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First Lightning mainnet release

blog.lightning.engineering

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Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#51

Post by apo »

thisisit wrote: post #35
apo wrote: post #29

For those who may not know the context, this has to do with long-term scaling of the Bitcoin network. The very first public response to Satoshi's announcement of Bitcoin was an expression of doubt about scalability: We very, very much need such a system, but the way I understand your proposal, it does not seem to scale to the required size. ... To detect and reject a double spending event in a timely manner, one must…

> Each one represents a kind of private ledger. That is an interesting quote. So, without the blockchain, how does Lightning track which transactions have been completed?

Each transaction spending the locked funds bears the signature of the party making the payment. The other party can then provide the counter-signature making the transaction valid on the Bitcoin network.

The main security problem to solve is preventing one party from publishing a previous channel state (half-signed transaction) giving themselves more money than they actually have by rights.

For example, Alice and Bob might start with a channel giving each of them 5 bitcoin. Then Alice makes two one-bitcoin payments to Bob:

A | B

------

4 | 6

3 | 7

Alice decides she wants to take back her last payment and instead publish the earlier transaction (signed by Bob) giving herself 4 bitcoin rather than the one giving herself 3.

This problem is solved with hashed timelock contracts (HTLCs). Without getting too technical, HTLCs make it possible for a party who spots a counterparty attempting to publish an invalid transaction to take all of the money in the channel (i.e., Bob would take all 10 bitcoin). The main idea is that cryptographic hash functions are one-way. If I make a payment contingent on knowing a preimage to a hash value, I can cause the payment to become valid by revealing the preimage.

Along with the signature to a transaction, Alice must also give Bob the preimage for the previous transaction before he will accept it. When she does, Bob knows that if Alice tries to play games, he can take all of her money.

This video gives a high-level overview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#52

Post by darawk »

dlubarov wrote: post #42
Ajedi32 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me personally I just don't like the approach of trying to solve the problem by throwing more disk space at it. It feels... inelegant, and probably unsustainable long term. Imagine for a minute a future where Bitcoin goes mainstream and needs to process ~2k transactions per second. (A reasonable estimate of the world's current credit card transaction rate, and 3 orders of magnitu…

Lightning Network isn't really a satisfying solution in my opinion. It means that Bitcoin will just be a low-capacity settlement layer, and regular purchases will need to use PayPal-like middlemen to avoid hefty fees. There are a few on-chain scaling solutions. One is Vitalik's approach to sharding. Payments would be split into debits and credits, and a credit transaction would include a Merkle proof showing that a b…

> It means that Bitcoin will just be a low-capacity settlement layer, and regular purchases will need to use PayPal-like middlemen to avoid hefty fees.

You're correct, of course. But what's wrong with that? You still retain ultimate sovereignty over your funds, which is the most important property, I think. What do you think is lost by Bitcoin being mostly a settlement layer with the option to transact on-chain for a higher fee?

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#53

Post by Erlangolem »

darawk wrote: post #47
foepys wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but routers aren't responsible for keeping my money safe. If you don't constantly monitor all your LN channels, the other party can just steal your money by issuing fraudulent messages to the network.

Which is why trusted intermediaries like banks will arise. They will be responsible for monitoring the channels, and they'll do a good job of it. The important distinction, however, is that you will still have the option of broadcasting transactions to the main blockchain for a fee. Which means that you still have ultimate sovereignty over your funds.

So like banks, but with a much darker recent history of taking the money and running, none of the stability, and none of the insurance. All traded for the dubious benefit of broadcasting transactions to the blockchain, which seems like an empty sop to principle. I don’t care how many times “ultimate sovereignty” gets thrown around like it means anything important outside of a few narrow circles. As a currency Bitcoin just stinks, as an anonymous means of transferring money it stinks, but it’s a great way to shuffle money or rob someone.

If people didn’t think they were going to use bitcoin to get rich quick, they just wouldn’t care. Well, except for scammers and money launderers.

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#54

Post by polyomino »

dlubarov wrote: post #42
Ajedi32 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me personally I just don't like the approach of trying to solve the problem by throwing more disk space at it. It feels... inelegant, and probably unsustainable long term. Imagine for a minute a future where Bitcoin goes mainstream and needs to process ~2k transactions per second. (A reasonable estimate of the world's current credit card transaction rate, and 3 orders of magnitu…

Lightning Network isn't really a satisfying solution in my opinion. It means that Bitcoin will just be a low-capacity settlement layer, and regular purchases will need to use PayPal-like middlemen to avoid hefty fees. There are a few on-chain scaling solutions. One is Vitalik's approach to sharding. Payments would be split into debits and credits, and a credit transaction would include a Merkle proof showing that a b…

Lightning is not a third party that takes custody of your funds, in what sense is it “paypal-like”?

