Yeah, I have personally always been baffled as to why Bitcoin cash is even necessary when we have Litecoin. If the idea is to have lower fees/quicker transactions during periods where Bitcoin core fees are rising and speed is slower due to spam or congestion, you have the Litecoin blockchain to function as a pressure valve. I'm optimistic that the lightning network will put this issue to rest regardless.
Litecoin has segwit. The biggest argument for bitcoin cash was to get rid of segwit. Many people are worried about how much less secure segwit is. It puts a lot more trust in the miners. I personally don't think either coin has the best solution but I'm definitely more wary of segwit.
Hey, thinking back on this post - can you explain what the worry is with Segwit? I was under the impression that Segwit is viewed as largely positive. I've actually never heard what the downside of it is, so the idea that "many people are worried about.." made me wonder about this. Thanks.
No problem! My favorite post on the subject is this one. Here is one of the more important excerpts:
The answer is that segwit uses what is, in my professional opinion, an unthinkably nasty hack: according to the Bitcoin protocol, all segwit transactions can be spent by anybody with no proof of authorization. That means that literally anyone can make a transaction that spends the bitcoins in a segwit address. The "witness data" (which is the rules for who's allowed to claim the outputs, and the proof that the rules were followed on the inputs that claim the outputs) is moved out of the main block and replaced with a simple "anyone can spend me, there are no rules and no proofs," and it's up to miners to know what the rules really are, ignore the "anyone can spend me" instruction, and instead apply the rules from the witness data....
The second implication is even more chilling: for the first time, the Bitcoin protocol will have official support for theft of bitcoins. See, the formal rules of bitcoin will be "anyone can spend these coins without authorization," but the segwit rules will say otherwise. This means that anyone who can get a majority of miners to agree to look the other way (i.e. ignore the segwit rules) can send a transaction that spends those bitcoins without authorization, and it will be valid by protocol. At present, if the majority of miners attempted to do this, their blocks would be invalid (and ignored by the network) because they violate the Bitcoin protocol, but with segwit, the Bitcoin protocol will only understand "anyone can spend these coins" so as long as the miners agree to ignore the segwit rules, the transaction will pass checks. Obviously this means that the miners could collude to steal everyone's segwit balances, but more likely, a government could force mining organizations to allow their transactions to steal bitcoins, reverse transactions, or whatever else. Whereas previously this meddling would've been extremely noisy, causing a hard fork (which would have likely been ignored). With segwit, however, theft by miner collusion is a first class feature.
I like this post because a lot of people just complain about the "lightning network" but that isn't really the main issue. The biggest issue is the fact that there was a change at the protocol level that allows cheating if enough miners agree to "look the other way."
I would recommend reading the entire article though. Enjoy! :)
Is it realistic for miners to "look the other way" on a large enough scale for this to happen? When I hear people like "Ivan on Tech" explain Segwit, it just sounds like a reasonable scaling solution. I will have to more thoroughly read the link you shared.
I think there will be better options out there anyway but I think the concern is that it is "possible" for them to do it even if it's not likely. Like I said, I think the solution will be something different. Segwit seems too complicated (and frankly unnecessary) for it to be a good solution and just raising the block size (bch) only solves part of bitcoin's problem.
I like to see the Lighting network capacity growing, but we don't actually know if it being utilized. Since all the transactions are private, all we know is more people are staking BTC to become a channel. Its interesting to see the BTC network backlog dropping. Is it due the Lighting, or is it due to shift in usage of other currencies?
My biggest interests are decentralized exchanges, privacy coins, and Steem.
I'll also add that when asking BCH supporters why Litecoin doesn't serve the purpose that BCH is meant for, I have never heard a direct answer to the question. So, I encourage anyone to help explain it to me!
I personally think the cross block chain technology will be the way whether or not it is lightning network or more like what Iohk is working on with sidechains. I like the sidechain idea because it adds functionality to chains that focus on security if only they can figure out a way not to break the security of bitcoin in the process.the team at IOHK seems to be set towards intermingling technology and open source.
Thanks for the post @cryptobobby!
Here's my take on some of your items:
Lightning for Bitcoin will definitely bring a new breath of fresh air, but in the long run BTC will loose the dominant role. It will probably serve well for value storage and with lightning it will be much easier (cheaper) to do transfers but whole crypto world is capable of doing much more. I'm bullish on platform projects. The analogy I share with my friends that are far away from crypto is: BTC is a good Nokia mobile phone, while Ethereum - is iPhone (1st gen), Cardano and EOS (and many others) are next generations of the smartphones. What brought iPhone and Android smartphones to the place where they are today?
It was not the phone-related technology. It was the underlying platforms that let developers write and for people to use apps on these phones.
As for ICOs. It's hot topic at the moment. Today I was trying to get into Dadi ICO. Followed instructions sent by Dadi team, was well prepared (not my first ICO), didn't waste a second since it began. But didn't manage to get in.
So even without regulation the market is not easily accessible at the moment.
Some ICO clarifications will be needed that will surely lead to regulation in the space. I think it is good that they are allowing for gray areas as it will lead to the innovation needed to create the framework needed for the future growth possible in combining the technology with access to capital. We need a fair balance to weed out the scams and bad players in order to establish wider adoption into the commercial mainstream. If not, so many projects will fail to get off the ground running which will ultimately hurt the community of decentralization focus technology.
