Great News For Bitcoin! Lightening Network First Payment Was Successful!

[eaLiTy]

Everyone is waiting for the lightening network to be implemented on bitcoin,it will take some time to get it implemented in bitcoin,it will solve the transaction issues we have at the moment but i doubt we will find some new troubles in the mean time,either way it is a good news for tech savvies so that they could work on implementing this to solve many issues.

[filharvey]

That's positive news, but still not enough to cheer the market back up. I don't want to sound negative but even when Lightening Network is fully implemented, it'll be too late for bitcoin to win all the investors who already moved to support new cryptos. New cryptos are implementing features that are missing from bitcoin such as anonymity and private transactions. Bitcoin is already outdated. I'm not saying that bitcoin will die. I'm sure bitcoin will stay forever however, it'll slow down gradually until another coin takes its place as the main crypto-currency.

Certainly not.Bitcoin had been the ultimate choice of most of the investors.The only drawback it was facing was the high transaction fee.Most of the investors had been longing for the lightening network to get activated.This is now really a great news.This would once again make investors to return to bitcoin once again proving it to be the king of crypto currencies.

[7788bitcoin]

There is some progress towards easing network congestion, but the question is whether it is too little too late. Segwit has been implemented, but there seems to be no reduction in transaction fees. I just hope that the migration to alt coins is not irreversible. There may be a certain inertia amongst crypto users to shift back to Bitcoin.

If you are talking about the network up gradation these implementation are not in full effect,we are waiting for the lightening network to be implemented in bitcoin and that is the main upgrade everyone is looking forward as it will reduce the network fees and network delay we are facing at the moment,is it too late,it might be ,but implementing it will take time,you cannot switch it just like that.

[Anti-Cen]

BTC was under testing for years and look at the mess we have got today not that this was not
planned from the word go.

20,000 miners are not needed, too little cake to go around and no one trusts the development
team anymore or the miners so forget the Lightning Network because it is a sticking plaster that
uses hubs and these are banks or called gateways on the Ripple network.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g

Fees are at crazy rates, fix the max fee in code and cull the miners because we have far too many
all wasting energy and as such offer no useful service and I won't even get into the 51% takeover bullshit
that has been floated around by snake oil salesmen.

We are the market, we are speaking so fix the fees or BTC will keep going down, it's that simple

[brontosaurus]

Sup guys!

I think this is a very important piece of info as we all kinda doomed bitcoin, but this might be a breakthrough.

The lightening network is a technology basically adds a layer of tech that can be a scaling solution for bitcoin, its supposed to prevent the high fees and slow transactions, with the same level of security.

A few days ago the first payment using the lightening network was successful, it was made to pay a phone bill.

The payment was INSTANT, and the fees were ZERO.

Here's the full article - https://www.coindesk.com/payment-provider-bitrefill-runs-successful-lightning-transaction-test/


Bottom line - the lightening network could solve most of the problems with bitcoin - if it does, its a huge step forward in terms of bitcoins scalability, meaning itll be easier to get mass adoption and use BTC for day-to-day transactions, and generally will be great news for the whole crypto section.

The much anticipated update is finally here. This improvement will surely eradicate the long lasting scaling problems of bitcoin and blockchain. The last attack on bitcoin when the fees aggrevated to around 900 sats/byte has really ended the utility of bitcoin as a currency. With this network finally bitcoin might be of use as a means of settlement rather than just an asset.

That's positive news, but still not enough to cheer the market back up. I don't want to sound negative but even when Lightening Network is fully implemented, it'll be too late for bitcoin to win all the investors who already moved to support new cryptos. New cryptos are implementing features that are missing from bitcoin such as anonymity and private transactions. Bitcoin is already outdated. I'm not saying that bitcoin will die. I'm sure bitcoin will stay forever however, it'll slow down gradually until another coin takes its place as the main crypto-currency.

Certainly not.Bitcoin had been the ultimate choice of most of the investors.The only drawback it was facing was the high transaction fee.Most of the investors had been longing for the lightening network to get activated.This is now really a great news.This would once again make investors to return to bitcoin once again proving it to be the king of crypto currencies.

That isn't really a drawback for the investors. High transaction fees doesn't affects them. Investors focus on returns and volatility of any coin. Investors still invest in bitcoin. Its the investors who have taken it to 19K despite of such high fees and time. Now what we are seeing is just a correction and nothing else.

[Anti-Cen]

it is a good news for tech savvies so that they could work on implementing this to solve many issues.

