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Lightning appears to add more problems than solutions. It has a whole bunch of critical issues. Here is a short list. 1. You need to have a computer constantly

Lightning appears to add more problems than solutions. It has a whole bunch of critical issues. Here is a short list. 1. You need to have a computer constantly online or your counter party can easily steal all your money. This leaves you vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. 2. The lightning network works by routing payments through a network to your destination. The issue here is that the routing for the lightning network is extremely complicated and is currently an unsolved (and probably unsolvable) problem. The core issue is that you have to route money though a network where channel capacities are changing with each and every transaction. Imagine trying to route internet packets if the size of the links changed thousands of times per second. 3. It's relatively expensive to create and destroy channels at about two transactions per channel. Lightning proponents claim that this will be rare, but that can only be the case if there is minimal net flow of money. This is trivially not the case because users will be sending bitcoin more than they recieve and the reverse for retailers. 4. Lightning has huge capital costs. You need to lock up large amounts of bitcoin in these channels for significant amounts of time. There is a real cost for this in terms of the lost interest. Channels are certainly not anywhere close to free.

Klathmon 9y ago
2 isn't true at all, routing isn't nearly that complicated and I don't know why everyone thinks it is. Most routes are expected to be under a few hops. But regardless we will find out soon as the number of nodes on the live system is very rapidly growing. 3 doesn't really apply, as channels can be used as middle hops to rebalance. If I give money to you for a good/service and drain my channel. Then I buy more Bitcoin from coinbase, coinbase can route that BTC to me through you to rebalance our channel so it is all on my side. 4 isn't true, as "locking the BTC up" is basically making it available. Would you consider depositing cash into a checking account "locking it up"? Because that's the equivalent here. But also locktimes are normally a few days.
- lalaland1125 9y ago
  2. Where is the evidence of this? Sure, routing can be easy and short if it's centralized and the number of hops is small. But, if it's centralized, then what's the point of using Bitcoin? Where is this mystical routing algorithm that will work in the presence of constant capacity changes over a decentralized network? 3. The issue here is that the flow for all channels across the entire network needs to be about balanced for things to work out properly. Once someone starts either net accumulating bitcoin or net dispersing bitcoin, then there will be problems somewhere on some link. 4. I can take money out of my checking account at any time at no expense.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    About 2, like I said we should know soon if it will work. I just don't think that most channels will be updating as quickly as you think, and even if they are, a channel will know of someone is trying to route through it, so it can avoid trying to route another tx for the duration of the first. 3. Fees can and will help balance things out. If a channel is really unbalanced, negative fees can strongly incentivize rebalancing in many cases. If it starts to get unbalanced again, fees can increase to help reduce the speed that it unbalances. 4. You can also take money out of LN at any time (assuming your counterparty I cooperative). Only in the case of non-cooperation do you need to wait for locks to expire, and in that case you get ALL money from both sides of the channel, and need to wait for the lock to expire. Id love it if my bank could give me 2x my money if it takes more than 3 days for me to get my money...
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > You can also take money out of LN at any time (assuming your counterparty I cooperative) This isn’t what people mean when they imply liquidity. Needing consent and being able to unilaterally demand cash are different domains. The former is e.g. a holding in a fund or coins in a LN, the latter is a consumer checking account. > Id love it if my bank could give me 2x my money if it takes more than 3 days for me to get my money Or lost 90%. We had this in the era of free banking, i.e. pre Federal Reserve. We then split the speculation and transfer functions of our financial system and ended up better for it.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        >This isn’t what people mean when they imply liquidity. Needing consent and being able to demand cash are different domains. I don't understand what you are trying to say here. You don't need "consent" if you want to wait the 3 days, but if you get "consent" from your counterparty you can get it instantly. 3-days is about as fast as ACH. But if you want, you can feel free to open channels with shorter locktimes if needed. >Or lost 90%. We had this in the era of free banking, i.e. pre Federal Reserve. That history is one Bitcoin is presently replaying. But you can't lose money if LN is working correctly. The whole idea is that you sign the transactions saying "if this is broadcast under these conditions, you get all of my money" when you open the channel. It's literally not possible to fractionally lend on LN, because all money MUST be there, and signed, for you to use it. I've had conversations with you before, and I'm fairly sure you don't understand the basics of Bitcoin as you keep repeating these things as fact, so I'm going to stop replying here. Please make an effort to understand it before you start denouncing it. Or at least explain why you think these apply to the conversation in ways that someone like myself who isn't well-versed in traditional banking systems but understands Bitcoin technically will understand.
- shazow 9y ago
