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Comment by pzxc | Hacker News Reader

The lightning network could fix everything, or fail spectacularly. I think an even bigger danger than failing spectacularly is if they take too long to roll it out. Other cryptocurrencies are already gaining some favor because of the situation BTC is in now with the high transaction fees.

It has a good chance of working, in my opinion (the lightning network), if they don't dawdle too long. But the clock is ticking.

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IMO Lightning network solves a non-problem. It only sets up a transactionless channel between two parties. The whole promise of Bitcoin was secure transfer to anyone. Maintaining a balance between two parties is trivial and solved thousands of years ago.

The whole reason we have currency is to allow transactions between people that don't trust each other, so I don't think Lightning network will do anything significant

Most transactions fall into the first -solved- category, a minority is in the second.

Lighting network channels don't require you to trust the other party.

Lighting network is also distributed, you don't need a direct channel between you and another party to pay them. You just have to find a route.

This is incorrect. Lightning Network transactions are trustless just like Bitcoin [1], even over multiple hops. You set up a channel with one or a few peers and then can pay or be paid by anyone in the network [2] with no counterparty risk.

1. With the caveat that you (or a service you delegate) need to be prepared to broadcast a transaction within some time period if a peer tries to defraud you, which is unlikely since if they fail they lose their funds in the channel.

2. Assuming enough liquidity in the network

> I think an even bigger danger than failing spectacularly is if they take too long to roll it out. Other cryptocurrencies are already gaining some favor because of the situation BTC is in now with the high transaction fees.

Who cares? Honestly, who cares if BTC is the one that wins? I only care about some cryptocurrency seeing mass adoption, I don't care if that's BTC or any of the other thousand coins.

>Who cares? Honestly, who cares if BTC is the one that wins?

Well, everyone who is long on BTC.

They should be diversified or else they deserve the pain.

Well certainly all of the HODLers care. Some of them have a lot to lose if Bitcoin fails.

I think a bigger risk than specifically Bitcoin failing is all this crypto fragmentation. If not Bitcoin, then what?

When Yahoo was replaced by Google people switched and their lives didn’t change.

If/when Bitcoin goes to zero people could lose faith in crypto completely there might never be a replacement.

The fragmentation is fine. Technology is in the works to make blockchains interoperable. Look up Polkadot.

I’m aware of some of these efforts. I’ve been following REQ.

If currencies go to zero and the masses lose their money then they could lose faith in the whole system. Interop of 100+ currencies won’t matter if all have zero value.

I’m not saying this will happen, but suggesting it’s a worst case scenario.

There are already new players in town. Currently Raiblocks is gaining in popularity. It offers AFAIK the fastest transactions with NO FEES. This is the future.

I'm sorry, but what's so good about raiblocks...? Aren't they just PoS based?

>It offers AFAIK the fastest transactions with NO FEES.

Is it not obvious to you that no fees is a ridiculous proposition? Free transactions mean spam and that doesn't work in a distributed ledger.

Transactions have a small amount of PoW attached to them to deter spam, and are also very small (designed to fit in a UDP packet).

Sure. You'll just have to perpetually wait 18 months for the lightning network to get completed.

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