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RE: Litecoin & Bitcoin: What's the Difference?!
I really like LTC but it is hard for me to find real purpose for it. For everyday payments 2.5 min per block is too slow, there are faster coins now and it can't compete with BTC as store of value. With LN development it will be even harder to find LTC purpose dough it will be able also to use LN. Still it is better than BCH.
Faster block times only mean it needs inversely proportional more confirmations for security. As conventional wisdom states though, the smaller the purchase the more comfortable we can be once the broadcast is made, very little practicality in anyone trying to be malicious there. :-)
As long as there is no RBF for example, which Bitcoin now has and Bitcoin Cash doesn't. I bet Litecoiners were smarter and didn't implement it, even when Blockstream obviously preferred it since it helps push users to side chains instead.
True, but RBF is opt-in anyway. Also, I'm not sure the smaller purchases would need to be prioritised, but anyway, depends on the vendor and the state of the mempool I suppose. But then there is Segwit.
Opt in but enabled by default. It makes a big difference, because it changes the culture and leads to a much less safe environment for 0-conf.
SegWit isn't a feature imo, but that's that.
Never said Segwit was a feature, but if we all start using Segwit, which is highly encouraged, we won't need to be weary of RBF being default etc. You could argue that RBF is implemented to push people towards Segwit.
Yes, RBF and low blocksize was intended to create a "fee market". In other words manipulate the pricing mechanism to drive up deflation arbitrarily. (Causing losses to peoples wallets in the process.)
This pushes users to whatever SegWit enabled networks can be created on the side, but those networks still can't compete with the original on chain transactions because the topology and resulting security will be completely different.
Even with the best possible implementation of Lightning, Liquid etc, the network simply won't look the same and have the same liquidity as the actual Bitcoin network (ie the "timestamp server run by hashing nodes). This is because Satoshi entirely avoided routing in the design, on purpose.
That said, if it can just be liquid enough to not cause issues most of the time, users will still probably migrate there over time. Especially if the mempool starts to fill up again etc.
Out of interest, at what blocksize do you think, at mainstream adoption, and you can imagine the number of transactions that occur, but lets put it to a low value of 150000 tps, is appropriate? And the golden question of, how does the larger blocksize, positive or negative affect the average full node wallet holder (or should full nodes be avoided)?
I understand portions of the first two lines of your last reply, but, would it be such a bad thing for a fee market?, to sustain the immense immutable security that the bitcoin POW provides? To add more functionality to this idea, it seems as though, RBF and low blocksizes encourage the higher much more valuable transactions to remain on-chain for obvious reasons, but the extremely high volume low value transactions to go off chain? I do want to examine the pro's an con's and don't want to appear biased to any particular design philosophy.
Would you please explain "In other words manipulate the pricing mechanism to drive up deflation arbitrarily. (Causing losses to peoples wallets in the process.)" as I do not understand this.
Somthing else I'd like to point out, and is a matter of opinion, "This is because Satoshi entirely avoided routing in the design, on purpose." I have briefly glanced at some of the original comms between the cypherpunks including Hal Finney and Martti Malmi with Satoshi, but I cannot see any discussion about avoiding routing in the design (I've probably just not noticed or misinterpreted this). I've also either not noticed or failed to interpret any avoidance of routing.
I side with Satoshi on full nodes; They should only have to be run as server farms and operated by professionals. Even 3-4 nodes would indeed be enough and the system is decentralized and properly incentivized even with fewer nodes than that, he was right about that too.
Because of there not being any arbitrary limits on these numbers, there need not be any arbitrary limits on blocksize either and it can grow to huge size.
A fee market is not bad in of itself, but the "fee market" that Greg Maxwell and company had in mind was one where the fee trended upwards instead of as per the Bitcoin design where it's supposed to go downwards towards a small minimum.
I'm not sure what you mean in this context by "sustain", because security is not increased but lessened by making confirmations unreliable.
This manipulated market in fees occasionally crowds out small transactions first and larger transactions would remain longer, that's correct. Of course personally that offends me since the security of Lightning Network transactions is both different by default and also then dependent on settlement on the main chain. (Potentially even worse imo is when some say that you should never settle on the main chain, as this is rather analogous to how gold coins were initially replaced by secure notes)
The manipulation in regards to pricing mechanisms is the introduction of higher fees by encouraging long queues, bidding and rebidding (actively raising) of ones fee. This drives fee prices up, which creates a lock in effect on the smaller accounts. In turn this creates a form of hyperdeflation, which can even drive up price per Bitcoin in the external market places. The deflation comes from lower liquidity and increased demand for replacing the Bitcoins already lost in fees or temporarily locked out of transacting with.
I'm not sure at the top of my head if there is any email correspondence mentioning the concept as "routing" in particular, but there should be a few mentions of how the nodes not needing to be identified and broadcasting on best effort basis eliminates dependency issues. If you're interested in that in particular, I'd try using that terminology in searches instead.
I'd also like to note that more or less only Satoshi and Gavin put as great emphasis on having transactions be on the main chain. Others, Hal especially, thought side chains should have a much more prominent role than had been preferred by the former two.
Yeah I probably will never see Litecoin as much more than a meme coin, but it still has speculation potential. That much is for sure. I also wouldn't trust as much in 1 LTC confirmation as I would in a few seconds without RBF on Bitcoin Cash. The network is just so much smaller.