Bitcoin Forum

It has been over 5 years since the first version of the Lightning Network whitepaper (http://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf) was released. LN is an off-chain scaling solution created for Bitcoin. It allows two users to make a payment channel and transfer bitcoins almost instantly and with minimal fees. If that sounds too complicated, feel free to use custodial wallets (like the Blue Wallet), where you are not required to open your own payment channels.  

This network can be integrated into altcoins as well. Litecoin already uses it. As Andreas Antonopoulos explained in his YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCSfoiD8wUA), LN can be used on other blockchains that support multi-signature addresses and time locks.  

I will not go into any more specifics about the network because Rath_  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1169179)has already written several extensive topics about it.

To learn more about it, I suggest you take a look at:

Basics of the Lightning Network (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4940536.0)
The Lightning Network FAQ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5158920.0)

1.   I would like to know if you have ever used the Lightning Network?
2.   How often do you use it, and how would you rate the experience and difficulty of use?
3.   Which Lightning implementation did you try, and what is your favourite one?
4.   What do you think can be further improved?

Please keep discussions on topic! Let’s talk about user experiences and not whether you are pro or against the Lightning Network.

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I have personally never used the Lightning Network. Not because I am avoiding it, but because I am not exchanging money with the same users multiple times that would require me to use it. I have also not yet used a service or platform where I was required to send Lightning payments.

I have used the Lightning Network at least a couple of times so far to transfer small amounts via Telegram and to gamble at LN casino.

And in general it is nice to pay at a lower bitcoin transaction fee as the current fee of a one and two payment is fairly high, if one consider Bitcoin as a cash transfer tool. Another great benefit of the Lightning Network is that it encourages the usage of bitcoin as a fast and cheap payment system, because it is very easy to move money from one place to another with the help of a simple app.

^This right here is probably like half the problem on why a lot of people refuse to try out Lightning. Where would they use it in the first place if the most used exchanges doesn't accept it yet? Because it's a safe assumption that exchanges(withdrawals/deposits) are where a good chunk of transaction volumes are. I'm betting that we get Lightning adoption once exchanges like Binance starts accepting it.

Personally I have only tried Phoenix[1] wallet because I've heard it has the best UX of all Lightning wallets, and the UX is definitely great. You'd barely feel the difference between LN and base-chain. Only tried it once though, because my VPN and VPS providers doesn't accept Lightning as of yet.

[1] P.S. For the iOS users: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5250677

Some sources for Lightning network

• Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5259973.0)
• [Complete] A fortnight of lessons on the lightning network (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5217699.0)
• Lightning Network - Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrr_zPmEiME)
• Lightning Network -- Basics (documents, data pages, files, plots) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5287756.0)

Some members on the forum can help to test and practice with Lightning network.

• Free lightning tests (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5186778.0)
• Overview of lightning network nodes owned by forum users (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5266907.0)
• Liberated: LoyceV's Legendary Little Lightning Loans (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5149962.0)

I have not used lightning network, the reasons are:

1. It requires miners fee which is the fee require for bitcoin transaction confirmation. To open and close a channel, it requires fee.
2. I have only little bitcoin
3. No service I have used that demand for lightning network payment
4. I still hear of some vulnerabilities about it which are fixed already
5. People I am sending to are not requesting for lightning network yet
6. Shops around me not supporting it

If lightning has been common and known and more used for transactions and if I have enough bitcoin, I will make use of lightning network.

Not for once have I used the lighting network, I don't know which reason I would give for not using it maybe because I haven't had the pressing need to use it, and for now am quite ok and comfortable with the way I do my transaction, am looking forward from this post and research to seeing how the benefits of lighting network is more than how I do my transactions now then I will ponder on my chances of using lighting network.

I’ve used the LN at least ten times. I use BlueWallet and it’s really simple to use and never had any problems with it . I don’t understand why LN hasn’t really been mass adopted, but I’ve got a feeling will be having the same conversation in 5 years time  :)

This is probably the main reason why many people are not interested in testing LN. In terms of USD, the cost to open/close channels is very high.

I think LN has a little bit of a chicken/egg problem. While some merchants accept LN, most cyrpto-accepting merchants do not. With so few merchants accepting LN, there is less incentive to keep a lot of coin locked up in LN channels if they might want to spend their coin on-chain.

