Hacker News Reader

Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how there is this "relative scale of hipsterism" and "No True Scottsman" applied to crypto currency projects.

Yes, layer-2 solutions amount to basically "running a tab". So what? Channel settlements are still happening on chain, and no layer-2 project can create/alter tokens on its own. Equating scammy ICOs with serious projects and dismissing it all with "a valueless and fraudulent solution" is as simplistic and reductionist as saying that "banks and credit card companies only use funny money".

For OP's use case, "running a tab" is exactly what is needed. It is easy for them to keep their accounting, it saves them money and operational costs and it avoids third-parties that the group do not trust. It facilitates economic activity. Why do you feel the need of pissing on it?

View on HN

It's even more of an absurd criticism when the literal banking system is "running tabs". Banks don't move dollars around, they don't even hold these dollars! It's all IOUs and lending money that literally doesn't exist.

In some sense, this is an argument in favour of bitcoin.

> In some sense, this is an argument in favour of bitcoin

If you see the link from the poster I responded to, you will see that s/he is likely a Bitcoin maximalist, so the only argument they can have is in favour of Bitcoin/"the one true chain".

The link is trying to make the argument that layer-2 projects are not "real cryptocurrency" because the transfer of values are not happening on chain. This is what I was responding to.

I wouldn't call myself a Bitcoin maximalist (and I don't necessarily endorse all the ideas in the page I linked to).

I am in favour of innovation in the cryptocurrency space, including the creation of new currencies where necessary, but I think that solving layer-1 scaling by adding the complexity of a layer-2 network should be a last resort.

Of course, companies and individuals who make their money from running layer-2 services will disagree with me, as will holders of currencies whose value depends on the success of layer-2 solutions. For what it's worth, I don't own any amount of any cryptocurrency.

Two issues I see with your position:

First, scaling layer-1 and implementation of layer-2 solutions is not an either/or proposition. They can be (and are) developed in parallel and one can and should complement the other. Even if ETH2 manages to increase transaction capacity by 5-6 orders (which is quite a tall order) of magnitude there is a strong likelihood that a lot of that will be taken by dapps beyond simple token transfers, and we will be back very quickly in a scenario of network congestion and (relatively) high network fees and consequently demand for payment channel networks.

Bitcoin as well, with all of its forks and different proposals has barely managed to increase its transaction capacity 10-fold with BCH. People will not wait 10-15 years to maybe get something that resembles the capacity from Lightning, so much so that the main story from most bitcoiners is that it should be seen as a store of value (not a currency).

Second,

> companies and individuals who make their money from running layer-2 services will disagree with me

Is a huuuuge ad hominem. I can tell you that there is a good number of developers (myself included, if I may say so) and companies working on this who are more driven by ideals than pure profit. The main reason that I would like to see strong layer-2 systems working (especially in ETH and with stablecoins like DAI) is that so far it is the only feasible way to have a payment network that can actually compete with credit card networks.

To put it bluntly, layer-2 is another case of "Worse is better" if we actually want to have blockchain technology as an alternative to existing financial and monetary systems. Being a purist will not help the people of Venezuela, while layer-2 projects (even custodial alternatives) could.

> First, scaling layer-1 and implementation of layer-2 solutions is not an either/or proposition.

Long term I agree, that's why I said "a layer-2 network should be a last resort" rather than layer-2 solutions being completely useless.

> Even if ETH2 manages to increase transaction capacity by 5-6 orders (which is quite a tall order) of magnitude

Doing a quick calculation, if ETH2 manages 9,000 transactions per second, that's about 0.1 transactions per person (on Earth) per day. You're right that a reasonable definition of success requires some sort of layer-2 solution eventually, although I don't think we are anywhere near that scale ceiling yet.

> Is a huuuuge ad hominem.

Wasn't it you who accused me of being "a Bitcoin maximalist" in an attempt to discredit my position? :-)

Anyway, we'll see how much layer-2 solutions end up helping the people of Venezuela relative to layer-1 solutions:

https://eatbch.org/venezuela/

https://decrypt.co/11370/bitcoin-cash-just-trumped-bitcoin-i...

You are getting it backwards, it seems. Instead of having dapp developers waiting for some uncertain capacity to show up and then develop the applications, what we have is people developing dapps at the current technology and finding ways to optimize it to make them practical given current constraints.

Decentralized exchanges, games, management of NFT, all that already exist. They are just really impractical/expensive to do on the blockchain, and layer 2 solutions are starting to come already to tackle that. It makes no sense for everyone to wait for every quantum leap in TPS capacity. "Worse is better" have always won.

Unless, of course, your definition of "winning" necessarily goes through the adoption of a blockchain that can not do much else besides transferring its one specific currency. ;)

> we'll see how much layer-2 solutions end up helping the people of Venezuela relative to layer-1 solutions

If people are getting BCH to convert straight to fiat and/or buy food, is it really a fair comparison with an alternative that is creating its own economy?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com