Bitcoin Forum

Is anyone able to explain the new lightning network to me? Sorry to be such a newbie.

Normally bitcoin transactions take quite a while given the limitations in the original code. Lightning Network builds an instant transaction system on top of this.

This is the best source I found to understand it quite quickly.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-building-a-bidirectional-payment-channel-1464710791/
It is a 3 part article from Bitcoin Magazine, just follow the links to the other parts. This is a link to first one.

The Lightning Network is dependent upon the underlying technology of the blockchain. By using real Bitcoin/blockchain transactions and using its native smart-contract scripting language, it is possible to create a secure network of participants which are able to transact at high volume and high speed.

The Lightening Network basically is an offline scalibility solution for bitcoin. With it, you and your partner can do frequent, micro payment in a fast way and a lower fee via state channels. Bitcoin main chain only needs to record the beginning state and final state of the channels.

They can talk all they want about "smart contracts" instead of private ledgers but on ETH these smart contracts are uploaded
by developers who want to deploy bean counting software and this is absolutely nothing like that and they are playing with
words just like they are in Lightning by trying to refuse to call hubs banks.

Here take a look and tell me that this is mama and poppa banking
https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/

Your starting to scarring me so lets skin a "Smart contract" out

Both sides deposit money
Move $25 from Bob to banks side of ledger (Joining fee)
Make Bob sign the muiltisig transaction
if (Direction=Outbound) Tx fee+= $0.10
else Interest Fee +=1% of amount
Make Bob sign the muiltisig transaction
//Bob can leave at any time but will pay us in the other hand in BTC block-chain fees

Anyone can be a banking hub if they know how to write "Smart Contracts" from a wallet and deploy the contract
on BTC mining nodes

No you and your partner can do big payments and play ping-pong for months on end
and get the cost down to $0.00001 per transaction if you like but in the real world the
network looks like this https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/ so we have Tx fees on five hubs
and micro interest payments to contend with and they will all be summed up and
past on to you and your long distance partner who likes cash to buy her hand bags
with anyway.

Tell me you're not one of the miners are you because in my book they come a poor
second to slot machine players and only slightly up on the mystical creatures known
around here as Whales

Here I recommend you watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g
because it seems like you have only watch this part so far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrr_zPmEiME
but if you want middle of the road then watch the long version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A
and stay to the end where he calls the big hubs banks too.

How would one make a transfer on the lightning network, do you have to know how to code?

Last chance for Bitcoin - LN, this year will decide everything!

No, in the future it will be much more simplified for end users, very similar to normal Bitcoin wallets today. It will be available for both desktop and mobile platforms, so you will be able to go place and make payments with your phone which is IMO the best thing about it, POS purchases are viable again.

Do anyone know when Lightning Network will be implemented in Bitcoin Blockchain? Or at least some estimated time to implement that?

It has already began on the bitcoin blockchain but people need to understand that it is not something that the whole blockchain would receive as an update. Its kind of a protocol which one needs to implement while he makes the transaction. So it will be upto the wallet creators when they will implement this protocol for transactions in their wallet. So just like segwit which not even now is available in all wallets. You can say same for LN it will take time to spread through various wallets but don't expect that the whole blockchain will get it soon.

in the future this system will be applied, this is amazing when sending Bitcoin will be faster. maybe just seconds or minutes.
hopefully every coin uses this technology.

Will this cause the fees to decrease too?

Very much indeed.

Concisely put LN is an offline solution that will result in essentially zero fees and near instant transactions which will utilize payment channels still on the network but not necessarily on the blockchain.

LN is not offline. LN requires nodes to be online even more than Bitcoin does because your node has to be online to receive payments. The payment channels themselves are on the blockchain as opening and closing transactions, but lightning network payments do not touch the blockchain, although they are all backed by valid Bitcoin transactions at all times.

tocurrency’s blockchain. With this extra layer of code in place[2]
 Read this sites will know more
1. https://lightning.network/.
2. https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
3. https://github.com/bcongdon/awesome-lightning-network
+ reddit :'(

Yes that's my understand to and either party can broadcast to the block-chain how the original balances should be distributed and if the channel is opened
with $100 from me and $100 from you then it can be closed but the total balance must still only sum to the original deposits of $200 

Trouble is this is centralization with a single point of failure so if you only have one channel open because they cost a lot in BTC miner fees to
open then if the bank goes offline then your off-line too.

Lightning network solves the scalability problem in bitcoin,
The same purpose for RDN to ETH and TNC to NEO..
Lightning network literally makes the transaction fees more cheaper, by keeping them off to the main network.

