Bitcoin Forum

I read about Bitcoin Lightning Network  and i need some clarifications..
I understand that it will kill the high fees we see today and make it cheap and fast like altcoins.

1. Is it going to be 100% sure or just speculations ?
2. Launching date ? weeks/ months/ years ?
3. is it work on a third party service or it will work on and from every wallet (blockchain.innfo , exodus, electrum etc ? )

few months i think they should do almost no fees/ and fast.

1. It'll be available. That's 100%.
2. There isn't an official launch date since there are various dev groups working on different implementations of LN. I can tell they are about to release it.
3. Adoption depends on you and me. If you start using segwit and prefer segwit ready companies with your transactions, the other companies which don't use segwit/LN will have to implement those protocols or else they'll go out of business.

Since LN creates an almost zero fee network, it just makes more sense to use it over the onchain transactions. Especially if you are transferring small amounts, buying coffee etc.

Companies can't ignore these developments. If they do, send them to the trash basket. We made them big its not the other way around.

The lightning network is going to be a very big thing. I think I have seen some demo of it and it seems to be working really good. As long as there is no conflict between sender and receiver the transaction is almost instant.

They are the only thing that bitcoin needs at the moment to prepare to go to the moon before the end of the year. If it gets implemented, the price can easily go to $20,000 in a few days.
But obviously that because of the major exchanges and the manipulation, it is not going to get implemented.

There is a testnet running Lightning right now, search around and you'll find about it.

1. Since it is not up and running, nobody really knows what will happen.
2. A few years ago they said 6 months. It's a lot closer now but I wouldn't hold my breath.
3. It is a protocol, like Bitcoin, so anybody can make software and apps for it.

If it works and it is adopted, it could save Bitcoin. If it doesn't or isn't, well then ...

At present its only in paper but surely they will implement it. But it will take some time to implement it and the launching date is not yet announced . If that comes into reality then no will be able to predict the price of bitcoin because implementation of lightening network is going to solve all its drawback. When its launched definitely third party wallets will launch an updated version which is compatible with lightening network for sure.

hey isn't lightning network will make bitcoin centralized?
Is that true? does anyone can clarify it?

no it won't kill the high fees. LN is an addition that will work on top of the bitcoin blockchain and if people use it more, it can help decrease the number of on chain transaction and the backlog a little bit and decrease the fees because of that. but eventually you need to make transactions on chain to get in and out of LN and that requires fees and they may even go higher if LN helps with more bitcoin adoption and more users which means more transactions ...

LN is a protocol just like bitcoin. i think we can call it a set of consensus like rules. there are currently a lot of projects being built around these just like how there are  a lot of bitcoin wallets built around bitcoin rules.

in other words the same way there are bitcoin core, bitcoin armory, electrum, multibit, blockchain.info, greedaddress, and 100 other wallets there are also many LN wallets.
LN is already launched and working. these wallets are in beta and being tested as we speak.
then we need adoption by everyone to start using it.

Yes 100% LN goes down, no chance it does not. It will happen sometime this year but nobody knows when, I believe they are testing it though at the moment. Should function on most but like anything I think you must agree to it prior to it functioning, how Segwit functions.

You can see here  (https://cdecker.github.io/lightning-integration/)how the development is doing and It's already being tested on the mainnet. In fact, TorGuard VPN is already accepting payments from LN and you can buy games and recharge your phone using Bitrefill  (https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/946175898029395968)(in testnet for now). As for the release date, I couldn't say it better then Jameson Lopp‏ (https://twitter.com/lopp/status/947808940255006726).

It is 100% sure that lightning network will be implemented, because it is already under development and they already tested it on Bitcoin mainnet and the first lightning network transaction is successful, that's is a good news but there are still bugs and improvements that should be done before they will be able to release the mainnet of lightning network. There is no official date on when it will be implemented, hopefully this year. It will work on all kinds of Bitcoin wallet and exchanges, if the they will support it they will need to upgrade and it will take some time.

1. No one can tell that for certain. But without it Bitcoin is going to stagnate bitterly and lose all relevance fairly quickly, maybe within a year or two. Competition is too strong.
2. If everything goes smooth, it should be fully deployed in a few months. In fact you can already use it.
3. No third parties will be required. But just like with SegWit, not all wallets will support it at the first notice.

I am not really an expert on Lightning Network and I don't have any data when it can be deployed and implemented by all so that we can get away finally from the high fees imposed by miners and wallet service providers but this is one project that the whole Bitcoin community has been expected to come soon. Hopefully LN can reinvigorate Bitcoin and make it robust once again as we know that there are already those who are giving up on Bitcoin as a currency and just treat it as a store of value -- something that Bitcoin should both fulfill if it should be adopted by the mainstream population. I am personally wishing that they can speed up the whole thing.

I don't think you understand LN.

