Chris Pacia, the former lead developer at the now-closed decentralized marketplace Openbazaar, has voiced criticism regarding the development and promotion of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN) as a solution for scalability issues. Pacia highlighted that the technical shortcomings of LN were deliberately obscured during the blocksize wars, which ultimately led to a Bitcoin hard fork.
According to Pacia, most of the public lacks the technical expertise necessary to assess the implications of increasing Bitcoin’s block size or adopting LN as a scalability solution. He claimed that technical experts who pointed out LN’s flaws were censored and banned from various platforms, and their statements were erased.
Consequently, mainstream non-technical figures in the cryptocurrency space such as Saifedean Ammous, Peter McCormack, Tone Vays, and Stephan Livera had to depend on the views of non-censored experts.
During the height of the blocksize conflicts, Pacia contends that these experts intentionally misled the public to garner support for their position. He stated:
“They knew lightning would work like dog sh*t. But it was considered a ‘noble lie’ to win the blocksize wars.”
Pacia’s comments echo a broader sentiment among developers regarding LN’s complexity and potential for leading to centralization. Last year, Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo criticized LN’s effectiveness, describing it as “kind of a joke.” Similarly, longtime Bitcoin enthusiast John Carvalho criticized LN’s design.
Other critiques have pointed to a reduction in LN’s liquidity, which has recently fallen below 5,000 BTC, along with a decline in the number of nodes and channels over the past year.
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