  Sounds like you're familiar with the tech, maybe you could answer a couple of questions: > If I give money to you for a good/service and drain my channel. Then I buy more Bitcoin from coinbase, coinbase can route that BTC to me through you to rebalance our channel so it is all on my side. Could you point me to details about how cross-channel rebalancing happens? Since lightning network channels are purely 1:1 (per the whitepaper); say you drained your channel to me, how does your channel with Coinbase allow you to route BTC to our channel without reopening a channel (requiring on-chain transactions)? The whitepaper mentions hops, but I can't find any details on how they actually work. > But also locktimes are normally a few days. Does that imply that every channel needs to make an on-chain transaction every few days to reopen/keep the channel open?
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    >Could you point me to details about how cross-channel rebalancing happens? Lightning transactions are less like TCP packets, and more like water in a pipe. If I put 1 ml of water in a pipe full of water, 1 ml comes out the other end, but it's not the same water. It works like this: I can give you 1 apple, but I contractually obligate you to give 1 apple to my friend Bob, and if you don't you get penalized. You won't actually give Bob the apple I gave you, you'll give him another apple that you have, and if you don't know exactly where bob is, you could give an apple to someone else, telling them to eventually give an apple to bob "or else". (in LN, the "or else" is actually cryptographically secure pre-created transactions) Because of this, each 1:1 channel is actually a network of 1:1 channels that can move in both ways. In my first example, there was an unwritten implication that you would have a connection to coinbase somehow through another channel. So if I paid you 1 BTC for something, and you have a connection with coinbase (either directly, or through another channel), then if I buy from coinbase they can send that money "through" you to recharge our channel, without you really "spending" any money. And you are more than happy that happened, because now I can buy more from you directly through our channel, so you might incentivize that kind of routing by setting an extremely low, or even zero, or even NEGATIVE! fee. >Does that imply that every channel needs to make an on-chain transaction every few days to reopen/keep the channel open? No, locktimes only come into play in the case of non-compliance. If we have a channel with a 3-day locktime, on day 2 we can agree to re-up our lock for another 3 days (really at any time we can), we can also agree to close it right now if we want, all off the blockchain. Only when you either try to cheat, or become non-responsive do locktimes come into play.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  That's fine, but if #1 is true, Lightning is far from workable.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    #1 isn't strictly true, you don't need to be "always online", only online at some point within the locktime (normally 3 days right now). You can also hand your "revocable delivery" transactions to a 3rd party (or multiple 3rd parties) who can monitor and broadcast them in the case of cheating, but can't actually spend any of your money themselves. So you could have a group of people watching the blockchain always online that can punish non-compliance, but you yourself are only online when you want to transact.
    - lalaland1125 9y ago
      Of course, someone could pay off that third party to stop watching your channel.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        And you could have multiple "watching" services that can prevent any one "watching" service from betraying you. Obviously controlling your own "watching" system is most secure, but the vast majority of people aren't going to want to do it themselves. And again, if the biggest worry is that someone will pay off multiple "watchers" then publish a previous version of a channel to steal money from you and hope that your proper node isn't online at any point during the locktime (or DoS your node to prevent you from seeing the bad transaction) to punish the thief and "steal" all the money back. I think we are doing a pretty good job!
        IncRnd 9y ago
        According to you own words, the answer to poor transaction times is to make transactions less reliable and to introduce centralization. I have to ask the million dollar question. Has this been threat modeled?
binarybits 9y ago
(1) is false. If you're not online, counterparties might decide to close open channels. But that just means you get your share of the funds in that channel refunded to you. You would need to pay a transaction fee to the bitcoin network for the on-chain transaction, but the other party doesn't get any of your money.
- ericb 9y ago
  > You would need to pay a transaction fee to the bitcoin network So a micro-transaction is a 10 cent payment that can turn into a 20 dollar fee plus 10 cent payment?
- lalaland1125 9y ago
  See section 9.5 of the lightning whitepaper: > 9.5 Forgetting to Broadcast the Transaction in Time > If one does not broadcast a transaction at the correct time, the counterparty may steal funds. You need to be online all the time (or at least frequently enough) so that you can publish a penalty transaction if your counter party tries to steal coins from you.
  - gruez 9y ago
    This can be easily be solved by pre-signing that transaction and having a third party service broadcast that transaction if you're not online.
    - throwaway2048 9y ago
      if you have to trust third parties, whats the point?
      - gruez 9y ago
        you don't. you're not handing over the private keys. you sign the transaction locally, and give them to the third party to broadcast in case you're not online. it can even be multiple third parties so you're not trusting a single one. this provides better reliability than broadcasting it yourself on your home/vps/colo connection.
EthanHeilman 9y ago
