Lightning *depends* on global consensus in order to function. You can't use it without a global consensus network at all. So given that there is absolutely a place for a global consensus network, we need to decide whether the cost to participate in that global consensus will be limited above or below the capability of technology. In a world where anybody can step up and fork the code, it's going to be hard for anyone to artificially set the price of participating in global consensus at a rate higher than what technology can deliver... On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 1:46 PM, Michael Naber via bitcoin-dev > wrote: > > Note that lightning / hub and spoke do not meet requirements for users > > wishing to participate in global consensus, because they are not global > > consensus networks, since all participating nodes are not aware of all > > transactions. > > You don't need consensus on the lightning network because you are > using bitcoin consensus anyway. Commitment transactions are deep > enough in the blockchain history that removing that transaction from > the history is impractical. The remaining guarantees are ensured by > the properties of the scripts in the transaction. You don't need to > see all the transactions, but you do need to look at the transactions > you are given and draw conclusions based on the details to see whether > their commitments are valid or the setup wasn't broken. > > - Bryan > http://heybryan.org/ > 1 512 203 0507 >