Epicenter brings you in-depth conversations about the technical, economic and social implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Every week, we interview business leaders, engineers academics and entrepreneurs, and bring you a diverse spectrum of opinions and points of view. Epicenter is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy and Felix Lutsch. Since 2014, our episodes have been downloaded over 8 million times.
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#080 Joseph Poon & Tadge Dryja: Scalability and the Lightning Network
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Since Gavin Andresen’s proposal to increase the Bitcoin block size, how Bitcoin can scale to accommodate higher transaction volumes has been heatedly debated among developers. One of the most promising long-term options to allow near infinite scalability is the Lightning Network. Joseph Poon and , the co-authors of the whitepaper, joined us for a discussion of scalability and how the lightning network could allow massive numbers of off-chain transaction in a trustless way.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Why Bitcoin has a scalability problem
- How payment channels work and the architecture of the Lightning Network
- Why the Lightning Network would still require a block size increase
- How transaction fees would work in the Lightning Network
- How the Bitcoin blockchain would take on a court-like function to ensure honest off-chain behavior
- The risks and downsides to the Lightning Network
Episode links:
- Gavin Andresen - Why Increasing the Block Size is Urgent
- Mike Hearn - The Capacity Cliff
- Mike Hearn - Crash Landing
- Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 1
- Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 2
- Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 3
- Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 4
- Lightning Network Whitepaper
- Lightning Network website
This episode was hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture, and is availble on YouTube, SoundCloud, and our website.