Quote from: btcton on December 16, 2017, 12:49:42 AM

To answer the first bolded text: While you are not wrong about the nature of decreasing the block reward in order to put the focus on the transaction fees as the rewards for miners, the scaling issue of transaction fees does not really relate to that. What matters is where the reward lies, not the amount. The amount will always be related to the supply and demand of the available hardware in the network. If transaction fees decrease, miners get paid less and therefore mine less, which lowers the overall difficulty of mining and makes it more profitable for the remaining miners who are still in it. If they increase, the number of miners will increase with it as will the difficulty to balance everything out.

To answer the second bolded text: There will always be coins to mine. The Lightning Network still depends on miners. All it does is perform the reconciliation of may more separate transactions off-chain into a single final entry that once "closed" gets put into the blockchain. To get put into the blockchain, miners still have to choose the transaction and will still get paid a fee. The difference is that the fee will be much less than it would be with all the separate transactions, which is fine considering the supply (miners) numbers will adjust accordingly.

That scenario would still see to decrease the usability of direct bitcoin transactions. It means that everyone has to pay more fees entirely for the benefit of a small group of centralized companies paying less fees overall.

To give an example, suppose that we are in a future where miners only get paid in transaction fees and the lightning network is heavily relied upon to compensate for having never implemented dynamic scaling. Online merchants who want to process millions of transactions a day around the world utilize a system where one on block transaction opens the channel for the day, and another on block transaction closes the channel for the day. All transactions that go through their payment system is taken care of in one go keeping the fees low for everyone sending transactions between the two companies. However, the people who initially send the coin to those centralized wallets are going to pay extremely high amounts which would discourage independent wallet usage (and increase the risk of what happens when centralized companies go out of business). Meanwhile, the people who just want to send money to someone across the world wouldn't benefit from the lightning network at all since they are dealing with just a single transaction, so they have to pay more as well.

The reason why everyone is stuck paying more is because anyone with multiple transactions just processes one, which means that the cost has to be spread across fewer payers, and those with less transactions ultimately pay the most.

Quote from: cryptodontus on December 15, 2017, 08:43:01 AM

I hate to be all doom-y, but what if lightning network isn't effective, or is too cumbersome or complex? I don't really see a problem with raising block size cap as needed. lightning network seem like it will become just as centralized (or more) as "big block" bitcoin.

I feel like we rushed into too many changes this year.

I agree with that sentiment. Even though the lightning network itself is decentralized, it's only value (that I can see) is in allowing two centralized systems to communicate with a total of 2 transactions - one to open the stream of communication, and one to close the stream of communication. That means that, for example, two exchanges could use the lightning network to allow inexpensive transactions to flow between practically instantly, but it won't allow two individuals using a decentralized platform to send anything at any increased speed or decreased cost. While I actually do like the lightning network as a tool for reducing the congestion (why should I have to wait because a big company has a million transactions it wants to process?), I don't like the idea of the entire network depending on it for avoiding all congestion. We still need a solution to keep the network working smoothly for everyone else.

As it stands right now, I've stopped sending Bitcoin all together. It's too expensive and takes too long. When I want to send someone anything, I'm either using Litecoin or Dashcoin. My opinion is that as it becomes easier and easier to transfer between coins - especially if fully decentralized platforms come about - Bitcoin will become less usable to the average person without dynamic scaling.

Quote from: DooMAD on December 15, 2017, 06:32:08 PM

Ever since BIP106 was first proposed, I've been a fan of the idea of dynamic scaling. Although shortly after that, I decided that the original concept was far too unrestrictive and had the capability to result in dangerously large size increases if it was abused. So over time, I've been looking at different tweaks and adjustments, partly to curtail any excessive increases, but also to incorporate SegWit, limit the potential for gaming the system and even prevent dramatic swings in fee pressure. So far, that's where I've got to. Still hoping some coders will take an interest and get it to the next level where it might actually be practical to implement.

My opinion is that an open cap is too unrestrictive, but a solid cap is too restrictive. That's why I think we need a way for the network to raise the cap on it's own within a set of limitations so that it can't bloat.

EDIT: I took a look at your thread, which looks similar to the first part of what I suggested here, but what's to stop the block size from increasing too fast for the network to handle? I think dynamic scaling needs to focus on both the needs of the network as well as the capability of the network with two distinct scaling solutions used together. The first adjusts the network according to the needs of the network, and the second adjust the network according to the capabilities of the network. Together, it allows flexibility, but there would have to be some incentive for the node operators to be willing to expand to handle the increased traffic.