Concerns regarding SegWit + Lightning Network?

[nullius]

LN transactions do not “converge within a block and get settled blockchain”.  No record of them ever reaches the blockchain.

The only LN use of the blockchain is channel maintenance transactions, “people opening and closing LN channels” as you said.

Imagine that you and I make an agreement to trade between each other, and track our trades in a private ledger.  We create an entry in a global public ledger, devoting funds to our private ledger transactions.  When we’re done and we want to settle accounts, we record our respective final balances from our private ledger in the global public ledger.  All else in the private ledger stays there, nowhere else.

Of course here, our “private ledger” is magical.  It provides each of us a unilateral recourse to force the current balances into the global ledger, in case of cheating; so there is no counterparty risk.

Right, so the only on-chain activity that happens with LN is in the opening of a channel?

So I create a channel with 1 BTC, and now I can send instant cheap transactions out of that 1 BTC to any other open LN channel and none of that is ever recorded anywhere but it's still non gameable?

Close.  You can send and receive with a party with whom you’ve established a channel.  Well, what if you’re connected to Alice, and you want to send money to Bob?  If Alice has a channel open with Bob, then you can have Alice “route” your payment for a small fee—essentially letting Alice be a mini-Visa network for you.  These routes can be extended with multiple hops, potentially (but not necessarily) passing through large hubs; did you ever play “six degrees” style games?  Developers with a focus on privacy have also been working on onion-routing Lightning transactions; think of a Tor which routes money, instead of routing stream sockets.  (PSA: This message is posted through Tor.)

Conceptually, roughly, the reason why the system can’t be gamed is that you send Lightning payments by providing your counterparty with sufficient information to slam the channel closed with the updated balance, and claim all their money on-chain.  Cheaters can’t do much mischief, in those conditions.  That’s a sketch of the system’s general shape.  The Lightning whitepaper (PDF) provides a good technical overview of how it really works under the hood.

In any case, have simulation models of lightning network been performed to somehow predict what fees will be like once people all over the world are opening channels? like at what rate will people be opening channels? (from what I understand, closing a channel is irrelevant, on-chain transactions only happen when opening)

Let's say people load up $1000 bucks a month worth of BTC in a channel for the month to spend from... how do we know this will be viable and for how long?

On-chain transactions also happen when closing the channel; that’s how final balances are settled on-chain.

You ask an excellent question about simulations.  I would appreciate more information about that, myself.

A related question is of how many global users Lightning could handle, and what tps it could reach, with the current capacity of the blockchain.  Back of the envelope, if on average a channel handles x LN transactions, and an on-chain block can hold y transactions, then the upper bound of Lightning capacity (ignoring other Bitcoin use) is about x*y/2 transactions per average 10-minute Bitcoin block.  I recently came across a neat little chart giving some numbers here; sorry, I can’t seem to find it at the moment.  The numbers looked fairly impressive, even given my desire to see orders-of-magnitude scaling of the Bitcoin ecosystem’s transactional capacity.

In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

What about spamming the LN? as in attackers opening and closing channels just like they do now to spam the network with regular spam.

Well, spurious opening and closing of channels would simply be a matter of spamming the blockchain with spurious transactions.  We have that problem already.  I don’t immediately see how Lightning itself could be problematically spammed, given that it’s relatively low and symmetric in resource use (spam needs highly asymmetric costs), and channel participation is by voluntary mutual agreement; but I do not yet have sufficient Lightning expertise to say authoritatively that it couldn’t happen somehow.  Another interesting question I shall need to think about.  Any takers here?

[cellard]

On-chain transactions also happen when closing the channel; that’s how final balances are settled on-chain.

You ask an excellent question about simulations.  I would appreciate more information about that, myself.

Im asking mostly because Peter Rizun and Andrew Stone claimed on (I think it was) Scaling Bitcoin 2017, that they had simulations of bitcoin working with 1GB, or even 1TB blocksizes, and I was curious about what and how these "simulations" were being done and how legit are those.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJm2ep3X_M

If they can do simulations to test how the system behaves at a certain scale, I guess simulations with LN could somehow be done.

