11 ms·

Lightning Network: Scalable, Instant Bitcoin/Blockchain Transactions

99 points by sinak 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
toomim 10y ago
Is there any news here?
- josephpoon 10y ago
  Not sure why it's posted again, but we might have some announcements soon :D
nofollow 10y ago
lower fees, but still no return of free transactions? core recently removed support for free transactions even though satoshi stated [1] clearly that free transactions should always be allowed. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=994.msg12168#msg12168 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=994.msg12168#msg1216...
- jrcii 10y ago
  Too bad satoshi ain't in charge no more. I'll give you ten seconds to get your ugly, yella, no-good keister off my property...
- RustyRussell 10y ago
  Miners can accept free transactions if they want, and some do. That seems unlikely in the long term as fees replace subsidy as the economic driver, though.
- gruez 10y ago
  >core recently removed support for free transactions even though satoshi stated clearly that free transactions should always be allowed. Free transactions right now have essentially zero chance of going through, so it makes sense that they're removing it, since it would prevent users from creating transactions that will never confirm. I'm not disputing satoshi's point, but given the current network conditions, the change makes sense.
deftnerd 10y ago
This is from the same company that has seized control of the development of the main Bitcoin codebase and has been making changes to cause problems that their Lightning Network claims to solve.
- RustyRussell 10y ago
  Your comment seems like a cheap poke at Blockstream, who have nothing to do with the lightning paper authors. (I work for Blockstream, and I am also trying to implement and standardize lightning. But we certainly didn't invent it, and this isn't our page)
  - ptokb3 10y ago
    You are implementing Lightning, paid by Blockstream but Blockstream has nothing to do with it? Maybe you're just really funny and they are paying you for your incredible sense of humor.
    - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
      Supposing this is really Rusty Russell [0], I would encourage some hesitation before you imply that they are involved in advocating for less than savory things. Rusty Russell has done a lot of great work on Linux (the TCP stack in particular) and you've probably used some of his work. For all I know, Russell might be deluded and Blockstream might be an evil brain-washing machine, but if Russell was in it for the money he could or would just as easily have done that 10 years ago rather than today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell
      - ptokb3 10y ago
        I was pointing out the obvious logical flaw in what he said, that's all. I'm sure he is a nice guy and maybe he's even funny. Blockstream does need to recoup the 70 million in funding they've received though and it's a fact that they have most of BitcoinCore's top contributing developers on their payroll, with exception to Wladimir. Clearly I'm not the only one concerned about a conflict of interest and I'm sure it's hard to see conflicts of interest if you're the one at the center of it. One last edit, aside from a grammar correction: authority deserves scrutiny.
realraghavgupta 10y ago
Nothing special / news here. I would also like to have limited free transactions per block allowed.
jswny 10y ago
I'm still not sure how I feel about implementing a layer over the Bitcoin network like this instead of just fixing the inherent flaws with the protocol. Especially when said network is being pushed by the company Blockstream which is known for shady practices.
- paavokoya 10y ago
  >instead of just fixing the inherent flaws with the protocol What are the "inherent flaws"? Seems like the bitcoin blockchain has done its job better than any other blockchain for longer. Also, it's open source.. You can submit a proposal yourself if you want to fix it..
  - sanswork 10y ago
    It doesn't scale.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    "You can submit a proposal yourself if you want to fix it" Not really. The vast majority of the bitcoin community has been trying to do just that. But a few devs have unilaterally been able to block the changes. The Devs have a lot of "soft power" to do stuff like that.
    - sanswork 10y ago
      How do you know the vast majority has been trying to do it?
      - stale2002 10y ago
        As measured by the fact that every major bitcoin company and mining pool has explicitly said that they want these changes to take place? They want these changes to happen, they just want the Core Development team to say that they are going to stay out of the way, and not attempt to burn the whole thing down if they don't get their way.
ptokb3 10y ago
-Blockstream Playbook- Step 1: Buy off all of the top developers of open-source project. Check. Step 2: Refuse to support/fix basic network operations so that transactions stop confirming just as the network needs to grow. Check. Step 3: Create a 2nd-layer solution for growth that allows the company to siphon Billions of dollars over many years. Check. Step 4: Censor any forum where people alert others about secret get-rich playbook. Check.
- sanswork 10y ago
  How does Step 3 work? How is Blockstream able to siphon Billions from Lightning?
  - ptokb3 10y ago
    Well, they say that "anyone can use" a 2nd layer lightning network but realistically nobody is going to trust any basement-dweller to intermediate their off-chain transaction. This will centralize off-chain scaling to large players like Blockstream. Blockstream will run a Lightning hub and make money off of facilitating transactions before settling them on-chain. Since blockspace is limited they will make (or have made) agreements with miners like BTCC in China - that way they will always be able to settle, but on-chain transactions might get kicked off and be forced to use their centralized system. It's really rather insidious. Lightning is also not the peer-to-peer solution that the Bitcoin Whitepaper promotes in its abstract. The first few sentences describing the reason for Bitcoin to exist in the first place make peer-to-peer the number one priority.