I am one of these "tech savvies" and made a good living writing systems over the years
so pull your eyes away from the flashing lights on the slot machine and listen.

The software architecture of BTC was never going to scale, this would had been known from
day one and CPU war between miners is not doing anyone any good, stupid plan all along
as is proof of work to stop spamming.

From a technical point of view the wheels are falling off the wagon !

[vv181]

Well that is really a great news, it will probably fix some problems that Bitcoin has but the problem is the implementation, lets say they already released the mainnet of lightning network and implemented it on the Bitcoin network, all wallets and exchanges should support it first for us to experience this cheaper and faster transactions and I doubt that wallets and exchanges will immediately update their service with lightning network. Just like segwit, it was released and implemented 4 months ago but still only few Bitcoin wallet/exchanges supports it.

There is some progress towards easing network congestion, but the question is whether it is too little too late. Segwit has been implemented, but there seems to be no reduction in transaction fees. I just hope that the migration to alt coins is not irreversible. There may be a certain inertia amongst crypto users to shift back to Bitcoin.

Segwit should have improved the transaction fees and transaction confirmation times, but due to lack of adaptability of the segwit many people didn't feel the difference about it.

[Anti-Cen]

That isn't really a drawback for the investors. High transaction fees doesn't affects them. Investors focus on returns and volatility of any coin. Investors still invest in bitcoin. Its the investors who have taken it to 19K despite of such high fees and time. Now what we are seeing is just a correction and nothing else.

I see from your footer that you are into gambling so lets cut the crap about investing and call it by it's real name "Gambling"

The miners took a gamble when BTC was shooting up that they could increase the fees because they have become a monopoly
or maybe you would like to explain why we need 20,000 full nodes just to perform 7 transactions per second  

This correction is what you get when you have a nice car and the roads or network don't work, you sell your car so fix the
roads (fees) or the price will go down because people are jumping out all over the place.

"Let the trend be your friend" is a term you would have come across had you worked in finance

[darkangel11]

The lightening network

Now, is the Lightening Network

Everyone is waiting for the lightening network

longing for the lightening network to get activated.

Guys, do even know what you're reading? It's lightning, like that spark in the sky, not lightening, unless you're hoping to be enlightened by it  

We were waiting for this for months. I think there has been a thread about it last year, but people forgot about it when the whole big block quarrel has started and then we had all that drama with BCH and another drama with 2x... Lightning is a great solution because it doesn't interfere with BTC but works around it. I hope this will bring more people into Bitcoin and raise confidence that we have lost recently when the fees rose to $50+

[Anti-Cen]

Segwit should have improved the transaction fees and transaction confirmation times, but due to lack of adaptability of the segwit many people didn't feel the difference about it.

I am moving over to Segwit and it should be faster for now but it still won't go much faster as the
block-chain starts too fill up.

BTC does 7 transactions per second and my guess for Segwit would put it at about double the speed
under the same conditions so in other words they can double the size of a piston (Blocks) in a steam engine
but it's still a steam engine.

Where segwit will pull ahead is because the team is more radical and they understand that they will
need to move over to a petrol engine or better still an electric engine and I don't think they will let the miners
piss all over everyone like the BTC development team has done.

Read up a bit on Ripple and how the protocol works, peek at IOTA Tangle and then see HashGraph
that is not used yet and is under development and then you will understand why I am talking about
old steam engines with Segwit and BTC

[Anti-Cen]

We were waiting for this for months. I think there has been a thread about it last year, but people forgot about it when the whole big block quarrel has started and then we had all that drama with BCH and another drama with 2x... Lightning is a great solution because it doesn't interfere with BTC but works around it. I hope this will bring more people into Bitcoin and raise confidence that we have lost recently when the fees rose to $50+

So if ledgers on this BTC network keeps a balance of BTC then whats trading on Lightning ? Hens teeth maybe or
is it IOU's for BTC and if so then who lends out the IOU's to be settled at the end of the month.

Boy this reminds me of VISA card and bankers dreaming up money just like they do already and I am not alone
in saying this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g

PoW and mining solved one problem and created ten more and this is just were we are heading with
lightning but instead of Bob talking to Alice we have Chow Ming mo and Rabdub Remead thrown into
the mix and they don't talk the same language or share the same tokens.

