Quote from: Zin-Zang on June 15, 2018, 03:04:40 AM

Lightning Network will be centralized.
Whether or not that dooms it has yet to be seem , but it will be no different than a Centralized Banking System.

As far a LN fees being cheap, it has not even begun to be used, so the promise of cheap fees may be exaggerated and proved to be false as usage increases.
LN is also a variable fee structure as such as it use increases so too will their fees. Tongue

Bitcoin core transaction fees were cheap , but they increased in time , odds are so will LN's fees.

That's certainly true, mate. LN can increase in fees if usage increases over time. It'll be the same way as before, with the block size limitation. However, in terms of centralization, then it is up to question, since such solution (Lightning Network) is a layer-two solution which doesn't affect Bitcoin's main chain. Even if LN were to fail, Bitcoin's main chain will still work accordingly, in a decentralized fashion.

Therefore, I would consider the Lightning Network a semi-decentralized solution, since it doesn't affect Bitcoin's decentralization (as its separate from the main chain), but it has some level of centralization in the way channels are opened and closed, mostly by wealthy individuals. There could be some point where banks, and big exchanges will be capable of opening/closing channels, making the Lightning Network a system of trust. This might change though, if people choose other channels and/or LN nodes that are operated by individuals instead of big corporations, or financial institutions. Despite this, it will also be possible to transact on Bitcoin's main chain, for further security.

One big question that I have, is how would the Lightning Network be as secure as Bitcoin's main chain, considering it's an off-chain solution? I think that it could be easy for a hacker to easily perform double-spending on LN, right? This has brought up a lot of confusion to me, and I'm still trying to figure it out when reading the whitepaper.

Quote from: pooya87 on June 15, 2018, 03:28:47 AM

first of all if you don't use the space then creating it is pointless. it is like buying an airplane to go to your job which is 1 block away from your house!
secondly when you open up space (32MB) you are making spam attacks easy. it doesn't cost anything to fill these 32 MB blocks and cause havoc.
thirdly you are not just a leach, as a contributing node you want to connect to different nodes and send/receive blocks and transactions. this means downloading and uploading. your monthly traffic is going to be ridiculously huge. check out Shorena's node status here, you will see very interesting stats. he is already spending 1-2 TB traffic per month.
finally it has never been just about the size. the problem is Zin-Zang doesn't understand anything about bitcoin. you are not downloading a file. you are downloading a block. which means you download the blocks, verify each transaction and then add it to your blockchain. that verification is the bottleneck.

Yeah. Having a huge block size is very bad for any cryptocurrency nowadays. It increases the level of spam attacks on the network and increases centralization as storage and bandwidth costs increase over time. As such, less nodes would be able to maintain the network, as most people won't be able to cover such high costs. The real deal, as you said earlier, is the verification process. Since the blockchain requires every single node available on the network, to process every transaction, it adds a lot of data, making it impractical to scale, especially with a huge block size like 32mb.

While Bitcoin Cash's 32mb blocks hasn't been filled yet, they could in the future, making this cryptocurrency extremely centralized in contrast to the original Bitcoin. Therefore, even if Bitcoin's block size is extremely limited, it's a good thing since it makes spam attacks expensive and allows Bitcoin to stay as decentralized as possible. Just my opinion