Great update Cryprobobby, really sums up a lot of the big topics of the current time in crypto. I firmly believe that when the lighting network fully rolls out, it will catapult bitcoin into a new stage of growth, especially since it is digital gold; with increased usability for transactions, it will be priceless. In addition, I am bummed about the rolling out of increased regulation over ICOs but it can be a double edged sword as well offering a variety of positives. Some regulation is not always a bad thing and can bring a sense of security in this wild-west atmosphere we call cryptocurrency!
@cryptobobby can you explain that lightning network graphic a bit more for more of a layman, ie why with the number of nodes increasing would see a leveling off of payment channels? And what that is suggesting?
Yeah, I have personally always been baffled as to why Bitcoin cash is even necessary when we have Litecoin. If the idea is to have lower fees/quicker transactions during periods where Bitcoin core fees are rising and speed is slower due to spam or congestion, you have the Litecoin blockchain to function as a pressure valve. I'm optimistic that the lightning network will put this issue to rest regardless.
Litecoin has segwit. The biggest argument for bitcoin cash was to get rid of segwit. Many people are worried about how much less secure segwit is. It puts a lot more trust in the miners. I personally don't think either coin has the best solution but I'm definitely more wary of segwit.
Well, I guess it's good to have BCH around just in case.
Hey, thinking back on this post - can you explain what the worry is with Segwit? I was under the impression that Segwit is viewed as largely positive. I've actually never heard what the downside of it is, so the idea that "many people are worried about.." made me wonder about this. Thanks.
No problem! My favorite post on the subject is this one. Here is one of the more important excerpts:
I like this post because a lot of people just complain about the "lightning network" but that isn't really the main issue. The biggest issue is the fact that there was a change at the protocol level that allows cheating if enough miners agree to "look the other way."
I would recommend reading the entire article though. Enjoy! :)
Is it realistic for miners to "look the other way" on a large enough scale for this to happen? When I hear people like "Ivan on Tech" explain Segwit, it just sounds like a reasonable scaling solution. I will have to more thoroughly read the link you shared.
(
I think there will be better options out there anyway but I think the concern is that it is "possible" for them to do it even if it's not likely. Like I said, I think the solution will be something different. Segwit seems too complicated (and frankly unnecessary) for it to be a good solution and just raising the block size (bch) only solves part of bitcoin's problem.
I like to see the Lighting network capacity growing, but we don't actually know if it being utilized. Since all the transactions are private, all we know is more people are staking BTC to become a channel. Its interesting to see the BTC network backlog dropping. Is it due the Lighting, or is it due to shift in usage of other currencies?
My biggest interests are decentralized exchanges, privacy coins, and Steem.
I'll also add that when asking BCH supporters why Litecoin doesn't serve the purpose that BCH is meant for, I have never heard a direct answer to the question. So, I encourage anyone to help explain it to me!
See my other reply to you. :)
Hi @cryptobobby ! Great post, i like it, i just upvoted it ! @wildvest
its bitcoin lowest feet
I personally think the cross block chain technology will be the way whether or not it is lightning network or more like what Iohk is working on with sidechains. I like the sidechain idea because it adds functionality to chains that focus on security if only they can figure out a way not to break the security of bitcoin in the process.the team at IOHK seems to be set towards intermingling technology and open source.
Thanks for the post @cryptobobby!
Here's my take on some of your items:
Lightning for Bitcoin will definitely bring a new breath of fresh air, but in the long run BTC will loose the dominant role. It will probably serve well for value storage and with lightning it will be much easier (cheaper) to do transfers but whole crypto world is capable of doing much more. I'm bullish on platform projects. The analogy I share with my friends that are far away from crypto is: BTC is a good Nokia mobile phone, while Ethereum - is iPhone (1st gen), Cardano and EOS (and many others) are next generations of the smartphones. What brought iPhone and Android smartphones to the place where they are today?
It was not the phone-related technology. It was the underlying platforms that let developers write and for people to use apps on these phones.
As for ICOs. It's hot topic at the moment. Today I was trying to get into Dadi ICO. Followed instructions sent by Dadi team, was well prepared (not my first ICO), didn't waste a second since it began. But didn't manage to get in.
So even without regulation the market is not easily accessible at the moment.
Some projects that I have been interested in lately are Nebulas (NAS), Theta Token (THETA), and Data (DTA). Have you heard of any of these?
https://nebulas.io/
https://www.thetatoken.org/
http://data.eco/
Thanks for great informative video.. Keep it up bro @cryptobobby
Steem on,
Arslan
Some ICO clarifications will be needed that will surely lead to regulation in the space. I think it is good that they are allowing for gray areas as it will lead to the innovation needed to create the framework needed for the future growth possible in combining the technology with access to capital. We need a fair balance to weed out the scams and bad players in order to establish wider adoption into the commercial mainstream. If not, so many projects will fail to get off the ground running which will ultimately hurt the community of decentralization focus technology.
Great update Cryprobobby, really sums up a lot of the big topics of the current time in crypto. I firmly believe that when the lighting network fully rolls out, it will catapult bitcoin into a new stage of growth, especially since it is digital gold; with increased usability for transactions, it will be priceless. In addition, I am bummed about the rolling out of increased regulation over ICOs but it can be a double edged sword as well offering a variety of positives. Some regulation is not always a bad thing and can bring a sense of security in this wild-west atmosphere we call cryptocurrency!
@cryptobobby can you explain that lightning network graphic a bit more for more of a layman, ie why with the number of nodes increasing would see a leveling off of payment channels? And what that is suggesting?
Alts to the Moon, we need this to happend...