Author: Antoine Riard 2020-05-07 03:56:17
Published on: 2020-05-07T03:56:17+00:00
The discussion revolves around the potential harm to the security of Bitcoin caused by externalizing the costs of security from light clients onto full nodes, which may lead node operators to stop servicing light clients. This may cause a net new increase in light clients and a redistribution of load onto a smaller surface area, leading to an unstable process where fewer node operators represent economic actors with extreme weight whose interests may diverge from the population at large. The consensus capture argument by miners is not the only concern, as any subset of users whose interests diverge from the overall consensus can equally damage consensus. Trust-minimization of Bitcoin's security model has always relied first and above on running a full-node, and this paradigm may be shifted by Lightning Network (LN), which may attract a lot of adoption without users running a full-node. However, all efforts to improve the "full node-less" experience are harmful, and should be actively avoided, as Bitcoin's security depends on the assumption that a supermajority of the economy is verifying their incoming transactions using their own full node.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T01:18:38.392770+00:00