"confidence " will be restored to some degree when the miners stop mugging us and if too many exist
in the CPU War BTC has created to make a living from just mining coins then some will have to go, like
90% of them because we simply don't need 20,000 to process seven transactions a second

[darkangel11]

I watched the video and I partially agree with it. Mainly with what was said about Gavin and Blockstream. I knew there was something off about this guy back when there was this whole theory about his involvement with the CIA.
Anyway, according to the author of the video we should have raised block size long ago, but we didn't... or maybe we did through BCH? Is that the solution? IS it a better solution than the lightning network? IMO it's certainly better than being stuck in 1mb blocks with unbearable fees. I would be willing to accept the nodes as a temporary solution to reduce the network load until a better solution is found.

[Anti-Cen]

Anyway, according to the author of the video we should have raised block size long ago, but we didn't... or maybe we did through BCH? Is that the solution? IS it a better solution than the lightning network? IMO it's certainly better than being stuck in 1mb blocks with unbearable fees. I would be willing to accept the nodes as a temporary solution to reduce the network load until a better solution is found.

If you fixed windows then would you like un breakable glass or was you a doctor then would you like to see the world
without a need for doctors.

The dev team can fix this one in hours but are enjoying the profit too much and writing a new system
but any two bid 1st year software student could work out that BTC would not scale and that you don't need
20,000 nodes to service just 7 transactions a second that are only 250 bytes of input data.

VISA has 1/100th the CPU power BTC network has and can preform 25,000 transactions a second
and Ripple can scale to that too but BTC cannot and VISA do it without splitting the ledger so what does
that tell you about the Lightning sticking plaster. 

[Anti-Cen]

This is great, but you shouldn't expect that Lightning will soon get released, there's still a lot of bugs across its implementations, some compatibility issues and other problems. And since we are dealing with money, it's not acceptable to  release a half-baked software - every bug can potentially cause millions of dollars worth of damage. So, the answer to a very popular question "When it will be released?" is - when it will be safe enough. Everyone should keep in mind that Bitcoin is a software in very active development phase, and open source development is usually slower than centralized development.

You make them sound like professional software developers and i will even agree with the last part " slower than centralized development."
but lets look at the facts.

1. BTC was never going to scale to mass adoption.
2. Good code would allow block size switch and size change in seconds
3. PoW wastes electrical energy
4. Mining = CPU war
5. 20,000 full nodes to do just 7 trades a second is madness
6. Lightning poor model to integrate, sticking plaster and is too late

As a software developer for 35 years (Back to ZX 48k Spectrum) with various letters after my
name I would be quite interested in entering into a debate over the points I have raised and
then lets see if anyone is swimming without any trunks on 

[crypto_Butterfly]

It looks a great news at first sight but definitely we need to see more carefully. I believe time will tell us if its really that great or just a fake hope.

[HeRetiK]

[...]

Read up a bit on Ripple and how the protocol works, peek at IOTA Tangle and then see HashGraph
that is not used yet and is under development and then you will understand why I am talking about
old steam engines with Segwit and BTC

[...]

VISA has 1/100th the CPU power BTC network has and can preform 25,000 transactions a second
and Ripple can scale to that too but BTC cannot and VISA do it without splitting the ledger so what does
that tell you about the Lightning sticking plaster. 

I don't know about HashGraph, but every other solution you propose is based on using a central entity to manage transactions and prevent double-spends. That's a trivial problem that has been solved decades ago. That is not the problem that Bitcoin has solved.

What Bitcoin solved by applying PoW to the double-spend problem is something wholly different. It seems wasteful, it looks weird, but it's the only meaningful and secure solution so far that allows transactions without relying on a central entity.

One can argue about whether decentralized currencies are worth it, but arguing that centralization is what would help cryptocurrencies scale is approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

So if ledgers on this BTC network keeps a balance of BTC then whats trading on Lightning ? Hens teeth maybe or
is it IOU's for BTC and if so then who lends out the IOU's to be settled at the end of the month.

[...]

PoW and mining solved one problem and created ten more and this is just were we are heading with
lightning but instead of Bob talking to Alice we have Chow Ming mo and Rabdub Remead thrown into
the mix and they don't talk the same language or share the same tokens.

[...]

Lightning Network is not "trading" anything. It's not a different language or a different set of tokens. It's Bitcoin scripts handling bitcoins. No new tokens that get conjured out of nothing. No IOU's that come with counter-party risk. Just Bitcoin.

