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What do you mean that Lightening has no counter party risk? It's my understanding that you have to constantly monitor the Bitcoin network as long as a payment

by pmorici 10y ago

What do you mean that Lightening has no counter party risk? It's my understanding that you have to constantly monitor the Bitcoin network as long as a payment channel is open to make sure your counter party doesn't try to cheat you. I also don't buy that hubs won't tend to centralize since hubs with channels open with a lot of other peers will naturally be central points.

nadaviv 10y ago
Yes, you have to watch for cheating attempts, but you get all your money back plus a bonus if you catch someone doing that. If you're doing that properly (and there's no reason you won't), then there's no counterparty risk. Edit: also, you can outsource this task to someone else, who'll take a small fee out of your bonus if he catches the cheating for you (and only if he does).
- pmorici 10y ago
  That sounds horrible. All your counter party has to do is DDOS your node off line then they can steal your lightening network funds. Outsourcing the task to a centralized service also sounds bad. At that point you have to trust that service. Anyone that looks at lightening can plainly see that it has a number of properties that aren't as nice as pure Bitcoin. With Bitcoin if I get knocked offline there is zero chance of my counter party stealing funds from me and you don't have to put your trust in any centralized monitoring service to prevent your counter party from stealing from you.
  - nadaviv 10y ago
    > Outsourcing the task to a centralized service also sounds bad. At that point you have to trust that service. You don't have to trust that service. He can't steal your money, you don't lose any privacy if the other party doesn't cheat, you don't pay anything to the service if there's no cheating attempt, and the 3rd-party service is financially incentivized to help you prevent cheating. So, no, you don't "trust" anyone in any more meaningful sense than saying that you're "trusting" the miners.
    - pmorici 10y ago
      Yes, you absolutely have to trust the service. If I have a channel open with Alice and she wants to cheat me but I've out sourced my monitoring to Bob Alice only needs to pay off Bob to go along with her cheating me. I have to trust Bob not to collude with Alice. In Bitcoin I don't have to trust anyone. Surely you can see that there is a difference in the two models.
      - nadaviv 10y ago
        You can have as many Bobs as you want, which can all function at a very low cost and compete for users with low fees and high service quality. I can easily imagine registering your transactions to tens of different service providers, making it quite impossible for Alice to pay them all of (or even know who they are).
        pmorici 10y ago
        How do you know bob didn't setup many nodes to perform a sybil attack on you? You don't.

by pmorici 10y ago

nadaviv 10y ago

Yes, you have to watch for cheating attempts, but you get all your money back plus a bonus if you catch someone doing that. If you're doing that properly (and there's no reason you won't), then there's no counterparty risk. Edit: also, you can outsource this task to someone else, who'll take a small fee out of your bonus if he catches the cheating for you (and only if he does).

pmorici 10y ago
That sounds horrible. All your counter party has to do is DDOS your node off line then they can steal your lightening network funds. Outsourcing the task to a centralized service also sounds bad. At that point you have to trust that service. Anyone that looks at lightening can plainly see that it has a number of properties that aren't as nice as pure Bitcoin. With Bitcoin if I get knocked offline there is zero chance of my counter party stealing funds from me and you don't have to put your trust in any centralized monitoring service to prevent your counter party from stealing from you.
- nadaviv 10y ago
  > Outsourcing the task to a centralized service also sounds bad. At that point you have to trust that service. You don't have to trust that service. He can't steal your money, you don't lose any privacy if the other party doesn't cheat, you don't pay anything to the service if there's no cheating attempt, and the 3rd-party service is financially incentivized to help you prevent cheating. So, no, you don't "trust" anyone in any more meaningful sense than saying that you're "trusting" the miners.
  - pmorici 10y ago
    Yes, you absolutely have to trust the service. If I have a channel open with Alice and she wants to cheat me but I've out sourced my monitoring to Bob Alice only needs to pay off Bob to go along with her cheating me. I have to trust Bob not to collude with Alice. In Bitcoin I don't have to trust anyone. Surely you can see that there is a difference in the two models.
    - nadaviv 10y ago
      You can have as many Bobs as you want, which can all function at a very low cost and compete for users with low fees and high service quality. I can easily imagine registering your transactions to tens of different service providers, making it quite impossible for Alice to pay them all of (or even know who they are).
      - pmorici 10y ago
        How do you know bob didn't setup many nodes to perform a sybil attack on you? You don't.