It is kind of parasitic in that way too since transactions happening on lightning don't pay miners transaction fees to secure the blockchain. If most transactions are supposed to happen on lightning i...
"who is going to pay miners? "
I've literally heard that question every single market low. 1 out of every 4 years... And the other three years are all record profits for miners, even when mempools are empty. Also, with AI they have fallbacks for their data centers during unprofitable months too, now.
About drivechains, I really don't know why people hold them up to compare to lightning at all. This is a category error IMHO. Lightning is optimized for fast, cheap, high-volume payments while drivechains are for feature experimentation & new asset types. It's honestly closer to ethereum.
Then there are many downsides to drivechains, even if you care about exploring new features more than you do hard money. Where to start? I can think of 4 no-gos right off the top of my head:
1. They have a serious miner custody risk. Probably the biggest technical objection is that withdrawals are gated by a simple hashrate majority (the spec uses a roughly 50%-of-blocks-over-~13,150-blocks threshold). This hands miners, rather than users or cryptography, effective custody over sidechained funds, creating a bribery/collusion attack surface. (A coalition with enough hashpower could approve a fraudulent withdrawal bundle and steal sidechain BTC!) Developer "Calle" has argued BIP300 drivechains grant miners excessive authority and could enable a hashpower majority to misappropriate funds.
2. Slow, capital-inefficient withdrawals. The ~3-month withdrawal delay is a deliberate security tradeoff (giving the network time to detect and react to fraudulent bundles), but it's much slower and clunkier than Lightning's near-instant settlement, making Drivechains far less suited to everyday payments. This makes them fine for developers playing with small amounts of coins for development only, but horrible for use as money.
3. The "shitcoinification" of Bitcoin. Most maximalists worry that opening this door invites speculative, low-quality, or scammy projects riding on Bitcoin's brand, which could reflect poorly on Bitcoin even if technically isolated.
4. No live mainnet deployment & stalled consensus. BIP 300 has been a "Draft" status proposal since 2017 and has never achieved the miner/community consensus needed for activation; it remains contentious within Bitcoin dev circles, with prominent developers opposed.
So as far as I'm concerned, drivechains are DOA. That's a shame, because I'd like to see many 2nd layers bloom on top of bitcoin until the public chooses the best one and we all run with that.
I've literally heard that question every single market low. 1 out of every 4 years... And the other three years are all record profits for miners, even when mempools are empty. Also, with AI they have fallbacks for their data centers during unprofitable months too, now.
About drivechains, I really don't know why people hold them up to compare to lightning at all. This is a category error IMHO. Lightning is optimized for fast, cheap, high-volume payments while drivechains are for feature experimentation & new asset types. It's honestly closer to ethereum.
Then there are many downsides to drivechains, even if you care about exploring new features more than you do hard money. Where to start? I can think of 4 no-gos right off the top of my head:
1. They have a serious miner custody risk. Probably the biggest technical objection is that withdrawals are gated by a simple hashrate majority (the spec uses a roughly 50%-of-blocks-over-~13,150-blocks threshold). This hands miners, rather than users or cryptography, effective custody over sidechained funds, creating a bribery/collusion attack surface. (A coalition with enough hashpower could approve a fraudulent withdrawal bundle and steal sidechain BTC!) Developer "Calle" has argued BIP300 drivechains grant miners excessive authority and could enable a hashpower majority to misappropriate funds.
2. Slow, capital-inefficient withdrawals. The ~3-month withdrawal delay is a deliberate security tradeoff (giving the network time to detect and react to fraudulent bundles), but it's much slower and clunkier than Lightning's near-instant settlement, making Drivechains far less suited to everyday payments. This makes them fine for developers playing with small amounts of coins for development only, but horrible for use as money.
3. The "shitcoinification" of Bitcoin. Most maximalists worry that opening this door invites speculative, low-quality, or scammy projects riding on Bitcoin's brand, which could reflect poorly on Bitcoin even if technically isolated.
4. No live mainnet deployment & stalled consensus. BIP 300 has been a "Draft" status proposal since 2017 and has never achieved the miner/community consensus needed for activation; it remains contentious within Bitcoin dev circles, with prominent developers opposed.
So as far as I'm concerned, drivechains are DOA. That's a shame, because I'd like to see many 2nd layers bloom on top of bitcoin until the public chooses the best one and we all run with that.
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