Why would you open/close channels constantly? That's the whole concept. You need to open a channel and stay open so others can use your route too.

You don't need to open/close unless you want to lose money.

This would be very exciting and after bitcoin lightning network release. Possibly the demand of bitcoin will be more higher and expect the value will up.

Methinks, this is exactly what's gonna happen if LN takes off for real. To understand this, we should first understand why the fees are so high today. They are high because there is a tough competition between senders for the inclusion of their transactions in the next block. Whether this competition is artificial or natural is another question, though. So if the number of on-chain transactions goes down thanks to Lightning, the competition should subside as well. But this will lead to faster confirmations and thus lower fees unless miners will start to ignore pending transactions and mine empty blocks, of course.

Bitcoin cash will do it before Bitcoin, because latter will require another 10 years to make it.

Good centralised solution anyway.

1. Its in alpha, so another 2-5 years and hell knowa what will come along it just so speculative right now
2. Years, for BTC decades
3. There is believes it brimgs centralization to BTC, google

Even if BCH will have LN before Bitcoin, it doesn't matter. People want to use the first and only coin that actually provides people the best and safest network. BCH is nothing more than an utter shitcoin.

They proudly talk like their fees are far lower than Bitcoin's fees, but on purposely don't directly say that these lower fees are the result of a severe lack of actual network usage.

Every altcoin basically offers cheaper and faster confirmations than Bitcoin, so BCH is nothing special in that aspect. I don't even see the purpose of BCHs existence with so many shitcoins in this market already.

THIS! We want to stay to the "core" bitcoin that was mentioned by Roger Ver and he stands that BCH is the main coin but hell no.
This is everyone's hope to make the fees cheaper so that we are good again to use bitcoin as it is being used before.

They've been saying 18 months for 2 years now. I hope it comes soon. We need lower fees and faster transactions.

I think that will be happen on Q1 people demands it because the transaction is very slow. I think bitcoin core has a proposal that they will try a testnet that will increase the transaction they call it lightning network.

I agree that the company dont implement this lightning metwork to help their user just throw it to garbage bag.
This LN is very helpfull to make the crypto as currency survive. As we know, cypto is just as investment not currency

personally i want the bitcoin lightning network will succeed because

we really need some more faster and lower trade fee

Of course that it will be a huge thing, and a lot of people are going to be scared of that because they are not going to understand how does it works.

But for me, it is a huge step to make it grow much more than what it is right now.

Let's see how it goes, maybe in a few months, it will get implemented on the mainnet.

Maybe. We don't know how individual users will behave. It's possible that popular "hubs" will evolve that people open channels with specifically because they are large.

I would be utterly surprised if the BCash folks, that is Jihan and his team of minions, actually went for LN. Really, one of the reasons for the creation of BCash was disagreement over SegWit activation with the Jihan party strongly opposing it. Well, at least that's what we are made to believe. But LN requires SegWit to function properly if I'm not mistaken, and implementing LN now will only prove that they are just a bunch of filthy and greedy hypocrites.

But we kinda already know that.

yes, we all are waiting for it only for that reason, if it gets implemented, a lot of people will love to join this game and start using bitcoin for normal purchases (with a low fee of course)

it is just matter of time until it gets released, maybe a few months from now, but it will get implemented before the end of the year.

i don't understand LN completely, i am not denying that.
but also i did not say you open/close channels "constantly"! but at some point you need to go in and out like moving funds from your wallet into your LN wallet for the first time. or getting them out to cold storage for the good security after you were done. or charging your LN wallet when you ran out of funds like spending it on buying coffee every day.
and we are not just talking about 1 person, it is about (hopefully) millions of people using bitcoin and wanting to make transactions on-chain and also to go in and out of LN.

It seems that I can tell you what detail you are missing exactly in the whole picture. It looks like you think that the vast majority of transactions are issued by individual Bitcoin holders, but that's most probably not true. The bulk of transactions are pretty sure made by a small number of entities like online wallets and exchanges between themselves, while the millions of people you are talking about don't have millions of personal wallets as you seem to imply. In fact, they are using third-party services to transact with. And these services don't need to open and close channels for each transaction. They can push millions of transactions through just a few channels. This is the whole thing behind LN, its most important point.

Bcash devs are not even capable of fixing their own shit.
https://twitter.com/verretor/status/952901265402589184

Expecting them to implement LN without segwit is not realistic. Even the Master Shill Roger can't decide if its a good thing or not. One day he says its a centralized hub network, the other day he says they don't need segwit to implement LN.

They are clueless noobs who can say anything to pump their altcoin.

There are facts;

1-They don't have the manpower to implement LN without segwit. Imagine the possible fuckups if they intended to do so.
2-They won't implement segwit because segwit breaks Bitmain's patented software ASICBOOST (https://www.asicboost.com/). So they won't be able to copy LN to bcash.
3-They are just talk. No action. They won't bother with coding their own shit. If they are able to steal it, they will. In this case, they won't be able to.

