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Comment by CyberDildonics | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't solve anything, it still has to be synced with the chain so that the balance can be useful to anyone else. The average transaction is around $20 USD and has been around this much for a while. Opening and closing second layer channels is even more expensive than an average transaction.

There is no universe where 1.5KB/s in transactions makes sense. Any other cryptocurrency works better, ethereum and bitcoin cash already have more transactions than bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency works better.

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I'm not an expert on lightning network, but couldn't Visa position themselves as a central hub for lightning network transactions, so that most people can open a channel to Visa and they act as the clearing house for keeping all of those channels balanced?

I'd never want to send large BTC amounts through visa, but I would trust them enough to facilitate <$100 transactions for a ~3% fee (with some potion profit and some towards tx fees).

Or heck, maybe consumers don't need an actual channel, just let me send Bitcoin out on credit and pay my monthly balance with BTC. Maybe only channels to vendors that receive payments are necessary.

Not sure how much demand exists for this, but "We are the #1 facilitator of Bitcoin transactions" would probably be great for Visa's stock price if they could achieve it.

They could and they probably will if LN keeps growing. You wouldn’t need to trust VISA at all, LN is “trustless”. They would just be a cog in the wheel, like all the other LN “nodes”.

They could, the big difference is they would just be another player on the lightning network payment channel, perhaps a very big player, but not "own the whole layer" kinda big.

They could just build their own LN replacement. Why be a cog when you can have control over your journey?

The reason why crypto people love crypto is also the same reason why companies hate it. If you give people control then companies lose control.

Think of a WoW cash shop on Ethereum. Blizzard would have much less control over it than a central cash shop.

It's 20 dollars now. Over the last year 50% of the time it's a few dollars.

It has been 20 or more dollars 5% of the time this year.

https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...

It doesn't sound like you're familiar with how lightning works. It doesn't have to be "synced with the chain" except during channel opening and closing, which occur infrequently (like on the scale of weeks or months).

> ethereum and bitcoin cash already have more transactions than bitcoin

The eth blockchain is untenably huge (good luck running an ethereum full node), and ethereum fees are often higher than Bitcoin fees.

> The eth blockchain is untenably huge (good luck running an ethereum full node)

No blockchains are anywhere close to "untenably huge".

The ethereum chain is 639.43 GB.

https://bitinfocharts.com/

A $10 USD VPS could sync with that in under two hours. That is about $12 USD of hard drive space after 5 years.

This is about the same as downloading the five to eight largest games on steam.

> and ethereum fees are often higher than Bitcoin fees.

No they aren't. They are about the same, making them both unusable for normal transactions, but it should be obvious there are no technical limitations to making larger and/or more frequent blocks since ethereum does it already.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth...

> It doesn't have to be "synced with the chain" except during channel opening and closing, which occur infrequently (like on the scale of weeks or months).

Which means that no one can use that balance for weeks or months and some third party has to spot people the money in the mean time. That sounds like a credit card. Know what doesn't work like that? On chain transactions.

> The ethereum chain is 639.43 GB.

False. This is for some sort of pruned SPV node or something. A full node takes multiple terabytes. Even the fastest implementations take days to sync, if you're lucky.

https://tjayrush.medium.com/building-your-own-ethereum-archi...

> Which means that no one can use that balance for weeks or months

You clearly have no idea how lightning works, so why do you keep commenting as if you do? Nothing about this claim is true.

The difference is that what I linked actually backs up what I said.

Did you even read what you linked? It says "We’ve long ago depreciated the cost of the machines. The ongoing cost of running these machines is negligible."

Does that sound "untenably" large?

> Even the fastest implementations take days to sync

You realize it has been going for five years right?

> You clearly have no idea how lightning works, so why do you keep commenting as if you do? Nothing about this claim is true.

Your evidence of <<nothing at all>> is pretty weak. You basically replied to say "nuh uh". In other comments you claim that certain things don't work when other people point out there there are many examples of it working already.

How exactly does someone who gets a balance on a 3rd party lightning channel use that money on the main chain without syncing with the chain? Until they get it on the chain it isn't a bitcoin balance and to make that transaction is going to cost a significant amount.

It does. You don’t need to leave the L2 solution. Why would you when you have the possibility to transact for free? Liquidity on LN is growing by the day and as more and more people join there will be fewer and fewer reasons to settle.

Define works better. Has larger blockchains? All transactions don’t need to live in the blockchain.

> Opening and closing second layer channels is even more expensive than an average transaction.

That's true if opening/closing channels require you to go to the blockchain, but channel factories will significantly ease the burden of 2nd layers on the blockchain.

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