By Bitcoin Žurnāls - pirms 4 mēnešiem - Lasīšanas laiks: 6 minūtes
Brīvs Kā In Brīvība Nav Brīvs Kā In Alus
Bitcoiners Need The Guillotine
Kā atzīmēja skotu ekonomists un filozofs Deivids Hjūms Traktāts par cilvēka dabu, mēs neko nezinām par ko is patiess var mums pateikt ko vajadzēja lai būtu patiesība, un mēs neko nezinām par ko vajadzēja lai būtu patiesība, var mums pateikt ko is taisnība. Objektīvo faktu pasaule un morālā patiesība ir pilnīgi atšķirīgas. Hjūms to nosauca par ir/vajadzētu problēma un viņa arguments, ka aprakstošā un normatīvā spriešana ir jānodala, ir zināms kā Hjūma giljotīna.
Hjūma giljotīna ir philosophical razor – a rule of thumb for reasoning about the world. It is a way of cutting apart two lines of reasoning that become entangled when they intertwine. An argument where one side argues about what is true and the other side argues about what ought to be true is a useless argument. Those people are talking past each other.
Even more importantly, the guillotine is a tool for reducing bias in our thinking. Left unsupervised, our hopes can corrupt our beliefs – leading us to assume that which is true is good (naturalistic fallacy) and that which is good is true (wishful thinking). In the Bitcoin industry there are many who let their conviction about what Bitcoin vajadzētu be distort their understanding of what Bitcoin is. They need to study giljotīna.
Decentralizācija nekad nebūs lēta
Viena skarba, bet vienkārša patiesība ir tāda, ka reāla decentralizācija ir pārāk dārga, lai tā būtu universāla. Ja ticat decentralizācijas vērtībai, ir viegli saprast, kāpēc vēlaties, lai tā būtu vispārēji pieejama. Bet, ja jūs saprotat, kā darbojas decentralizācija, ir viegli saprast, kāpēc tas nekad nebūs iespējams. Matemātika to vienkārši neļauj.
Decentralizācija ir - pēc definīcijas – dārgāka nekā centralizēta alternatīva. Lai tīkli būtu decentralizēti, tiem ir nepieciešams vairāk tīkla vēstures kopiju (zili kvadrāti) un vairāk savienojumu starp mezgliem (sarkanās bultiņas). Centralizēta tīkla koordinēšana ir principiāli lētāka un vieglāk izdarāma. Atkarībā no tīkla mērķa par decentralizāciju var būt vērts maksāt, taču tas nekad nebūs lētākais risinājums.
The expense of running a network is split between users and validators. Networks can either limit activity on the network (which makes transactions expensive because they are scarce) or they can demand more work from validators (which centralizes the network). Bitcoin keeps the cost of network validation low by limiting the block size – but that also by definition means transaction space is limited. Transaction fees on Bitcoin ir dārgi pēc dizaina.
Adding more capacity to the network wouldn’t make it cheaper for individual users, anyway. That’s because Bitcoin’s transaction fees aren’t set by the network, they are set by users’ willingness to outbid each other in the blockspace auction. You can’t lower transaction fees by increasing capacity because increasing capacity doesn’t change anyone’s willingness to pay. Users don’t decide whether to pay for a transaction based on how full the blocks are, they decide based on how high the fees are.
Lielāki bloki būtu labas ziņas kalnračiem (jo būtu vietas vairāk maksājošu klientu), taču lietotājiem tas neko daudz nemainītu – darījumu maksa būtu aptuveni tāda pati. Iedomātā ekonomikas termins šim pretintuitīvajam rezultātam ir Dževonsa paradokss.
Inventing new Layer2 technology won’t make transacting on Bitcoin any cheaper, either. Technology like Lightning, Liquid, Fedimint and Ark expand the power and flexibility of what Bitcoin transactions can do – but making transactions more useful does not make them cheaper, it makes them more valuable. More ways to use Bitcoin transactions means more demand for the limited available blockspace. We should expect Layer 2s to make L1 Bitcoin darījumi dārgāks, nav lētāks.
That’s ok, because Bitcoin is not supposed to be cheap. It’s supposed to be Free.
Bezmaksas Kā Brīvībā
The lure of cheap decentralized transactions is strong. It was the heart of the blocksize wars and it is the central value proposition of most altcoin networks today. It’s also the driving force behind the widespread but misplaced belief that the Lightning network will allow Bitcoin scale to universal adoption. The reality is more nuanced: Lightning lowers the cost of using Bitcoin. That’s not the same thing as making Bitcoin cheap to use.
The truth is that Lightning channels require Bitcoin darījumi un Bitcoin transactions will inevitably be expensive. Bitcoin confirms ~0.4M transactions/day. That’s one transaction/person every ~55 years, assuming no one is born or dies while waiting. The long term price of a bitcoin transaction is difficult to predict, but it isn’t difficult to predict they will be rare: either because most people can’t afford them or because most people don’t want them in the first place.
There are proposals to make channel management cheaper (e.g. channel factories) but since every proposal ultimately depends on some on-chain anchor transaction, every channel will need to be purchased/leased somehow from someone who can afford the original transaction. Anthony Towns did some interesting analysis and estimated that there was room for approximately ~50,000 entities to transact directly on-chain. Everyone else would need to rent custodial services from one of those on-chain entities. You can use a copy of this spreadsheet to tweak the assumptions and run your own estimates.
Even if we ignore opening/closing costs entirely, channels themselves are not cost-free to maintain. Users need an online presence to receive payments / supervise their counterparties for misbehavior. They need to either perfectly balance their sent/received payments or periodically pay a liquidity provider to rebalance their channels. Most importantly, any bitcoin being used to create Lightning channel capacity is necessarily online and not in cold storage.
The marginal cost of individual Lightning transactions is very small, but the total cost of creating, using and maintaining a Lightning channel is actually quite high — because it is denominated in bitcoin un bitcoin is the scarcest resource in history. Telling retail users to open Lightning channels to make cheap transactions is like telling them to launch their own satellites for cheaper mobile internet.
To be clear, I am a believer in the value of the Lightning Network – I just don’t think it will bank the unbanked. The Lightning Network makes Bitcoin transactions more powerful, not cheaper. Payment channels will only make sense for people who make enough payments to justify paying to streamline them. For most people even owning a single on-chain UTXO will be a privilege of significant luxury. I’m not trying to defend that outcome as labi. Tā vienkārši ir. Tā pastāv otrā pusē Hjūma giljotīna.
Bitcoin Is For Saving, Not For Spending
The enormous size and continued growth of the stablecoin market is proof there is plenty of demand for low-cost, disintermediated retail payments. But Bitcoin is not a panacea – just because low-cost payments are useful does not mean that Bitcoin is a useful way to make low-cost payments. Bitcoin is not designed to be cheap – it is designed to be durable. Those aren’t the same goals and they probably won’t be achieved by the same system.
Even in a world where Bitcoin transactions were somehow cost free we should vēl expect stablecoins to dominate payments. Why would anyone who thinks bitcoin is precious want to spend it? Why would anyone who doesn’t think bitcoin is precious have any to spend? Bitcoin is emergency money, not convenience money. No one should be spending it on coffee.
Decentralized networks do not make good retail payment tools – they’re expensive, slow and unforgiving. Using Bitcoin to make a retail purchase is like driving to the mall in a M4 Sherman tank. It might be forši, bet tas nav praktiski – un tas nekad nebūs normāli.
This is a guest post by knifefight. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Žurnāls.
Oriģināls avots: Bitcoin žurnāls