Lightning network is mostly dead. Someone should do this but for the thriving L2 ETH ecosystem.
Source? It seems to be doing well (along with "podcasting 2.0") for some (not-crypto-related) podcasts I'm listening to.
L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
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Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#12I'm not seeing anything in the protocol that stops the first human from paying for the resource and then sharing their macaroon+preimage with everyone else. Normally, I'd account for that by associating the preimage with a specific human (account) but this seems to be intended for use without accounts?
Presumably the macaroon itself contains a shortish timeout. You can rate-limit (runes do this, which are simplified macaroons) but then the server is no longer stateless. Pretty sure I've ranted about this in HN comments before, could dig it out if you're interested?
Would appreciate it if you did, be so kind ...
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#13Calling this "the missing piece" oversells what it's a missing piece of. I'm not really interested in participating in something like this until other missing pieces are present also.
Most notably, content should be able to cite its sources and I should be able to verify that payment is being split and sent to those sources directly. Sending it all to whoever maintains the server and trusting them to pass it on to the right people feels like a recreation of exactly the problems that crypto micropayments were supposed to solve.
If I rehost some content, I should just be cutting into the server-owner's slice of the pie. Other contributors should get paid just the same. Otherwise you might as well just do paywalls like they currently do paywalls.
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#14Is lightning network open source and a non-profit? How can we put our trust in L402? Can it go bankrupt? Can it be corrupted? Can it go down?
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#15Bitcoin is not acceptable in 2024, and Lightning doesn't help.
Nothing based on a PoW cryptocurrency should get any support from anybody.
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#16Calling this "the missing piece" oversells what it's a missing piece of . I'm not really interested in participating in something like this until other missing pieces are present also. Most notably, content should be able to cite its sources and I should be able to verify that payment is being split and sent to those sources directly. Sending it all to whoever maintains the server and trusting them to pass it on to t…
In cryptocurrency, if you don't trust the person you're paying, you can check the program being called and its outputs and see the previous runs of the program distributing the currency to other accounts.
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#17Lightning network is mostly dead. Someone should do this but for the thriving L2 ETH ecosystem.
This does not seem accurate, but perhaps I'm too close to see it? Do you have a source for this?
Uhh.. how about the fact that almost no wallets/exchanges/no one uses it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/lightningnetwork/comments/190orn6/c...
There are a ton of outstanding technical issues that lightning has had that have just kind of been glossed over for the past half-decade because people start companies, raise funding, build small fortunes and their success is predicated on pretending those fundamental technical issues don't exist.
Don't get me wrong, L2 has its own set of technical issues. The complexity of L2 is high, and some of the currently popular L2 chains are not decentralized at all. But it has much higher usage and popularity than Lightning, and is being pushed forward strongly by the Ethereum Foundation itself.
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#18Bitcoin is not acceptable in 2024, and Lightning doesn't help. Nothing based on a PoW cryptocurrency should get any support from anybody.
Do you think you're being reasonable in saying that? I think micropayments are desperately needed, and I don't see modern payment networks doing anything to get there
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#19Bitcoin is not acceptable in 2024, and Lightning doesn't help. Nothing based on a PoW cryptocurrency should get any support from anybody.
Do you think you're being reasonable in saying that? I think micropayments are desperately needed, and I don't see modern payment networks doing anything to get there
Yes, I do.
If you really want micropayments, then use one of the newer, better base systems that do the same things better on every metric, including not ripping through half a percent of the electricity generated in the world.
Even if Bitcoin were the only choice available, micropayments aren't needed desperately enough to justify the climate impact. But in fact it's not.
Re: L402: The Missing Piece in the Internet's Payment Infrastructure
#20Bitcoin is not acceptable in 2024, and Lightning doesn't help. Nothing based on a PoW cryptocurrency should get any support from anybody.
Do you think you're being reasonable in saying that? I think micropayments are desperately needed, and I don't see modern payment networks doing anything to get there
"We must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it"
"Micropayments are desperately needed" - this is true.
"I don't see modern payment networks doing anything to get there" - this is also true.
Neither of those imply we must solve this problem with Bitcoin, and neither of them contradict OP's statement. Bitcoin is slow, energy inefficient, and a shit transaction currency because of philosophies built into the creation of the coin. It's a fine speculative asset, but by this point in its existence, it should be pretty obvious it's not an actually useful currency for this kind of exchange.