>1. You need to have a computer constantly online or your counter party can easily steal all your money. This leaves you vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. This isn't not the case. You can outsource channel monitoring to other peers in the network such that if anyone attempts to cheat you, they can punish the cheater and claim a reward. Bitcoin makes various security assumptions such as 51% of the mining power is honest, users have access to perfect information about the blockchain, etc... The LN, if the software is designed correctly, is likely to more realistic security assumptions than Bitcoin itself. >3. It's relatively expensive to create and destroy channels at about two transactions per channel. Lightning proponents claim that this will be rare, but that can only be the case if there is minimal net flow of money. This is trivially not the case because users will be sending bitcoin more than they recieve and the reverse for retailers. Channel factories[0] address this problem such that you can move channels between participants without touching the blockchain. There are also ways to do this whereby you switch n channels for a single transaction that spends log n outputs. [0]: Scalable Funding of Bitcoin Micropayment Channel Networks https://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/a20a865ce40d40c8f942cf206a7cba96/Scalable_Funding_Of_Blockchain_Micropayment_Networks%20(1).pdf https://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/a20a865ce40d40c8f942cf206a7c...
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Don't channel factories only allow you to move channels between users who were a part of the original multiparty transaction? It's a fantastic idea, but I feel it more has usecases between popular hubs and less for actual users. Although they also have the side effect of making the initial transaction on the blockchain up to 90% cheaper, so they are useful there too!
  - EthanHeilman 9y ago
    >It's a fantastic idea, but I feel it more has usecases between popular hubs and less for actual users. Won't actual users be connected to popular hubs? For instance Alice's connects to Hub1, Hub2, and Hub3 via a channel factory.
    - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ataturk 9y ago
Anything tied to Bitcoin is a zero. What's 1,000,000 times 0?
kbody 9y ago
Wow, I guess it's dead then /s It's an evolving software still in pre-alpha state. But the core idea is solid and if you follow the development you'll see the strides of progress that is being done on all fronts. To your points. 1. Depending on the options you set to your channels, you could have a window of days (or anything the two parties agree to), to act in case the other party tries to broadcast outdated TXs i.e. steal funds. Also you don't need to have a computer constantly online, you can offload the task to Watchtowers, software dedicated to do that for multiple users concurrently. (You also can have multiple Watchtowers as backups). Also, I imagine it could even be a mobile app. So this is a non-issue. 2. Routing will keep being improved but it's already pretty good and the way you present it screams FUD. 3. Currently crazy low fees aside, LN basically enables the multiplication of on-chain TXs population. I think your assumption is that the retailer will close and reopen a channel for every LN payment they receive which it makes no sense whatsoever from any point of view. 4. If by huge you mean $100 of which the fee is $0.5, sure. You can add any amount you want on an LN channel. Basically it's like a hot-wallet, e.x you can add $1500 for $0.5 fee, and casually spend it for coffees and other small expenses with lower TX fees than a satoshi (since LN supports fees at the millisatoshi = 1/1000 satoshi level). P.S: This FUD-wave is pretty pitiful, at least get some real arguments. I hope even more people start to recognize that a lot of people have incentives to attack new tech in order to push their narratives for their altcoins or w/e.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > It's an evolving software still in pre-alpha state Now imagine a start-up in this state was hocking shares to college students and grandmas at a $140 billion valuation.
  - kbody 9y ago
    I was talking about Lightning Network nodes, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin at one point was at this stage but through iterations and continuous improvement it evolved to being able to secure all those funds. The point is that it's disingenuous to deem a new tech dead, while the engineers working on it sill say that it's not yet fully-ready for production. The implementation and the protocol still evolves, but the core idea behind it is rock solid and the most promising way forward to help with scaling AND enable use-cases that would be otherwise impossible (see microtransactions & realtime millisecond scale monetary transactions etc.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
UncleEntity 9y ago
> Lightning has huge capital costs. You need to lock up large amounts of bitcoin in these channels for significant amounts of time. Isn't that kind of the point? You conduct your day to day transactions outside the bitcoin network and (presumably) only need to hit the blockchain on rare occasions. Or so I assume not having read the whitepaper. Having studied the history of money and banking in a previous lifetime I'd say it's more akin to gold backed deposit certificates with guarantees against double-spending and fractional reserves.
- grubles 9y ago
  "You need to lock up large amounts of bitcoin in these channels for significant amounts of time." That's actually false. The protocol actually limits channels to a fraction of a bitcoin currently (something like 0.1 or maybe even 0.01 BTC).
  - UncleEntity 9y ago
    I think they mean across all channels implying some "velocity of money" fallacy harming the bitcoin network.
api 9y ago
Wow. I didn't know about #1. That is absolutely, categorically fatal. If that's true then lightning is DOA. Nothing to see here.
- notsrg 9y ago
  As long as you solve transaction malleability (segwit), #1 is a non-issue.
  - api 9y ago
    At that point haven't you just reinvented fiat currency?
    - notsrg 9y ago
      I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion.
wyager 9y ago
Literally none of these are true except for #4. It’s remarkable to have this many incorrect assertions stated so confidently in a single post. As for #4, I view it like a checking account. You need to have a bit of money set aside in liquid form in case you want to buy something.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
DennisP 9y ago
5. With channel networking, you have to be online to receive funds. Unlike (1) you can't really outsource this, unless you're willing to trust someone else to hold your funds for you.