Honestly, I'm not going to lie, I have never used Lightning Network. Not because I against it or I don't understand it. Simply, so far I haven't found any places where I can use it. It's not an easy task to find merchant which accept Lightning Network payments. So far it seems that I only can try it for testing purpose only or on Testnet.

I have Blue Wallet downloaded for that purposes, fooled around a bit with it, checked few guides but never really bothered to try sending, mainly because I didn't really have any real need to use it.

I do plan to actually try to use it, it is on my bucket list and I honestly feel kinda ashamed that I never really tried to do at least one transaction.

I also have a Blue Wallet. I have transferred some satoshies to it solely for the purposes of LN payment. I've been playing around with it for a while and I've done a few transactions. Everything went very smoothly, however, as Rikafip said, I can't say I have any particular needs for it.
Too bad the Lightning Network has not yet been widely adopted.

According to https://lightningnetworkstores.com/, a lot of the sites that accept Lightning payments are crypto casinos and sportsbooks. But there seems to be a couple of exchanges  (https://lightningnetworkstores.com/?sector=exchange&digital_goods=all&sort=best&search=&safemode=false)that have integrated LN as well. There aren't that many familiar names and I have only heard about these:

- SouthXchange
- Bitfinex
- Bitgild

This one seems to have the most hits:
https://fixedfloat.com/

How do the error messages look now?

Thanks for the remainders. I didn't know that jackg has so many LN-related threads. I will take a look at them.

So does a standard on-chain bitcoin transaction. However, if you send/receive bitcoin from the same people on a regular basis it would make sense using it.

Considering that not even Bitcoin has seen massive adoption yet, I don't think Lightning Network will either just yet. We shouldn't forget that this is still a work in progress and the development is still on-going.  

Yep. The list of services that accepts Lightning is surely slowly but surely growing. But still, I think that international exchange giants such as Binance is what's going to decently boost up adoption if they started accepting Lightning. As we speak, the withdrawal fee is 0.0005 which is more or less $25 in current prices. That's definitely pretty high for most people in poor countries.

So far, I have never transacted using LN, but I have heard about it quite often on several occasion. At this time, I can't try to make transaction using LN because maybe I don't need it yet. But yes, LN will be very helpful for small transaction and I'll try it next time. Hopefully someone in my area will accept an LN payment for just a pack of cigarette.  :D

By the way, let me help you with a small tip when you need to quickly find topics with specific keyword if you are guessing one user has big interest in that area. Assume you want to find topics on lightning network from jackg

• Go with this hidden link: https://bitcointalk.org/gettopics.php?user=543626
• Search with keyword is: lightning or LN
• 543626 is the jackg's UID.

It's a quick and very efficient searching.

I did a couple of tests when it was first introduced and AFAICR, that's it... Some of the online stores that I use from time to time offer it but I still prefer using the on-chain transaction instead.
^{- Having said those, I have nothing against it [I'm just fine using on-chain TXs (with its current limitations)].}

In addition to "Pmalek's second post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5322169.msg56513471#msg56513471)", you can find a few more places from here: 1ML directory (https://1ml.com/directory) ^{[website links are usually posted in the "Owner Info" section]}

It depends on LN implementation/software you use. Here's few example for BlueWallet from reddit,

1. https://reddit.com/r/bluewallet/comments/atl0ne/api_error_try_again_later_code_9/ (https://reddit.com/r/bluewallet/comments/atl0ne/api_error_try_again_later_code_9/)


2. https://reddit.com/r/lightningnetwork/comments/kyky1l/1_of_fund_stuck_in_blue_wallet_lighting/ (https://reddit.com/r/lightningnetwork/comments/kyky1l/1_of_fund_stuck_in_blue_wallet_lighting/)

I remembered one guy over here giving away 100/ 500 Sats for free if you enabled LN on your wallet.

I tried but never received the Sats because it expired/ became invalid and he never replied to my inquiry ;D

It's precisely because of those withdrawal fees that many centralized exchanges won't act that quickly to implement the Lightning Network. It will weaken their revenue structure. Traders will still be using their services, with or without LN. If I am not mistaken, Binance was quite slow with the introduction of the SegWit upgrade as well.

Excellent advice. I will bookmark the address because it can be useful in the future.   

