Author: ZmnSCPxj 2021-08-31 13:41:10
Published on: 2021-08-31T13:41:10+00:00
The discussion revolves around the suitability of Lightning Network (LN) and apt repositories in terms of centralization. The maintainers of apt repositories make an effort to avoid `Conflict`-ing packages to ensure that users don't experience complex issues. While PPAs are available, they can cause cascades of conflicting packages, leading to massive headaches. Nix and Guix provide a good alternative to using PPAs as they avoid the `Conflict` issue. In contrast, LN is decentralized, and nodes can be private, making it difficult to have full control and complete view over the network of packages. The risk with LN is that some centralized curator may be consulted to provide good payment solutions, which could dangerously centralize the network. Such central coordinators may define which nodes and channels are allowed to be considered in any payment solution, avoiding NP-hard problems for most users. However, this could lead to the centralization of the network to such an extent that evicting them becomes challenging. It is essential not to have a central entity so that users have the choice between accepting a centralized LN or making do with the expensive but decentralized base layer.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T05:46:33.640942+00:00