Bitcoin Forum

As commented by Armin Van Bitcoin on Twitter “ https://twitter.com/LNstats/status/988406112406966273 ”, the mainnet has reached 7.000 active channels. Also, https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/ displaying present activity on lightning’s btc mainnet implementation exposes the network capacity of $156.5 mil which has been approximately 2 times higher in 15 days before. Moreover, there are more than 2.000 operating nodes accessible to operate transactions which cost lower than 1 shatoshi
Therefore, what can be clearly seen in the above statistics is the phenomenal growth of faith in Bitcoin as a payment method rather than financial investment or a store of long-term value. Awesome!

Edit:
Active channels: 8433
Nodes: 2228
BTC capacity: 20.948

This just shows you how high the demand is for cheap and fast global transactions. It is not unlikely that many of these channels are being run by the same people. The amazing thing for me is that despite the throttle and cap that are placed on amounts that can be used to fund these channels, people still use it for commercial payments. <It is still in a beta testing phase>  ::)

I predict that if everything goes well towards the end of this year, that we might see full implementation and unrestricted use in early 2019.  

According to their Tweet, the latest statistics is:
"Nodes: 1949 (1507 public nodes; 1485 nodes with channels)
Channels: 6784
Btc capacity: 18.378
219 channels opened, 130 closed"

Source: https://twitter.com/LNstats/status/988583328725991425

In comparison with 1 month ago: https://twitter.com/LNstats/status/977892860023500800

Toward that paces, I am quite sure that the mainnet shall easily reached 20.000 active channels in late 2018  ::) ::) ::)

i know it right, i love it tbh!

Well if the lightning network could possibly make bitcoins transaction faster and with a lower fee then the merchants will come rushing in. I have read many news about many business, establishments, merchants that are advertising that they will accept bitcoin and possibly they are waiting for the lightning network to take effect so that they can finally accept bitcoin as a mode of payment.

unfortunately the adoption, specially by merchants does not work that way. they don't "rush in". it is a slow process of them weighing options and and doing risk assessment and then adding bitcoin payment to their platforms.
as for lightning network it is growing fast because there are a lot of people interested in it but it is not yet complete nor safe to use it for serious purposes. that will also take time.

I would like to point out and update the median transaction fees for 6 major cryptocurrency networks on April 24, 2018 for your reference:
BTC – median transaction fee: $0.653
ETH - median transaction fee: $0.106
EOS - median transaction fee: $0.0136
BCH - median transaction fee: $0.0057
TRON - median transaction fee: $0.0001
LTC - median transaction fee: $0.0561
Although there’re presently cheaper alternatives to BTC in terms of on-chain transaction, the L.N could empower payments much cheaper than what are offered by most of the altcoins. Moreover, as i would like to emphasize here, L.N can help transactions to be accepted as valid immediately without waiting for the verification of a new mined block

Technically, at the beginning of project’s development, Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s father, imagined as a future possibility of lightning network to be built on payment channels. His idea is shortly described as the payment channel could be locked by related parties and their latest balances is the most recent transaction which shall be announced and stored in the BTC blockchain. In terms of payment channel, L.N allows its users to carry out their payment directly rather than announcing their transactions worldwide. Moreover, the related parties can effectively avoid expensive and time wasting interactions with btc blockchain by self –tracking their payments. In case of conflict happening which relates to balances on the L.N, the latest valid state recorded by parties to the blockchain could be sent by each party in order to automatically judge the fraud (if any)

not everything is about fees and how much you pay, it is about security of the network and the coin that you are using too. otherwise there are free coins like NANO (old name RaiBlock) that don't even have a fee.

It's tricky to track the progress of growth, as Lightning isn't easily measured in that way.  While one source may say ~1500 nodes, others may say ~2000.  At the time of posting, for example:

http://shabang.io/ currently lists 1560 nodes and 14260 channels
https://graph.lndexplorer.com/ says 1818 nodes, 5796 channels
and https://rompert.com/recksplorer/ 2133 nodes, 5864 channels

As such, all statistics should be treated strictly as estimates.

---

Indeed.  The current implementations of Lightning do seem similar to ideas Satoshi discussed privately (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2834752.0).  But, unless I'm failing at using the forum's search function, I can't see that Satoshi ever used the word "channels" here on the forum.  Slightly curious, but then it seems Satoshi had a habit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.msg10388435#msg10388435) of bouncing ideas off a select few people in private before implementing them.  

As you can see, the payment channel is based on the HTLC protocol. For more information, you can track the wiki link: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hashed_Timelock_Contracts. In short, the acceptor/ receiver has to confirm that he has accepted/ received the payment in a given time and the sender has the sum automatically without having confirmation from receiver. Moreover, L.N has its own code of committed transactions. They are are security despite a sudden conflict or other party turn into unresponsive. To better understand why L.n is safe, you can track this link: https://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=462

Regards

Isn't that because no one node is seeing all other nodes, so all these are seeing different subsets (presumably a large subset, but less than 100%)?  So it would be safe to conclude that there are a minimum of 2133 nodes, but how many more would be unknown?

Why would the shabang.io site list dramatically more channels than the other two?

I'm not exactly sure fi these stats really mean that each person runs it separately, but either way we all know there is huge demand for instant low fees transactions..

As tweeted by Rawtx: https://twitter.com/rawtxapp/status/994601198148730880 and Patrick Chugh: https://twitter.com/patrickchugh/status/994473207758499840 on May 10, 2018, Rawtx's Mobile Lightning Wallet is available at the moment. Let's see the Android app's features which are described in https://rawtx.com

- Send and receive testnet Bitcoins on blockchain and lightning network.
- Support multiple wallets.
- Each wallet is composed of 2 accounts: checking account and savings account.
- Checking account = **funds on lightning network**, savings account = **funds on blockchain**.
- Only 1 wallet can run at any given time, but we are going to add possibility of running multiple wallets at the same time.
- Pay lightning invoices by QR code or lightning invoice.
- You can generate lightning invoices.
- You can directly get testnet coins from the faucet.
- Show outgoing and incomings payments on the lightning network.
- Transfer money from checking account->savings account by closing channels.
- Transfer money from savings account->checking account by creating channels to an existing peer or by QR code.
- Displays lightning network information (number of nodes, edges, etc.).
- Show a list of nodes and filter nodes by pubkey or alias.
- lnd-as-a-service: runs [lnd](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd) in the background (can run 24/7 if the wallet is open) and you can access the instance even - outside the app by using the https certs and macaroons which are displayed in "About" screen.
- The battery usage seemed reasonable in our testings, but this is just a start and it will keep improving.
- Show lnd logs for debugging purposes.

