Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#71

Post by Klathmon » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

philipwhiuk wrote: post #63

freejulian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning uses the same routing algorithm as tor — it’s an onion router. It has the added benefit of no one in the network knowing where transactions are from or whom they’re to. With regards to channel capacity — fees in lightning are proportional to the amount of the transaction. If you are sending a transaction which consumes a large amount of capacity, you pay a high fee. Note how this is a fundamental difference…

Tor has a centralised list of exit nodes.

which doesn't apply to tor hidden services, which work fine without an exit node.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#72

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #47

lalaland1125 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bala…

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 reba…

> 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.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#73

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

kbody wrote: post #57

lalaland1125 wrote: post #15

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 net…

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.…

> 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.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#74

Post by IncRnd » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #18

lalaland1125 wrote: post #15

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 net…

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…

That's fine, but if #1 is true, Lightning is far from workable.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#75

Post by Klathmon » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72

Klathmon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reba…

> 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…

>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.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#76

Post by zdfjkhiuj » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

kylnew wrote: post #42

marsRoverDev wrote: post #8

Or perhaps replacing bitcoin with something that doesn't have fundamental flaws in its design. Hence why a lot of us think it has no inherent value into the future. Of course, those in on the ponzi scheme will disagree with this sentiment.

It’s funny to say ‘replacing’ bitcoin to me because we talk like it had a strong value and use in the past but really this has all just been speculation since the start. We all seem in agreement that blockchain as a technology is legitimate but none of these currency implementations float my boat yet because of how highly speculative the whole market is right now. Aside: last week up I looked it up and sure enough th…

I don't think the blockchain is a good technology. Traditional databases or something like Git solve the same problems better. I have an ideological desire to see more trustless and peer-to-peer systems and I think they'll take hold eventually, but at the moment blockchains are worthless.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#77

Post by Klathmon » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

IncRnd wrote: post #74

Klathmon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's fine, but if #1 is true, Lightning is far from workable.

#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.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#78

Post by Klathmon » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

philipwhiuk wrote: post #65

freejulian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there’s services you can outsource that to. Furthermore, if you only use lightning for sending payments (the majority of us) then publishing an earlier version of the channel benefits you!

Are those services called banks?

You could call them that if you want, but they are significantly different than traditional banks.

These services won't actually hold your money, just a transaction that sends all the money to you if someone tries to cheat. It's more of an escrow service than a bank, but the escrow service again doesn't actually hold anything valuable.

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#79

Post by kbody » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #73

kbody wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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.

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.)

Re: Bitcoin has a huge scaling problem–Lightning could be the solution

#80

Post by EthanHeilman » Sun, Feb 04, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #37

EthanHeilman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ho…

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!

>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.