How do you keep your chain secure going into the future with a falling subsidy and sub 1 sat/vB transaction fees? Does the plan rest on price going up forever and at the same rate as the past? We already see that sloping downward.
If it works out, and mempool is bustlin with sky high fees, how will anyone unilaterally exit Lightning to enforce it's security model if it makes no economic sense to do so? Blockchain version of a fuedal system? Plebs relegated to custodians?
Block subsidy declining ≠ collapse.
What matters isn’t sats/vB staying fixed, but whether those fees buy enough real-world resources (ASICs, energy, bandwidth) to secure blocks. As hardware and energy sourcing improve, securing the chain requires less in monetary terms, not more.
Security in Bitcoin is dynamic. Miners respond to incentives. If fees dip too low, block space fills up, and fees rise—no central planning required. It’s a self-adjusting market.
As for Lightning exits, closing a channel costs one on-chain tx. That cost is amortized over time and traffic. If the mempool is full, you planned poorly or waited too long. Exit is always possible; it’s just priced like any scarce resource.
And no, #Bitcoin doesn’t rely on “price up forever.” It just needs enough value to outpace attack incentives, which adjust dynamically. Attacks, if attempted, create fee spikes or price surges, restoring the balance.
Bitcoin’s layer 1 is expensive, slow, limited — on purpose. That’s its guarantee. Scaling happens above it, not within it. That’s not feudalism, it’s voluntary hierarchy on neutral ground.
Cheap base layer security through permanent inflation like #XMR’s tail emission isn’t sustainable. It’s just stealth dilution. Bitcoin’s model requires planning, not tweaking. And it’s working, whether you like it or not.
If you zoom out Bitcoin fee landscape isnt climbing. It's mostly flat with a handful of spikes. Why would you think this is going to change?
If Lightning is going to be where everyone transacts that ironically makes this worse by taking away on-chain transaction fees from miners
>"If the mempool is full, you planned poorly or waited too long. Exit is always possible; it’s just priced like any scarce resource."
It's not the users fault if they were force closed. You don't always control that.
Exit is meaningless if the cost is more than the value of the channel.
Bitcoins future requires high on-chain fees. Consequence of falling block reward + fixed blockspace.
Is gold mining stealth dilution? Are current Bitcoin miners stealth diluting the circulating supply?
The security of Bitcoin’s network isn’t dictated by nominal sats/vB fees, but by their real-world purchasing power. As technology and energy markets evolve, the value each sat buys increases, offsetting declining block subsidies and flat fee rates. What secures #Bitcoin is that the cumulative economic value of block rewards (fees plus subsidy or just fees from 2140) remains sufficient to incentivize honest miners, not whether fees rise endlessly on a chart.
Lightning’s off-chain scaling doesn’t weaken base layer security—it specializes it. Most #Lightning channels close cooperatively and can be timed when fees are low; force closes are rare edge cases, typically stemming from unplanned disruptions, not routine use. If on-chain settlement becomes costly, it’s an accurate pricing signal that higher-value transactions should take priority, mirroring traditional system settlement hierarchy.
Bitcoin’s long-term security model relies on efficiently aligning economic demand for settlement with honest miner incentives, not perpetual inflation or fee hypergrowth. As adoption and value rise, users will pay more in aggregate for scarce block space, even if that means fewer, but more valuable, on-chain settlements. Real-world miner costs continue to fall, and network security adapts dynamically—anchored in market forces, not central planning or silent dilution.
