Great discussion!

What are the differences/similarities between MW & Lightning Network (LN)?

​

I run a full BTC node and have been testing LN on Ubuntu/Windows/Docker.


Is it just me, but I am totally dissatisfied with the way LN is so clunky and 
quite

difficult to work with.  I have experienced errors every time I try to do 
something.

You would think that the amt of dev time devoted to this project, they would 
have arrived

@ something more productive....


Tony C


________________________________
From: Mimblewimble <mimblewimble-bounces+ac89=buffalo....@lists.launchpad.net> 
on behalf of Philbert Wallace <philbertwalla...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2017 4:58 PM
To: Andrew Bellenie
Cc: mimblewimble@lists.launchpad.net
Subject: Re: [Mimblewimble] block weight decay for old inputs

Apologies. I did not mean it to come off so opinionated. Ultimately a 
(collective) opinion is what the block weight concept itself enforces though 
isn't it? I don't see the harm in at least proposing slight modifications, if 
nothing else, as fodder for resolving future situations we (collectively) may 
find ourselves in.

That being said, it's been brought to my attention that there are a number of 
costs that this concept adds to the complexity side of things and it is clear 
that (at least for now and the foreseeable future) that the perceived benefits, 
if there be any at all, may not outweigh the upfront complexity cost of a 
consensus level change like this.

Thank you each for your thoughtful feedback. Grin is already on such a great 
path!

On Dec 20, 2017 1:45 PM, "Andrew Bellenie" 
<andybelle...@gmail.com<mailto:andybelle...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I don't agree with opinionated approaches dictating how people 'should' use a 
blockchain. What you are proposing is effectively a transaction tax which will 
discourage use of the blockchain for its primary purpose, transacting.

A fee market already incentivises people to use off-chain transactions wherever 
it is economically appropriate.

Unless I'm mistaken, grin will do dust cleanup easily with cut-through. A 
properly designed wallet should do this by default.

Andrew B


On 20 December 2017 at 20:54, Philbert Wallace 
<philbertwalla...@gmail.com<mailto:philbertwalla...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Greg,
Thank you for your quick reply. However, I do not see how that invalidates 
anything I proposed. Spending IS still encouraged, even in what I proposed 
since the discount of inputs versus outputs is still preserved (and thereby 
putting some downward pressure on the UTXO set).

Either I'm missing something, or you're subtly suggesting that next-layer 
solutions on top of grin should be avoided and literally everything should be 
on-chain? Aren't there still some fundamental throughput transaction limits 
and/or micropayment use cases that we would prefer to have in channels/offchain?

On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 12:39 PM, Greg Sanders 
<gsander...@gmail.com<mailto:gsander...@gmail.com>> wrote:
With MW(and even mostly with Bitcoin), the cost of UTXO storage(and rangeproof 
thereof) are likely the constraining resource factor in the long run for use. 
Making sure users pay their way for that storage seems more pertinent. Spending 
should be encouraged, as it literally makes MW chainstate smaller.

On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 3:36 PM, Philbert Wallace 
<philbertwalla...@gmail.com<mailto:philbertwalla...@gmail.com>> wrote:
So I see that grin also uses the concept of "block weight" similar to bitcoin. 
I'm curious though, has there been any thought into (further) reducing input 
weight according to how old the input is? Right now, regardless of the age of 
an input it has the same weight. However, isn't it more reasonable, for 
example, that an input that is 1 day old would weigh much more than an input 
that is 1 year old?

The underlying motivation is: crypto networks, including grin, are new and they 
are going to take time to develop/adopt. We want patient and resourceful 
participants. Furthermore, on-chain transactions are akin to a global state 
changes and should be viewed as extremely precious/scarce. If a local state 
change is possible instead, people should prefer that method over a globally 
impactful one. We want to be attracting people that are in it for the "long 
haul" rather than just a "quick fix." If you're impatient and don't plan ahead 
it is/should be the most-expensive way to interact with the network. If, on the 
other hand, you're patient and/or plan a head (ie: use other layers whenever 
possible so as to not burden the main chain) you're rewarded with a lesser 
impact on blockweight (and thereby, essentially, cheaper fees) when you do need 
to utilize that input. To be clear, of course we would never prevent on-chain 
txs, this is merely about encouraging one type of behavior over another and 
keeping grin's mainchain clean and respected.

There are a number of advantages I can think of if we did this:

1) This would encourage on-chain txs as a last resort (rather than a first 
resort) and rewards patience and forward thinking (ie: if you do an onchain 
transaction to someone and that someone turns right around and does another 
on-chain tx ... there is a chance that was the ONLY option, in which case fine, 
but there may also have been a way for the parties to cooperate to achieve the 
same end off-chain and perhaps it should always be cheaper for all parties to 
at least first investigate if it's possible to accomplish the goal off-chain 
and/or in another layer, such as lightning).

2) If inputs get cheaper to spend over time, this might provide a natural 
mechanism for at least some dust cleanup. Similarly, it gives some piece of 
mind to the hodlrs and rewards them for their patience and/or conversely 
punishes them (with more expensive fees) for being finicky. While it is a 
somewhat silly meme, I believe a growing cohort of hodlers are crucial to the 
success of any crypto network (in addition to all the other great features that 
grin brings to the table!).

3) One of the unknown issues with lightning, as far as I can tell, is that if 
channels are expensive to both open (and presumably also expensive to close), 
it's tough to justify the initial opening expense. However, this mechanism 
would encourage long-lived channels (nothing prevents short lived channels) 
since the longer a channel is open, the cheaper it would be to close. This is 
also a nice peace-of-mind aspect for channel participants. It allows them to 
feel more comfortable investing in the upfront cost of a) opening the channel 
and b) the due-diligence cost in determining whether the channel partner is 
someone/thing you'll likely transact with for a while.

As far as implementation (ie: at what rate should inputs decay?), it seems 
reasonable to me that an input that is over a year old should "cost" (in block 
weight) a small fraction of an input which is only a couple minutes old. A 
smooth decay function may not even be necessary. If there is a particular 
threshold that we think is healthy, a simple stepwise function could do:

input_weight = if( age > 1 year) then "1 unit" else "3 units"
output_weight = "10 units"

Though, of course, I prefer the cleanness of a more smooth decay :-)

Thoughts?

P.S. There are probably some downsides to this that I have not yet thought of, 
but wanted to at least get a discussion going and some feedback before 
investigating further.

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