I debated Paul, who maintains that Lightning is cope and doesn't work
In the end I invited him to join nostr so we can zap him as he shits all over Lightning š
Discussion
Found it hard to watch, even @1.5 but keeping an open mind is key to staving off Blindness
Hella frustrating to watch. The general attitude that [paraphrasing] "all energy must be put towards my vision of the future; or it's a scam" strikes me as pure hubris. Alex, I don't think I would have had the patience you demonstrated just in order to have a coherent conversation.
You took one for the team here. š«”
The comments on the video already show that Paul's deflections and theoretical objections fall flat without me needing to weigh in.
Lightning works well, today. End of story.
bitcoin need better critics
it's tough work being a critic because all their arguments suck ass
š I generally like debates, and applaud nostr:npub16le69k9hwapnjfhz89wnzkvf96z8n6r34qqwgq0sglas3tgh7v4sp9ffxj for setting up this. They have the potential to challenge the bitcoin echo chamber. But if there are more Sztorcs outside our echo chamber Iām staying in.
Btw fun to see @gladstein trying to keep his calm š
Me too, and I am always open to consider some valid bitcoin criticism. I just haven't heard any good ones in quite a while...I guess mining centralization is probably the most valid one currently.
Not only does lightning ā”ļø 100%]
Works, I was surprised to receive, in our charity fundraiser, $1500 through a single lightning transaction. Something I didnāt even think was possible
Just listened on my walk around Antigua during which I paid for a coffee and banana bread with NOSTR wallet.
My jist from Paul is that heās definitely behind the curve on current use case and application/re wall world usage.
And he kept honing in on ācustodial lightningā services and couldnāt grasp that even in that case if an end user has their own self custody wallet that the bitcoin they receive is thereās regardless of if routes through a custodian.
The tradeoffs we make for such ease arenāt unknown and make sense given the need for L1 to be as ironclad as it is. I just canāt fathom the unwillingness to accept that innovation is happening on the protocols that are seeing real world use case, that things mature, and the gap of theory vs. application, in the end, is what will always make the real world difference.
Here was that event, a few months ago.
And we used noones to sell the Bitcoin into Egyptian pounds non-KYC, and now the school the money was raised for is being built!
https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsve0kq6lcwm7hd49vjmnp3ga6dpzhsqugtqrr2rwng6eduu6ldjggy64c5q
I listened earlier today. I genuinely wanted to hear a coherent, compelling argument for why Bitcoin and Lightning are failing. Unfortunately, all I heard was butthurt and cope.
Cashu scales Lightning scales Bitcoin.
Lightning has never failed
A valid criticism would be non-custodial is not practical for small amounts, payment failure rate..
I'm not sure I have had a payment or route failure on my main node channels in well over a year. I have had at least 6 or 7 times a stores credit card machine was down in that same timeframe.
decentralized routing for the long tail resiliency win!
That is a great experience.
I too have had fiat system fail, maybe one or a couple times this year.
I hear and see often questions of āwhy did my zap not workā / similar over nostr.
Oh, it happens for sure. It's all about the channels, routes and sizes. If you have a 100k channel, perhaps not.
I can't remember my largest channel, maybe 5M sats?
non custodial also doesn't scale. can't have 8 billion + utxos for channels and expect to be able to publish your justice transaction
Why do you need 8 billion utxos? Do you feel that every single person and country in the world will hold or use Bitcoin?
To me, there is exactly zero chance of that. There are currently around 180 fiat currencies. Plus gold, silver, shells, cigs, Bitcoin other crypto, stablecoins, whatever...
I'm bullish as hell, but there is absolutely zero chance everyone on the planet at any time will all use the same money at the same time.
The exact bandwagon thinking Paul was talking about as everyone dunks on him here. He definitely needs to update his understanding of lightning and ecash. I found it refreshing to hear a bitcoiner honestly expressing concerns about the ability of lightning to scale. We need more space for the types of arguments he's making, even if he fumbled with a lot of the specifics. Totally fair to point out the many misunderstandings and over emphasis he puts on various authorities in lightning shitting on it publicly
Seems like a good one.
I don't understand when someone says LN doesn't work.
That's like saying cars don't work.
I use it dozens of times per day. Hundreds of times per months.
Zaps, robosats, shopping, bets, blackjack, used to on stacker, fountain streams, paying friends back for food, ivpn, nzb indexers, stacking sats and withdrawals from exchanges, and so much more.
It's a strange argument. Perfect? No. Working? Absolutely, without question.
He should be here, but Iām sure itās a matter of pride. He wonāt get my zaps until he admits heās wrong.
That was painful. Here is my summary:
Lightning doesnāt work because it does not scale to 8 billion people in a fully private self custodial way thus the project is a complete failure and should be abandoned so we can invest our time in something else.
Vs
Lightning works as evidenced by the fact that people and companies use it every day and I just zapped someone right now from my self custody lightning wallet to theirs. It will form an integral part of how people in the future use bitcoin either through their direct participation in lightning or as a communication layer between emerging protocols such as ecash.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignoranceāit is the illusion of knowledge". - Daniel J. Boorstin
"Commercial planes can't fly at Mach 10 and carry everyone at once. Therefore they fail as hypersonic omnijets."
This shear amount of money Iāve lost inadvertently fucking up various lightning situations over the last few years is proof enough that, at least for now; it sucks.
BIP 300/301 are never going to happen and Paul is ridiculously hand wavey about legitimate criticisms, but yeah lightning which is actually deployed and working has failed. š
Agreed.
Lost me at the hard fork segment ā¦ hard forks at this point stand zero chance.
Nirvana fallacy. The whitepaper itself acknowledged that the lightning network cannot scale to 8 billion people so calling it a failure for failing to achieve a goal it never set for itself is silly.
Oh Paul. I don't get it, shitting on lightning to push drivechains is a terrible approach.
"Anything that could be done with a hardfork could be done with a softfork"
Not much of a debate. Paul doesn't even understand what a hardfork is.
Lightning needs some tough love. So many problems still remain and progress is slow.
Running my own node has always been a pain in the ass. It's gone from infuriating to annoying....which is a big improvement
Hey did you know 5/10 years ago smart people had criticisms of the lightning network?
This podcast felt like peeling away the skin of a fruit to reveal more skin.
The year is 2040
Paul Sztorc miraculously finds a way to scale to 8 billion people.
The population is now 9 billion so he deems the project a failure and destroys it all.
Meanwhile Bitcoin is still ticking along and 80+% of the population still don't care enough to self custody....
You argue that Square will start accepting lightning payments? How is that progress? Square is central POS
They just announced it
Itās a software update
All square readers will accept LN
Link?
I sent 12 million sats through lightning today. Not to brag...š¤„
Weird. I probably need to listen again. All I heard was nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu throwing cream pies and then settling for telling Paul to change his communication approach. There is something at the core of this conversation that never got examined with any real honesty. Tonnes of bias and no steel manning. Cheers.
I just listened to this today, the way you handled yourself in the conversation providing compelling arguments and keeping your cool in the face ofā¦ paper thin criticisms??? was admirable. It felt like you won the argument AND the person (he really seemed to change his tone by the end of the conversation) which is super hard to do.
Thanks!
Paul has a fish to sell, so it's clear his assessment of lightning cannot be unbiased