• makeasnek@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    It’s done off-chain because on-chain would be expensive and slow. On-chain takes 10 min and $1.50-$15 in fees depending on the day. Lightning takes < 1 second for < 1 penny in fees.

    Lightning transactions are secured by the base chain, so you’re not at risk of losing any funds. The transaction data is “off-chain” because there’s no reason for it to be “on-chain”.

    • thegreekgeek@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      Yes and all that technical debt, complexity and loss in decentralization could be avoided by simply increasing the block size. BCH for example has zero-conf transactions and the average fee is also <$0.01.

      But that would mean that you’d be able to use it as an actual means of exchange instead of this crippled “Internet gold” bastardization that BTC has become.