when btc started it would appear the 10 minute wait was acceptable. if there are any that used btc in this time it would be great to know what the experience was like. pros and cons.
today's corruption of currency and the financial tools, makes 10 mins seem like a small price to pay for the freedom. the downside are the fees to do small transactions, which reduces the feasibility of using btc for minor transactions. yes there are some great l2 solutions. are we reinventing the wheel though?
if btc was unlimited transactions from the start and only installed small blocks for protection of the early network, would it be reckless to consider expanding the scope of operations to match the network scale?
the danger is ossification or stagnation. if nobody uses the network for anything other than huge payments, it is no longer the people's money. can l2s be locked out of the network? eg: can lightning be switched off/disconnected?
thank you for your response. it is all extremely helpful in understanding.
good fortunes with your ventures.
GM 🙃
Thank you for sharing additional insights on this. As a relatively new bitcoiner, it is helpful to me to get more perspective. I have set up two lightning nodes myself to better understand the technology and use cases and don't think it could be locked out of the base layer. The reason is that to open a channel, I simply do an on-chain transactions from my wallet to a new multi-sig wallet with the party on the other end of my channel. How would a decentralized Bticoin network prevent somebody from submitting a valid onchain transaction to open a channel?
Once opened, I can freely transaction via the Ligthning protocol using that channel until such time as either my channel partner or I want to close the channel which is another onchain transaction to settle the amount of bitcoin each of us has on our side of the chnanel. If the channel closing transactions is valid onchain, I don't think anybody would prevent it from being added to a block.
Except perhaps miners who could figure out a 51% attack but if that happened we have bigger problems than whether L2 is working or not.
new or old - it is always important to ask questions. as they say verify don't trust. particularly with something new.
learning how something works and why is part of the process. in time the questions will change as understanding improves.
for me it is question messaging and actions.
currently the messaging doesn't match the actions. the talk of ossification reinforces this.
money go up was not the purpose of btc. it's value is as peer to peer medium of exchange ( no middle men). as the network grows so will the value. storing btc and stagnating the network with coins that don't move .... is like having a computer that is slower than your brain. zero value. or cold storage with 0s and 1s.
if the reason the btc network is stagnating is the size of the blocks restricting the number of transactions, why not increase the block size?
node ownership? is that really an argument? we have no idea how credit cards work but thousands use them. privacy? chainanalysis would appear to undo that argument. supporting the network? really? domestic tinkerers vs network trained staff across thousands of businesses worldwide? the network will survive and thrive with usage of network with spv as designed. think email.
block size was unlimited by design. the restriction was an early stage protection against denial of service 'dos' attack on an infant network. that needs seems considerably reduced judging by network size today. so why do we still need small blocks?
lightning network - redesigning the wheel. spv already serves that need. bitcoin cash still uses it. looking to the future and big fees, slow transactions on-chain - what happens when millions of lightning users need to do on-chain transactions too? pay the ransom or bottleneck?
as i said - message and actions. they don't marry.
we are all being told a million reasons, that it is essential to run small blocks but nobody is asking the question why? The btc design allows for unlimited blocks - why not let the free market decide what size blocks are best?
ignoring market needs is never good for a business. it is not boding well for btc either despite all the hype and money go up.
seems a reasonable question? let's have a discussion on block sizes and get some real feedback on big vs small and let the chips lay where they land. should btc return to being an moe, i suspect the true value will return.
here's hoping.
GM 🙃
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