Klathmon 9y ago

2 isn't true at all, routing isn't nearly that complicated and I don't know why everyone thinks it is. Most routes are expected to be under a few hops. But regardless we will find out soon as the number of nodes on the live system is very rapidly growing. 3 doesn't really apply, as channels can be used as middle hops to rebalance. If I give money to you for a good/service and drain my channel. Then I buy more Bitcoin from coinbase, coinbase can route that BTC to me through you to rebalance our channel so it is all on my side. 4 isn't true, as "locking the BTC up" is basically making it available. Would you consider depositing cash into a checking account "locking it up"? Because that's the equivalent here. But also locktimes are normally a few days.

lalaland1125 9y ago
2. Where is the evidence of this? Sure, routing can be easy and short if it's centralized and the number of hops is small. But, if it's centralized, then what's the point of using Bitcoin? Where is this mystical routing algorithm that will work in the presence of constant capacity changes over a decentralized network? 3. The issue here is that the flow for all channels across the entire network needs to be about balanced for things to work out properly. Once someone starts either net accumulating bitcoin or net dispersing bitcoin, then there will be problems somewhere on some link. 4. I can take money out of my checking account at any time at no expense.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  About 2, like I said we should know soon if it will work. I just don't think that most channels will be updating as quickly as you think, and even if they are, a channel will know of someone is trying to route through it, so it can avoid trying to route another tx for the duration of the first. 3. Fees can and will help balance things out. If a channel is really unbalanced, negative fees can strongly incentivize rebalancing in many cases. If it starts to get unbalanced again, fees can increase to help reduce the speed that it unbalances. 4. You can also take money out of LN at any time (assuming your counterparty I cooperative). Only in the case of non-cooperation do you need to wait for locks to expire, and in that case you get ALL money from both sides of the channel, and need to wait for the lock to expire. Id love it if my bank could give me 2x my money if it takes more than 3 days for me to get my money...
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > You can also take money out of LN at any time (assuming your counterparty I cooperative) This isn’t what people mean when they imply liquidity. Needing consent and being able to unilaterally demand cash are different domains. The former is e.g. a holding in a fund or coins in a LN, the latter is a consumer checking account. > Id love it if my bank could give me 2x my money if it takes more than 3 days for me to get my money Or lost 90%. We had this in the era of free banking, i.e. pre Federal Reserve. We then split the speculation and transfer functions of our financial system and ended up better for it.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      >This isn’t what people mean when they imply liquidity. Needing consent and being able to demand cash are different domains. I don't understand what you are trying to say here. You don't need "consent" if you want to wait the 3 days, but if you get "consent" from your counterparty you can get it instantly. 3-days is about as fast as ACH. But if you want, you can feel free to open channels with shorter locktimes if needed. >Or lost 90%. We had this in the era of free banking, i.e. pre Federal Reserve. That history is one Bitcoin is presently replaying. But you can't lose money if LN is working correctly. The whole idea is that you sign the transactions saying "if this is broadcast under these conditions, you get all of my money" when you open the channel. It's literally not possible to fractionally lend on LN, because all money MUST be there, and signed, for you to use it. I've had conversations with you before, and I'm fairly sure you don't understand the basics of Bitcoin as you keep repeating these things as fact, so I'm going to stop replying here. Please make an effort to understand it before you start denouncing it. Or at least explain why you think these apply to the conversation in ways that someone like myself who isn't well-versed in traditional banking systems but understands Bitcoin technically will understand.
