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If we ever want Bitcoin to evolve from a store of value to an actual payment method we have to come up with something that does at least better than VISA's 8000

If we ever want Bitcoin to evolve from a store of value to an actual payment method we have to come up with something that does at least better than VISA's 8000tx/s and that's just not solved with going from 7tx/s to Bitcoin Cash's ~62tx/s. We have to be able to compete with every payment method out there and we should be able to handle peak throughput during sales period. Another important factor is the 10 minutes confirmation time, nobody wants to wait for 10 minutes at the counter before they trust you walking out. We need something with instant verification and low fees and increasing the blocksize will never do that.

brendanw 9y ago
It exists. It is called nano: no fees and instant transactions through the block lattice. https://nano.org/en/whitepaper https://nano.org/en/whitepaper I am surprised more folks on HN are not familiar with nano considering it is one of the few teams in crypto with endorsements from familiar faces: Zack Shapiro on the core team (ex-Product Hunt), Garry Tan (YC, angel investor in Coinbase), and Charlie Lee (former director of engineering @ Coinbase).
- polyomino 9y ago
  Because these altcoins are default scams. Nano is basically iota + proof of stake. None of which have been shown to work in a decentralized fashion.
  - brendanw 9y ago
    Anyone who has read both whitepapers at a minimum, or audited either code base, knows they are far different technologies.
  - dfhdr446543 9y ago
    Your description of Nano as "iota plus PoS" reveals how informed you really are. I suggest you actually read the Nano and IOTA white papers. They're very different.
- sireat 9y ago
  Endorsements and nifty tech are nothing without actual use. Nano suffers from the same problem that 99.9% of cryptocurrencies suffer from: no useful information on how an average person might actually USE it. Google brings various ways you can BUY Nano in order to speculate. I want to see real world usage, I want to buy VPN/Hosting/Alpaca Socks using Nano. PS Nano is also 100% pre-mined which means one would have to investigate on who holds what percentages of these pre-mined coins. (case in point: Ripple)
  - brendanw 9y ago
    https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks https://www.statista.com/statistics/268225/countries-with-the-highest-inflation-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/268225/countries-with-th... You do not see it because you likely fall outside of the demographic of cryptocurrency first users: businesses and citizens in countries facing hyperinflation, black markets, gambling, porn users seeking anonymity, legal pot businesses in the west cut-off from traditional banking in the west, legal porn businesses cut-off from traditional banking in the west. Bear in mind there is a lag in adoption of the best technology. Just 4-5 months ago bitcoin was still the dominant currency on darknet markets, now it is monero.
    - sireat 9y ago
      See, I remember the huge growth in merchant adoption in 2013 for Bitcoin and how for a moment in time Bitcoin was useful as a currency. I actually used Bitcoin back then from my 2011 minings. Now I agree that there is a niche for Monero in black markets. Then there should be a huge opportunity for some crypto currency to take over Bitcoin in the role as a medium of exchange for general public. Thus it really irks me that I am not seeing these supposedly revolutionary crypto currencies attempt to do anything useful. Why doesn't any cryptocurrency focus on usability for a regular audience first?
  - tobik999 9y ago
    Funny fact, there is a VPN provider accepting Nano, there are hosting providers accepting Nano, there is even a sport socket shop accepting Nano (sadly no Alpaca from what I know) In regards to premine, yes it was premined, but because 95% were distributed by the captcha faucet, 5% went to the dev fund. Since the nano protocol does not need miners it was in my eyes a pretty good idea to get even non crypto people on board.