I hope this article will helps you understand the Lightning network and how it helps the bitcoin to use as day to day currency.. As it helps me too.  :) :)
https://medium.com/@argongroup/bitcoin-lightning-network-7-things-you-should-know-604ef687af5a

I think its capable of millions or billions of transactions per second across the network. From what i read about Lightning Network and by transacting and settling off-blockchain, the Lightning Network allows for exceptionally low fees, which allows for emerging use cases such as instant micropayments. I guess that, by creating a network of these two-party ledger entries, it is possible to find a path across the network similar to routing packets on the internet.

The Lightning Network is a "second tier" payment protocol that operates on blockchain (most often Bitcoin). It allows instant transactions between participating nodes and has been touted as a solution to bitcoin scalability issues.
The normal use of the Lightning Network consists of opening a payment channel by funding transactions to the relevant blockchain, followed by making a number of Lightning transactions that renew the temporary distribution of unallocated channel funds to blockchain, optionally followed by closing the payment channel by broadcasting the final version of the transaction to distribute channel funds.

I'm loving the lightning network. In December 2017 to January 2018, the transaction fee was from $10 - $60 and the transaction can take up to 3 - 6 hours. Nowadays, the transaction fee is just around $0.5 - $10 and the transaction would just be below 1 hour, just like Ethereum and Litecoin.

it is the next gen of Bitcoin network , very cool . Check it https://lightning.network/ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrr_zPmEiME

If Block stream had allowed to raise the block size from 1MB to 8MB none of this multisig-side chain-hard fork nonsense would be needed. You see we would still have only one Bitcoin. But the powers that shouldn't be are well aware of the old adage "divide and conquer Again, Just raising the block size was a simple and elegant solution that could have avoided a contentious hard fork, while allowing thousands or tens of thousands of people to have access to their funds in a timely manner.

Evidently not.  The option to hardfork to a larger blocksize was freely available, but not enough people chose to go with it.  The majority decided that a softfork to an opt-in 4MB blockweight with SegWit and Lightning was a more sensible option.  Plus, it's arguable that one hardfork to increase the size wouldn't be enough and future hardforks would likely be required.  



People often describe it as "second tier", but in the big picture, I tend to think of it more as "inter-tier".  It will effectively weave any future tiers together and allow you to move your funds between them.

Simple in code perhaps, but not in terms of adoption and network compatibility.

Hard forks ought to be adopted on a timeline of years, not a few months, and that's assuming there is general social consensus to adopt the fork. Otherwise you risk mass confusion and financial loss: the network could split, the blockchain(s) could be repeatedly reorganized and -- perhaps most notably -- trust in the Bitcoin network to reliably reach consensus would be lost.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to hard forks and UASFs, but I am quite disappointed that people think they should be adopted on such compressed timelines. I think the rushed mindsets characterized by all the hard fork attempts and the BIP148 UASF are real affronts to the expansive and diverse nature of our network.

The way I explain it to people in the easiest way is this. The current problem with the Blockchain is that it can only handle a certain amount of transactions per second and Bitcoin has reached that threshold. So they had to decide, if they are going to "upgrade" the Bitcoin code to handle more Tx per second or if they are going to add another layer on top of it to handle that load.

They saw that "upgrading" the Bitcoin code, will be unsustainable in the future, so they figured out a way to take these transactions to another layer, where a infinite number of micro transactions can be done, without "clogging" or "bloating" the Blockchain and this solved the problem.

Pure Genius.  ;)

While I generally land in the "small blocker" camp on most issues, I'm not convinced that block size increases are unsustainable per se. I just think that 1) consensus change is harder than people think and 2) we should offload as much transaction volume as possible offchain (LN, drivechains, etc). The problem with big blockers is they believe there is only way to scale a network. Don't fall into that trap.

One of my gripes with Gavin Anderson and Mike Hearn and their mindset was that they assumed that improved future tech would easily address today's bandwidth and latency shortcomings. I don't think they were necessarily wrong about that, but I'm not willing to decide that on a leap of faith, or risk unnecessarily increasing orphaning rates and squeezing lots of nodes off the network.

I just want to see hard data suggesting a block size increase is safe from that perspective, and I want to see it done on reasonable timeline (like 1-2 years instead of a few months if we're talking about a hard fork or UASF).

How is 'block stream' involved into this debate?
It is the users (everyones) choice which way of scaling to support.

As long as one miner does not upgrade to 8MB (a hell lot of nodes didn't do this) while others do, there is a hardfork.
A hard fork occurs when no consens is reached. This was the case.




There is still only one bitcoin.
Those shitcoins named 'Bitcoin INSERT_ANYTHING' are NOT bitcoin. They just make use of the popular name to gain awareness/attention.




On-chain scaling is NEVER as efficient as off-chain scaling solutions.
And increasing block size is a very very bad approach to scaling (if not the worst one).

