#[0] ⚡️🫡🤝

gm 🤙

Niiiice ⚡️⚡️🫡

Zap away! ⚡️⚡️⚡️

Very alarming, yes.

We knew society was heading this way, from all the politically correct dictates that have been introduced over the recent decades.

It has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion, where all the NPCs have just said we were overreacting: 'it's just a new hate law to combat hate. The government will never use this to rewrite history.'

The slow nudging with increasing restrictions that reduces the window of free speech gradually. The process is treacherous: 'oh, but we already have censorship, why does it matter if we expand it a little?'

Thankfully we have physical books in private hands. We can't trust government-operated libraries to resist censorship.

Nostr may become absolutely necessary for honest and true communication. Most probably so.

The ⚡Lightning network's current capacity is ~ 5000 #Bitcoin   .

Saylor alone could significantly increase capacity but if tomorrow he opens a channel with 1000 BTC would this increase the network efficiency?

Not necessarily. Let me offer an analogy in the form of sports - Consider the 'Ewing theory'.

Coined by Bill Simmons, This theory describes the observation that the New York Knicks always seemed to play better when their best player, Patrick Ewing, wasn't playing for them.

Most pundits acknowledged this was true; but the best explanation of why this was the case was the observation that Basketball is similar to a network problem.

Players are attempting to route the ball into the net and are looking to find the most efficient path.

In network systems there's a well known paradox that can explain why adding a star player may actually make the network less efficient overall.

This is known as Braess's paradox.

The idea is that adding additional capacity to a network can actually make the network operate less efficiently.

This is because the change in capacity can create incentives for individuals to make suboptimal choices, leading to congestion and other inefficiencies.

In the Basketball example:

When a team’s best player is not on the court, the team is forced to make harder, lower-percentage plays and to share the ball.

And when the team shares better, it plays better.

The Ewing theory is a fun example, but this isn’t just a hypothesis.

Braess’s paradox has been shown to appear in all kinds of networks such as traffic and electrical grids and there's a formal math proof to explain why this can happen.

So back to our lightning network example, if Saylor opened up a large channel would this increase efficiency?

Intuitively it seems like the answer is yes, but it's actually very hard to know and in fact it could lead to an even worse outcome.

Zap me and I’ll zap you back.