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  Nano and other non-linear/DAG chains are interesting, but it seems more difficult to reason about the consensus properties. Have any (neutral) 3rd parties done thorough analyses of them? I saw Charlie Lee's reddit post asking questions about Nano (https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/80c6fg/questions_about_nano_from_charlie_lee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/80c6fg/questi...). Did he follow up with an endorsement?
  - danibx 9y ago
    Yep, he posted on twitter after the questions on reddit: https://twitter.com/satoshilite/status/968931625001140224?lang=en https://twitter.com/satoshilite/status/968931625001140224?la...
  - tobik999 9y ago
    Devs said they are researching for a audit company currently, but there will be a major change in the protocol pretty soon, so I guess it will be done afterwards.
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  Nano / Raiblocks is a scam in the sense it is created for free, and old users need new users to dump their nano at a profit to new bag holders. The initial distribution of XRB was performed through "manual mining" limited via a captcha. The distribution rate was 17 XRB (Raiblocks) per hour per ip4. This method was easy to automate, and easy to bypass with the plethora of VPNs and users who own hundreds of IP4/IP6 addresses. Presumably the dev team has the vast majority, millions of Rai/Nano. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captcha https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captch... https://github.com/nanocurrency/raiblocks/wiki/Design-features https://github.com/nanocurrency/raiblocks/wiki/Design-featur... These users need new people to buy their Raiblocks / Nano in order to profit off this scam.
  - brendanw 9y ago
    If we had a token either strictly or loosely tied to real-world identity, then I too would criticize the initial distribution. I would call for an airdrop that provides an equal allocation of a new currency to every identity token. I don't believe there currently exists a good way to do a universal airdrop. The counter argument to doing a universal airdrop is that all economic systems move towards inequality of outcome, so in due time, the initial distribution is meaningless. ICO's that promise guaranteed returns are scams. Nano is an open source project that aims to give people an alternative to government currency. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks The most interest as measured by google search activity in the world for raiblocks/nano is in Venezuela; you'll find a similar pattern of top search results coming from countries where citizens are looking for alternative currencies -- Kosovo, Cyprus, Greece, etc -- with other useful cryptocurrencies. disclaimer: I interviewed with the team back in January and turned down a contractor role but was impressed with their mission and roadmap.
  - DennisP 9y ago
    To a close approximation, the first couple million bitcoins were created for free as well.
    - nosuchthing 9y ago
walls 9y ago
So it has to go from 7 tx/sec to 7k tx/sec or it's not worth doing?
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  No, but if you're someone who wants to see Bitcoin succeed then you probably don't want to use a scaling solution which only works if you assume Bitcoin will never achieve mainstream adoption.
  - walls 9y ago
    > you probably don't want to use a scaling solution which only works if you assume Bitcoin will never achieve mainstream adoption But, that's exactly what happened with segwit. Why is that worth doing but increasing the block size is not?
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      If I recall correctly, Segwit was a prerequisite to Lightning. A block size increase is not.
      - SuddsMcDuff 9y ago
        You recall incorrectly. A malleability fix was a prerequisite to Lightning. SegWit is just one of many possible malleability fixes.
        Ajedi32 9y ago
        Were there any other serious proposals for fixing transaction malleability without Segwit?
    - eklitzke 9y ago
      The main thing Segwit fixes is transaction malleability (which is necessary for Lightning).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
SnowProblem 9y ago
0-conf transactions are instant and work great on BCH.