Increasing blocksize to scale sounds trivial. But this is just a short-term scaling. You can't always increase the blocksize. This does heavily lead to centralisation.

Raising the block size may be anything but elegant.. It is the exact opposite..




Funds can always be accessed in no time. I am not sure what you are talking about ? ???
The 'access' time depends on your storage type and wallet.

Did people really choose not to go with a hardfork? I don't think it was ever up for debate. The core team refused to go along with a 2x increase, so instead it was picked up by a different team which basically made it a hostile takeover of Bitcoin. There was never a search for a consensus around the blocksize increase, because core team refused it in the first place. There is nothing dangerous about a hard fork if you get a consensus, but since the devs said no that was the end of it. The majority of people in the spring opted for segwit plus 2x, but then core said no to 2x so the 2x idea became basically a competing chain and that risked the network so it lost support.

To other people's answers, there is no reason a hard fork should take years to do. The coding could probably be done and tested in weeks. You just have to build a consensus around the fork, and for most of last year their was most definitely a consensus that bitcoin needed bigger blocks but core stopped the consensus (which is a terrible thing considering Bitcoin's development is supposed to be based on consensus). A block size increase would have alleviated the insane fees at the end of last year a lot, and it would have left the Bcash shills with much less propaganda. Now of course block size is only one part of a solution for scaling. But it is needed, absolutely. The question is how much do you do it so as to weight security/decentralization vs capacity. Probably a 2x would have been appropriate at that time considering segwit already increased the amount of data being sent around.

As it stands LN will likely only be able to handle at best a few million users, at worst maybe a few hundred thousand users, which even now is only a tiny amount of all bitcoin users. One would think the simplest scaling solution would be done first which would have an immediate impact unlike segwit/LN which will take years for its network effect to really become revolutionary.

Anyone who says onchain scaling is a terrible solution is as bad as anyone who says 2nd layer is a terrible solution. Both are needed if bitcoin is ever actually going to be used by the world.

The only way to decrease the cost per transaction for BTC while still maintaining the same level of security is to increase the number of on chain transactions.  Additionally, LN may allow some scalability, but it is not free because the LN hub must post capital to facilitate transactions through the hub. The cost of capital is not free.

Chances are, not everyone sees it the way I do, but this is my take on it:

I despise the current usage of that phrase "hostile takeover".  It's abhorrent and I'll explain why.  (//EDIT:  in a much longer post than I had planned, it seems)

It's likely that because Core have done such a successful job of maintaining Bitcoin, the majority of users are willing to go along with whatever Core think is best.  However, that doesn't mean a hardfork is impossible without Core's blessing, just that it's highly improbable.  I'm still not at all comfortable with people describing fork proposals as "hostile takeovers", as I believe it sets a dangerous precedent and strongly implies that one development team is in total control and/or ownership of Bitcoin.  It's not like we're forced to do what any particular dev team think is best.  The dev team don't own the chain.  We choose to run their code if we like what they're doing.  

Consider that using an emergency exit in a fire, for example, wouldn't be called a "hostile departure".  That's the way in which we should think of proposed hardforks.  Not as someone trying to "seize control", but as a way of users having an escape route from anyone who did somehow manage to seize control and act against the wishes of the users.

Because otherwise (and this is the crux of the argument), the moment you suggest that someone is trying to take over, you're consequently also suggesting that Bitcoin has a centralised authority, that this authority is in control of Bitcoin and some rival authority is trying to wrest that control from them.  I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like any Bitcoin I've ever been a part of.  So that argument makes no sense to me.  It's an affront to freedom to say that no one can code another client and allow the users to decide for themselves.  You literally can't have a hostile takeover if it is the users who have simply opted to run a different client with different consensus rules.  Creating clients with different consensus rules isn't a takeover, hostile or otherwise.  Because they only have influence if the users support them.

If enough users disagree with the direction being proposed, they should always have the option to bail out of it and go their own way.  Perhaps there's only an infinitesimally small chance that Core would ever make a decision that the majority of users didn't agree with, but if the chance is there, however miniscule, we shouldn't preclude the possibility of a hardfork without that dev team on board.

So coming back to 2x and my previous post, if a vast majority of users had wanted it, even if Core didn't, the users would have had the freedom to leave.  It wouldn't be a hostile takeover because it's the users making that decision to change.  It just so happens, the users didn't decide to make that change.

Conversely, after a split has occurred, the lesser of the two chains is undisputedly the altcoin.  If the altcoin then tries to claim the mantle of Bitcoin, despite having insufficient support, you can call that an attempted hostile takeover to your heart's content.  You won't hear any complaints from me there.  Because that's a smaller group of users deliberately trying to take something from a larger group of users against their wishes.