3 ms·

The problem I have with Lightning is it further validates the existence of Bitcoin - a decrepit and highly polluting technology which has at best has failed to

The problem I have with Lightning is it further validates the existence of Bitcoin - a decrepit and highly polluting technology which has at best has failed to achieve any of objectives in any meaningful way, and at worst recreated a financial system more exploitative and toxic than anything that came before it. Let it die already.

kordlessagain 4y ago
So you blame Lightning not for what it is, but what it enables? That doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given the creators built it to address the issues you raise here. With Lightning, micropayments for the Web can be a thing. Just because nobody has implemented it yet, doesn't mean it doesn't have a killer use case worth the cost of mining (which will decrease over a long period of time). Moving payments for API calls to Lightning becomes very efficient, given the (nearly instantaneous) transactions can occur off chain. I'm a big fan of mining with solar. Wish more miners were investing in this.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It doesn't make sense to blame Lightning for enabling Bitcoin, it only makes sense to praise Lightning for enabling Bitcoin?
  - kordlessagain 4y ago
    Does it make any sense to judge something used a biased argument or ask leading questions? No, it doesn't.
- JofArnold 4y ago
  Correct. If you're going to build something like this, why on top of Bitcoin which - as I say - is rotten to its core. With Ethereum and its L2s instant, practically-free micropayments are already a thing. With Solana even... and others I'm not particularly in to but I hear work to various degrees. To be clear, the tech itself is interesting and broadly I remain fascinated in blockchain technologies and engaged with them to various degrees as you can see from my GitHub. But Bitcoin though? It's the oil of our time; dirty and corrupting. Edit: to address your point about solar (which along with using mining for heating is clearly a good way of reducing direct CO2 emissions) it's only part of the problem... e-waste is another and a pretty big one at that.
  - kordlessagain 4y ago
    The authors of the Lightning paper were well aware of the cost of Bitcoin mining to the environment. We (the authors and myself) speculated at the time that energy usage of Bitcoin mining could one day exceed the current output in the energy markets. I was the one that made the joke about forcing us to wrap the sun in a Dyson sphere one day to satisfy the need for power. It concerned us and they (Joseph and Tadge) ended up doing something about it, while I just sat back and watched. Lightning isn't limited to Bitcoin, either. As long as the cryptographic algos are compatible, cross-chain swaps can be a thing on the network. That said, Lighting was initially architected to take advantage of Bitcoin's scripting and post-dated payment abilities (which are done using full nodes, not miners). That means anything using Lightning doesn't necessarily contribute to excessive power usage by the Bitcoin network. This is why I called out the attack on Lightning by association to Bitcoin. Would it, if used widely, contribute to Bitcoin's power usage problem? No, it wouldn't. Bitcoin's power usage problem is unique to the mining strategy for the chain, not the use of the transactions it enables, off chain. Does Lightning still require on-chain transactions? Yes, but they can be done within the current capacity of the network AND even then that doesn't contribute much to the power usage given the full nodes process these payments, not the miners. If mining came to a near halt, Lightning would still be functional. This means blaming it for anything related to Bitcoin is not a valid argument, which is why I said what I said. It's not that you are wrong about mining costs to the environment or energy markets, but more that the thing you are blaming has little to do with those issues. Besides which, Bitcoin isn't the primary enemy here, it's the idea of PoW put into production plus human behavior to attempt to acquire wealth with it that is the real boogeyman. Ethereum is making a big bet on PoS, but some remain skeptical this can give way to a fair market. We'll see, I guess. Those folks appear to be way smarter than I am, even on a good day. In the meantime, Ethereum is still stupid slow and still uses PoW to do what it does.
    - cesarb 4y ago
      > This is why I called out the attack on Lightning by association to Bitcoin. Would it, if used widely, contribute to Bitcoin's power usage problem? No, it wouldn't. Bitcoin's power usage problem is unique to the mining strategy for the chain, not the use of the transactions it enables, off chain. The contribution to Bitcoin's power usage is a bit more indirect. The power usage of Bitcoin mining is capped by how much electric power miners can buy with the block rewards and fees (otherwise, the miners would lose money). The block rewards and fees are measured in Bitcoins, while the cost of electric power is measured in dollars (or whatever is the currency where the miner is located). To convert from Bitcoins to dollars, you multiply by the price of a Bitcoin. Therefore, whenever the Bitcoin price increases, the cap on how much power Bitcoin mining can use also increases. By making Bitcoin more useful, Lightning Network can increase the demand for Bitcoins. As we all know, increasing demand while keeping the supply the same (and Bitcoin's supply is fixed by its algorithm, it doesn't change to track the demand) tends to increase the price. And that means miners have more money they can use to buy more power to mine Bitcoin.
- simiones 4y ago
  As others have explained, Lightning simply can't scale to any significant number of users - it would take months for a larger US state to all have channels, assuming all transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain for those months were new LN channels. So either you use a trusted 3rd party that opens a single channel for a large amount of users (so, a fully centralized L3 over L2 LN over L1 BTC), or you can't actually use LN any more than you can use BTC.
dboreham 4y ago
If you prefer, there are LN-like systems that run with other L1 chains.
- JofArnold 4y ago
  Indeed. And I'm very interested in the core tech as I say elsewhere; for instance I've written my own ZK rollups for Ethereum as a project to better understand the tech. There's some bits and pieces on my GitHub if you're into that kind of thing.