There are some websites which support sending & receiving tesnet btc adopting the L.N, such as: htlc (https://htlc.me/), ACNQ (https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair-wallet). You can check and prepare yourself a suitable wallet/ payment method in the time to come

According to Bitcoinist.com and 1ml.com, "Bitcoin off-chain scaling solution the Lightning Network (LN) has reached a record $5 million in capacity as Bitcoin price rises fuel enthusiasm across the board.". You can visit https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-lightning-network-reaches-milestone-5m-capacity/ for more information
I am so excited to hear that news. What's about you?

That is great news. Just checked out the link that you mentioned and the numbers look great. The changes over the past 1-2 months are seriously awesome and the LN continues to gather momentum over time.

At this rate, I feel that the LN will come out of its experimental phase and go mainstream sometime next year.

Unfortunately, capacity is not the same as real usage. People still have to decide that they want to spend those 5 mln on microtransactions. No matter how good is the system if no one is using it.
Even if we are talking about future adoption then nothing can guarantee that someone would provide a better quality service (like for example a trusted bitcoin bank).

It feels slightly disingenuous to say that prise rises are fuelling enthusiasm when part of that $5 million figure will be coming from the price rise itself.  If the price dropped down again tomorrow, it wouldn't mean that fewer people were using it.  It's probably best to stick to using BTC to measure the overall capacity.  That will avoid any moving goalposts.

The growth has been phenomenal, but we still have a ways to go before the second layer is more user-friendly and transactions easier. I am looking forward to the release of the Neutrino lite client on mainnet.

those calling it a lightning bitcoin mainnet. or a bitcoin layer 2.. have no clue
those saying LN has great growth have no clue.

the sudden 'growth' is not real utility. but people 'buying channels' or getting free channels

one service offering "channel opening" is showing this as their tweet
https://twitter.com/lnbig_com/status/1112688601429614593
"Sum of all local balances from us: 618.75808533 BTC"

60% of LN balance belongs to one entity

I'm not exactly sure on the percentages, but assuming this is true for argument sake, it's quite bullish. It is recommended that people only dedicate small amounts to LN, and this LNBIG entity ignoring that shows how much trust there is in LN.

Overall, people seem to dislike something that works extremely well if you're connected to the right nodes. I haven't had one single transaction fail in the last few weeks.

The most expensive fee I had to deal with was 10 sats, where the rest is either free or 1 sat. There is no point in being so salty. If people get it working right, they find it useful, then it's all fine.

Works well?
It sux.
Has had no effect on the current txn bloat.
Yet again Segwit fails.

But give some credit, and consider the node-count in Lightning, which is more than the node-count of Bitcoin Cash, or Bitcoin Cash SV, or maybe even two of them together? 8)

Although, I would have to agree. The growth is good, but not that phenomenal.

windfury
you dont use LN, you dont understand LN. so why are you always trying to promote LN

LN is not bitcoin
not all nodes are individual people

check this out
https://1ml.com/location/us/va
"LNBIG.COM[LND-1], LNBIG.COM[LND-2],LNBIG.COM[LND-3],LNBIG.COM[LND-4],LNBIG.COM[LND-5],LNBIG.COM[LND-6],LNBIG.COM[LND-7],LNBIG.COM[LND-8],LNBIG.COM[LND-9],LNBIG.COM[LND-10],LNBIG.COM[LND-11],LNBIG.COM[LND-12],LNBIG.COM[LND-13],LNBIG.COM[LND-14],LNBIG.COM[LND-15],LNBIG.COM[LND-16],LNBIG.COM[LND-17],LNBIG.COM[LND-18],LNBIG.COM[LND-19],LNBIG.COM[LND-20],LNBIG.COM[LND-21],LNBIG.COM[LND-22],LNBIG.COM[LND-23],LNBIG.COM[LND-24],LNBIG.COM[LND-25],LNBIG.COM[LND-26],LNBIG.COM[LND-27],LNBIG.COM[LND-28],LNBIG.COM[LND-29],LNBIG.COM[LND-30],LNBIG.COM[LND-30],LNBIG.COM[LND-31], LNBIG.COM[LND-32],LNBIG.COM[LND-33],LNBIG.COM[LND-34],LNBIG.COM[LND-35],LNBIG.COM[LND-36],LNBIG.COM[LND-37],LNBIG.COM[LND-38],LNBIG.COM[LND-39],LNBIG.COM[LND-40],LNBIG.COM[LND-41],LNBIG.COM[LND-42],LNBIG.COM[LND-1],

Well, i promote LN because it's one of the logical math in the near future which I wanna solve myself.
You're right, i and most of btc enthusiasts don't or even never use LN but I wanna deeply understand what it really is and how it works
Thank you for your information. I will take it into my consideration

Why the lies? Plus who's promoting? I'm only informing newbies that there are no "IOU promises to pay tokens" in the Lightning Network, which is a fact.

But newbies, listen to franky1, accept it as "the truth", then do your own research. Or not. Haha.

I have never used lightning network, because so far I didn't feel the need for it, and because I was too lazy to learn how to use it. If the network is too centralised, it's a serious risk, but the fees people are talking about are amazing, and perhaps the former issue would solve itself if more people joined the network.
Bitcoin might be getting bullish again, and the fees are rising. If they get as high as they did in 2017, I'll give the lightning network a try. And others probably will too, since it seems to tackle the scalability issue better than anything else offered so far.

It's been pretty phenomenal to watch. People were getting so excited to get involved. As crypto should be! mass adoption is near

I think now is the best time. It's still well ahead of any serious adoption and already usable in many ways. You can set up the node almost for free (raspberry pi parts) and learn basics as you go. I seriously think that it's the best time to get immersed in this topic.

Shameless plug, here is video that shows the process of setting up the node: https://youtu.be/77BBQWg1n8w

This is great news. Even though large entities hold a larger percentage of the channel still this means that people are now turning to using bitcoin as a currency not for exchanges only. It just makes sense for me that this entity is getting big. It cost money to open a channel.