shazow 9y ago
Sounds like you're familiar with the tech, maybe you could answer a couple of questions: > If I give money to you for a good/service and drain my channel. Then I buy more Bitcoin from coinbase, coinbase can route that BTC to me through you to rebalance our channel so it is all on my side. Could you point me to details about how cross-channel rebalancing happens? Since lightning network channels are purely 1:1 (per the whitepaper); say you drained your channel to me, how does your channel with Coinbase allow you to route BTC to our channel without reopening a channel (requiring on-chain transactions)? The whitepaper mentions hops, but I can't find any details on how they actually work. > But also locktimes are normally a few days. Does that imply that every channel needs to make an on-chain transaction every few days to reopen/keep the channel open?
- Klathmon 9y ago
  >Could you point me to details about how cross-channel rebalancing happens? Lightning transactions are less like TCP packets, and more like water in a pipe. If I put 1 ml of water in a pipe full of water, 1 ml comes out the other end, but it's not the same water. It works like this: I can give you 1 apple, but I contractually obligate you to give 1 apple to my friend Bob, and if you don't you get penalized. You won't actually give Bob the apple I gave you, you'll give him another apple that you have, and if you don't know exactly where bob is, you could give an apple to someone else, telling them to eventually give an apple to bob "or else". (in LN, the "or else" is actually cryptographically secure pre-created transactions) Because of this, each 1:1 channel is actually a network of 1:1 channels that can move in both ways. In my first example, there was an unwritten implication that you would have a connection to coinbase somehow through another channel. So if I paid you 1 BTC for something, and you have a connection with coinbase (either directly, or through another channel), then if I buy from coinbase they can send that money "through" you to recharge our channel, without you really "spending" any money. And you are more than happy that happened, because now I can buy more from you directly through our channel, so you might incentivize that kind of routing by setting an extremely low, or even zero, or even NEGATIVE! fee. >Does that imply that every channel needs to make an on-chain transaction every few days to reopen/keep the channel open? No, locktimes only come into play in the case of non-compliance. If we have a channel with a 3-day locktime, on day 2 we can agree to re-up our lock for another 3 days (really at any time we can), we can also agree to close it right now if we want, all off the blockchain. Only when you either try to cheat, or become non-responsive do locktimes come into play.
IncRnd 9y ago
That's fine, but if #1 is true, Lightning is far from workable.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  #1 isn't strictly true, you don't need to be "always online", only online at some point within the locktime (normally 3 days right now). You can also hand your "revocable delivery" transactions to a 3rd party (or multiple 3rd parties) who can monitor and broadcast them in the case of cheating, but can't actually spend any of your money themselves. So you could have a group of people watching the blockchain always online that can punish non-compliance, but you yourself are only online when you want to transact.
  - lalaland1125 9y ago
    Of course, someone could pay off that third party to stop watching your channel.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      And you could have multiple "watching" services that can prevent any one "watching" service from betraying you. Obviously controlling your own "watching" system is most secure, but the vast majority of people aren't going to want to do it themselves. And again, if the biggest worry is that someone will pay off multiple "watchers" then publish a previous version of a channel to steal money from you and hope that your proper node isn't online at any point during the locktime (or DoS your node to prevent you from seeing the bad transaction) to punish the thief and "steal" all the money back. I think we are doing a pretty good job!
      - IncRnd 9y ago
        According to you own words, the answer to poor transaction times is to make transactions less reliable and to introduce centralization. I have to ask the million dollar question. Has this been threat modeled?

