[Cryptography] Bitcoin is a disaster.

[jrzx]

On 2020-12-30 02:36, Deryk Makgill wrote:
> There's a popular quote floating around that in the future, transacting on the blockchain will be as rare and specialised as chartering an oil tanker. What's annoying is the OP thinks that's a good thing and very few people of note seem to disagree.

Obviously this is inherent in a successful blockchain, and obviously chartering an oil tanker is inherently going to be not very pseudonymous or anonymous.  If Monaro gets as big as bitcoin, it is not going to be very pseudonymous either.

> Many of us have been warning this outcome was inevitable for years. If transaction fees become too expensive, funds will consolidate on centralised exchanges and only a very small number of "banks" will use to blockchain to settle funds for the rest of us peasants.
>
> This makes possible political control through the regulation of payment layers, censorship, tracking, loss of privacy, seizure of funds, fractional reserve...all the things we want to kill. As Satoshi said, "the main benefits are lost if a trusted party is still required...">
> Lightning Network has largely failed thus far to live up to its early promises and timelines,

So the problem is not clever cryptography on a blockchain to support pseudonymous or anonymous transactions on the blockchain, but clever cryptography on the blockchain to support clever cryptography on a reliable and onion routed lightning network.

This failure of the Lightning Network is inherent in the bitcoin architecture.

We don't need a blockchain that is, like Monaro, anonymous or strongly pseudonymous. We need a blockchain layer that supports a reliable and decentralized lighting layer that onion routes payments.

The problem with running a lightning network over bitcoin is that nothing except centralized supervision and control stops someone from dropping an out of date lightning network transaction on the blockchain, or intercepting and pocketing a multi party transaction - it has the insider check kiting problem that decentralized correspondence banking has.