    - josephpoon 10y ago
      Our implementation will not be biased towards Blockstream's hub if they ever make one. In fact, it's designed to work in a scale-free network topology. You can find it at https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd
      - nullc 10y ago
josephpoon 10y ago
For the HN crowd passing by, here's why this stuff could be interesting to you. It's not possible to do extremely small micropayments on bitcoin directly as people use it today. Bitcoin's made a lot of promises around micropayments, but doing it in an economical way has tradeoffs, especially if you're talking about millions to billions of transactions per second. In fact it's not possible to extremely small micropayments on ANY platform. Try sending $0.001 to someone once. It's not possible. The closest you're probably going to get is sending someone an item on Steam (and there's no easy way to price the items). The reason for this is underwriting costs, it's too expensive for Visa to process it since they're assuming some liability. Even Paypal, who ostensibly should be doing this, charges $0.30 for payments for goods and services. Lightning allows for micropayments to actually happen because custody is still pushed to the edges, so you don't have the same kinds of underwriting risk. This means that something as simple as paying someone $0.001 over the internet one time will become viable this year. The amount of possible business models and use cases could dramatically shift. Users may not know they're using Bitcoin (your application could hide it and abstract it away), but people are getting paid in a way they could not before (even centralized systems did not exist, let alone decentralized ones). Pay-per-click webpages, massive decentralized CDNs, creating API services without a username/password to make onboarding seamless (you paid? you're done!). We're working on code here: http://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd http://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd It's MIT licenced and will soon have some pretty simple APIs to use. Of course, since this stuff will be in testing for a little while, make sure you only use small amounts/micropayments initially when it's released.
- troymc 10y ago
  You can send someone one Linden in Second Life (the virtual world), i.e. over the Internet. One Linden works out to about 0.004 US dollars. (It depends on the exchange rate, which is determined by an open market.) This has been possible for many years.
  - josephpoon 10y ago
    Ah yeah, that's a good point, I totally forgot about them, thanks! I think the big difference here is that obviously decentralization is nice, but the real issue is that Linden could do it because they simply didn't become big enough to be a target. There were some attacks at the edges, but if you wanted to do what Linden did at Visa-scale, they would quickly put a stop to it with chargebacks. Adversarial problems are far easier at smaller scale, but it is a good point, thanks for the correction! It may be more accurate to say nobody's done it where it could be conceptually feasible at high-scale/volume with dedicated adversaries (many of the Linden exchanges solved this with high exchange rates to buy in, e.g. Virwox).
wellthissukz 10y ago
The lightning network is a pathetic scheme to suppress the liberties the original vision of Bitcoin provides. Blockstream is a corrupt company which does not refrain from spreading lies and propaganda to further their agenda. Everyone is free to look up what entities own them.
7373737373 10y ago
Similar work is going on in the Ethereum space, both with microtransactions and more generalized state channels for arbitrary computation and data distribution (see Raiden/Truebit/Swarm). But the problem remains the same: finding protocols that have the right (or even adjustable) centralisation/efficiency/privacy/risk/cost tradeoff. Another question is whether these systems will become purely financially incentivised or implement some form of social routing. While the trust conferred to the intermediaries can be quite low, some cooperation is still necessary and even in an initially free market, economies of scale could result in some actors having control over the entire system. Routing still requires consensus, but this time it's local.
- nullc 10y ago
  Whats the challenge for ethereum? If the smart contracts don't work out like you hoped, you just get the people running it to adjust the ledger for you. (Or do they only do that when they personally lose out?)
  - 7373737373 10y ago
    The DAO debacle showed that regardless of the system - even Blockchains - there is no cloud, there are only other people's computers. All systems are inherently influenced by the people behind it, even if they try to ignore or abstract that fact away. There is no perfect neutrality, in fact, Blockchains with economic consensus (PoW/PoS) set a price for it. In addition to what I described above, there are more open questions, ranging from the best network topology to the different patterns of interactions and how they can be optimized. I'm becoming convinced that the best approach would not only allow for one paradigm, but for a range of protocols with different properties (e.g. that work in offline environments) - logical decentralisation. Any kind of maximalism for a single currency and network instance isn't applicable to this.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
hashmp 10y ago
At it's most basic, the Lightning network is just a way of implementing pre payment cards for Bitcoin. Its over engineered and over complex. Which is demonstrated by the comments here trying to explain how it works. No one has yet been able to explain how they will prevent one central hub from developing which by economies of scale will offer the lowest cost path through the network as it will have channels setup with everyone. Ask yourself who will operate this hub and you'll understand why people want to implement this.