kordlessagain 4y ago

So you blame Lightning not for what it is, but what it enables? That doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given the creators built it to address the issues you raise here. With Lightning, micropayments for the Web can be a thing. Just because nobody has implemented it yet, doesn't mean it doesn't have a killer use case worth the cost of mining (which will decrease over a long period of time). Moving payments for API calls to Lightning becomes very efficient, given the (nearly instantaneous) transactions can occur off chain. I'm a big fan of mining with solar. Wish more miners were investing in this.

pessimizer 4y ago
It doesn't make sense to blame Lightning for enabling Bitcoin, it only makes sense to praise Lightning for enabling Bitcoin?
- kordlessagain 4y ago
  Does it make any sense to judge something used a biased argument or ask leading questions? No, it doesn't.
JofArnold 4y ago
Correct. If you're going to build something like this, why on top of Bitcoin which - as I say - is rotten to its core. With Ethereum and its L2s instant, practically-free micropayments are already a thing. With Solana even... and others I'm not particularly in to but I hear work to various degrees. To be clear, the tech itself is interesting and broadly I remain fascinated in blockchain technologies and engaged with them to various degrees as you can see from my GitHub. But Bitcoin though? It's the oil of our time; dirty and corrupting. Edit: to address your point about solar (which along with using mining for heating is clearly a good way of reducing direct CO2 emissions) it's only part of the problem... e-waste is another and a pretty big one at that.
- kordlessagain 4y ago
  The authors of the Lightning paper were well aware of the cost of Bitcoin mining to the environment. We (the authors and myself) speculated at the time that energy usage of Bitcoin mining could one day exceed the current output in the energy markets. I was the one that made the joke about forcing us to wrap the sun in a Dyson sphere one day to satisfy the need for power. It concerned us and they (Joseph and Tadge) ended up doing something about it, while I just sat back and watched. Lightning isn't limited to Bitcoin, either. As long as the cryptographic algos are compatible, cross-chain swaps can be a thing on the network. That said, Lighting was initially architected to take advantage of Bitcoin's scripting and post-dated payment abilities (which are done using full nodes, not miners). That means anything using Lightning doesn't necessarily contribute to excessive power usage by the Bitcoin network. This is why I called out the attack on Lightning by association to Bitcoin. Would it, if used widely, contribute to Bitcoin's power usage problem? No, it wouldn't. Bitcoin's power usage problem is unique to the mining strategy for the chain, not the use of the transactions it enables, off chain. Does Lightning still require on-chain transactions? Yes, but they can be done within the current capacity of the network AND even then that doesn't contribute much to the power usage given the full nodes process these payments, not the miners. If mining came to a near halt, Lightning would still be functional. This means blaming it for anything related to Bitcoin is not a valid argument, which is why I said what I said. It's not that you are wrong about mining costs to the environment or energy markets, but more that the thing you are blaming has little to do with those issues. Besides which, Bitcoin isn't the primary enemy here, it's the idea of PoW put into production plus human behavior to attempt to acquire wealth with it that is the real boogeyman. Ethereum is making a big bet on PoS, but some remain skeptical this can give way to a fair market. We'll see, I guess. Those folks appear to be way smarter than I am, even on a good day. In the meantime, Ethereum is still stupid slow and still uses PoW to do what it does.
  - cesarb 4y ago
    > This is why I called out the attack on Lightning by association to Bitcoin. Would it, if used widely, contribute to Bitcoin's power usage problem? No, it wouldn't. Bitcoin's power usage problem is unique to the mining strategy for the chain, not the use of the transactions it enables, off chain. The contribution to Bitcoin's power usage is a bit more indirect. The power usage of Bitcoin mining is capped by how much electric power miners can buy with the block rewards and fees (otherwise, the miners would lose money). The block rewards and fees are measured in Bitcoins, while the cost of electric power is measured in dollars (or whatever is the currency where the miner is located). To convert from Bitcoins to dollars, you multiply by the price of a Bitcoin. Therefore, whenever the Bitcoin price increases, the cap on how much power Bitcoin mining can use also increases. By making Bitcoin more useful, Lightning Network can increase the demand for Bitcoins. As we all know, increasing demand while keeping the supply the same (and Bitcoin's supply is fixed by its algorithm, it doesn't change to track the demand) tends to increase the price. And that means miners have more money they can use to buy more power to mine Bitcoin.
simiones 4y ago
As others have explained, Lightning simply can't scale to any significant number of users - it would take months for a larger US state to all have channels, assuming all transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain for those months were new LN channels. So either you use a trusted 3rd party that opens a single channel for a large amount of users (so, a fully centralized L3 over L2 LN over L1 BTC), or you can't actually use LN any more than you can use BTC.

dboreham 4y ago

If you prefer, there are LN-like systems that run with other L1 chains.

JofArnold 4y ago
Indeed. And I'm very interested in the core tech as I say elsewhere; for instance I've written my own ZK rollups for Ethereum as a project to better understand the tech. There's some bits and pieces on my GitHub if you're into that kind of thing.