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Comment by lawn | Hacker News Reader

> As for Satoshi Nakamoto: The most obvious candidate seems to be Adam Back. His invention of proof of work, his biography, character, writing style and role as the CEO of the company behind the main wallet software all point to him.

Adam Back is obviously not Satoshi.

His level of writing or thinking is not even close to the level of Satoshi.

When asked what people should pay with when fees were high and Lightning Network wasn't complete, he seriously suggested people should just use tabs:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DHc81OL_hk4&feature=youtu.be&t...

This and other brainfarts... No way that he's Satoshi and people need to stop suggesting it.

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Not to mention that he is a bit of a self-promoter. I am sure he would take credit for Bitcoin if he could.

He has already tried to do that in his Twitter bio (that he removed) where he claimed that Bitcoin was just hashcash with inflation control.

And he also dismissed Bitcoin initially.

> he seriously suggested people should just use tabs

Why is this a "brainfart"? It does not seem like a horrible recommendation to me, especially for someone who needed a solution "today" in 2017.

Because cryptocurrencies were already working.

"Use another cryptocurrency" would be a much better recommendation that would solve the problem much better than tabs.

The reason why Bitcoin stopped working well was because Adam Back and others were actively sabotaging it's ability to cope with demand, and instead pushing people towards other solutions.

Those solutions were nowhere near ready, so the best Adam could come up with (except admitting they were wrong) was Tabs.

So yeah, instead of a brainfart it could just be malicious behavior.

The question asked on that video does not mention lightning.

But his answer begins by explaining lightning.

Back early on forsaw that lightning is the way forward and not larger blocks. Which is another indication to me, that he is indeed Nakamoto.

It was a great insight very much in line with Nakamoto's thinking. Nakamoto who forsaw so many things early on like the need for a script instead of just transaction data on the chain.

Meanwhile, in actual 2023, Bitcoin once again has bloated mempool and high transaction fees while big block Bitcoin cash is clearing regularly.

I think we have enough real history at this point to dismiss the notion that "lightning is the way forward" in an absolute, concrete and not theoretical way.

Entries on a blockchain are auctioned of in an auction which allow arbitrarely low bids. So it is to expected that there is a long tail of bids with a low chance to win.

If a mempool clears, that just means there is limited demand to use the chain, even for free.

Satoshi was for raising the blocksize:

> It can be phased in, like: if (blocknumber > 115000) maxblocksize = largerlimit It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don’t have it are already obsolete.

Given that lightning still has shit UX without relying on third parties should be proof enough that it was and still is a terrible idea to rely on for Bitcoins usability.

Before lightning was a thing, he anticipated the block size would increase over time. And he changed his mind when the idea of level 2 came up. Which was the right thing to do. But hard to understand at that time.

UX is a problem throughout all crypto. No matter which coin, no matter L1 or L2. It's all still like the internet before the 90s.

He sure changed his mind!

From a revolutionary new form of money, to suggesting people should develop their own app for tabs...

Wouldn't the real Satoshi do everything in their power to throw people off the scent?

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