99 points by sinak 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

toomim 10y ago

Is there any news here?

josephpoon 10y ago
Not sure why it's posted again, but we might have some announcements soon :D

nofollow 10y ago

lower fees, but still no return of free transactions? core recently removed support for free transactions even though satoshi stated [1] clearly that free transactions should always be allowed. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=994.msg12168#msg12168 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=994.msg12168#msg1216...

jrcii 10y ago
Too bad satoshi ain't in charge no more. I'll give you ten seconds to get your ugly, yella, no-good keister off my property...
RustyRussell 10y ago
Miners can accept free transactions if they want, and some do. That seems unlikely in the long term as fees replace subsidy as the economic driver, though.
gruez 10y ago
>core recently removed support for free transactions even though satoshi stated clearly that free transactions should always be allowed. Free transactions right now have essentially zero chance of going through, so it makes sense that they're removing it, since it would prevent users from creating transactions that will never confirm. I'm not disputing satoshi's point, but given the current network conditions, the change makes sense.

deftnerd 10y ago

This is from the same company that has seized control of the development of the main Bitcoin codebase and has been making changes to cause problems that their Lightning Network claims to solve.

RustyRussell 10y ago
Your comment seems like a cheap poke at Blockstream, who have nothing to do with the lightning paper authors. (I work for Blockstream, and I am also trying to implement and standardize lightning. But we certainly didn't invent it, and this isn't our page)
- ptokb3 10y ago
  You are implementing Lightning, paid by Blockstream but Blockstream has nothing to do with it? Maybe you're just really funny and they are paying you for your incredible sense of humor.
  - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
    Supposing this is really Rusty Russell [0], I would encourage some hesitation before you imply that they are involved in advocating for less than savory things. Rusty Russell has done a lot of great work on Linux (the TCP stack in particular) and you've probably used some of his work. For all I know, Russell might be deluded and Blockstream might be an evil brain-washing machine, but if Russell was in it for the money he could or would just as easily have done that 10 years ago rather than today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell
    - ptokb3 10y ago
      I was pointing out the obvious logical flaw in what he said, that's all. I'm sure he is a nice guy and maybe he's even funny. Blockstream does need to recoup the 70 million in funding they've received though and it's a fact that they have most of BitcoinCore's top contributing developers on their payroll, with exception to Wladimir. Clearly I'm not the only one concerned about a conflict of interest and I'm sure it's hard to see conflicts of interest if you're the one at the center of it. One last edit, aside from a grammar correction: authority deserves scrutiny.

realraghavgupta 10y ago

Nothing special / news here. I would also like to have limited free transactions per block allowed.

jswny 10y ago

I'm still not sure how I feel about implementing a layer over the Bitcoin network like this instead of just fixing the inherent flaws with the protocol. Especially when said network is being pushed by the company Blockstream which is known for shady practices.

paavokoya 10y ago
>instead of just fixing the inherent flaws with the protocol What are the "inherent flaws"? Seems like the bitcoin blockchain has done its job better than any other blockchain for longer. Also, it's open source.. You can submit a proposal yourself if you want to fix it..
- sanswork 10y ago
  It doesn't scale.
- stale2002 10y ago
  "You can submit a proposal yourself if you want to fix it" Not really. The vast majority of the bitcoin community has been trying to do just that. But a few devs have unilaterally been able to block the changes. The Devs have a lot of "soft power" to do stuff like that.
  - sanswork 10y ago
    How do you know the vast majority has been trying to do it?
    - stale2002 10y ago
      As measured by the fact that every major bitcoin company and mining pool has explicitly said that they want these changes to take place? They want these changes to happen, they just want the Core Development team to say that they are going to stay out of the way, and not attempt to burn the whole thing down if they don't get their way.

ptokb3 10y ago

-Blockstream Playbook- Step 1: Buy off all of the top developers of open-source project. Check. Step 2: Refuse to support/fix basic network operations so that transactions stop confirming just as the network needs to grow. Check. Step 3: Create a 2nd-layer solution for growth that allows the company to siphon Billions of dollars over many years. Check. Step 4: Censor any forum where people alert others about secret get-rich playbook. Check.

