pull down to refresh
This is the Jevon's effect, and why Lightning increases block demand rather than reduces it.
When the cost of gas goes down, people drive more, therefore spending as much or more on gas. Same for electricity, etc.
Lightning creates channel events far in excess of what its users would make in chain payments in its absence.
Bitcoin is institutional grade settlement, akin to ACH/SWIFT/Wires... not for coffees. So the question isn't why aren't people using it for coffees, why aren't more institutions settling in it.
Replacing ACH and Wires alone would be more transactions per day than Bitcoin can handle.
Each Lightning node however is an emergent institution, one that settles in on-chain Bitcoin. Thank god we have those, as each LN institution increases demand for settlement and the network effect is increasing.
My joke comment has gotten so many thoughtful replies.
Do we have evidence to support this for lightning? It's a thing that can happen with goods, but there's no requirement. Sometimes you just consume a little more and use most of the savings on other stuff.
We can see what the use cases for lightning are, and how none of them cannibalize uses the chain was ever used for materially.
No one zapped social posts, unlocked paywalls, paid for APIs, or vending machines with the chain. The chain isn't that granular.
Lightnings value isn't it's cost savings vs the chain, as it generally costs more on a percentage basis actually to route over LN... It's in its speed and granularity.
LN is also a hot wallet, so is not cannibalizing to/from cold storage to/from exchanges, nor institutional settlement as channel liquidity is a bigger friction than the lack of granularity.
Maybe cannibalizes a percentage of gift card buys? Or is it more people are buying GCs at all because they can fund a lightning hot wallet for that + the other stuff which makes the GCs more cost effective. I never bought a GC on chain.
It doesn't cannibalize using it to trade vs shitcoins with fake chain swaps...
There's simply no usage that ever existed lightning displaces, yet it generates a lot of channel/swap events.
Jevons doesn't apply to things with inelastic utility, but gas and electricity have infinite uses. In the context of money being akin to energy, Bitcoin has infinite uses.
Bitcoin blockspace is the good/service, and Lightning is a massive consumer of that good.
Good points.
There have only been a few lightning transactions that I’ve made that would have otherwise been on chain, and I’ve opened more channels than that.
That's... what it's designed for really. L1 to open/close/manage Lightning channels and on-chain only for channel management + unusually large transactions.
Without this reality Bitcoin doesn't scale. With it we have mostly empty blocks right now and that's something we can work on
op_ctv would be nice. Could spread out more lightning open and close actions across a lot more blocks.
We should make a list of what our options are for this problem, with tail emissions being the most nuclear option, rank them by intensity and viability, and then just sit around until it becomes a problem.
If it then does become a problem, we then UASF each option.
Unfortunately, it takes waiting for it to be a problem for a unilateral soft fork (even hard fork) to work out for this problem specifically I believe. Otherwise the other chain that might URSF could get away with paying for security in block subsidy and win by being the default.
op_ctv would be nice. Could spread out more lightning open and close actions across a lot more blocks.
If this makes Lightning more "efficient"... I'm not sure we need that
We should make a list of what our options are for this problem, with tail emissions being the most nuclear option, rank them by intensity and viability, and then just sit around until it becomes a problem.
I would rather the entire project fail than we propose a "tail emission" because if we do that then Bitcoin will fail.
Unfortunately, it takes waiting for it to be a problem for a unilateral soft fork (even hard fork) to work out for this problem specifically I believe.
I don't know why credible people haven't at least suggested a block size decrease. It's far less disruptive than anything else being proposed right now ("proposed") plus it decreases spam and makes blocks easier to process.
Sounds like a win-win to me if we're going to do something
If this makes Lightning more "efficient"... I'm not sure we need that
And it does, but there was also this idea about making a chain on on-chain transactions that don't wait to be mined because you've already committed to a limited set of possible spending paths, so the user is less worried about getting their transaction mined "right now"
However, having said all of that, I had a thought last night.
Mutually Assured Destruction Transactions could be a thing today and would kinda have the same affect. Only kinda. Don't know how you'd make a chain of CPFP transactions will still being able to maintain your MAD capability until it gets mined.
But do you get the idea? Transactions over more blocks vs more transactions in a block. Consistent fees included in blocks vs one block with a lot of fees.
If I understand what you are saying... we don't have almost any blocks with "a lot of fees." Fees are already pretty consistent at near 1 sat/vbyte and the spammy transactions (runes inscriptions etc) are typically .15 sat/vb or less. I mean they can't get much lower.
Have...you not been around very long?
Listen, we have months of VERY high fees, and times like this of almost no fees.
You have to solve both sides of the problem simultaneously, because only solving for one side, makes the other side worse.
So what I'm saying is, if people during the times when fees are VERY high, could instead be enabled to wait (which you can only really do by making waiting itself unnecessary), until these lower tides for their transaction to go through, the stress on both sides, high tide and low tide (high fee and low fee) can be solved at the same time.
CTV is retarded, all it does is delegation (centralization) which allows the deferral of costs at best. Proponents are just re-branding centralization and trust with scam fake L2 wallets and DeFi, shitcoiner mindset.
Channel ops (or transaction throughput generally) is not the scaling bottleneck, divisibility is. There's literally not enough Bitcoin for mass sovereign usage, given it only goes to 8 decimal places, and chain security costs a minimum of 4 decimals, realistically 5-6 if its not to be a substantial portion of ones assets.
Security budget stuff is nonsense, industrial mining is an arbitrage on a temporary subsidy and stranded energy. It must continue evolve into to waste energy or heat as a by-product, like space heaters, to re-decentralize.
If the network is valuable enough to users, even if block rewards are diminimis, there's an incentive to mine. Not that it will remain diminimis, the intended users aren't here yet, the chain is for institutions, akin to Wire/ACH: #1437045
Tail emissions won't happen, just as an increase in divisibility won't happen, both are supply increases that would capitulate to malleability thereby making it worthless.
Most of us don't make many unusually large transactions, but if home sales start being settled in bitcoin, that would provide a lot of on-chain transactions.
@TFTC recently (in the last couple days) released a video: a pie chart showing the ownership type of bitcoin across types of owners over time.
kinda surprising to see that Individuals still hold the majority. And how many institutions are into the corn?
I'm guessing... but, certainly fewer institutions are buying corn than there are users of Stacker News, right?
it's really instructive about the "then they fight you" stage...
I watched that and it's interesting, but I wonder how reliable the information is. It's not like you check a box to identify what kind of entity you are when you receive bitcoin.
you're def right about the box-checking, and I still think there are more users of SN than there are institutional buyers
maybe not for much longer tho.
Last time I checked... I was under the impression that ~70% of Bitcoin was privately owned. But then again this was pre-ETF so ha
I don't mean that large.
Most (90%) of my zaps are under 10 cents. Over 100$ is rare for me
My guess is that lightning will handle pretty much everything under 1M sats, which is basically all ordinary transactions.
Biggest Lightning transaction I ever made was like... 3 million sats. It took maybe 30 seconds to process but went through.
It was instant with a bunch of hops. The only downside was that at .5% in fees it costs more than just doing on-chain
On-chain would have been a flat fee... of like 25 cents. Lightning was instant and more private but some %?
I’m certainly guilty of pretty much only using L1 for managing lightning channels.