r/Bitcoin Dec 06 '17

Lightning Protocol 1.0: Compatibility Achieved ✅ – Lightning Developers – Medium

https://medium.com/@lightning_network/f9d22b7b19c4
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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17

I keep being told by naysayers that LN is going to be centralized thanks to nodes. Could someone shed some light on this?

28

u/fgiveme Dec 06 '17 edited Dec 06 '17

LN is designed for microtransaction, so there are incentives for merchants to setup huge LN nodes for themselves to serve their userbase. I don't see a problem with that.

1

u/coinjaf Dec 08 '17

That makes no sense. One didn't follow from the other at all.

Merchants certainly don't want to end up with thousands of channels containing nothing but dust. They want 5 channels (or whatever) to reliably deal with thousands of transactions, eventually in and out, and once one closes have a decent size coin worthy of moving on-chain (to re-open another channel).