7 ms·

I think Bitcoin is the AOL of blockchain technology. It was a first mover, it had huge uptake and valuation, but in a few years (or perhaps already) someone is

I think Bitcoin is the AOL of blockchain technology. It was a first mover, it had huge uptake and valuation, but in a few years (or perhaps already) someone is going to build a protocol that is capable of hundreds of thousands of secure transactions a second, and it will make Bitcoin look archaic.

eosrei 9y ago
FWIW that is the goal of the Lightning Network on Bitcoin: https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/
- Operyl 9y ago
  I keep seeing this brought up over months and months, but how close are we even to using it? Is the technology a thing yet? Or is it all white papers.
  - wyager 9y ago
    Working implementations exist and are usable, but they are being very cautious before releasing to the general public.
  - Mahn 9y ago
    It exists in its early stages, but it's terribly impractical, hence no exchange or end user is in a rush to adopt it. Its design is almost like someone took a hard look at Bitcoin and concluded "Gee, this is not cumbersome enough for people, we need to make transacting a worse and more confusing experience".
  - grubles 9y ago
    I demoed [0] receiving one tenths of a cent's worth of bitcoin (0.00000010 BTC) instantly, and on Bitcoin's mainnet (not a test network). I also demoed [1] purchasing swag from Blockstream's store [2] which is powered by their newly released Wordpress e-commerce plugin [3] that enables Lightning payments. I did not screencapture the videos because Qubes dom0 does not come OOTB with screenrecording software, and I don't want to enable networking in dom0 to install software that does. [0]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/955611467889422337 https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/955611467889422337 [1]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/954933507863863296 https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/954933507863863296 [2]https://store.blockstream.com/ https://store.blockstream.com/ [3]https://blockstream.com/2018/01/16/lightning-charge.html https://blockstream.com/2018/01/16/lightning-charge.html
  - VarFarYonder 9y ago
    Here is a graph showing the number of lightning network payment channels on the bitcoin mainnet: https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1 https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1
  - brokensegue 9y ago
    it's not useful for speculating on the price of bitcoin so few people will use it
  - josu 9y ago
    You can buy coffee https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/955870434230132736 https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/955870434230132736
- hmcdona1 9y ago
  The lightning network will be far less effective than people are hoping. You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it, and b) each stake capital in that channel for it to be functional. This is useful only in specific scenarios like exchange-to-exchange transfers. Exchanges are going to be very unlikely to ever set up channels to customers. They haven't even implemented segwit yet, there's no way they are going to bother setting up the infrastructure needed to charge for and activate lightning channels.
  - Paul-ish 9y ago
    > a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it I think you only need a path to the person you want to pay, not a direct channel. eg if Alice wants to pay Bob, and they both have a channel to Greg, then Alice can send money to Bob through Greg. > They haven't even implemented segwit yet, The wikipedia[1] page seems to say that most miners implement segwit now. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SegWit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SegWit
    - lhl 9y ago
      Segwit is still not fully supported in the Core wallet [1] - change goes to P2PKH addresses and there's no GUI support for generating (or even sending to AFAIK) bech32 addresses. While certain charts regulary show 10% usage [2], when analyzing UTXOs, the numbers are a miniscule 0.03% of transactions. [3] [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/11403 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/11403 [2] http://segwit.party/charts/ http://segwit.party/charts/ [3] https://twitter.com/dukeleto/status/954759096544124928 https://twitter.com/dukeleto/status/954759096544124928
  - Natanael_L 9y ago
    It's named network because you do not need a channel with every individual user. You have a channel with one or more LN servers, they in turn have connections with yet more servers. As the other guy said, there only needs to exist a path of channels between you and the entity you're paying, and the payment will be routed through the network.
  - 9y ago
stanmancan 9y ago
There's a few different ones that have made huge jumps forward; RaiBlocks can apparently do around 7,000tx/s.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Meanwhile, your payment card provider is probably doing that many transactions per second just in the small city I live in.
  - kraftman 9y ago
    [citation needed] A quick google says Visa peaks at 4k txs/sec
    - mh- 9y ago
      [0]: VisaNet handles an average of 150 million transactions every day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second. [1]: 65,000 Transaction messages per second [0] https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/retail.html https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/... [1] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/visa-facts-figures-jan-2017.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/vi... Also, consider there are other networks like MasterCard: [2]: MasterCard’s 2012 annual report asserts that its network can handle more than 160 million transactions per hour with an average network response time of 130 milliseconds. Operating 24 hours a day every day, MasterCard reports that its processing systems have consistently maintained availability 99.9 percent of the time. [2] https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/consumer-finance-institute/payment-cards-center/publications/discussion-papers/2013/d-2013-october-clearing-settlement.pdf https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/consumer-finance-ins...
      - kraftman 9y ago
        Thats around the world, not in one town/city
forgotmypw 9y ago
I had a similar thought recently, only I thought MS-DOS. Same difference.
tyingq 9y ago
That's a great observation. I was struggling to put my view into words. That captures it perfectly. Edit: Yes, against the guidelines to talk about downvotes, but really? This is more than a "me too". Parent was unusually on point for me, and felt compelled to offer thanks for the succinct summary

eosrei 9y ago

FWIW that is the goal of the Lightning Network on Bitcoin: https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/