To all newbies. Listen to him and franky1, and take everything they say about Lightning as the truth. Believe everything.

If you have more questions, ask them in this topic, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4792622.0 8)

Memefy them. 8)

so after many months of your nonsense. your 'proof' that LN is not pegged IOU is some quote of someone..

well again, do some actual research. and look into unconfirmed payments in millisats.
goodluck trying to counter argue that millisat based contracts are bitcoin confirmed funds.

i gave you many chances to update/correct your lack of knowledge. but it seemed you ignored the hints
so one more chance. hint: learn about millisats.
its the first stepping stone outside the echo chamber you have become stuck in.. please dont fear taking steps outside your echo chamber, the big wide world of reality is not as scary as yo may think.. enjoy learning new things

No, because all the answers that the newbies will actually learn are from people who don't spread misinformation, and disingenuous techno-babble from people who have been losing with their narrative. Sorry, but Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, or Craig Wright has lost.

But newbies, listen to franky1. It's also the other correct path to real learning. 8)

windfury, why have you decided to be a social drama queen. wouldnt it atleast benefit you to actually learn about the tech for once.
learn by USING, learn by reading CODE, checking stats
if you only want to learn via social drama, than your failing yourself

again do some actual research
you spend too much time with this social drama stuff that its becoming obvious your just on this forum to troll people and just shout "wrong coz [persons name]" without actually using any experience, code, stats, data

You can call me whatever you like, but nothing will change Bitcoin history, and Bitcoin facts.

There's no social drama. It's Bitcoin history. But newbies, I encourage you to listen to franky1's version. 8)

i talk about millisats, i shown proof that LNbig hosts alot of the 'balance' which shows its not a large consumer base but a corporation faking growth by bloating its own balance into the network

and all windfury can do is talk about social names and social stuff. no code, no stats, no features.
so yea windfury you love social drama not bitcoin facts

now go spend some time learning about bitcoin, not social drama. it will help you

Lightning network mass adoption can make the difference between crypto as a standalone payment alternative and nothing more than pure speculation.

I just hope to see lightning network implemented in many projects in the near future.

You posted very interesting figures on median transaction fees of BTC, ETH, EOS, BCH, TRON, and LTC (6 coins). Among 6 coins, fees of Litecoin is cheapest.  :)
However, if you can, please give me your hands on two things:
Firstly, can you give me the source where you visited and get those figures, please.
Secondly, can you post additional figure on the median transaction fee of Dogecoin, please.

I agree. I'm the stupid one. Newbies, you won't learn anything from me. But, you will learn many things from franky1. He's a coder, he reads all the code. He also did his own due diligence on the Lightning Network, and had a profound discovery that Lightning transactions are made up of IOU pegged promises to pay tokens issued by the network.

Believe him. Thank you franky1 for opening our eyes to the truth.

8)

Newbies, whatever happens in your Bitcoin journey depends on you. If you believe the Earth is flat, then it is flat.

Bitcoin lightening payment is fast and cheap when you already created a lightening channel but the on-net transactions come with a very high fee, the lightening network is still very young and a lot of us can not understand the process easily on like the old method of bitcoin transaction. I try creating a channel and uptil now I finding it hard to understand how it works, any one willing to give a more elaborate explanations.

more social drama rants from windfury about believe personality a or personality B.
pretty shameful he misses the point of DYOR(do your own research)

if only he spent more time researching and less time just naming names to follow/avoid. he too would know more about bitcoin and less about social drama

that said.
lightning hasnt grown much due to real utility/adoption. its justmore sybill stats just to try faming it up for sponsorship

No more drama. I WANT the newbies to believe in you. I WANT the newbies to take everything you post as "simply the truth".

The irony is you want them to "DYOR". 8)


Ok, your opinion, but should that stop the LN developers from developing what they want? Why?

seems you believe in "trust" of third parties too much. i believe in self control.
meaning all them influencers who spam about how great LN is without actually using it, are putting the people that 'trust' them at a disloyal position of believing in something due to social drama rather than factual things.

its way better people pull their socks up and do their own research and actually try things at low/limited risk or atleast learn about things, run scenario's before promoting/using it at full risk

LN has been buzzworded about for atleast 3 years. and still it is not ready to do what was promoted. thus it has delayed any bitcoin progress because bitcoin devs are waiting for LN instead of innovating bitcoin. thus putting a disadvantage on bitcoin and holding it back.

the more people know that LN is not as advertised the more we would hopefully get pressure on devs to get back to innovating bitcoin and seeing LN as just a side service and not as 'the solution'.. because even after 4-10 years LN wont achieve its goals realistically. thus this wasted time is just benefiting no one.

LN devs should carry on with thier side service if they want. but having bitcoin devs sitting on their hands and promoting LN as the roadmap forward benefits no one

I also believe that the full implementation of this technology should take at least 4-5 years. Then we can draw some conclusions. It is too early to talk about the pros and cons.

No one group is capable of "holding it back".  If you believed one group were able to control Bitcoin in such a way, surely you would just admit to yourself that Bitcoin had failed and move on to another coin.  Bitcoin was designed in a way that it wasn't susceptible to co-option, so if what you say is true, then it sounds like we should scrap the whole idea and go back to the drawing board, because it hasn't worked.

That is, of course, assuming anyone actually believed that devs were holding Bitcoin back.   ::)

bitcoin is not an AI of self writing code. it requires devs to write code to progress bitcoin or to not progress it by them devs not innovating bitcoin.

one group of devs are holding it back, even YOU admit one group dominate the codebase

YOU have been the one excited that core can code what they like
YOU have been the one excited that core can implement mandatory activations as they 'dont need permission'
YOU have been the one also highlighting that now core is dominant there is no need for community vote(consensus)
YOU have been loud about how bitcoin is not a democracy
YOU have been the one that loved that they banned nodes (example: using version bits 6 and 8)
YOU have been the one that after all the apartheid tricks implemented by said group that bitcoin is now core dominant brand where other nodes are just 'compatible'(not part of the main relay/protocol)

you pretend the network is diverse(flip) and open to other brands but as soon as other brands want to change the rules YOU see them as attackers(flop)

you can try pulling out your social drama quotes where you flip. but you also have you flop quotes too saying the exact opposite

its this group that made the 'roadmap' in december 2015 and have been following it like sheep for 3.3years now where the only main changes to bitcoin were to make bitcoin LN compatible

I believe you are trying too hard to discredit all the hard work the Lightning developers have done. Plus my debate was not about "trusting" third parties, it is "why should anyone remove anyone's ability to develop applications on top of Bitcoin that don't even alter anything in the consensus layer?"