I am sure that will be sorted out with time. The developers have to understand that if LN (and Bitcoin for that matter) is to get some serious traction, it has to become understandable and easy to use for those with 0 experience with that subject.

I think that was LoyceV or jackg.

Maybe someone else did the same thing, but the one I remember doing it was @bpovtmg when he created the thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5275451.0) last September in which he was giving 200 Satoshis for free for those who installed  Lightning Network wallet. That was exactly the reason why I downloaded Blue Wallet, but somehow I forgot to ask for those free satoshis in order to test it.


+1

This is the key, ease of use, and until that is sorted I don't think that use of LN will get any traction. Sooner or later that will happen though, as with everything. But until then, it will be used by those few that are either tech savvy enough, or really interested in all this.

That's him alright.

I'll answer:
1. Yes :D
2. I pay with LN whenever I can, sometimes a few times per week. With the right wallet, it's very easy to use.
3. I've tried many (but won't mention the inconvenient ones). I now only use BlueWallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5168527.0) and Phoenix Wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5250677.0). The former has custodial LN, the latter non-custodial. Both on Android, both wallets take care of channels (they charge a small percentage fee for this), incoming capacity and connectivity. There's not much you have to setup manually (just create your backups).
4. Acceptance. And to accomplish that, more people should start using it.

Then don't use those exchanges :P I've used CoinPlaza (https://www.coinplaza.it/) and FixedFloat (https://fixedfloat.com/) with LN. The latter has a very low minimum, it allows to exchange $1 worth of Bitcoin LN for an altcoin! It's a great way to try the LN network and see how fast it works too.
I've even used LN to pay for hosting.

Problem 1 is easy: use one of the wallets mentioned above. And problem 2 isn't a problem in LN: LN is perfect for small amounts!

That's still true indeed, so don't put in more money than you can afford to lose.

I'll give you a reason: this very post is what made me bump you to Legendary! How's that for motivation to install a LN-wallet? :D

Please post a QR-code with a 100 sat ($0.05, I'm cheap) LN payment request. I'll fund the first 10-ish I'll see (one per user of course). I don't want to turn this into a giveaway thread, but for testing it should be okay. If your request is valid for 24 hours I should see it on time (if it's only 1 hour I might be asleep).
I'm asking for a QR-code so I can easily pay from mobile without copying codes.

It's pretty high in rich countries too. As long as they don't allow LN withdrawals, I simply don't withdraw low amounts of Bitcoin, but withdrawing an altcoin to an instant exchange to turn it into LN works like a charm!

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I always said I only use LN for small amounts, and I'm okay with custodial for small amounts. But since Bitcoin went up quite a lot and $10 on-chain transactions aren't really worth the fees anymore, my LN balance is slowly increasing.

Let's give it a try then so here it is, QR code for 100 satoshis invoice :)

https://i.postimg.cc/K8X6qXfg/LN-invoice1.jpg



edit: Damn that was fast, 100 satoshis already received! Thanks @LoyceV, I really appreciate it. Now I can cross it off the bucket list! Anyone willing to do the same, post QR code with a few satoshis  invoice so I can try to do the same?

https://i.postimg.cc/sDncx5Qf/LN2.jpg

I made the payment from Phoenix Wallet, so it's not just "internal" on BlueWallet.

You can try a casino (https://lightning-roulette.com/). Deposit 5 sat, double it, withdraw 10 sat :D

I have not used the Lightning Network yet but will probably use it soon. I did try to open up a channel once.
I had downloaded and configured the Electrum wallet to open up a channel just when the payment was settled mutually.
So I'm just waiting for the next payment period to arrive when I will be opening up a channel and then start the Lightning Network payment on occasions.

One thing I would like to ask is many people are mentioning wallets I have never heard of before.
Is Electrum not so good for Lightning payments or are the other wallets too good for them ?

I haven't tried LN on Electrum. It requires you to manually open a channel, and after trying that on several wallets, I came to the conclusion that it's much easier to use a wallet that does everything for me.

So by the term "does everything for me" you mean it automatically opens a channel for you right ?
Even if it does it automatically, you would still have to pay the fees for opening the channel right ?

It depends:
BlueWallet is custodial, so you don't need your own channel. I think LN transaction fees are up to 0.3%, which is still very low (assuming you only use it for small amounts).
Phoenix Wallet opens a channel for you. They charge some fees (https://phoenix.acinq.co/faq) for this:
I kinda expect them to charge a bit more in the future, but that's just my speculation.

