@ph1l I realize that my post was overwhelming to a person who does not use Bitcoin or cryptos and definitely for anyone who's never used the Bitcoin Lightning Network, but I can tell you right now, that was not my intention I was trying to get you to understand network capacity and its usage and importance on the LN but from your own research not me spoon feeding you the information so we can have an intelligent and informed discussion It's not the holy grail bullet that you thought you had found to argue that the top 12 nodes have so much network capacity hence the LN is centralized If I explain it to you why as I'm about to do, will you understand or will it go over your head? Network capacity is simply the amount of money (BTC) that the node is capable of routing. Big players like Kraken, Bitfiniex, OKEX, etc, will have big network capacity because they have a lot of BTC's to allocate toe their LN node Now, here's the tricky part, those nodes don't matter as much for the vast majority of LN transactions that are micro payments (small BTC amounts) ------------ That's why I mentioned I've done several dozen LN transactions and discovered some oddities I did not consider I was trying to use the LN as a replacement for Bitcoin mainnet transactions when it behaved very differently Without making this TL;DR, let's say I deposit 0.5 BTC to my LN node and create 10 channels with 10 different peers varying in capacity from 0.01 btc, 0.02 btc .... 0.09 btc If I try to send a 0.1 BTC LN transaction, my node cannot route it. No way no how. Transaction will fail As I use the LN for transactions, those channels will shift in capacity in either direction so even the 0.09 channel may only have 0.06 BTC capacity for sending out, and 0.03 BTC for receiving ------------ If you made it this far, I'm simply telling you that if OKEX has 10% of network capacity compared to 80,000 LN nodes, it would mean OKEX may have the capcity to route a 2 BTC LN payment, but 99.99% of the LN nodes do not have that capacity on their individual LN channels, hence it does not matter OKEX won't route my LN transactions nor the 99% of the LN transactions It is more important to have as many LN nodes as possible The big network capacity LN nodes are for a very small set of LN transactions that take place I've been using the Bitcoin mainnet for transactions that are more than 1 Million satoshis because other than instant settlement, the fees are similar for the LN and mainnet for those "bigger" transactions
First, I'll answer your questions. no no more or less No downsides -- after all, there are twelve Federal Reserve Banks, and I can't recall anyone bad-mouthing them. However, a famous crypto expert wrote "We always distrust centralized entities like Coinbase and others," so maybe centralized entities can be a problem. I'll try to illustrate the problem with this argument by borrowing something from an unrelated post. So, even with many small transactions, the network can easily get congested. My opinion on how to solve that problem is the same way airlines, railroads, and the Lightning Network do it -- with large centralized hubs. The power to handle increased network capacity is in a few big players that you are forced to trust if you use their networks. Of course, this already exists with other payment networks. The previous medium post and a new one cover this.
I'll assume you got a chance to see my other post, anyway, doesn't matter much because you're arguing from concepts, and using old Medium articles The Lightning Network s a beautiful production network, fully functional and growing ---------- I have to feed you info so we can continue the discussion. This is the problem when I'm arguing based on actual usage of a production network, while you cite Medium articles as your source Centralization is bad for cryptos because of loss of funds and censorship (look at Ethereum incident with Infuria and Venezuela) You mentioned Coinbse, if Coinbase fails, millions or billions of $ worth of Bitcoins may be lost that belong to Bitcoiners Can you provide specifics on how BTC's are at risk due to this LN centralization you speak of? You mentioned Coinbase, recently they are blocking transfers to Russian-linked wallets, which means censorship Can you provide specifics on how LN transactions will be censored due to the centralization you speak of? Let's go further, you mentioned risk of disruptions if there are failures on centralized LN nodes Are you aware that LN channels can be opened (created) ad-hoc from sender to receiver? No reliance on routing hubs or other LN nodes and hops. Can you provide specifics on how any LN node failure will disrupt the network?
@ph1l I'm sorry looking at my posts they are condescending. I apologize and there's no excuse -------- I would like to continue the discussion of risks of centralization, censorship, loss of cryptos (BTC's) and disruptions as they apply to native LN nodes If you find an article stating any of those 3 had occurred on the LN, even if it's from a Medium article, I'll take a look at it and examine the particulars they provide Now with Russian sanctions, it would be interesting if censorship or seizure of funds have occurred on the LN Custodial LN would always be at risk, since they are like other custodial platforms like exchanges and such