Check the developer activity on both projects:
https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

Yes, I heavily suspected something like that, especially the theft part. Bitcoin Cash is basically the same Bitcoin with only a few variables/constants changed which allowed to increase the block size, maybe a few other small things, and that's pretty much all. If LN get activated at the end of the day, the BCash devs or whoever pretends to be them will probably try to bluntly replicate it in BCash without SegWit because otherwise they will finally lose competition to the original Bitcoin.

Another option is that they can massively sabotage LN activation under whatever excuse they find or invent.

1. Yes it's real most of us here are just waiting for the implementation of the lighting network due to high fees.
2. We don't have any idea(s) when or what day will the LN  be here.
3. It depends with you if you want to use the Lightning Network same as the segwit transactions work.

It is only a zero fee network in the beginning.  Since it is owned, operated and controlled by a private company they can put the fees to whatever they want once everyone adopts and starts using it.  They took over Bitcoin.  They own Bitcoin now.  Trust me, it is not 'free'.  You will only see this after about 2 years when everyone is fully integrated and it is too late to turn back.  Suckers.

OK that all sound well and convincing. But I have one doubt that I was trying to discuss in other threads and I really got no opinion on it. I have read somewhere that when you open a Lightning channel and when you close it, you have to pay regular fees, so LN really would NOT make the fees go away, at least when you engage with a given service provider only once or twice.

Can you please tell me your opinion on that?

Also, regarding LN availability, the same news (i.e. it is ALMOST released) has been there for at least 2 months. So what is your expectation in terms of a set date?

You won't be closing your channel. Once you are on the network that's it.

Do you send bitcoins back and forth every day? You know how ridiculous it is and you'll lose money when you do that right? Opening & Closing channels is the same thing.

There are already LN channels available on the mainnet. 14 or 20 of them at the moment. Don't try anything yet.

Why should we trust you, what are your credentials, really? Kidding aside, everyone who won't be quite satisfied with LN can still use the good old onchain transactions with no LN involved. So your point is effectively meaningless, null and void. These options (I refer to onchain and offchain transactions here) will necessarily make the fees lower. Any way you look at it, ordinary people will have to pay less even if LN hubs will start to charge a fee in the future. In other words, don't make it look like LN is evil because it is not.

Thank you. The news piece that I was referring claimed, that you need to open a new channel per sender and recipient, so when you engage with a new recipient you need a new channel, thus you pay a new regular fee. So you are saying it is not the case. It is good to know and I hope you are right.

Damn! That's a huge step forward for Bitcoin! We will see major prices increases for Bitcoin and Altcoins alike! I can't wait.

High fees are killing our ass. They will need to do something for sure.
The price is gonna rise again so the fees too, well maybe not today lol
It is so red out there today.

Hell-raiser is right. Whatever the real price of using the LN, just by taking some transactions out off main chain will lead to main chain transaction fee decrease: miners will not have that many high fee transactions to choose from so they will have to include the low fee transactions in the blocks they mine too

I'm going to assume you're referring to Blockstream. Even if that's true, unlike running a full node, Lightning network shouldn't cost much resources to run so anyone could do it.

LN will bring good news to some of the issues ailing the network.

How will this system going to be implement in the network? Does the exchange or website need to had to their code or buy it, rent it?
I really hope it will save bitcoin :D

I have been waiting for the big news about the Lightning network implementation because this will definitely bring a huge push to Bitcoin.  Imagine sending Bitcoin with 0 fee and instant confirmation?  This solves the scalability problem that had been an issue of bitcoin for so many years, but of course development does not please everyone especially those who will be affected if this upgrade is implemented.  Though I hope this will be done soon!

I really want LN to come live.

The real problem is on the acceptance of this development just like the segwit and segwit2x. Miners, Mining pools, crytpoexchanges are hesistant with this kind of changes.

I'm impatiently waiting for Lightning Network activation myself but I still have my scruples about its long-term effects. I have no doubt that the price will surge to the sky once LN gets activated and established but will it contribute to real adoption in any meaningful way? Let's assume that we now have free and near-instant transactions, will that make people spend their precious coins on everyday things? Isn't Bitcoin used mostly for speculation today?

You don't pay for a cup of tea with gold, so why should you pay with Bitcoin? That question bugs me constantly. It kinda looks that hassle-free transactions aren't enough to make Bitcoin into what it was conceived to be, that is a universal means of exchange, a full-fledged currency in its own right.

on one hand you are right, you don't pay for your coffee with gold. But there are people (i know a few myself) who keep all their savings in gold and treat the gold holdings as a kind of ATM. When they need fiat money, they go out, exchange an ounce or a few ounces (a bar or coin) to A LOT OF fiat and buy things. Now imagine that this exchange is made infinitely easier - you can go out, pay with your gold and get what you wanted to buy - be it coffee, some service, petrol, whatever.