binarybits 9y ago

(1) is false. If you're not online, counterparties might decide to close open channels. But that just means you get your share of the funds in that channel refunded to you. You would need to pay a transaction fee to the bitcoin network for the on-chain transaction, but the other party doesn't get any of your money.

ericb 9y ago
> You would need to pay a transaction fee to the bitcoin network So a micro-transaction is a 10 cent payment that can turn into a 20 dollar fee plus 10 cent payment?
lalaland1125 9y ago
See section 9.5 of the lightning whitepaper: > 9.5 Forgetting to Broadcast the Transaction in Time > If one does not broadcast a transaction at the correct time, the counterparty may steal funds. You need to be online all the time (or at least frequently enough) so that you can publish a penalty transaction if your counter party tries to steal coins from you.
- gruez 9y ago
  This can be easily be solved by pre-signing that transaction and having a third party service broadcast that transaction if you're not online.
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    if you have to trust third parties, whats the point?
    - gruez 9y ago
      you don't. you're not handing over the private keys. you sign the transaction locally, and give them to the third party to broadcast in case you're not online. it can even be multiple third parties so you're not trusting a single one. this provides better reliability than broadcasting it yourself on your home/vps/colo connection.

EthanHeilman 9y ago

>1. You need to have a computer constantly online or your counter party can easily steal all your money. This leaves you vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. This isn't not the case. You can outsource channel monitoring to other peers in the network such that if anyone attempts to cheat you, they can punish the cheater and claim a reward. Bitcoin makes various security assumptions such as 51% of the mining power is honest, users have access to perfect information about the blockchain, etc... The LN, if the software is designed correctly, is likely to more realistic security assumptions than Bitcoin itself. >3. It's relatively expensive to create and destroy channels at about two transactions per channel. Lightning proponents claim that this will be rare, but that can only be the case if there is minimal net flow of money. This is trivially not the case because users will be sending bitcoin more than they recieve and the reverse for retailers. Channel factories[0] address this problem such that you can move channels between participants without touching the blockchain. There are also ways to do this whereby you switch n channels for a single transaction that spends log n outputs. [0]: Scalable Funding of Bitcoin Micropayment Channel Networks https://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/a20a865ce40d40c8f942cf206a7cba96/Scalable_Funding_Of_Blockchain_Micropayment_Networks%20(1).pdf https://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/a20a865ce40d40c8f942cf206a7c...

