

No it's not.

Even if everyone had channels with the same, single central node it would have more guarantees than Visa does. The single central node could not just decide to keep everyone's money, as participants have the option to create an L1 transaction to withdraw funds if node they have a channel with misbehaves.

[8note]

> participants have the option to create an L1 transaction

Theoretically they have that option, but in practice do they?

Theoretically I can sue visa to get the right outcome too, which is a good guarantee

[thebean11]

What do you mean? Why wouldn't they have that option in practice?

[rawtxapp]

You can close a channel whenever you want, for whatever reason.

[null0pointer]

The main issue with LN is even more fundamental than that. Their argument against other scaling solutions was basically "if we scale on chain the hardware requirements will be hard for regular people to keep up and decentralization will suffer". So instead they went about and created a system where only the wealthy have the capital to commit to open enough channels and route payments. LN is almost totally antithetical to crypto in that it enables the creation of the very thing crypto sought to destroy; gatekeeping payment processors. Bitcoin was co-opted by Blockstream and co. who wanted to become Visa/Mastercard-like rent seeking middlemen.

Opinion part: Monero is technically superior to Bitcoin in basically every way.

[voldacar]

>Monero is technically superior to Bitcoin in basically every way

I see how this is true from a privacy perspective, but how does monero solve the issue of the blockchain eventually becoming too large for an ordinary person to run a node on their pc? the bitcoin blockchain is already several hundred gigabytes

[null0pointer]

As I said, that's just my opinion really. But Monero uses a dynamic block size. The hardware requirements will increase of course. But hardware becomes cheaper over time so the monetary cost of participation does not increase as quickly as LN where the cost of participation is capital directly.

[kingo55]

RE: Monero, I agree. One shortfall - how do we verify no one on the network has found and exploited an inflation bug?

[null0pointer]

Good question, I don't have an answer for you unfortunately. I have seen people talk about this in the Monero community though so at least they're aware of the issue.

[anonporridge]

Monero is what everyone used to think bitcoin was.

Now that people are starting to realize what bitcoin actually is, and all the lies and misinformation are falling away, the world is gearing up to pounce on it and fully integrate it into society. People are rapidly realizing that it really is the internet of money.

Monero will still have it's place, but only as the dark money network.

I've actually become increasingly worried that Monero is at pretty significant risk of a nation state 51% mining attack, since it mines with generic CPUs. A government could rent out an AWS fleet to attack the network and if not kill it, at least add a lot of friction via this kind of DDOSing that temporarily blocks people and breaks interest, like they do with Tor services today.

[HashBasher]

Exactly, CashApp/RobinHood/Coinbase/Kraken are all bitcoin L2. Centralized and trusted, but L2 nonetheless.