If you don't want it, don't use it, or you can criticize it, but you have no right to impose your own opinion towards others.

One group dominates because the users run that code.  If users opted to run different code, obviously one group wouldn't dominate.  And the only response you have in your sad little arsenal is that all those users are sheep, but if they were sheep, they might believe the lies you're telling them.  So clearly they are capable of thinking for themselves.  Other dev groups need to step up their game and offer users something they might actually want.  You still think that users want larger blocks, but evidently you're wrong about that.  If people wanted that, they'd run code to make it happen.



Prove to me that they can't.  You seem to be attributing some sort of moral implication to my words, as if it's somehow wrong or bad for me to say that.  You can call it right or wrong, but I'm just telling you how it is.  Any dev group can code what they like.  And I'll keep saying it.  Because it's the truth.  If I point that out that abundantly plain and clear truth, you have to recognise that's not something anyone can use to besmirch my character.  If anything, the opposite is true.  It tarnishes your character to say that Core can't code what they want.  That's simply not true.  If you say devs can't code what they want, then you are a liar (or possibly just an idiot, I still can't tell).



Users ran the code, so the effects of the code are enforced whether you like it or not.  Again, this is a plain and simple fact that you cannot overcome.  It's your permission that isn't needed.  You don't matter.  Get over yourself.



We already have consensus.  Every time the network churns out another block, we continue to have consensus.  If we did not have consensus, there would be forks.  Each of those forks can then form their own new consensus.  We don't need your consensus because you think consensus means "permission".  You genuinely believe you can sit there running different code and somehow prevent us from running the code we want to run.  It doesn't work like that.



Because it isn't.  Democracies look like the never-ending Brexit shitshow.  You sound like Theresa May who wants MPs to vote on her crap proposal for the dozenth time and everyone has to play along with this total farce until they can reach agreement.  It's ridiculous.  In Bitcoin, we can simply ignore your crap proposals.  We don't have to give them a second thought.  We don't have to agree.  We can just leave you behind and move forward without the people who don't agree.  Again, prove to me I'm wrong about that.  You literally don't understand the first thing about Bitcoin because you just want some democracy/voting/permission bullshit.



Disconnected.  Not banned.  Disconnected.  Stop lying.



The fact that you would even dare to compare something as horrific as Apartheid to your butthurt over people running code you don't agree with just goes to show what an utterly reprehensible creature you are.  Please go to a country afflicted by Apartheid and compare the plight of those people with yours.  Go ahead and tell them how you perceive this supposed injustice of compatible nodes equal to the injustice they face in their daily lives.  You are disgusting.

---

But... but... but... democracy/voting/permission/etc?   ;D

We all have to agree or no one can do it.   ;D

You just need to research more.   ;D

He's literally never going to get it.  At some point it's just going to reach the stage where someone changes his title to "wrong because franky1".

Indeed, people would like to pay using their crypto safely and without any worrying, and as you said, it's not about how much fees you should pay, so I think a lot of people who use cryptocurrecies are aiming to have more stable and fast transactions safely. In the market, there are a some cryptos which have so fast transactions (i.e: ripple), I just didn't know about NANO coins, that's seems so good if it haven't fee.

oh doomad
learn consensus
its a vote that everyone should be part of.
not where before the deadline a event occurs to dismiss an opposition to then fake majority
you really need to learn about real consensus and how the byzantine generals theory is solved (not bypassed)

then you will learn how core got control and learn why core are now holding bitcoin back with thier 'conservative' roadmap THEY(not the community) decided on. and how core believe LN is the solution and thus twiddling their thumbs.
the only main changes to bitcoin have been to make the gateway to the lightning network and to implement things to make bitcoin network less appealing to help promote LN even more

---

as for your other waffle defending cores actions to become dominant

1. core dominate not because all users/majority chose core. infact only 35% chose core.
core dominated because before the consensus, CORE implemented mandatory apartheid campaigns. i would say the word segregation, but you would get confused.
you again were completely excited and happy that core implemented the aparthied to get the VOTE COUNT needed to activate segwit

2. its not about writing code on napkins, github or as a tattoo on their arm. its about writing code that was designed to bypass consensus to trojan in segwit without needing wide community opt-in.
thats right the community didnt need to opt-in to get segwit activated. you know this (should you finally decide which flip or flop narrative you want to dedicate yourself to)
if any other brand wrote mandatory consensus bypass they would not get the same excitement from you. you would treat them as attackers and you would flip to argue that other brands should suddenly stick to just using consensus naturally.. thats the point you have brand bias. you dont care about the bitcoin network, your loyalty is to a dev group.

3. again users didnt need to run the software. even the devs will tell you about their 'inflight upgrades/compatibility and apartheid tricks. yes the core devs OWN fibre meaning they control the top of the relay layer tree that controls what gets relayd out from most pools. meaning by the time it reaches normal random nodes the data is already biasedy rejected/not relayed thus when normal random users get is already selective. same with the DNS seeds. core devs own and manage them too, so again controlling which new nodes are acceptable to the network for users to connect to. all without random users needing to independently do anything

4. again for emphases. if any other brand dared try the apartheid causing bans/rejects and disconnects you would be screaming REKT them, attack, trojan group

because core now dominate the network because opposition were thrown off (yep the opposition didnt give in and just stay on bitcoin) again for emphases. the opposition did not suddenly decide to support core.
but because the core devs pushed out part of the community. your waffle about how 'users chose to run core' holds no merit

now with all that said, now the network is core dominant core are following their roadmap of mainly playing with bitcoin just to make it LN compatible and doing what they can to make LN the network the community should us for daily spends.
oh as for your theresa may reference. it seems its you that loves the conservative buzzword.

now try to actually read what devs admit happened, check the blockdata, check the code. learn about the network and how core bypassed certain things to trojan in segwit to then get LN stepping forward.
oh and please dont flip flop. its not healthy for you and just makes you look foolish
EG flip bitcoin isnt democracy/consensus/voting
flop bitcoin neds users to run the code

reality. core didnt need majority users to run the code, they just needed to remove users not running the code and also control the data 'compatible' users received via fibre/dns seeds. the events of 2017 were not community led/controlled, but core controlled

So rather than even attempting to counter a single point I made, you just repeat all the same incorrect assertions and outright lies you've made dozens of times before in a slightly different way.  Your entire argument hinges on the absurd notion that nobody on the Bitcoin network likes what Core are doing, but still continue to run their code anyway.  You're insane.