BlueWallet doesn't require opening an LN channel. As LoyceV replied, this custodial part of the wallet where the channel is already open on their side. You just need to transfer part of the funds from the main chain to top-up the LN wallet.

I have never used the lightning network.  There's lots of altcoin networks I've never used.  I don't find lightning to be any more special than any of the others.  I actually find it to be less honorable than most given the developer's attitude following the New York Agreement so it isn't something I'd rush to support.  I've also never had a single escrow request come in for Lightning funds, despite receiving hundreds of requests for other altcoins, leading me to believe that not many users are doing any real activity with Lightning.

Nobody follows the New York Agreement anymore.  That's the point.  People moved on and created a 400 billion dollar altcoin market.  The lost synergies have most definitely cost the Bitcoin market a ton of value, heartache, time spent bickering amongst each other, and splintered the real resource, creators of use cases, while making low value trades of BTC ridiculously expensive and replacing real world activity with the idea of hodling.  I don't know about you, but if I found Bitcoin today and it's main use was to hold and try to sell to someone later for more, I would have avoided it, as I don't invest in the Greater Fool Theory.  Wall Street is certainly embracing it as a way to generate management fees, so if that was satoshi's goal, to create another revenue source for the existing monetary system, congratulations, we did it!  People are even more excited about Dogecoin now for god's sake...  It's tough to say what could have been, but it's simple to say what became was not the original intent that had many of us excited to help change the world.  Do you think the New York Agreement would still have failed if everyone knew that in 2021 the Lightning network would be what it is today?



OK, I've never had someone ask me to open a Lightning channel for any reason, ever.  Escrow was just one example.  Come to think of it, I don't even think I've seen Lightning payments accepted for any goods or services on this forum ever.  This despite having the "altcoin pass" to post anywhere here while other altcoins do not.

I would not describe LN as an "altcoin network". LN is a 2nd layer above the bitcoin protocol. If you use LN, you are transacting in bitcoin. If you have an open LN channel and receive a LN payment for 0.001 BTC, you are cryptographically guaranteed to own that 0.001 BTC, the only difference is that the transaction is not settled on the blockchain, however, the risk of losing the coin is near zero because if your counterparty were to attempt to double-spend this transaction, they would be risking a near-certain loss of far greater funds.

The person who created and opened the payment channel is risking losing his whole deposit if he attempts to manipulate the off-chain transactions. The risk is not the same for the other participant in the channel because he didn't deposit his own coins. What you described will be a great manipulation prevention method when dual funded channels get implemented. That way, both parties can fund the channel and they risk losing their money in case of fraudulent attempts. 

"Double-spend" in this context sounds inaccurate. It suggests that the other party can freely create any transaction which is not the case since the funds are locked in a multi-signature address. Instead, the other party can perform an uncooperative channel close and broadcast an old state of the channel (an old commitment transaction). Such a transaction can be easily revoked by the other participant of the channel if they come back online before the locktime expires. Also, a penalty transaction can be broadcast if that happens.

You can read more about it in this blog post (https://blog.bitmex.com/lightning-network-justice/).


There is a risk even if you don't deposit your own coins. For example, when someone asks you to route their payment through your node then you receive some coins from them in one channel and you need to use some other channel to send the exact same amount (minus your routing fee). Now, if your node went offline and that person broadcast the previous state of the channel, you could lose money this way.

Also, both parties need to maintain a channel reserve, which is equal to about 1-3% of the channel's capacity. So, if you open a channel to someone, transact with them a couple of times and the other side ends up with the 0 balance. The other party can still lose money because they have to maintain that unspendable channel reserve on their side.

I would. I did. I’ll do it again because that is what it is. I don’t care what cryptographic magic or guarantees make users feel like Lightning is Bitcoin, it isn’t...  Anyone could make an altcoin with the same cryptographic guarantees, but nobody would call it Bitcoin and rightfully so. Do you think ETH’s Wrapped Bitcoin is also Bitcoin? Do you think USD loans given with Bitcoin as collateral is also Bitcoin? Are Casascius Coins bitcoins or are they holding BTC? What about leveraged BTC on exchanges or call options, are those Bitcoin too? Where is the line drawn? Just because Core maintainers developed it doesn’t give anyone the right to call it Bitcoin any more than CSW can say his altcoin garbage is Bitcoin. It should be pretty obvious that Bitcoin exists on the Bitcoin blockchain but I figured it was obvious that having a dick means you should use the men’s restroom, so maybe I’m just not with the times and LBTC identifies as BTC.

