While some Chinese miners are still opting for the execution of a contentious hard fork in Bitcoin Unlimited, local Bitcoin exchanges and service providers such as Huobi are looking for Bitcoin Core experts to address scaling issues of Bitcoin.
On March 28, the Chinese Bitcoin exchange Huobi invited Bitcoin Unlimited supporter Jiang Zhuoer to discuss the viability of the Bitcoin Unlimited software and current issues with Bitcoin Blockchain congestion.
During the online event called “Bitcoin scaling and its impact on price,” Zhuoer introduced controversial theories on the possibility of two-layer solutions like Lightning being shut down by the local authorities and the necessity of a hard fork at this very moment.
Jiang stated:
“LN [Lightning] will nurture monopoly LN processor like Alipay or Wechat Pay. By that time, the government could easily shut down the LN in the name of AML. Then the LN transaction will be transferred to the 1M mainnet, the 100x transaction demand will jam the network and soon the network will be paralyzed as well.”
Potential risks
Essentially, Jiang noted various potential risks involved with launching the Lightning network including network paralysis and inefficiency. However, Bitcoin experts and Bitcoin Core developers including Luke Jr. offered a completely different overview of Lightning, by arguing that LIghtning in fact scales the Bitcoin Blockchain more efficiently and securely.
Jiang’s explanation of the Lightning network implied that centralized organizations or commercial corporations such as Alipay or Wechat Pay will control Lightning transactions and channels. But, Luke Jr. noted that the presence of a third party organization is unnecessary with Lightning, as the public Bitcoin Blockchain is used to resolve disputes without any potential issues.
Luke Jr. wrote:
“Lightning uses on-chain smart contracts to guarantee the instant confirmation of otherwise-unconfirmed transactions. Because these transactions are guaranteed before they are mined, mining of them can be deferred indefinitely, as long as both parties are honest (if one party is dishonest, the Blockchain is used to resolve the dispute perfectly). Secure routing between users is possible to enable only a small number of on-chain smart contracts to enable trading with the entire network of Lightning users.”
Hard forks inevitably fail
More importantly, to Jiang’s support of Bitcoin Unlimited and a question on why the Core development team views the Bitcoin Unlimited hard fork solution as a risky and reckless approach to development, Luke Jr. stated that hard forks inevitably fail and lead to the creation of altcoins without the full consent of the community.
Currently, a few miners and mining pools are in support of Bitcoin Unlimited but little to no node operators, users and businesses are in support of the Bitcoin Unlimited software.
To clarify the stance of the Bitcoin Core development team in the Bitcoin scalability debate and address technical issues in Bitcoin Unlimited, Huobi is looking for Bitcoin Core experts to participate in the online event of Huobi.