Quote from: Abiky on June 22, 2018, 07:20:36 PM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on June 21, 2018, 06:20:08 AM

Who said that? Is this a network of banks and wealthy institutions? https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/ - The Lightning Network is live.

Stop the FUD. The Lightning Network has more nodes maintained by users than Bitcoin Cash.

I'm not spreading any FUDs. As a long-time Bitcoin user, I hate Bitcoin Cash simply because it will tend out to become extremely centralized in the long term with its huge block size increases. However, I'm only concerned about how the LN on Bitcoin might turn out to become if fees rise to astronomical levels as usage increases over time. I'm still studying the whitepaper related to the Lightning Network, so I still have a lot to learn about it.

Bitcoin made a concious design decision not to increase the block size to make the network "scale out". That means the opportunity to increase the running of full nodes because the requirements for hardware to run them will not be high. That decision maintains decentralization and security.

To solve the problem of scalability in accordance to Bitcoin's design decision, a 2nd layer is needed. Bitcoin Cash is solving it by having everything onchain, but it will have to negatively affect decentralization and security.

Your fear that it might increase the fees astronomically are only that. When that problem arises, do you believe that the developers will leave it alone? There are already future plans to allow channels to add more Bitcoins if needed to refrain the users from opening and closing them as often.

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Perhaps, LN is still a decentralized scalable solution for Bitcoin after all, considering that you don't need to trust a specific node to use it. The large number of nodes available on the LN, shows the strong support it has among individuals, eventually leading to geographically distributed nodes to prevent centralization. And yes, it's true that there are a lot more nodes within LN than Bitcoin Cash, which shows that BCH is more centralized than BTC. BCH will become even worse as it increases its block size to unprecedented levels over time, making costs to operate a node much expensive for an average Joe.

What is worrying in Bitcoin Cash's 32mb blocks is if it scales, it might isolate some full nodes and make it hard for them to sync and keep up to the rest of the network because of the higher hardware requirment.

That's an attack scenario for some bad miners to use to attack the network and isolate some full nodes deliberately. Security and decentralization are slightly given up for scalability.

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Nevertheless, I hope to become enlightened about the Lightning Network as I read all about it in the whitepaper. Until this point, I learned things that I've never knew by simply browsing this thread. Wink

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"If". That is the biggest distinction. Why not start enforcing KYC/AML on the miners? They "process" transactions onchain, correct?

Yes, that's correct. If they never did enforce KYC/AML on miners, then I believe that there should be no reason to do so in the LN, since it's not subject to a single jurisdiction. Hopefully, once LN becomes active and stable enough for daily use, we'll see how everything would turn out in the regulatory sector.

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Centralized how? Explain it.

I was referring to centralized in the sense that only wealthy individuals will be able to open/close channels. While this might not happen quickly, it will in the long term, as fees on the main chain will keep rising. I think that a simple solution to make the Lightning Network better, would be to increase the block size of the main chain by small increments every 2 to 4 years to make opening/closing channels on the main chain cheaper than ever.

I believe you are thinking of the worst case scenario. Let us leave that thought open and observe how it happens in practice.

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That's why I've believed that LN would become centralized, but other than that, it could perform just as intended without the need for middleman or centralized control. Only time will tell how everything will work out with the LN. Hopefully, it could remain as decentralized as possible to maintain Bitcoin's security and resiliency against external attacks or manipulation. Undecided

Yes, only time will tell. But never sell your Bitcoins. Cool