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#55

Post by sireat »

brendanw wrote: post #38
jgeerts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we ever want Bitcoin to evolve from a store of value to an actual payment method we have to come up with something that does at least better than VISA's 8000tx/s and that's just not solved with going from 7tx/s to Bitcoin Cash's ~62tx/s. We have to be able to compete with every payment method out there and we should be able to handle peak throughput during sales period. Another important factor is the 10 minutes c…

It exists. It is called nano: no fees and instant transactions through the block lattice. https://nano.org/en/whitepaper I am surprised more folks on HN are not familiar with nano considering it is one of the few teams in crypto with endorsements from familiar faces: Zack Shapiro on the core team (ex-Product Hunt), Garry Tan (YC, angel investor in Coinbase), and Charlie Lee (former director of engineering @ Coinbase)…

Endorsements and nifty tech are nothing without actual use.

Nano suffers from the same problem that 99.9% of cryptocurrencies suffer from: no useful information on how an average person might actually USE it.

Google brings various ways you can BUY Nano in order to speculate. I want to see real world usage, I want to buy VPN/Hosting/Alpaca Socks using Nano.

PS Nano is also 100% pre-mined which means one would have to investigate on who holds what percentages of these pre-mined coins. (case in point: Ripple)

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#56

Post by BLanen »

foepys wrote: post #10

Did the Lightning Network solve the routing problem now or are they still emulating banks by requiring permanent online super nodes?

Even with the hub-spokes model, it won't work since every transaction has the power to invalidate multiple routes.

The white paper is a joke.

https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=635

People are just handwaving this away like it's a side thought, while touting the solution this gives as THE gift to mankind to get away from traditional banks.

Another cryptocurrency 'innovation' delivering overly complex solutions to problems that didn't exist and ignoring the real problems.

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#57

Post by walls »

jgeerts wrote: post #33
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #9

Serious question, why does HN seemt o be in favor of lightning over BCH’s approach of not neutering the block size? LN has so many drawbacks. Have to always be online, need to hold hot walkets, need liquidity provided at both ends (kyc/aml)...

If we ever want Bitcoin to evolve from a store of value to an actual payment method we have to come up with something that does at least better than VISA's 8000tx/s and that's just not solved with going from 7tx/s to Bitcoin Cash's ~62tx/s. We have to be able to compete with every payment method out there and we should be able to handle peak throughput during sales period. Another important factor is the 10 minutes c…

So it has to go from 7 tx/sec to 7k tx/sec or it's not worth doing?

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#58

Post by tlrobinson »

brendanw wrote: post #38
jgeerts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we ever want Bitcoin to evolve from a store of value to an actual payment method we have to come up with something that does at least better than VISA's 8000tx/s and that's just not solved with going from 7tx/s to Bitcoin Cash's ~62tx/s. We have to be able to compete with every payment method out there and we should be able to handle peak throughput during sales period. Another important factor is the 10 minutes c…

It exists. It is called nano: no fees and instant transactions through the block lattice. https://nano.org/en/whitepaper I am surprised more folks on HN are not familiar with nano considering it is one of the few teams in crypto with endorsements from familiar faces: Zack Shapiro on the core team (ex-Product Hunt), Garry Tan (YC, angel investor in Coinbase), and Charlie Lee (former director of engineering @ Coinbase)…

Nano and other non-linear/DAG chains are interesting, but it seems more difficult to reason about the consensus properties. Have any (neutral) 3rd parties done thorough analyses of them?

I saw Charlie Lee's reddit post asking questions about Nano (https://www.reddit.com/r/nanocurrency/comments/80c6fg/questi...). Did he follow up with an endorsement?

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#59

Post by Klathmon »

foepys wrote: post #34
knocte wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what? All the hops where your TCP/IP connection has gone to allow you to write that message, were provided by devices that had to be online in order to provide you the services. EOM

Yes, but routers aren't responsible for keeping my money safe. If you don't constantly monitor all your LN channels, the other party can just steal your money by issuing fraudulent messages to the network.

Someone can setup "watchdog" services that you can give your revocation transactions to and they can watch the blockchain for any attempts to "steal" your money and if any are found they can instantly broadcast the revocation.

Doing it this way you don't give the "watchdog" service any control of your BTC, just the ability to broadcast countersignatures, which means there is still no counterparty risk here. You could even give your revocation transactions to multiple 3rd parties that can all watch the blockchain for you if you don't trust any one of them to not backstab you.

Re: First Lightning mainnet release

#60

Post by polyomino »

tlrobinson wrote: post #43
apo wrote: post #29

For those who may not know the context, this has to do with long-term scaling of the Bitcoin network. The very first public response to Satoshi's announcement of Bitcoin was an expression of doubt about scalability: We very, very much need such a system, but the way I understand your proposal, it does not seem to scale to the required size. ... To detect and reject a double spending event in a timely manner, one must…

Great summary. One common misconception is that LN transactions rely on some amount of trust with 3rd parties, vs. on-chain Bitcoin transactions which do not. This is not the case, payment channels and even multi-hop LN transactions are just as secure as on-chain transactions, modulo one important assumption: that you (or a service you delegate) can monitor the blockchain and broadcast a transaction (which is then co…

Another possibility for the network topology is a scale-free network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network
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