Bryan Bishop wrote, "There are many potential technical solutions for aggregating millions (trillions?) of transactions into tiny bundles. As a small proof-of-concept, imagine two parties sending transactions back and forth 100 million times. Instead of recording every transaction, you could record the start state and the end state and end up with two transactions or less. That's a 100-million-fold [increase in volume], without modifying max block size and without potentially compromising secured decentralization."

This sounds like Lightning Network and I would give it a very easy and emphatic thumbs up.

But let us think about it this way. There is an egregious breach of the trustless system that is supposed to be the bitcoin protocol with an increase in the block size limit. I see it as two competing sides, perhaps of the same coin, however, if SegWit is activated BEFORE the Lightning Network is activated, the network will completely destabilize. If SegWit is to be activated, and I believe it can be activated, it MUST be uncontroversial. That is to say, the network must be NOWHERE NEAR the transaction limit in each block. That way, when SegWit is activated, the protocol will not be constantly butting up against even the ever-increasing limit with SegWit, causing miner meltdown and even more extreme market perturbations that we currently experience.

If the Lightning Network is implemented BEFORE SegWit, it will be as if two competing interests met mutual resistance/collided, and then rapidly moved apart, both birthing a more robust network. The Lightning Network, if implemented immediately, will reduce, perhaps, the revenue that miners make per block due to the compressed size of each block (they are paid per byte, as far as I can remember), BUT it will ensure the survival of the ecosystem.

Nevertheless, there is a light at the end of this tunnel. While the theoretical limit of the Lightning Network's compression is infinite, it will not start out that way. It will perhaps start out only compressing each block by about 15%, then 35%, then 75%, then 99%, then 99.99%, and so on, and so forth. As it compresses the size of the blocks, so too does SegWit become less controversial, and provide higher capacity for the blocks–while we never reach those capacities.

Those who are working both sides of the issue (and Roger Ver is playing Devil's Advocate, and I feel bad for attacking him as hard as I did before, because this will actually dramatically help the network if we can pull it off) are fashioning a diamond by causing friction on both sides.

This will work, as far as I can tell. Did I miss anything? Admittedly I do not have a perfect knowledge on the subject and am very much desiring more info where people can provide it. Take a look at this:

https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf

submitted by /u/terr547
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Source and link to Reddit topic: The Lightning Network is the way forward

Author: Reddit.com