You keep telling people that Bitcoin doesn't work in the way it clearly does and instead works in the way you imagine it does.  Then, at the same time, you somehow complain about the way in which Bitcoin does currently work (because it actually doesn't work like how you imagine) and why you think Bitcoin would be better if it did work the way you imagine.  It demonstrably doesn't work like you imagine and never will.  Now clean out the mess between your ears that you have the audacity to call a brain and get back to us when you have a clue.

go do some research. stop wearing the core defense cap. its not attractive on you

Woouldn't dare comment on ongoing discussions re Core and LN as I doubt I've got the technical balls for it, but I wonder if OP should update his statistics from little under a year ago. Would be really interesting to see a comparison of the past 12 months, against a backdrop of dipping confidence supposedly, and lowered hype surrounding Bitcoin.

From 1ML (https://1ml.com/statistics) and from BitcoinVisuals (https://bitcoinvisuals.com/lightning):

Active channels: 38,694 (1ml) | 34,982 (BV) - about 400% YoY growth
Nodes with active channels: 4231 (1ml) | 4,191 (BV) - about 95% YoY
BTC Capacity: 1,063 (1ml) | 1,065 (BV). - about 10,000% YoY

Below quoted for reference:

worth noting yet again
one group LGBIG have 42 nodes that have ~500 channels and 30btc capacity each
meaning if all LGBIG nodes wre online.. alone they would account for

~2100 channels
~1260 capacity
(yes i know they are not all online at the same time, but it just puts it into prospective how one group is sybilling the numbers)

Well, we can't say that for sure

As there are no stats revealing if all or most of these payment channels are actually used for transacting and to what degree. Not to sound like a wet blanket or whatever, but at least some of these channels may be people just testing the waters. So unless we get solid data on real use of Lightning Network for value transfer (i.e. how much money actually gets sent via LN), the sheer number of active nodes and open payment channels doesn't tell us much on its own (this has been a matter of debate before)


That proves the point

Somewhat agree. It's not worth as much as it appears, that's something I can agree on. But it's not worth nothing. Bitcoin started from one node, and even when it grew ten times, it was probably 10 nodes that all at least knew each other, if not belonging to the same entity.

I know also that if I wanted to go online and look for LN-enabled services, I would be hardly spoilt for choice. So other than people carrying the torch and doing their best to push the numbers, actual stuff I could reliably use LN for still isn't here yet... but the point is, for someone like me, I didn't even think we'd get this far at this point of time.

I know what we need in order to push through

We just need the repetition of the dire situation which happened by the end of 2017 with people having to pay insane fees like 50 dollars per transaction. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and if we live up to that (again), people will quickly find LN quite useful and convenient which they refuse to do now simply because most are lazy and don't mind paying a little more at the moment (but 50 dollars would be over the edge, of course)

people paying $50 wont
firstly those with fiat wont buy bitcoin to then open a channel to spend bitcoin. because its gonna cost them $50-$250 to set up LN(50 for one channel but upto $250 for multiple channels to have a somewhat modicum chance of payment route success)

people end up just ignoring bitcoin entirely and noticing they can use the same LN system but with litecoin or other coins for much cheaper.

infact people will start to think crypto in general should be avoided if it starts costing foolish amounts just to use it

There's an age-old adage in the Russian language

Which essentially says that an expert is like a gumboil as his expertise is one-sided only. More specifically, you don't take into account the overall effects and consequences of the expansive LN application in a case like this. It would be like an avalanche or Ebola virus spreading exponentially and bringing fees down to their knees (again). We just need them to rise initially to start off this "resonance cascade" (a tipping point of sorts)

Lightning network really is a work of art and people aren't being appreciative enough of all the hard work that went into it, this is a complete game changer for the bitcoin ecosystem.

not a work of art. even the devs are shouting out the risks. seems maybe you should use it before promoting it.

here is a hint. a company called fold done a pizza campaign recently. 1500 users tried it but only 150 succeeded.
this 150 was not due to issues with fol not following through with pizza or not having balance to pay pizza company. but because LN and its routing system had issues so transactions could not even complete

might be worth you doing some research
lastly LN is not a bitcoin unique feature. many coins can use LN and so its not something that will 'promote bitcoin adoption'
as others have already highlighted . pushing bitcoin fee's up to promote LN, does not help bitcoin. it infact helps promote altcoins to be the onramp in and out of LN

It's not a defense on Core. It's the community who came in consensus on what we consider Bitcoin. Unless you are trying to sneak the "Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin" narrative again. Because there is no debate there.

Yes.  And it's also a defence of all developers being equal.  Each client survives on its merits.  We currently have a level playing field, but because some people are of the mistaken opinion that one dev team have an advantage, they propose hamstringing that dev team and handing a natural advantage to others.  If effect, creating an imbalance of power.  I'm beginning to suspect that's their goal.  Fortunately, I don't think anyone here is foolish enough to buy into that idea being preferable to what we currently have, though.

Look at it this way, Roger Ver, with the help of Jihan Wu, and Peter Rizen and some developers did a hard fork, and split from the main chain. What's the consensus on what the main chain and minority chain is?

Some people believe "the real Bitcoin is Bitcoin Cash", because "Satoshi's vision". ::)

1. the community did not decide using a fair commmunity inclusive consensus. actually read some code, speak to devs and look at blockchain data.
before the activation even occured(consensus) core devs had code to disband parts of the community, which they did. they didnt need the community. all they needed was nodes controlled by matt corrola's fibre network to control what blocks the relay network gets. the core devs to change the dns seed node listings to only include certain nodes. and also barry silberts NYA agreement to sway the laggers that were 'compatible' that sticking with cores roadmap would allow them to spend coin. in short it didnt need 10,000-60,000 nodes/community users. the adoption of segwit and the following of core was done with far far far far less involvement of the community and far far more involvement of the group of devs and those siding with the devs.

