maxis and knotzis are getting everything wrong about the idea of centralization risk. they are being inconsistent and nothing they are saying makes any sense. L1 consensus changes, including covenants, drivechain, and small conservative blocksize increases, do not create tangibly dangerous amounts of centralization. it is a complete myth spread by dangerous middlemen companies who should not exist. their business model depends on people believing that nothing should change. the liquid federation doesn't want what's best for you. lightspark is not your fucking friend. the lightning network creates observable amounts of dangerous centralization, due to the inability of lots of people to maintain their own channels at the same time. the market will not bear it. centralized and permissioned appliances like liquid, spark, arkade, and ecash exist entirely to make the lightning network appear to work, while enriching the wrong people. I am sick and tired of having conversations about centralization risk with people who think the lightning network is all we will ever need. these people are blind. centralization is not a "what happens if we do x" thing, it's a right now thing and lightning created it. the lightning network and all of its cancerous tumors are starving miners of fee revenue, which they need due to the dwindling block subsidy. but you can also argue that simply doing conservative blocksize increases won't really be a suitable replacement and you're probably right. this is where we are stuck, and only L1 consensus changes will give us better scaling and protect us from centralization. covenant proposals and drivechains make the most sense here. I consider any ossifier as an enemy of decentralization. these people need to be eliminated. they are a threat.

Replies (7)

Its a hard one. I would like to see some improvements on bitcoin L1, i think its the only way it will survive. But i also see the power of ossification. As Jimmy Song rexently said, people want a store of value more than unit of exchamge. This is the exonomic reality that the market chooses. Swapping btc for monero or ltc or lightning to spend is no big deal.
the market chooses ethereum and litecoin, and only due to the failure of bitcoin. reclaim the transaction volume, then we'll talk
The future security budget hinges on whether the BTC-denominated fee floor stair-steps upward across halvings. Everything else is secondary.
The fee floor stair-step requires persistent L1 settlement demand. There are three candidate mechanisms: (1) organic settlement growth, (2) non-custodial L2 that still touches L1 broadly, (3) L1 changes that expand high-value settlement demand. Blocksize increases alone are not a guaranteed fee-floor mechanism. Lightning may contribute to settlement centralization if it becomes custodial, but that’s distinct from proving it starves miner fees.
Nuh's avatar
Nuh 3 days ago
Who the fuck is going to pay for miners if not people exchanging Bitcoin for other things? If all Bitcoin is locked in multisig bridges, these federations will realise they can settle between each other through an even larger multisig or LN channels and never pay fees on chain. You expect the current hashrate to persist despite no fees forever If the hashrate falls, what does Bitcoin offer that Litecoin doesn't? Nothing is the answer. Everything can ossify, that is not a selling point, not until you have a Script that can emulate anything we might need in the future... FFS that is why Satoshi invented Script instead of hard coding all "approved" spending conditions... The fact that Script got neutered since is an accident and a failure that Bitcoiners started to worship for some retarded reason.