brendanw 9y ago

It exists. It is called nano: no fees and instant transactions through the block lattice. https://nano.org/en/whitepaper https://nano.org/en/whitepaper I am surprised more folks on HN are not familiar with nano considering it is one of the few teams in crypto with endorsements from familiar faces: Zack Shapiro on the core team (ex-Product Hunt), Garry Tan (YC, angel investor in Coinbase), and Charlie Lee (former director of engineering @ Coinbase).

polyomino 9y ago
Because these altcoins are default scams. Nano is basically iota + proof of stake. None of which have been shown to work in a decentralized fashion.
- brendanw 9y ago
  Anyone who has read both whitepapers at a minimum, or audited either code base, knows they are far different technologies.
- dfhdr446543 9y ago
  Your description of Nano as "iota plus PoS" reveals how informed you really are. I suggest you actually read the Nano and IOTA white papers. They're very different.
sireat 9y ago
Endorsements and nifty tech are nothing without actual use. Nano suffers from the same problem that 99.9% of cryptocurrencies suffer from: no useful information on how an average person might actually USE it. Google brings various ways you can BUY Nano in order to speculate. I want to see real world usage, I want to buy VPN/Hosting/Alpaca Socks using Nano. PS Nano is also 100% pre-mined which means one would have to investigate on who holds what percentages of these pre-mined coins. (case in point: Ripple)
- brendanw 9y ago
  https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks https://www.statista.com/statistics/268225/countries-with-the-highest-inflation-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/268225/countries-with-th... You do not see it because you likely fall outside of the demographic of cryptocurrency first users: businesses and citizens in countries facing hyperinflation, black markets, gambling, porn users seeking anonymity, legal pot businesses in the west cut-off from traditional banking in the west, legal porn businesses cut-off from traditional banking in the west. Bear in mind there is a lag in adoption of the best technology. Just 4-5 months ago bitcoin was still the dominant currency on darknet markets, now it is monero.
  - sireat 9y ago
    See, I remember the huge growth in merchant adoption in 2013 for Bitcoin and how for a moment in time Bitcoin was useful as a currency. I actually used Bitcoin back then from my 2011 minings. Now I agree that there is a niche for Monero in black markets. Then there should be a huge opportunity for some crypto currency to take over Bitcoin in the role as a medium of exchange for general public. Thus it really irks me that I am not seeing these supposedly revolutionary crypto currencies attempt to do anything useful. Why doesn't any cryptocurrency focus on usability for a regular audience first?
- tobik999 9y ago
  Funny fact, there is a VPN provider accepting Nano, there are hosting providers accepting Nano, there is even a sport socket shop accepting Nano (sadly no Alpaca from what I know) In regards to premine, yes it was premined, but because 95% were distributed by the captcha faucet, 5% went to the dev fund. Since the nano protocol does not need miners it was in my eyes a pretty good idea to get even non crypto people on board.
tlrobinson 9y ago
Nano and other non-linear/DAG chains are interesting, but it seems more difficult to reason about the consensus properties. Have any (neutral) 3rd parties done thorough analyses of them? I saw Charlie Lee's reddit post asking questions about Nano (https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/80c6fg/questions_about_nano_from_charlie_lee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/80c6fg/questi...). Did he follow up with an endorsement?
- danibx 9y ago
  Yep, he posted on twitter after the questions on reddit: https://twitter.com/satoshilite/status/968931625001140224?lang=en https://twitter.com/satoshilite/status/968931625001140224?la...
- tobik999 9y ago
  Devs said they are researching for a audit company currently, but there will be a major change in the protocol pretty soon, so I guess it will be done afterwards.
nosuchthing 9y ago
Nano / Raiblocks is a scam in the sense it is created for free, and old users need new users to dump their nano at a profit to new bag holders. The initial distribution of XRB was performed through "manual mining" limited via a captcha. The distribution rate was 17 XRB (Raiblocks) per hour per ip4. This method was easy to automate, and easy to bypass with the plethora of VPNs and users who own hundreds of IP4/IP6 addresses. Presumably the dev team has the vast majority, millions of Rai/Nano. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captcha https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captch... https://github.com/nanocurrency/raiblocks/wiki/Design-features https://github.com/nanocurrency/raiblocks/wiki/Design-featur... These users need new people to buy their Raiblocks / Nano in order to profit off this scam.
- brendanw 9y ago
  If we had a token either strictly or loosely tied to real-world identity, then I too would criticize the initial distribution. I would call for an airdrop that provides an equal allocation of a new currency to every identity token. I don't believe there currently exists a good way to do a universal airdrop. The counter argument to doing a universal airdrop is that all economic systems move towards inequality of outcome, so in due time, the initial distribution is meaningless. ICO's that promise guaranteed returns are scams. Nano is an open source project that aims to give people an alternative to government currency. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=raiblocks The most interest as measured by google search activity in the world for raiblocks/nano is in Venezuela; you'll find a similar pattern of top search results coming from countries where citizens are looking for alternative currencies -- Kosovo, Cyprus, Greece, etc -- with other useful cryptocurrencies. disclaimer: I interviewed with the team back in January and turned down a contractor role but was impressed with their mission and roadmap.
- DennisP 9y ago
  To a close approximation, the first couple million bitcoins were created for free as well.
  - nosuchthing 9y ago

walls 9y ago

So it has to go from 7 tx/sec to 7k tx/sec or it's not worth doing?

Ajedi32 9y ago
No, but if you're someone who wants to see Bitcoin succeed then you probably don't want to use a scaling solution which only works if you assume Bitcoin will never achieve mainstream adoption.
- walls 9y ago
  > you probably don't want to use a scaling solution which only works if you assume Bitcoin will never achieve mainstream adoption But, that's exactly what happened with segwit. Why is that worth doing but increasing the block size is not?
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    If I recall correctly, Segwit was a prerequisite to Lightning. A block size increase is not.
    - SuddsMcDuff 9y ago
      You recall incorrectly. A malleability fix was a prerequisite to Lightning. SegWit is just one of many possible malleability fixes.
      - Ajedi32 9y ago
        Were there any other serious proposals for fixing transaction malleability without Segwit?
  - eklitzke 9y ago
    The main thing Segwit fixes is transaction malleability (which is necessary for Lightning).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

SnowProblem 9y ago

0-conf transactions are instant and work great on BCH.