Klathmon 9y ago
Don't channel factories only allow you to move channels between users who were a part of the original multiparty transaction? It's a fantastic idea, but I feel it more has usecases between popular hubs and less for actual users. Although they also have the side effect of making the initial transaction on the blockchain up to 90% cheaper, so they are useful there too!
- EthanHeilman 9y ago
  >It's a fantastic idea, but I feel it more has usecases between popular hubs and less for actual users. Won't actual users be connected to popular hubs? For instance Alice's connects to Hub1, Hub2, and Hub3 via a channel factory.
  - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ataturk 9y ago

Anything tied to Bitcoin is a zero. What's 1,000,000 times 0?

kbody 9y ago

Wow, I guess it's dead then /s It's an evolving software still in pre-alpha state. But the core idea is solid and if you follow the development you'll see the strides of progress that is being done on all fronts. To your points. 1. Depending on the options you set to your channels, you could have a window of days (or anything the two parties agree to), to act in case the other party tries to broadcast outdated TXs i.e. steal funds. Also you don't need to have a computer constantly online, you can offload the task to Watchtowers, software dedicated to do that for multiple users concurrently. (You also can have multiple Watchtowers as backups). Also, I imagine it could even be a mobile app. So this is a non-issue. 2. Routing will keep being improved but it's already pretty good and the way you present it screams FUD. 3. Currently crazy low fees aside, LN basically enables the multiplication of on-chain TXs population. I think your assumption is that the retailer will close and reopen a channel for every LN payment they receive which it makes no sense whatsoever from any point of view. 4. If by huge you mean $100 of which the fee is $0.5, sure. You can add any amount you want on an LN channel. Basically it's like a hot-wallet, e.x you can add $1500 for $0.5 fee, and casually spend it for coffees and other small expenses with lower TX fees than a satoshi (since LN supports fees at the millisatoshi = 1/1000 satoshi level). P.S: This FUD-wave is pretty pitiful, at least get some real arguments. I hope even more people start to recognize that a lot of people have incentives to attack new tech in order to push their narratives for their altcoins or w/e.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> It's an evolving software still in pre-alpha state Now imagine a start-up in this state was hocking shares to college students and grandmas at a $140 billion valuation.
- kbody 9y ago
  I was talking about Lightning Network nodes, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin at one point was at this stage but through iterations and continuous improvement it evolved to being able to secure all those funds. The point is that it's disingenuous to deem a new tech dead, while the engineers working on it sill say that it's not yet fully-ready for production. The implementation and the protocol still evolves, but the core idea behind it is rock solid and the most promising way forward to help with scaling AND enable use-cases that would be otherwise impossible (see microtransactions & realtime millisecond scale monetary transactions etc.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

UncleEntity 9y ago

> Lightning has huge capital costs. You need to lock up large amounts of bitcoin in these channels for significant amounts of time. Isn't that kind of the point? You conduct your day to day transactions outside the bitcoin network and (presumably) only need to hit the blockchain on rare occasions. Or so I assume not having read the whitepaper. Having studied the history of money and banking in a previous lifetime I'd say it's more akin to gold backed deposit certificates with guarantees against double-spending and fractional reserves.

grubles 9y ago
"You need to lock up large amounts of bitcoin in these channels for significant amounts of time." That's actually false. The protocol actually limits channels to a fraction of a bitcoin currently (something like 0.1 or maybe even 0.01 BTC).
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  I think they mean across all channels implying some "velocity of money" fallacy harming the bitcoin network.

api 9y ago

Wow. I didn't know about #1. That is absolutely, categorically fatal. If that's true then lightning is DOA. Nothing to see here.

notsrg 9y ago
As long as you solve transaction malleability (segwit), #1 is a non-issue.
- api 9y ago
  At that point haven't you just reinvented fiat currency?
  - notsrg 9y ago
    I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion.

wyager 9y ago

Literally none of these are true except for #4. It’s remarkable to have this many incorrect assertions stated so confidently in a single post. As for #4, I view it like a checking account. You need to have a bit of money set aside in liquid form in case you want to buy something.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

DennisP 9y ago

5. With channel networking, you have to be online to receive funds. Unlike (1) you can't really outsource this, unless you're willing to trust someone else to hold your funds for you.