Operyl 9y ago
I keep seeing this brought up over months and months, but how close are we even to using it? Is the technology a thing yet? Or is it all white papers.
- wyager 9y ago
  Working implementations exist and are usable, but they are being very cautious before releasing to the general public.
- Mahn 9y ago
  It exists in its early stages, but it's terribly impractical, hence no exchange or end user is in a rush to adopt it. Its design is almost like someone took a hard look at Bitcoin and concluded "Gee, this is not cumbersome enough for people, we need to make transacting a worse and more confusing experience".
- grubles 9y ago
  I demoed [0] receiving one tenths of a cent's worth of bitcoin (0.00000010 BTC) instantly, and on Bitcoin's mainnet (not a test network). I also demoed [1] purchasing swag from Blockstream's store [2] which is powered by their newly released Wordpress e-commerce plugin [3] that enables Lightning payments. I did not screencapture the videos because Qubes dom0 does not come OOTB with screenrecording software, and I don't want to enable networking in dom0 to install software that does. [0]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/955611467889422337 https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/955611467889422337 [1]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/954933507863863296 https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/954933507863863296 [2]https://store.blockstream.com/ https://store.blockstream.com/ [3]https://blockstream.com/2018/01/16/lightning-charge.html https://blockstream.com/2018/01/16/lightning-charge.html
- VarFarYonder 9y ago
  Here is a graph showing the number of lightning network payment channels on the bitcoin mainnet: https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1 https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1
- brokensegue 9y ago
  it's not useful for speculating on the price of bitcoin so few people will use it
- josu 9y ago
  You can buy coffee https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/955870434230132736 https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/955870434230132736
hmcdona1 9y ago
The lightning network will be far less effective than people are hoping. You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it, and b) each stake capital in that channel for it to be functional. This is useful only in specific scenarios like exchange-to-exchange transfers. Exchanges are going to be very unlikely to ever set up channels to customers. They haven't even implemented segwit yet, there's no way they are going to bother setting up the infrastructure needed to charge for and activate lightning channels.
- Paul-ish 9y ago
  > a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it I think you only need a path to the person you want to pay, not a direct channel. eg if Alice wants to pay Bob, and they both have a channel to Greg, then Alice can send money to Bob through Greg. > They haven't even implemented segwit yet, The wikipedia[1] page seems to say that most miners implement segwit now. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SegWit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SegWit
  - lhl 9y ago
    Segwit is still not fully supported in the Core wallet [1] - change goes to P2PKH addresses and there's no GUI support for generating (or even sending to AFAIK) bech32 addresses. While certain charts regulary show 10% usage [2], when analyzing UTXOs, the numbers are a miniscule 0.03% of transactions. [3] [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/11403 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/11403 [2] http://segwit.party/charts/ http://segwit.party/charts/ [3] https://twitter.com/dukeleto/status/954759096544124928 https://twitter.com/dukeleto/status/954759096544124928
- Natanael_L 9y ago
  It's named network because you do not need a channel with every individual user. You have a channel with one or more LN servers, they in turn have connections with yet more servers. As the other guy said, there only needs to exist a path of channels between you and the entity you're paying, and the payment will be routed through the network.
- 9y ago

stanmancan 9y ago

There's a few different ones that have made huge jumps forward; RaiBlocks can apparently do around 7,000tx/s.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
Meanwhile, your payment card provider is probably doing that many transactions per second just in the small city I live in.
- kraftman 9y ago
  [citation needed] A quick google says Visa peaks at 4k txs/sec
  - mh- 9y ago
    [0]: VisaNet handles an average of 150 million transactions every day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second. [1]: 65,000 Transaction messages per second [0] https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/retail.html https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/... [1] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/visa-facts-figures-jan-2017.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/vi... Also, consider there are other networks like MasterCard: [2]: MasterCard’s 2012 annual report asserts that its network can handle more than 160 million transactions per hour with an average network response time of 130 milliseconds. Operating 24 hours a day every day, MasterCard reports that its processing systems have consistently maintained availability 99.9 percent of the time. [2] https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/consumer-finance-institute/payment-cards-center/publications/discussion-papers/2013/d-2013-october-clearing-settlement.pdf https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/consumer-finance-ins...
    - kraftman 9y ago
      Thats around the world, not in one town/city

forgotmypw 9y ago

I had a similar thought recently, only I thought MS-DOS. Same difference.

tyingq 9y ago

That's a great observation. I was struggling to put my view into words. That captures it perfectly. Edit: Yes, against the guidelines to talk about downvotes, but really? This is more than a "me too". Parent was unusually on point for me, and felt compelled to offer thanks for the succinct summary