2. cores mandatory code came first not bitcoin cash. also cores implementation triggered before bitcoin cash. bitcoin cash didnt even make an independent block for themselves for hours AFTER cores mandatory splits kicked in. so it was core striking first not the other way round

3. but seeing as you refuse to look at code/stats/data and only interested in social drama here is some. did you know that bitmain was on the NYA. did you know blockchain.info and bitpay(Rver gets money from) is barry silbert funded and peter rizen works for coindesk(a barry silbert company). thus bitcoin cash was just a false option and fake choice and inevitably a worthless altcoin used just to benefit core for social drama

4. as for you echo chamber response of if not a fan of core people must be team bitcoin cash with your suggestion that im trying to sneak in some bitcoin cash narrative. i have nor ever will be team bitcoin cash. so dont even try playing that game

5 i think its time you stop circling the foolish things being scriptd to you from your buddies. as you not gaining any traction nor supplying or able to supply any counter argument bar "wrong because X persona said it"
just try for once to actually do some research about what actually happened. and try to avoid the social drama rhetoric your buddies inform you of, because its not helping you.

D'awww, does poor widdle fwanky think someone didn't play nice?  Diddums.

Tell us how you're going to make us meet your definition of "fair" going forwards.  Oh that's right, you can't.  

Bitcoin doesn't acknowledge or recognise whether you think it's fair or not.  Bitcoin is only what the users instruct it to be.  Those users continue to decide with every single block that this is what Bitcoin is.  You've been crying about it for a couple of years now and you can keep crying for a couple more, because you don't have the numbers behind you to make the slightest hint of difference.

doomad.. sober up
you keep on thinking that i am writing code and trying to change bitcoin under some big campaign
1. show me code i wrote
2. show me the campaign of numbers you think i dont have enough of

what you try to do is try to suggest i am campaigning an opposition and change of state. when the reality is i am just correcting the misinformation that a certain group spouts out about how they pretend to be a fair open system
now if the brand/team was not core that done the exact same things core did. you would be the first in line to support correcting the mis information. you would be happy that people are pointing out the trojan and consensus bypass methods used to gain control. you would actually be salivating and taking every opportunity to announce how a brand achieved control unethically. but because core done it, you just want people to shut up and not talk about it
you cant counter the stats/code/devs admissions. so all you can do along with windfury, is just keep circling the social drama games of "wrong coz franky said it"

now go try to learn some stats/code/data and stop wasting time on your social games. if you actually started to care about the bitcoin network and not care about a certain brand. your motives and messages would differ compared to your current rhetoric

as for A mthod of a fair consensus. hint not my idea, not me making any campaign, but just informing of what consensus is
1. no mandatory aparthied/segregation pre consensus vote activation ( meaning no faking the vote)
2. require nodes to actually opt-in rather than sheepishly being 'compatible' (meaning no faking the vote)
3. understanding consensus is consent of the majority. meaning there is a majority and a need for majority consent
4. not faking a majority by removing parties pre count

the whole point of bitcoins important solution that was so revolutionary in 2009 was that it invovles uniting parties to an agreed consensus. NOT throwing out parties until all thats left is a smaller group of agreement
thus if a brand wants to change the network rules they need to provide a proposal of new rules that the REAL community can find unity around. without needing to just make up random rules and just push out opposition to force the rule into affect

anyway. here is another hint that will save you circling.
devs ADMIT their actions. they dont need you or windfury to pretend things didnt happen. so you again are wasting your time being a core defense script reader when core dont need you defending them.
so just try to spend more time caring about bitcoin and not a team of devs. and you will start to have a something worthy of spending your time discussing

I said tell us HOW, not "make a fantasy list of improbable things you'd ideally like to see in Bitcoin".  How would you get the rest of us to run code supporting any of that?  Even if you could convince someone to write code to enforce all four points (and I'm highly doubtful that you ever will), we could all just keep running the code we currently run to completely ignore all your bullshit changes and keep doing all the things we're currently doing to piss you off so much (and it's fun to watch, so I'm personally in no hurry to see it change).  The only way you can have your sad little wishlist is if other users want it.  You need to find people who share your beliefs.  This is what you are incapable of comprehending.  None of your tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy crackpot lunacy changes any of it.  If people on this network wanted the things on your basket-case wishlist, they would run code to enact it.  So you need to find a network where people want what you want.  Clearly that isn't this one.  Now go be a pathetic crybaby loser somewhere else, please.

We're doing Lightning.  Decision made.  You can't stop us.  No one cares if you think it's fair or not.

goodnight doomad.
your dream of consensus meaning if users dont like it find another network. shows how little you know about consensus and the thing satoshi solved in 2008
by the way heres another hint. its users finding agreement is called commUNITY not comSLITTY

see you one day when you wake up

and then you add in the fact that amazon will now be accepting payments which is pretty huge! I am excited to see what happens over the next couple months

With lightning bitcoin manner we can expect more mass adoption of crypto in the market we can see online and offline merchants accept bitcoin positive news for crypto currency

franky1, instead of making us read all that long, confusing dribble, please go straight to the point. Because as far as EVERYONE is concerned, Bitcoin Cash is a contentuous hard fork. Ask Peter Rizen, even he will admit that.

To clarify, "Amazon" are not accepting payments via Lightning.  Someone has made a third-party plugin for people to use on Amazon's website that will enable Lightning payments to be made.  Amazon are not directly involved at this stage.  It's a small but crucial distinction.

lightning network is still in the testing phase, more development is lacking for its implementation in commerce, but it is quite positive that the network is growing

instead of even replying. how about
learn about bitcoin
learn about LN
reply using code, dev quotes, data, stats. and not just social drama about people that are not writing bitcoin protocol rules

P.S the event of august 1st which gregmaxwell calls a bilateral split (2 sides split) was a contentious fork event. but remember the data found on the blockchain shows it was core devs code that triggered the event. as for mentioning bitcoin cash. thats just you trying to meander the topic away from talking about bitcoin and LN. because you still dont have the knowledge of bitcoin and LN to talk about it.

your more then welcome to reply about bitcoin and LN but atleast keep it in context by actually including code, data, stats that can actually back your assumptions. without your replies just sounding like "x because y said it"

but to again jump back to your meander. cores segwit was also contentious. both sides split below a majority threshold

