How to start testing Payments Channels on the lightning network?

[miguelmorales85]

As many of you might now, yesterday the Lightning Labs blog published this new entry:

http://blog.lightning.engineering/announcement/2017/10/12/test-blitz.html

it is about The Lightning Network Desktop app being published to start testing. I have download it but it seems I lack the knowledge to start using it.

Can somebody give me a hand?

[TryNinja]

This version is current only running in the Bitcoin testnet chain. I would wait until they release a working version for the regular user that is probably going to come with a video or guide.

[miguelmorales85]

Hello all, just to update this thread.
I have just downloaded the file Lightning-linux-x64.tar.gz from the URL https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-app/releases and then executed Lightning.
Now I am testing the lightning network using testnet coins from these two faucets:

https://testnet.manu.backend.hamburg/faucet
http://tpfaucet.appspot.com/

Now we can use this post to share our first impression and doubts about the lightning network.

peace 

[FuzzyQuant]

It certainly looks interesting, I find it's a clever solution to the bottleneck issues on the network.

Every chain gets to keep its ledger functional, with channels taking care of offloading transactions and even serving as decentralized exchanges in a way.

They tested it between Litecoin and Vertcoin a few weeks ago, Charlie Lee tweeted about it, it was a splendid success, both communities were pumped haha!

I'm going to download the testnet client myself later tonight and give it a spin, so thanks for this update!

[miguelmorales85]

It certainly looks interesting, I find it's a clever solution to the bottleneck issues on the network.

Every chain gets to keep its ledger functional, with channels taking care of offloading transactions and even serving as decentralized exchanges in a way.

They tested it between Litecoin and Vertcoin a few weeks ago, Charlie Lee tweeted about it, it was a splendid success, both communities were pumped haha!

I'm going to download the testnet client myself later tonight and give it a spin, so thanks for this update!

hello friend, I have asked a question in Stackexchange so someone could explain us how to create a payment channel and start using this functionality. I wont say at this development stage that would be a feature for high skilled developers to test.

this is the URL to the question:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/60729/testing-the-lightning-network-with-desktop-app-ubuntu

If someone know the answer feel free to go there and here to comment how to create payment channels

peace

[Kakmakr]

Hello all, just to update this thread.
I have just downloaded the file Lightning-linux-x64.tar.gz from the URL https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-app/releases and then executed Lightning.
Now I am testing the lightning network using testnet coins from these two faucets:

https://testnet.manu.backend.hamburg/faucet
http://tpfaucet.appspot.com/

Now we can use this post to share our first impression and doubts about the lightning network.

peace 

Interesting choice to use a faucet for the testing, because it will be a good indication if micro transactions can be done fast and cheap with the payment channels. Do you have active users on these faucets to bombard the channel with micro transactions or are you going to simulate the network load?

Please come back to us with the results of your testing, because this is the one aspect of this technology I am looking forward to the most. < Cheap & Fast Micro transactions >