Also, I remember hearing about how you could make money by having an open channel with a certain amount of BTC (kind of PoS for BTC through LN). What are the details on this? (I guess it's the fee that you mentioned), how would the profit that you could make depending on your stake be calculated? and what are the implications of this game theory wise.

[RNC]

This will be the millionth time I have to respond to the same completely false and fabricated ideas. All of these "complaints" are false.

I would argue with you but you keep waving that moderator stick and banning people that won't agree or you remove the posts
so why not pop over to zero-hedge and try having a chat Andrew because I don't like fighting with one hand tied behind my back

Yes you have been reported for your bias moderation and should not post here if you cannot control yourself.

[RNC]

In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

That didn't take a page to make the point did it now !

[DooMAD]

This will be the millionth time I have to respond to the same completely false and fabricated ideas. All of these "complaints" are false.

I would argue with you but you keep waving that moderator stick and banning people that won't agree or you remove the posts
so why not pop over to zero-hedge and try having a chat Andrew because I don't like fighting with one hand tied behind my back

It's a tad presumptuous to claim someone is going to delete a post before you've made it.  How about you just make the argument and we'll decide if it holds any water.

In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

[nullius]

Code:

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         |   PLEASE DO NOT   |            :.:\:\:/:/:.:           
         |  FEED THE TROLLS  |           :=.' -   - '.=:          
         |                   |           '=(\ 9   9 /)='          
         |   Thank you,      |              (  (_)  )             
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In that regard, I look at Lightning as a huge force multiplier for any further incremental on-chain scaling improvements.  Of course, I also hope that Lightning itself will see further scaling improvements as it matures.  If it gives big, then I’ll want bigger—well, one step at a time!

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

You raise an excellent point, DooMAD.  I myself try to do what I can, e.g.:

I would also recommend that you steer clear of Coinbase altogether - they are a very shitty company and have banned my account for a rather trivial reason. Just don't use them. Get a private key and lock it in a fireproof safe, there's your vault.

This.  If you don’t have private keys, then you’re not using Bitcoin.  Coinbase is a bank.  Be your own bank.

Staking Bitcoin address? Well, sorry that I don't have a permanent one. All my Bitcoin addresses are given to me by exchange sites so there would be no point.

If you don’t control your own private keys, then you are not using Bitcoin.  Forgive me if I am underwhelmed by your opinions about the Bitcoin Forum.

However, please realize that the people who attack Lightning with such vitriol are not acting in good faith.  Ulterior motives readily explain why they spread malicious disinformation misrepresenting Lightning as if it “consists of banks” (quoted above), whereas they ignore the issue of exchanges which are banks in any sensible definition of the word.

Lightning is like an off-chain P2P private wire transfer network connecting people who adhere the Bitcoin motto, “Be your own bank.”  Settlements for Lightning-wire consist of on-chain, armoured-car transfers of bit-bullion.  This analogy is intended to be roughly conceptual, not technically rigorous.

(I also find it curious that known troll account #1801074 “RNC” dug up and quoted a post of mine from when I had just passed from Newbie to Jr. Member.  I can hear the gnashing of teeth over how e.g. there is now a Meta thread titled, “Who the hell is ‘nullius’ the guy is too smart around here :)”.  I am also involved in some long-term running flamewars over there.  But in Development & Technical Discussion, I try to avoid such things due to my respect for the moderator’s policy of maintaining a high S/N ratio for technical discussion.)

[LtMotioN]

Lightning is off-block and consists of banks that charge fees and many developers are running away from Bitcoin for this reason just as fast as they can.

That didn't take a page to make the point did it now !

I like how we can actually go onto Github and see these things ourselves; where the developers are that is. Below are some stats for the last 30 days.

Bitcoin cash Github
https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc/pulse/monthly 0 Merges 2 Proposals 6 Closed 4 New

Bitcoin Github
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulse/monthly - 101 Merges 61 Proposals 68 Closed 54 New

BitcoinXt
https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/pulse/monthly 28 Merges 1 Proposal 2 closed 1 New

Bitcoin Unlimited
https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimited/pulse/monthly - 27 Merges 7 Proposals 4 Closed 3 New

I welcome you to support your flavour of Bitcoin you wish to, I am happy we have freedom of association in cryptocurrency. But it's best if we can keep things to fact as much as we can. Looking at those stats it seems to me that Bitcoin is evolving rapidly. The misc forks seem to be getting much more development love than bitcoin cash too(although I think these other githubs work together on bcash to be fair, I'm not sure). The point still stands though.

