try open source, self custody and cold storage, along with your own node.
problem solved.
Discussion
Try sending an email to a gmail account from your own mail server. See the issue?
no issue. my copy of the blockchain is immutable. This is one of the reasons to run your own node. horribly flawed analogy.
Your copy of the blockchain is useless if 99% of economic nodes don't peer with you.
Your LN node is useless if the largest LN nodes block payments to it.
If you don't understand the weaknesses and failure modes, you are not doing your homework.
why would other nodes not peer with me?
everyone who is using bitcoin would peer with me.
If they are not using bitcoin, then its a non issue.
You have a lot to learn and lots of your own homework to do.
For the same reasons established mail servers consider independent mail providers as spam, to further centralize and capture the protocol.
If a majority of users relies on a reduced set of custodians/service providers, that set can easily collude and keep the minority out.
If Wallet of Satoshi blocks my own LN node because I offended them, I cannot receive zaps from 99% of nostr users.
your original post said Bitcoin. Now this is turning into lightning. If Wallet of Satoshi was found to be blocking nodes, people would flock awy from Wallet of Satoshi and run their own node too.
You are still learning about decentralization i see.
Sure, because people really ran away from censoring platforms... Right? Right?
Nope. 99% ofpeople will comply and choose convenience
as long as me and the rest of the 1% do, then thats all that matters.
we will open LN channels with eachother only. This is getting silly.
Sure 1% of people can also run mail servers and email each other. That does not make email "open and decentralized" in practice.
Your analogies are wild. Running an email server and downloading an app on your phone that runs your lightning node are not even comparable in terms of convenience.
You know what is even more convenient than running a node on your phone? Using a custodial app which 99% of people do.
How did you come up with the 99% number?
WoS has 500k+ downloads on playstore
Phoenix wallet has 50k+ on playstore
Muun wallet has 100k+ on playstore
Nostr is just 6 months old and to assume that zaps make up most of lightning transactions is ridiculous.
Nostr is not 6 months old. Maybe for you.
Sampling actual usage from zaps is much more insightful than looking at gameable "download counts" from play store.
I've shown you the ugly reality and now you are just making up excuses and coping. Accept it and fight it instead.
Zaps on posts were introduced in feb 2023 in nip-57.
You are assuming all of lightning is just zaps which is complete BS.
You have shown no substantial evidence to support your argument that 99% of lightning users do/will use custodial wallets. Pointing statistics from a sample that is not even close to being representative of the population is just being willfully ignorant to prove your point.
Statistics will never be perfect. I've shown you the best that AFAIK is publicly available. You chose to dismiss it since it does not suite your fairytale narrative.
LN volume outside nostr zaps is fairly negligible. Just check publicly available stats from popular merchants like bitrefill and you see that LN is under 2% of their volume.
https://nostrcheck.me/media/public/nostrcheck.me_1198146285801260701689868989.webp
Your cherrypicked examples for supporting your argument are not working. Let me just put use cases of lightning outside zaps in front of you just to give you some much needed perspective
Not to mention thw number of centralised exchanges that support ligjdning withdrawals now
So more custodians and centralized exchanges investing in LN is supposed to support your argument that LN is not getting centralized?
It isn’t but it debunks your claim that “LN volume outside zaps is fairly negligible”
On LN centralization I am on the fence and I haven’t seen any evidence to support it. Your evidence is based on nostr only when there are is a substantial user base outside nostr
Fair enough
the majority of people will use custodial wallets for the foreseeable future for two reasons..
1) people are lazy
2) it’s the paradigm they understand
Good discussion though
*the *lightning
While I would never try and place a percentage on the possibility of such an outcome. You're definitely not far off! 😅 Human laziness never ceases to amaze me. Lol! And not in a good way!
by the way your website doesn't work
VPS migration
#Cryptoeconomics
Oh can large lightning nodes basically censor transactions?
I am still waiting. I am still also waiting for them to stop me from torrenting hollywood movies....
Anyone can run their own node and everyone should.
Of course
please provide a real life example of where this has happened.
You seem to be mixing 'has happened' and 'can happen'. I also never had a bank transfer blocked, does that make it censorship resistant?
My lord, you didn't do your homework whatsoever.
Disregard the above note.
Care to make a counterargument instead of just being dogmatic?
The first part doesn't make any sense, why would you be part of the <1% that's avoiding consensus?
The idea of Bitcoin is that there is consensus & you must bend the knee to it - even miners.
---
On LN, I can open a payment channel with the peers I do business with & avoid the largest nodes forever & never have to worry about a thing.
If blackrock owned 99%+ of economic LN nodes then the network is dead & we should shoot it in the head & move on to better solutions that promote user decentralization.
If big centralized entities (custodially) 99% of users and capital, they have the power to unilaterally change things.
That's a different premise than what you said about full nodes above,
But like I said,
My OP was exactly saying that any open decentralized protocol can get captured and centralized by big players if we are not careful and let them.
I didn't claim that did or will happen to bitcoin, LN or nostr.
"your node is useless if the largest LN nodes block payments to it" 🚫
It's as useless as a private mail server, if it does not work when mailing/paying 99% of people. That's what capture looks like.
The analogy doesn't work & is leading you to draw some conclusions that I don't think is based on LN but your feelings towards Email.
Surely this time it will be different!
You don't understand the difference between p2p decentralized systems that are self hosted,
Vs.
Client to server systems that are never self hosted.
Never self hosted... now. In the 90s, having your own mail server and website was fairly common. Things change.
Nothing is stopping LN from just being client - server in the future.
Ofc there is.
Not saying it will happen for sure. Hopefully it will not, but it's a reasonable possibility given past historic trends.
I don't think so,
Even if there are big players, they have an incentive to keep their counterparts in check by always keeping consensus.
That consensus always allows me to send you money p2p with our own private channel.
This will always be available to us imho.
They have more incentive to collude between them and make it harder for smaller independent nodes.
Each node on the network is just that, a single node.
The incentive is to keep the network as is, and once established is almost impossible to change due to competitive behaviors.
The problem with centralized services is that there is no good way to interact without it.
With LN there is a good way to interact & it will only get better as the network evolves.