Author: Paul Sztorc 2022-03-04 20:06:50
Published on: 2022-03-04T20:06:50+00:00
In an email exchange, Billy Tetrud shared his views on sidechains and whether they could solve the problem of a less-secure altcoin becoming dominant. He noted that while there are some merits to sidechains in this scenario, it is not accurate to say that they completely solve the problem. Moreover, a sidechain could stop supporting deposits from or withdrawals to bitcoin and completely break any relationship with the main chain. However, it is hard to see how this "sidechain cuts off the mainchain" scenario could plausibly be in enough people's interest. Tetrud further discussed the benefits and drawbacks of a largeblock sidechain and compared it to other payment systems like Visa and Lightning. He listed various tradeoffs such as onboarding, speed of payment, micropayments, types of fees charged, and contribution to layer1 security budget. He also mentioned that LN is better for speed of payment and micropayments but everything else is probably up for grabs. Finally, he concluded that if a layer2 is harmless, then its existence can be justified via one single net benefit, for some users, somewhere on the tradeoff-list.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T16:37:35.091468+00:00