I've never used it, i don't usually do many small payments so i didn't need it.
But I maybe use it in the future if i'll need it.

When two people open a LN channel, they are having bitcoin held in a multisig address, and are also pre-signing a closing transaction in which each party will receive the same amount of bitcoin they had (less tx fees) when they opened the channel. As transactions done between the two parties of a channel, each party will exchange new signed transactions that will allow the other party to close the channel while receiving an agreed-upon amount of bitcoin. Having coin in a LN channel can be compared to having an unconfirmed transaction that was sent to you, except there are additional safeguards against double-spending.

The closest thing to bitcoin in your list is WBTC, and with WBTC, the end-user has to trust a third party to follow through with their obligations to allow for WBTC/BTC redemptions.

Yes, I am aware. Being that this is the B&H section, I wanted to minimize the technical details. See the bolded part of my comment:

You are using irrelevant examples. None of the things you named rely on bitcoin. For example shitcoin (WBTC) built on top of another shitcoin (ETH) has nothing to do with bitcoin. Some day the ethereum foundation could decide they wanted to spend all the WBTCs on their chain and they can do that easily regardless of what is locked on bitcoin blockchain. Same with BSV shitcoin.

On the other hand LN is built on top of bitcoin and relies on bitcoin and uses pretty much the same protocol without the "blockchain". Users are still in control of their funds and they rely on Bitcoin protocol. Maybe we can't call it "bitcoin" but it is not an altcoin either, it is a second layer built on top of bitcoin protocol to help the scaling.
And I believe that using a second layer is the only way to scale bitcoin but as long as we also increase the on-chain capacity.

I used it a few times a couple of years ago when the first Neutrino clients were released. Lightning App was the first wallet that I used. It was really buggy and I had a lot of failed payments. I think eventually they stopped developing the wallet which is odd because Lightning Labs entire existence revolves around the Lightning Network.

I also tried out Zap Wallet, Blue Wallet and tippin.me. Now that we're seeing new services that support lightning payments I am thinking of giving it another try. The new Moon browser extension (http://paywithmoon.com) is something I'm interested in trying next time I do online shopping.

You aren't the first one to suggest that the Lightning Network isn't Bitcoin. Casascius coins are Bitcoin as much as Electrum, Core, Ledger or any other implementation is Bitcoin. They are not, but they store your keys and allow for easy transfers of digital values. I can't agree with you that LN isn't Bitcoin, because as PrimeNumber7 mentioned, you are transferring BTCs over the network. More precisely, two parties are signing a balance sheet where they agree what each of the participants gets when it's time to close the channel. Although those transactions don't get broadcast on the blockchain, they affect what the final balance (in bitcoins) will be. 

No I haven't. I only read the whitepaper. And I'm unhappy with the pace of LN protocol development.

Sure we have the contract part of the protocol completed and ready to build (and there are at least two protocol implementations of it), but even the whitepaper itself notes there are a bunch of holes that need to be plugged.

For example, 8.4 Payment Routing:


We do not currently have a specification for this - every implementation is doing what it wants - and I think this it is absolutely necessary to have standard for this kind of stuff to resolve idiosyncrasies and quirks in what the description above has. (Eg: "The core Tier-1 routes can be online all the time" we haven't even defined what a tier 1 LN node is!)

[on a side note - even my ISP has crap routing, evident by my multiple attempts to load the Reply page and post this message: obviously we do not want to allow for that kind of behavior in LN.]

Another example of out-of-scope concepts is in 9.4 "Data Loss":


Neither how a data retention 3rd party would work nor how to store transaction data on a node redundantly has been defined, and quite frankly nobody can make such a service if they don't even know how the protocol would use it relative to their service. Not that I like the idea of a 3rd party intermediary in the first place - making data loss from lossy UDP connections extremely unlikely is much better.