I myself have begun reading the LN whitepaper, trying to understand as much of it as I can and I really love the technology, the only issue I have with it is offline payments. But I am sure that will be sorted out, Rome wasn't built in a day. And as for centralization; you would be very dumb to try make a lightning hub and run 100k channels funded with 50k BTC. You are begging to get hacked and the fees you collect would not justify the risk at all.

[RNC]

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

You have not taken the time to read the white paper and you are free to call lightning hubs what ever you like
but they charge both transaction fees and interest on BTC loaned out and the rest of the world tends to call these
"Banks"

Nothing about these bank/hubs is decentralised and if Bitcoin is so safe then maybe you won't want to read this
https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
or watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g




 

[RNC]

However, please realize that the people who attack Lightning with such vitriol are not acting in good faith.  Ulterior motives readily explain why they spread malicious disinformation misrepresenting Lightning as if it “consists of banks” (quoted above), whereas they ignore the issue of exchanges which are banks in any sensible definition of the word.

Lightning is like an off-chain P2P private wire transfer network connecting people who adhere the Bitcoin motto, “Be your own bank.”  Settlements for Lightning-wire consist of on-chain, armoured-car transfers of bit-bullion.  This analogy is intended to be roughly conceptual, not technically rigorous.

I tend to think that people who won't address the obvious truth have a vested interest and never act in good faith and the motto “Be your own bank.”
must also be printed on all VISA cards if this claim of yours was true when it comes to Bitcoin because fees + interest != “Be your own bank.” and
you can argue as much as you want but this remains a fact.

Truth is treason around here so I am happy to be called a troll by you.

[pebwindkraft]

You have not taken the time to read the white paper and you are free to call lightning hubs what ever you like
but they charge both transaction fees and interest on BTC loaned out and the rest of the world tends to call these
"Banks"

yadda, yadda, yadda - we already had other people posting about "banks" in exactly the same constructed,weird messages. At the end they somehow disappeared for good reasons.
Fundamentalistic behaviour in a religious manner - waste of time...

[RNC]

yadda, yadda, yadda - we already had other people posting about "banks" in exactly the same constructed,weird messages. At the end they somehow disappeared for good reasons.
Fundamentalistic behaviour in a religious manner - waste of time...

Comments vanish around here due to censorship and vested interests but Lightning fans are free to
argue with the white paper because this is where my facts come from so "yadda, yadda, yadda" that one
in search of a few more merits

[DooMAD]

I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.

You have not taken the time to read the white paper and you are free to call lightning hubs what ever you like
but they charge both transaction fees and interest on BTC loaned out and the rest of the world tends to call these
"Banks"

Nothing about these bank/hubs is decentralised and if Bitcoin is so safe then maybe you won't want to read this
https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
or watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g

While people have erroneously compared it to "interest on loans" in their attempts to understand all this, that's categorically not what's happening in Lightning.  "Loans" and "interest" imply fractional reserve and there's none of that in LN.  If that's the impression you were left with, perhaps it's you who needs to take another look at the whitepaper.

I don't see the relevance in your linked article about Craig Con-Man Wright.  There was no weakness exploited in Bitcoin itself.  Dave Kleiman was sadly just friends with someone he evidently didn't realise was a scumbag.  If you do business with disreputable people, no choice of financial medium will save you.  Whether it had been PayPal, credit card, crypto, precious metals, cash, or whatever, Wright still would have stolen it.  Also, none of that has anything to do with Lightning.

Still yet to hear any compelling arguments about how payment channels are banks.  I mean, sure, Bitcoin has definitely been marketed as a way to "be your own bank", but that's about as far as the analogy can go.  That phrase was always more to do with highlighting the importance of removing the reliance on centralised banks, not coming up with a highly elaborate and convoluted way of creating new centralised banks.  If you think that's what we're doing here, then no wonder you think we're crazy.  We'd think that's an insane thing to do, too.  So it's a good thing Lightning definitely isn't an attempt to create centralised banking.  Try to understand that, or if you still can't, then maybe just give it some time, wait and see.

