We should note, though, that a layered architecture was not envisioned by the inventor and early adopters of Bitcoin. They envisioned it more as a monolith: a single piece of software that handles all the possible use-cases and features in itself. At least, that is how I read the whitepaper: no-where was there a mention of "Application layers" or even "layers".
Many envisioned a layered system, including Satoshi himself:
Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
In this response (which revolves around the nascent Namecoin idea), he also describes cross-chain trades, something only now being implemented at scale.
In another post, Satoshi describes "high frequency trades" in which intermediate transactions between parties are discarded. This feature was present in the original version of Bitcoin, but was later disabled. It is being brought back in a sense through Lightning Network.
Great article, great analogy. There are many interesting applications being built (distribution applications), but distinguishing them from the application layer is an important point. Bitcoin Lightning and Ethereum's version of it (raiden network) are better compared to an application layer, whereas a particular Dapp is more like a particular application powered by that layer. And so far, many of these applications have been hindered by the lack of such a layer, up until 2018 when I think it will see mainnet usage.
Saying that the Lighting Network is the most interesting thing in crypto is like saying IPv6 on IPv4 tunneling is the most interesting thing in networking.
No no no
You know what's instead the most interesting thing for building on top of crypto? More people using crypto for various purposes, whether it's for running programs (ETH), private transactions (Monero/zcash), or name lookup (Namecoins).
People have been using bitcoin for various purposes for a while now, it's nothing new.
Lightning is seeming like a viable options as it grows ever larger, additionally most of the new development in privacy is happening in Bitcoin. Very cool stuff.
And LN is nothing new- it just allows people to transact ...cheaper and faster. Okay that's cool, but that's not a new goal; That's the original goal of Bitcoin
As for adding new functionalities into Bitcoin, the creator of Ethereum originally wanted to build Smart Contract on Bitcoin but was rebuffed by Bitcoin developers. Ditto for Zcash. Bitcoin developers don't have a good track record of incorporating new functionalities into the Bitcoin protocol...
You're missing the point of the article. A particular smart contract, or zk-snarks, or a new Bitcoin protocol functionality... these are not application layers, they are a particular application. Lightning is an application layer that enables a whole new set of applications.
And this is groundbreaking stuff, you can't expect it to have been released in Bitcoin's original 2009 client.
You obviously haven't played with IPv6 tunnels in a restrictive environment - like if your ISP doesn't let you host websites.
Being able to go to tunnelbroker and get a /48 that you can allocate to all your gizmos and VM at home is magical -- especially when your ISP doesn't want to support IPv6
I gave my weather station its own IPv6 website, with fixed AAAA records, and some dyn dns magic to update tunnelbroker.net whenever my ISP changed my IPv4.
People failing to understand the limitations of the blockchain is indeed interesting. However I think more people would be interested in how we will overcome such limitations.
The expectation for a proper scaling solution to open up bigger possibilities. Ofcourses privided this is best course of action against bigger blocks only
The political angle is more interesting to me, since the Lightning Network is developed by Blockstream, whose investors include:
Reid Hoffman, Khosla Ventures and Real Ventures, Nicolas Berggruen, Crypto Currency Partners, Future\Perfect Ventures, Danny Hillis, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Max Levchin, Mosaic Ventures, Ray Ozzie, Ribbit Capital, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Horizons Ventures, AXA Strategic Ventures, and Digital Garage.
Think again, if you REALLY still think Bitcoin (core) is "decentralized".
Lightning Network is not "developed by Blockstream". There are 3 primary teams that have contributed to the specification: ACINQ, Blockstream, and Lightning Labs. All of the projects are open source and have outside contributors.
This is standard Alex Jonesian "association implies conspiracy" type thinking. They are associated and that's it. LN development is as open source as can be.
Many envisioned a layered system, including Satoshi himself:
Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg289...
In this response (which revolves around the nascent Namecoin idea), he also describes cross-chain trades, something only now being implemented at scale.
In another post, Satoshi describes "high frequency trades" in which intermediate transactions between parties are discarded. This feature was present in the original version of Bitcoin, but was later disabled. It is being brought back in a sense through Lightning Network.