[Cryptography] What is total world transaction volume?

[Natanael]

Den 8 feb 2017 02:16 skrev "James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com>:

On 2/8/2017 5:16 AM, Jameson Lopp wrote:

> From some quick googling it appears that there are ~100 Billion credit &
> debit card transactions per year. But the real question is how many
> /cash/ transactions occur? I suspect (globally) it is probably far
> higher than electronic transactions.
>
> Given that blockchain-based cryptocurrencies require every validator
> node to process the entirety of the network's transaction history, in
> order to scale them up to reach mainstream level volumes, more complex
> layers of transaction processing need to be built on top of the base
> layer in order to achieve sufficient scalability.
>

What I have been thinking on for many years is that you do not really need
every full node to process the entirety of the network's transaction
history, or indeed any nodes processing the entirety of the network's
transaction history.  Rather, your node needs to be able to prove that
every node connected to your node by a rather short chain of transactions
is in agreement about all transactions directly or indirectly affecting you.


... and you just reinvented Lightning Network. (It also sounds a bit like
Ripple.)

Alice and Bob creates a 2-of-2 multisignature transaction that they publish
to to the blockchain. They assign X coins each, both paying themselves.
Then they create a follow-up transaction which they don't publish, this
works as a draft transaction, a digital tab. One that is signed by both
parties.

It uses the Bitcoin locktime functionality to prevent doublespends before
the locktime expiry (before expiry both parties needs to agree to spend
coins to the blockchain, after expiry you only need one - this prevents
permanently freezing funds).

Alice tells Bob "you owe me $10 for that pizza", the two then modify the
draft transaction to assign the payment output values accordingly. This is
the basics of payment channels in Bitcoin.

Lightning network is the networked version of that. People have payment
channels to payment processors. Processors have payment channels between
each other.

Payments are routed across the nodes, and the sender verifies that it
reaches the receiver.

Unfortunately I know very little about the server side pieces of Lightning
Network nodes. Somebody else can probably fill in on that.

Performance for the same-server usecase is at least essentially unlimited
since there's very little overhead necessary. Can't say anything about what
happens in large loosely connected networks.
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