Totally agree with this point

It is like someone claiming that a famous sports car manufacturer (think Lambo here) started to sell its cars for crypto, while in reality it is only some obscure car dealer offering a cryptopayment option to their buyers (in order to get some free publicity and advertising). Looks like pretty much the same as with this "Amazon"

And while we are at it, does anyone know a resource which gives stats about real use of payment channels, i.e. not their number or the number of active nodes like what 1ML does but how many bitcoins that they have actually pushed through? I've seen a site where they offered such stats for a fee, but I'm not sure how legit they are (and whether it is possible to track this number at all)

LN's over promises were that it meant to be more private than what blockchain coins are. so if there are stats available for LN, it shows LN is not as private as thought. i kinda laugh that 1ML shows the country and IP addresses of nodes. it is funny

also, because HTLC's are not actually tethered to blockchain coins via any fixd network punishable rule. people can open HTLC and have an agreement with a counterpart without the tether. infact as thor turbo proves and even some other scenarios prove, that the numbers of balance can be faked

infact recently i done a private scenario with a friend. i set the funding as a pair of shoes(sneakers) where by he agreed a value $60(denoted as millisats of btc(1100000000msat)) so we made a HTLC of $30(550000000msat) each and we set it so that balance would be left open to be used for others to route(we would not spend for personal use) and whichever directions routes went, when all balance leaned to one side, that party gets to own the shoes.

yep no tethered bitcoin blockchain tx, yep routes actually went through us and yep who owes what changed. yet the agreed 'settlement' was a pair of shoes not btc even though the 'value' in the HTLC supposedly represented btc

You act like you know more, but you tell us there are issued "IOU pegged promises to pay tokens" in Lightning. There are none.

Were you also with the "only miners should run full nodes" camp?


Before we debate, let's first ask Greg Maxwell to clear that up. I will PM him. Plus I brought up Bitcoin Cash as an example of a contentious split from Bitcoin, and it will always be brought up again.

This is great as the transaction cost is reduced and will encourage people to accept it more.

Msats are a token that exists within LN and only LN... bitcoins network does not recognise masts.
if you even tried to broadcast a LN htlc to the bitcoin network, it would not relay, it would not enter mempool and it would not get added to a block to confirm.
LN htlc's are not balances of actual bitcoins. bitcoins never leave the bitcoin network
if you cant understand that then you will never understand the pegging that occurs. and you will just circle around in your own absance of information like someone sticking head in the sand. which is why i keep saying to learn about this stuff so you dont just keep this whole circular empty thought you keep having.
for your own benefit, learn this stuff


as for the IOU. again because its not real btc because its not even guaranteed that a HTLC will convert to a blockchain CLTV and because theres no guarantee that the bitcoin CLTV will unlock to settle out in the amounts alloted in comparison to the HTLC.. the HTLC is not a final guaranteed settled fund. its just a agreement of who owes who what. thus iou agreement

lastly i was not the one that was "only miners should run full nodes".
my words were
the importance for average joe that only needs to check 1tx a day/month compared to a retailer/business or pool. means that
catering full nodes should be more aimed at those that actually need to be full nodes the most. such as businsses, rgular spenders and pools.

the fact that most average joe users are not technical and not interested in whats good or bad code, they would run 'compatible nodes' just because of lame reasons
if they have internet issues and are not in actual need to validate transactions regularly, they would benefit themselves from running lite wallets
the fact that with most average joe who does have limited internet they are not actually helping the network by throttling up 100+ connections. they can easily benefit their own phone bill and also the data transfer rate to other peers by only connecting to 1-3 nodes if they stayed running a full node.

trying to have bitcoins network on the whole stifled and deburdened of utility purely with the lame mindset that bitcoin should remain at low capacity for the odd small user that doesnt NEED to be a full node. it displaces, annoys and hurts the many businesses, users and pools that could take advantage of a better utility/capacity network thats not stifled.

its much the same argument as saying EA games should not release HD online shoot-em-ups because some users are on dial up. but then promote another company to handle HD games and then try to sway the majority of the community to deburden themselves of using EA games

Whatever you say franky1.

Moving on.

On the topic of your "Bitcoin bilateral split" comment, Greg Maxwell replied, but I was disappointed he didn't post his reply in the topic. But he said what you said is "gibberish", and to quote the man,

though ur digressing the topic to be about bitcoin cash. because you cant counter argue LN. nor counter segwit activation (gateway to ln thus related to topic)

1. segwits mandatory bip came first. gmax does not counter that... he just tries to talk about unrelated bitcoin cash stuff. not answering who triggered the actual mandatory bilateral/controversial split. thus even he cant counter who instigated pushing segwit into activation via the consensus bypass (controversial fork/bilateral split)

2. funny thing is gmaxwells meander that does not addrss the consensus bypass part. talks about how bitcoin cash had to change something which then made it then unable to do PoW... hmm... yet bitcoin cash, last time i checked still does PoW, and from what i can see the history still exists. so i guess gmax is wrong.. again the blockchain data of bitcoin cash shows they still do PoW and still have block history.

again this is where you need to do your own independant research and stop trying to get info from your echo chamber
you have not proved a controversial split didnt happen. you have not proved that cores segwit didnt trigger a controversial split first. you have no proven anything. all you have done is side step the issues, not provided a counter and just opened up another meander.

now please go back to basics of learning the topic and actually provide data, stats, code and such to back up the topic

but while we are on your unrelated meander. to just put it to bed lets address a point. increasing the blocksize by saying 'anything under 4mb is acceptable' 'anything under 8mb is acceptable' means 1mb is acceptable and does not make history disappear.
however code such as luke JR's 300kb blocks of only accept 300kb would risk killing off all historic blocks 301kb+ if not coded a correct way

---

anyway. unless you want to talk about LN try not to reply to this topic. but if you do, atleast show you done some research

LN does NOT require tethering to a blockchain. (research thor turbo)
the tokens in LN are not recognised by blockchain networks (research msats)
there is no community consensus so 2 private parties can make private malicious agreements(fractional reserves)
HTLC's dont settle funds they're just temporary agreements of who OWES who what, meaning iou (research CLTV vs htlc)

once you learn the flaws of LN. you start to see the stats of 'LN's growth' are not real or accurate. as shown by proving that LNBig and bitrefill done alot of sybil noding/channeling to fudge numbers

Indeed.  BCH had to make a few important changes.  First and foremost was updating their network magic, so that they would not be following the BTC chain, then they needed the EDA to compensate for the lower-than-anticipated hashrate their chain had. 