The same applies to bitcoin. Currently, to exchange bitcoin to fiat, you need to do it in large chunks, so the percentage fee consumes is kept low.

And with LN? Say you want to save bitcoins. Say, you want to save it to the point, you keep all your savings in bitcoin. You have no free money. And LN with its fee free transactions would exactly enable that - you could virtually go out with your hardware wallet full of bitcoins and be paying your everyday needs with bitcoin. And the moment your salary arrives, you could exchange it all to bitcoin knowing, that it is going to be quite easy to spend it later.

1. There are currently multiple groups working on LN, here is a reddit with some insight you may appreciate: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7q3iw9/this_is_how_btcs_lightning_network_is_supposed_to/

2. The current consensus is that it will be available this year, you can currently test a LN transaction now
http://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-lightning-network-is-coming-test-a-transaction-now/

3. It will require implementation by all third parties.

I definitely see your point and I'm not arguing with it. In fact, these dudes you are talking about have a pretty decent strategy. But this is not what I meant with my example. To tell the truth, gold was a bad choice for it because gold is mostly used as a store of value and not so much for multiplying your wealth. I just wanted to say that it is not very wise overall to spend or rather waste your capital on trivial things. People use bitcoins to earn money, and it makes sense to spend fiat thus earned, not bitcoins themselves with which you earn this fiat. It is like a woodworker selling his tools to provide sustenance to his family when he should actually sell his woodwork.

This is not the case.  LN is not only on paper.  There have been mainnet txs that used LN and the testnet is widely used.  #bitcoin IRC and #lnd are good places to learn more about it. Joeseph Poon is basically the face of the project as far as I can tell.

I have also heard about this Bitcoin Lightning Network news. As a matter of fact, if I am not mistaken with the dates, this news about Bitcoin upgrade came out even before Litecoin introduced its own version of Lightning Network. But I am zero when it comes to the latest updates about it. I hope this will be implemented pretty soon so that Bitcoin will gain more trust.

Yes I can see your point too and I am not arguing with it either :) I think that many people just hodl their bitcoin and it comes with great pain when they have to depart with it. But still, you need to spend some money each month to survive. What I wanted to say is that if LN brings what it promises, than you can do BOTH: hodl whatever you can save from spending, and spend what you must, at the same time.

I would like to stress one additional thought: that with a deflational currency (bitcoin) it makes much more sense to save it than to spend it immediately. And this behaviour (saving money) whould get promotted. I think it is socially beneficial. It is in contrast with fiat: it makes much more sense to spend fiat as soon as possible, because with time it becomes less and less valuable.

The woodworker from your example will do well to provide woodwork for his family, instead of selling it and later buying the same or similar stuff (maybe made of metal) with earned money. On the second thought I am not sure if the reworked woodworker example proves or disproves my line of thinking, but here it is anyway :)

I think now is the proper time to implement this changes. We can see that there are many investors that have been losing trust to bitcoins capabilities. We cannot totally argue with them because there is really a major problem.

Then let's agree to agree!

Basically, I agree that some people may be holding their coins without doing anything else with them, but they are losing a lot of profit opportunity to multiply their wealth and capitalize on Bitcoin's volatility. Moreover, I'm strongly inclined to think that the people who are idly sitting on their coins have regular jobs, and thus they don't need to sell their stash or some part of it to provide their sustenance. On the other hand, people who are living off their cryptocapital should trade their coins if they don't want to lose it, but in that case they should earn enough fiat both to spend and reinvest it.


In fact, money is created to be spent, not to be saved. Saving comes about as an off-target effect of one particular quality that money should have. Money should preserve its value over longer terms, otherwise it can't function as money, and this makes saving possible.


You are taking my example too literally. Bitcoins right now have no practical use apart from speculation, which would justify your line of thinking. So I don't really think it is possible to use Bitcoin in the way you described, though I certainly see your point and understand what you mean here.

Lightning network grows and develops. Each user of the network bitcoin, at your own peril and risk, can join it. In the Internet, a dashboard appeared with a graph showing the parameters of the lightning network development.
https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1

They just uploaded a video today, no one knows if that is real for sure, but it was tweeted by one of the developers so i think that this is a very nice progress. Let's see how it goes, maybe it will get implemented before May.

It's in its early stages, but it has launched a beta version. It's a great concept and should help fix some existing issues...we have a blog post on this, so check it out  :)

Bit.ly/LightningNetwork101

Hope this helps!

You'll find everything about lightning network here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7pwna9/lightning_network_megathread/
It literally has everything you may want to know. Right now,its very much complicated for an average user.