sanswork 10y ago
How does Step 3 work? How is Blockstream able to siphon Billions from Lightning?
- ptokb3 10y ago
  Well, they say that "anyone can use" a 2nd layer lightning network but realistically nobody is going to trust any basement-dweller to intermediate their off-chain transaction. This will centralize off-chain scaling to large players like Blockstream. Blockstream will run a Lightning hub and make money off of facilitating transactions before settling them on-chain. Since blockspace is limited they will make (or have made) agreements with miners like BTCC in China - that way they will always be able to settle, but on-chain transactions might get kicked off and be forced to use their centralized system. It's really rather insidious. Lightning is also not the peer-to-peer solution that the Bitcoin Whitepaper promotes in its abstract. The first few sentences describing the reason for Bitcoin to exist in the first place make peer-to-peer the number one priority.
  - josephpoon 10y ago
    Our implementation will not be biased towards Blockstream's hub if they ever make one. In fact, it's designed to work in a scale-free network topology. You can find it at https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd
    - nullc 10y ago

josephpoon 10y ago

For the HN crowd passing by, here's why this stuff could be interesting to you. It's not possible to do extremely small micropayments on bitcoin directly as people use it today. Bitcoin's made a lot of promises around micropayments, but doing it in an economical way has tradeoffs, especially if you're talking about millions to billions of transactions per second. In fact it's not possible to extremely small micropayments on ANY platform. Try sending $0.001 to someone once. It's not possible. The closest you're probably going to get is sending someone an item on Steam (and there's no easy way to price the items). The reason for this is underwriting costs, it's too expensive for Visa to process it since they're assuming some liability. Even Paypal, who ostensibly should be doing this, charges $0.30 for payments for goods and services. Lightning allows for micropayments to actually happen because custody is still pushed to the edges, so you don't have the same kinds of underwriting risk. This means that something as simple as paying someone $0.001 over the internet one time will become viable this year. The amount of possible business models and use cases could dramatically shift. Users may not know they're using Bitcoin (your application could hide it and abstract it away), but people are getting paid in a way they could not before (even centralized systems did not exist, let alone decentralized ones). Pay-per-click webpages, massive decentralized CDNs, creating API services without a username/password to make onboarding seamless (you paid? you're done!). We're working on code here: http://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd http://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd It's MIT licenced and will soon have some pretty simple APIs to use. Of course, since this stuff will be in testing for a little while, make sure you only use small amounts/micropayments initially when it's released.

troymc 10y ago
You can send someone one Linden in Second Life (the virtual world), i.e. over the Internet. One Linden works out to about 0.004 US dollars. (It depends on the exchange rate, which is determined by an open market.) This has been possible for many years.
- josephpoon 10y ago
  Ah yeah, that's a good point, I totally forgot about them, thanks! I think the big difference here is that obviously decentralization is nice, but the real issue is that Linden could do it because they simply didn't become big enough to be a target. There were some attacks at the edges, but if you wanted to do what Linden did at Visa-scale, they would quickly put a stop to it with chargebacks. Adversarial problems are far easier at smaller scale, but it is a good point, thanks for the correction! It may be more accurate to say nobody's done it where it could be conceptually feasible at high-scale/volume with dedicated adversaries (many of the Linden exchanges solved this with high exchange rates to buy in, e.g. Virwox).

wellthissukz 10y ago

The lightning network is a pathetic scheme to suppress the liberties the original vision of Bitcoin provides. Blockstream is a corrupt company which does not refrain from spreading lies and propaganda to further their agenda. Everyone is free to look up what entities own them.

7373737373 10y ago

Similar work is going on in the Ethereum space, both with microtransactions and more generalized state channels for arbitrary computation and data distribution (see Raiden/Truebit/Swarm). But the problem remains the same: finding protocols that have the right (or even adjustable) centralisation/efficiency/privacy/risk/cost tradeoff. Another question is whether these systems will become purely financially incentivised or implement some form of social routing. While the trust conferred to the intermediaries can be quite low, some cooperation is still necessary and even in an initially free market, economies of scale could result in some actors having control over the entire system. Routing still requires consensus, but this time it's local.

nullc 10y ago
Whats the challenge for ethereum? If the smart contracts don't work out like you hoped, you just get the people running it to adjust the ledger for you. (Or do they only do that when they personally lose out?)
- 7373737373 10y ago
  The DAO debacle showed that regardless of the system - even Blockchains - there is no cloud, there are only other people's computers. All systems are inherently influenced by the people behind it, even if they try to ignore or abstract that fact away. There is no perfect neutrality, in fact, Blockchains with economic consensus (PoW/PoS) set a price for it. In addition to what I described above, there are more open questions, ranging from the best network topology to the different patterns of interactions and how they can be optimized. I'm becoming convinced that the best approach would not only allow for one paradigm, but for a range of protocols with different properties (e.g. that work in offline environments) - logical decentralisation. Any kind of maximalism for a single currency and network instance isn't applicable to this.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

hashmp 10y ago

At it's most basic, the Lightning network is just a way of implementing pre payment cards for Bitcoin. Its over engineered and over complex. Which is demonstrated by the comments here trying to explain how it works. No one has yet been able to explain how they will prevent one central hub from developing which by economies of scale will offer the lowest cost path through the network as it will have channels setup with everyone. Ask yourself who will operate this hub and you'll understand why people want to implement this.