Banks rely on creating money out of thin air to lend at interest.  Lightning will rely on source-routed payments of existing funds, with no magical money creation.  Completely different concepts.

[RNC]

While people have erroneously compared it to "interest on loans" in their attempts to understand all this, that's categorically not what's happening in Lightning.  "Loans" and "interest" imply fractional reserve and there's none of that in LN.  If that's the impression you were left with, perhaps it's you who needs to take another look at the whitepaper.

fractional reserve banking stopped working years ago with main stream banks and they no longer need money on deposit to print new notes but your argument is like
saying that because a street light is left on at night that it's not night time because you can see in the dark.

Interest + fees = Banks and not only is this centralized in the case of hub-banks going down but it is also off-chain so may I suggest that perhaps you
need to read the white paper again instead of letting them pull the wool over your eyes.

A Funding Transaction may have multiple outputs with multiple Commitment
Transactions, with the Funding Transaction key and some Commitment
Transactions keys stored offline. It is possible to create an equivalent
of a “Checking Account” and “Savings Account” by moving funds between
outputs from a Funding Transaction, with the “Savings Account” stored
offline and requiring additional signatures from security services.

It stinks of banks, face up to the facts.

[DooMAD]

While people have erroneously compared it to "interest on loans" in their attempts to understand all this, that's categorically not what's happening in Lightning.  "Loans" and "interest" imply fractional reserve and there's none of that in LN.  If that's the impression you were left with, perhaps it's you who needs to take another look at the whitepaper.

fractional reserve banking stopped working years ago with main stream banks and they no longer need money on deposit to print new notes but your argument is like
saying that because a street light is left on at night that it's no night time because you can see in the dark.

Interest + fees = Banks and not only is this centralized in the case of hub-banks going down but it is also off-chain so may I suggest that perhaps you
need to read the white paper again instead of letting them pull the wool over your eyes.

A Funding Transaction may have multiple outputs with multiple Commitment
Transactions, with the Funding Transaction key and some Commitment
Transactions keys stored offline. It is possible to create an equivalent
of a “Checking Account” and “Savings Account” by moving funds between
outputs from a Funding Transaction, with the “Savings Account” stored
offline and requiring additional signatures from security services.

It stinks of banks, face up to the facts.

Yes, apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times, there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact, there's no interest, there's no overdraft, there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed, there's no junk mail asking you to sign up for a credit card or to tell you about other products and services, there's no "know your customer" crap requiring every company you've ever transacted with storing and likely losing your personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers, there's no AML, there's no money printed from thin, there's no supporting a $1.2 Quadrillion Bankster Derivatives Market, there's no central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency, there's no PPI, there's no LIBOR, there's no hyperinflation, there are no "banker bonuses", there's no "too big to fail", there are no bail-ins or bail-outs.

But yeah, other than all that, it's just like banking.  

[RNC]

Yes, apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times, there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact, there's no interest, there's no overdraft, there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed, there's no junk mail asking you to sign up for a credit card or to tell you about other products and services, there's no "know your customer" crap requiring every company you've ever transacted with storing and likely losing your personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers, there's no AML, there's no money printed from thin, there's no supporting a $1.2 Quadrillion Bankster Derivatives Market, there's no central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency, there's no PPI, there's no LIBOR, there's no hyperinflation, there are no "banker bonuses", there's no "too big to fail", there are no bail-ins or bail-outs.

But yeah, other than all that, it's just like banking.  

Well most of this won't stand up to debate so lets start
"apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times"
Like taking 3 days to settle an account that is in dispute your talking about.
"there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact"
Bank/hub is down = no transaction, it not working
"there's no interest, there's no overdraft"
No overdraft (YET) but call it what you like but bank charges money for keeping BTC in the ledger and most people call this "Interest"
"there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed"
Banking hubs are a single point of failure, network down = bank holiday
"personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers"
Read today's news and then answer your own question https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
"central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency"
So printing fake USDT to then buy BTC must be the new way to go
"there's no PPI"
No instead we have fees that for all you know could reach as high as $50.00 per transaction like we have already seen

if it looks, talks and sounds like a bank, it's a bank and yes you have financial freedom with main stream banks and
can always move branch but that's not to say the system is like or is working is it now.

