Took me some time, but I think I digested the SW2X cancelling and start to be more optimistic. (Maybe that's just temporary until the market enters the next multi year bear phase lol)
Looks like dark markets have finally had enough with BTC:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/
Dream Marketplace (the biggest DNM now?) just allowed vendors to start accepting Bitcoin Cash. Monero is also seeing some use.
This is really great news.
In regards to the block interval time, I agree with
@lunar.
IMHO it is a very bad idea to start bikeshedding about this value at this point. 10 minutes have been working great for years, why change it and why even start a discussion about this at this point. Although I don't see the actual need for a lot of the new stuff, BCH can make some real improvements without touching this subject. Zeroconf is secure again (without 100k+ tx in the mempool), subchains looks like an interesting concept.
Lightn...Micropayment channels can be done today.
Worldwide transfers of value. From subcents to billions, for very little fees. For smaller purchases instantly, either with 0-conf or micropayment channels.
The tech is here now, in this moment. It is in front of the companies and individuals to use it, they'll just have to understand that and actually start the revolution.
But one discussion really is necessary for Bitcoin cash: Finding a long term solution to the blocksize question. Every resource spend on the block intervals should rather go into this.
...
I thought about the current LN testnet, that is used in r/bitcoin and other places to show "how great LN will work" because you can do instant tx's to buy virtual coffee. As I understand the LN design, couldn't I set up two nodes, A and B, connected to as much other nodes as possible and start spamming the network like crazy just by doing as many transaction updates between my two nodes as possible? The only limiting factor seems to be the upload transmission. Another way to "stress test" the network would be the introduction of millions of new nodes that provide low fees for multihop tx (no idea if anybody is actually trying this on the test network) and just never transmit these tx.
Maybe that would help to let some people ask questions about the viability of this crazy idea? (No idea if that would be illegal, especially in the US.. With all these fucked up anti hacking laws..)
Also, it would be interesting to show people, that Onion routing doesn't work if everybody has to know everything... And maybe use some testnet coins to dry out often used routes..
And I am still pretty sure, that it is actually impossible to do what the LN devs are trying to do. They can't reach the security of an onchain transaction with lower fees by adding another layer. There will always be trade-offs. There must be. This is just a gut feeling and I don't know if it is provable.