Yet another unfinished business is in 9.2: Forced Expiration Spam, when someone expires many channels or activates too many timeouts at the same time. One solution is proposed for the former and two for the latter (the other is in section 10) but none of them are elaborated well enough to actually design a standard mitigation for this. And IMO this one is so bad that clients shouldn't be allowed to run in production without a patch to this.

I am not anti-LN (I also do not think it's an altcoin, but at the same time I feel that I can't call it canon bitcoin either since it allows for sub-satoshi payments) but frankly it should be clear that our work is not finished yet. We risk having different incompatible standards of LN implementations that segregate users to the same client if we don't have specifications for everything. Some anonymous guy was bankrolled by Square in tenths of BTC which is 2x its worth now to develop LN and we need to see some results because we aren't seeing any major additions. People are talking about increasing the block size as a solution for some of these vulns but this'll just introduce more drama. There are already companies like LN Labs who have their own view of how the network should be constructed and stuff like this is going to faction the network.

Let's make things simple.

- Mitigations for spam expirations and
- a proper, lossless, routing protocol for LN contracts

has to be standardized first, and maybe then we'll see some real adoption.

Then wallets need to make it easier for users to "move" BTC between mainnet and LN.

Then the majority of wallets and especially exchanges have to implement the protocol too (do not underestimate the influence of exchanges).

I just noticed jochen-hoenicke.de, my favourite Bitcoin fee estimate site (https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight) accepts LN donations:
https://loyce.club/other/johoe2.png
Big spender as I am, I paid for an hour :P

If you're new to LN, this offer still stands:

Yeah, I've been sending some lightning satoshi to the site since September last year for testing purposes (to try if my channel is the problem when I'm failing to send LN funds) aside from appreciation for being an early adopter of lightning.
Actually, it's the only site that I've found that accepts low value LN donations, so there's no other choice :D

I don't know if lightning donations to that site has been available much earlier than Q3 of 2020.

You can also "donate" anything from 1 sat to at least 2 online casinos. Or feed some chickens (https://pollofeed.com/#/) :D Last time I did that they charged 1000 sat, now it's 50 sat.

Thanks, apparently google search isn't reliable when it comes with "lightning donation" queries.
I have found a list but most of them are inactive or have very high minimum donation amount.

lol

How many of your Lightning Network payments fail to reach the intended receivers percentage wise? Do you consider it to be a cause of worry personally?

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Regarding donations via the Lightning Network. After a quick search, I found that the Bitcoin Development Fund (https://hrf.org/programs_posts/devfund/) accepts LN donations.
Wikileaks does the same, but I think they accept it in their shop, not exclusively for donations.

I'd say it's about 90% reliable in my experience, high because the other end of my channel is connected to what they call "Hub", aka a well-connected lightning node.
Most of those failures are from instant exchanger from time to time, specifically Fixedfloat, but I think it's their channels' capacity since they usually 'fix' it after a while.
In jochen's mempool stat and some users of custodial lightning wallets, I haven't experienced any payment failures.

The few times I've had a LN-transaction that failed, my wallet tells me I have to wait. That's the annoying part, I can't just try again instantly, the transaction is in limbo. That also means I can't just try another wallet to try another route.

I'd say less than 10% fails nowadays.

Bump

I have not used the LN before. But I have a few questions.
1. Apart from the timeliness of transactions procession, are there any other advantages of the LN?
2. The cost of opening/closing channels and the minimal cost of transaction fees, if summed together, will it not equate to the original transaction fee on the blockchain?
3. In terms of fraudulent transactions or transactions complications, if the channel is not closed, can the transaction also be tracked in the blockchain?

It is possible to build more layers on top of the Lightning Network. For example, Sphinx Chat (https://sphinx.chat/) takes advantage of the way LN transactions work and provides a decentralised encrypted messaging service.


The Lightning Network was not designed for one-time payments. You are supposed to use your channels multiple times before you close them. You have to pay an on-chain transaction fee for both channel opening and closing transactions. Since LN fees in most cases are extremely low, those channels will quickly pay themselves off if you use them more than once.


I am not sure if I understand your question correctly. Lightning Network payments are not recorded on the blockchain. Instead, both participants of the channel update its balance without broadcasting anything to the Bitcoin network. If your Lightning payment is routed through multiple nodes then it becomes nearly impossible to track your transaction. Once you decide to close your channel, the closing transaction will include only yours and your peer's address (or either of them).