7 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Lightning Network Megathread
[deleted]
Comment by codedaway at 03/01/2018 at 02:25 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This does not matter.
Lightning Network channels will naturally tend to form along the paths of economic activity. If you assume (as I do) that most economic activity in Bitcoin today is from individuals to large Bitcoin businesses (mostly exchanges), then you should further assume that most channels will be between users and those very same large businesses.
You can call the centralization if you wish---but it is not a centralization of Lightning's making; it is a centralization that already exists for Bitcoin users.
Moreover, even though Bitcoin commerce and trading is dominated by large businesses, there are quite a few of those large business. I haven't looked up figures, but I would suspect that Bitcoin commerce has a much less centralized distribution than mining at the present time---and with new businesses offering Bitcoin-payable services all the time, Bitcoin commerce would seem to be in a steady of progressively becoming more decentralized.
Another excellent answer is the one below it
Comment by ecnei at 03/01/2018 at 02:32 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Denial-Of-Service including censorship. Bitcoin will be an non-Censored settlement-layer for a Censored-Centralized payment platform?
This is an honest question. My company depends on crypto to operate as it is not legal in many countries. If we support LN but have a well-known address will not this mean major hubs can deny us payments?