Projecting problems to the second layer, stacking up protocols on protocols leads to nowhere other than ruining bitcoin, turning it to something it was not meant to be.
I thought you were of the opinion that Bitcoin was already ruined because of numerous other reasons. You don't like the ASICs, you don't like mining pools, you don't like Lightning. Is there any part of Bitcoin you
do like? Just about all the changes you would implement if it were up to you simply aren't compatible with the software everyone else on the network is running. It doesn't look like you're going to find what you desire here. At some point you might stop to consider why you're actually following this chain if it's such a lost cause in your lofty opinion.
One use of nLockTime is high frequency trades between a set of parties. They can keep updating a tx by unanimous agreement. The party giving money would be the first to sign the next version. If one party stops agreeing to changes, then the last state will be recorded at nLockTime. If desired, a default transaction can be prepared after each version so n-1 parties can push an unresponsive party out. Intermediate transactions do not need to be broadcast. Only the final outcome gets recorded by the network. Just before nLockTime, the parties and a few witness nodes broadcast the highest sequence tx they saw.
Indeed. While Dryja and Poon are often credited as the inventors of Lightning, it seems Satoshi had some remarkably similar ideas. Maybe we were always destined to get an off-chain option in some form or another. I wonder if the development timeframe would have been similar if Satoshi had stuck around. Or would we have possibly got Lightning (or a close approximation of it) a little sooner? Or perhaps it would have been an idea Satoshi stuck on the back-burner and never got around to implementing? Pity we'll never know.
I can't be bothered to read anyone's arguments about LN back here, but let's be clear about one thing, there is no use quoting what Hearn claimed 7 years ago that satoshi said as an argument for anything.
I get that Hearn isn't the most beloved figure in the community, but I don't see what there would be to gain in fabricating that email, if that's what you're suggesting. I do concede that just because Satoshi talked about it, that doesn't mean it was something they definitely wanted to implement, though.