[bitcoin-dev] Lightning Network's effect on miner fees

[s7r]

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Hello,

I am reading about the Lightning Network and the BIPs which need to be
deployed until it can be fully functional. I have to say it's a neat
solution to scale and have almost instant transactions in a peer 2
peer, distributed and trustless way. I already knows what the needed
BIPs are and what each one does, I am curios about the impact this
will have on miner fees.

If transactions happen in a big percent offchain, and they are only
broadcasted on the mainchain where funds are moved in or out of the
lightning network, this means there will be less transactions on the
mainchain -> less fees collected by the miners. What will happen when
the block reward will go away? Either the fees for the little amount
of onchain transactions will increase to unpractical levels, either
the miners will find it not profitable to keep their hardware plugged
in to mine, so will leave and the effect will be that the hashing
power of the network will decrease. Since the network's hashing power
is a security feature (it makes some attacks impossible or insanely
expensive) I think it's important to anticipate what will happen in
this scenario.
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