Either way, it takes two to tango.  But I'd personally still argue that BCH announced their fork prior to agreeing to change their network magic, which is why Core responded by implementing the code they did.

while the social dramatists continue thier meanders
core devs announced a segwit mandatory controversial split in march, the announcement set the date for august first

as for bitcoin cash. well that was announced way later..
anyway i can see the foolish tactic doomad and windfury are doing to detail the topic so far by getting people to not take about LN flaws.. but thats windfury and doomad failure

may they finally stop wasting time with their social drama meanders and instead learn about bitcoin and LN.
there is no need for them to reply about arguing why they shouldnt have to learn.
there is no need for them to reply about arguing why they shouldnt have to understand LN/bitcoin
there is no need for them to reply about arguing about me

all they should do is learn about a topic they want to reply about, use actual details stats, cod related to the topic. and if they want to meander off topic, they should just avoid the reply button altogether. if they dont like other people. they can hit the ignore button

---

reigning the topic back ontopic, yet again

LN does NOT require tethering to a blockchain. (research thor turbo)
the tokens in LN are not recognised by blockchain networks (research msats)
there is no community consensus so 2 private parties can make private malicious agreements(fractional reserves)
HTLC's dont settle funds they're just temporary agreements of who OWES who what, meaning iou (research CLTV vs htlc)

once you learn the flaws of LN. you start to see the stats of 'LN's growth' are not real or accurate. as shown by proving that LNBig and bitrefill done alot of sybil noding/channeling to fudge numbers

You asked for words from developers and that's exactly what you got.  You then claimed the developer was wrong, but the only reason you could possibly thing Gregory Maxwell is wrong in what he said is if you lack the technical understanding to comprehend his words.  You clearly aren't in any position to comment if you cant understand why he's right.  BCH definitely changed their network magic to avoid tangling with the BTC chain, but that didn't happen right away.  Read the code.  

And if you're still banging on about UASF, that code was forked from Core's repository and may have shared some contributors with Core, but UASF is not an official Core build.  That's why it has its own repo.  As I've pointed out to you in no uncertain terms on multiple occasions.  I know that doesn't fit with your pathological need to blame Core for everything, so I'm sorry that reality can't be more accommodating for you.

wind fury did not even get greg to counter the whole controversial split debate about segwit (gateway format for LN thus ontopic)which windfury said he was gonna message greg about.
greg just waffled about other stuff to do with bitcoin cash(unrelated to segwit or LN or bitcoin)
thus windfury failed

just getting greg to reply, even when his reply didnt even talk about the issue. makes gregs reply meaningless
so trying to just use the fact that greg bothered to reply is not proof in itself. its just another meaningless meander offtopic

secondly to address your flip flop about it. there was a 3 trick game at play.

you incessant attempts to first say everyone loved core, yet stats showed only 35% agrement in spring 2017
you incessant attempts to first say there was no controversy.
you incessantly say that core devs didnt write code and how it magically wrote itself and users magically just had it
you incessantly said how core are free to write whatever they like and activate what they like without permission

you incessantly attempt to say there was only one person opposition it (yea you kept acting as if im the only opposer)
you then incessantly said how its not a vote, not a consensus(more no permission waffle).
you then incessantly said how it needed users to opt-in(flopping about just the bip148 part)
you then incessantly said how its not an opt in due to compatibility.
you then incessantly said how its ok for users to ban nodes

and now you cannot deny that core fans and core devs wanted the mandatory activation first. you not even gonna counter that. but talk instead about stuff gmaxwell did not even mention (who struck first)

seriously. stop with the social meanders and flip flops. spend more time learning about bitcoin and LN

P.S need you forget your own excitement about how core devs wanted to force nodes of service bit 6 and 8 off the network BEFORE segwit even activated. or will you now flop and deny that trick tactic was used too

now can you pair of meanders go do some research.
i was talking about LN and its issues until doomad asked for proof how core devs were causing issues for bitcoin.
which doomad has been incessantly trying to make the topic about since. to avoid negative LN conversation.
windfury wanted to meander about bitcoin cash social drama.. again as an attempt to avoid talking about LN flaws
seriously you both lack the basic knowledge of LN and i see no point why you both even bother talking in LN topics.
how about instead try learning it first before replying

Sorry, I am a newbie. Is that same Lighting network that has been launched on Amazon? if so - awesome, guys! ;D

uh? I can't figure out what you're talking about here. No changes were made to Bitcoin due to BCH.  BCH went from secret to done very quickly-- in something like two weeks? it wouldn't have even been possible to do much of anything in response in the available timeframe.

Maybe you're thinking of segwit2x?  We did add some code to more aggressively disconnect peers with incompatible consensus rules to reduce the risk that bitcoin nodes would end up partitioned by s2x nodes pretending to be Bitcoin nodes esp in the event that S2X never got any blocks (which was, in fact, what happened).

Believe what you like, but whatever misinformation, techno-babble, gaslighting dribble you repeat, there are no "IOU pegged promises to pay tokens" in Lightning. They are signed transactions by both participants of the channel that haven't been broadcasted and included in a block on-chain yet.

An IOU is something issued. There are no such issuance in Lightning. But newbies, listen to franky1, and welcome to your long hard Bitcoin journey.

I saw reference to the Bitcoin-ABC client in pull 10982 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/10982) with a post from deadalnix saying that they would be rolling out a new magic, so I naturally assumed it hadn't been done when the BCH fork was announced.  I understood that 2x was the main reason for that pull request, though.

::)

Plus franky1, when the man you quoted to claim that he has posted something and meant it one way, has said that what you made it mean like, is gibberish and that it wasn't what he was saying, then we should believe the man, not you.

That was disingenuous of you to use his words to trick us.

you used his words. but you didnt even include a screen shot of full context conversation. he could be calling your answers the gibberish nonsense. the fact that you wrote something which is just basically saying he replied to you has no proof about the question you were trying to counter.
also if you read code, check block data and stats. you will see the clear truth. i know you love your social drama. but try to learn something about bitcoin and LN

Well that doesn't change the fact that YOU were using HIS words, and that you were trying to make everyone believe that Greg Maxwell was the originator of your "bilateral split" misinformation.

To quote the man, "it's gibberish".

For context,