[ToTheMoon_XOM9IK]

Mathematical Proof That the Lightning Network Cannot Be a Decentralized Bitcoin Scaling Solution:

https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800

[pebwindkraft]

Mathematical Proof That the Lightning Network Cannot Be a Decentralized Bitcoin Scaling Solution:

https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800

As a big blocker it is not surprising critique on lightning, just that this was already discussed here

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2854596.msg29325656#msg29325656

 - no need to pick it up again.

[DooMAD]

"apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times"
Like taking 3 days to settle an account that is in dispute your talking about.

Assuming you aren't foolish enough to spend from anything but the most recent commitment transaction, there won't be any disputes.  Once the software is more user-friendly, chances are it won't even give you the option to mess it up. 

"there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed"
Banking hubs are a single point of failure, network down = bank holiday

Your logic is the only single point of failure here.  There isn't one single hub that controls everything.  There will be many channels.  Lightning will never "go down", just like Bitcoin itself never will.  You'll simply take another route through different channels and probably won't even notice.

"there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact"
Bank/hub is down = no transaction, it not working

Again, not an actual issue if you understand how it works.

"there's no interest, there's no overdraft"
No overdraft (YET) but call it what you like but bank charges money for keeping BTC in the ledger and most people call this "Interest"

There are no "banks" charging "interest" for "keeping BTC in the ledger".  Most people would struggle to fit that much wrongness into a single sentence.  If you genuinely want to gain an understanding of how fees and revocation in LN work (but I'm starting to suspect there's nothing genuine about your posts at all), there are plenty of resources available.  I strongly recommend stackexchange. 

"personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers"
Read today's news and then answer your own question https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/

What part of my earlier post did you fail to comprehend?  Either Kleiman and Wright had a joint business venture together, or Wright defrauded someone into giving away a controlling interest of the company after Kleiman died.  Whichever it turns out to be, it's completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand.  If you think Lightning works like a joint business venture or defrauding someone out of a controlling share in a company, I'm afraid there's not much we can do for you here.

Well most of this won't stand up to debate so lets start

Start what, exactly?  Making shit up?  That's not how you debate.  You need to educate yourself about the subject you want to debate first.  Then you might be able to make some valid points.

[pebwindkraft]

...
There are no "banks" charging "interest" for "keeping BTC in the ledger".  Most people would struggle to fit that much wrongness into a single sentence.  If you genuinely want to gain an understanding of how fees and revocation in LN work (but I'm starting to suspect there's nothing genuine about your posts at all), there are plenty of resources available.   

You seem to have your fun in responding to the fud.

I was always wondering, why lightning nodes should be banksters and centralization (cause they take fees! Chorus of outrage), where miners are not.

The ideology of these people is hard to be discussed at a non emotional level, and always has some Monthy Python elements. I stopped to argue with fundamentalistic people. They appear to be too many levels below scientific levels. And in these discussions they pull you down to their level of (non-)understanding, and beat you there with experience. Waste of time?

[DooMAD]

You seem to have your fun in responding to the fud.

I was always wondering, why lightning nodes should be banksters and centralization (cause they take fees! Chorus of outrage), where miners are not.

The ideology of these people is hard to be discussed at a non emotional level, and always has some Monthy Python elements. I stopped to argue with fundamentalistic people. They appear to be too many levels below scientific levels. And in these discussions they pull you down to their level of (non-)understanding, and beat you there with experience. Waste of time?

Sometimes things have to be confronted head-on before they snowball.  All it takes is a few impressionable newbies to come into the thread, read the FUD and go away with completely the wrong idea.  Then they go around the boards spreading the same FUD because they don't know any better.  Hell, I was probably guilty of it myself a few times in the past back when I was a newbie.  It's so easy for this sort of thing to get out of hand.  It can't be quietly swept under the carpet either, or people start to think it's some sort of conspiracy and post it even more.  It's best to catch it early before it becomes more serious, even if you have to be a bit blunt in the process.  And a little humour always makes it less of a chore for everyone else to read.  At the risk of sounding too cornball about it, it's never a waste of time to educate and inform.