[khaled0111]

The lightning Network will not affect the cryptocurrency market immediately. We will wait for months before we can see the impact of LN on Bitcoin.
Devs are doing their best, but it is always up to users whether to support it or not.
I am certain that the lightning network will be massively adopted since all users are suffering from high trasactions fees.

[pixie85]

The lightning Network will not affect the cryptocurrency market immediately. We will wait for months before we can see the impact of LN on Bitcoin.
Devs are doing their best, but it is always up to users whether to support it or not.
I am certain that the lightning network will be massively adopted since all users are suffering from high trasactions fees.

It should be up and running in 4-6 months. By that time we may be deep into a bear market and the whole distribution of wealth will change. Those who were too late for this month's rally will have another chance and the current holders will have a chance to show their dedication.
I also agree with you that it's going to be adopted. Forks were dividing the community and lightning offers us a resolution without the need to make a new coin.

[Anti-Cen]

I don't know about HashGraph, but every other solution you propose is based on using a central entity to manage transactions and prevent double-spends. That's a trivial problem that has been solved decades ago. That is not the problem that Bitcoin has solved.

Welcome and at last someone who's skills extend past slot machines so lets do battle friend!

I like the concept of centralization even less than you in the way it's being presented with banksters calling the shoots but we can have
a decentralized system of coordinators without having to bend over to know who. See Ripple and how trust is established (Yes Ripple is banker central, i know!)

What Bitcoin solved by applying PoW to the double-spend problem is something wholly different. It seems wasteful, it looks weird, but it's the only meaningful and secure solution so far that allows transactions without relying on a central entity.

Wow, hold on a second because we never needed PoW in the past and tight loops are to be avoided and spamming is avoided
by transactions fees anyway and what about the waste of energy so it now costs 90KWH of electric to process 250 bytes of data.
Reeving engine with car out of gear is crazy

One can argue about whether decentralized currencies are worth it, but arguing that centralization is what would help cryptocurrencies scale is approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

See above comment but let me add to this because virgin nodes starting up uses DNS to get a list of well known nodes anyway
but you will also note that DNS serves cannot steel coins (Maybe they could thinking about it again) so the white-paper broke
it's number one rule anyway and is government blocked domain names on one server then others would take over like OpenDNS

Lightning Network is not "trading" anything. It's not a different language or a different set of tokens. It's Bitcoin scripts handling bitcoins. No new tokens that get conjured out of nothing. No IOU's that come with counter-party risk. Just Bitcoin.

OK if all the BTC token are in the ledger, you know the thing that's all blocked up then me sending you $0.01 must be a fake
BTC because to change the balance in the official ledger would result on blocks getting bigger and this fake is a token, cannot be original
so we need hubs (See documentation) and someone must trust that I am good for this money sent over a channel .............................

Hubs are banks (Semi trusted) and use IOU's so lets not play with words, no one lends anything for free and will charge for the speed too

Your comment makes no sense and something must be moving between Alice and Bob plus this video contradicts you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g

[HeRetiK]

I like the concept of centralization even less than you in the way it's being presented with banksters calling the shots but we can have
a decentralized system of coordinators without having to bend over to know one. See Ripple and how trust is established

Even a decentralized system is only as strong as its weakest link if it has a single point of failure. See Ripple and how tokens are issued.

The consensus protocol itself is quite interesting and I'm sure that LN has borrowed some pages from it (assuming there is no prior work on which both protocols are based upon) but I still find it hard to trust a payment network that relies on a central corporate entity for both development and token issuance. I'm sure that Ripple has merits of its own but it's not quite what I expect from a cryptocurrency.

What Bitcoin solved by applying PoW to the double-spend problem is something wholly different. It seems wasteful, it looks weird, but it's the only meaningful and secure solution so far that allows transactions without relying on a central entity.

Wow, hold on a second because we never needed PoW in the past and tight loops are to be avoided and spamming is avoided
by transactions fees anyway and what about the waste of energy so it now costs 90KWH of electric to process 250 bytes of data.
Reeving engine with car out of gear is crazy

PoW is not about preventing spam transactions, it's about preventing double-spend attacks. Before PoW came along you couldn't rely on keeping a valid, reliable ledger state without a central entity acting as arbiter. Bitcoin's master stroke is making the network not only fault-tolerant against attackers, but actually using what would usually be an attack -- ie. brute force -- to protect the network from the very same class of attacks.

Like everything this approach comes with a trade-off, which in this case is secure decentralization -- on every aspect -- at the cost of performance. At least to me the electricity cost involved seems like a step upward from the waste of human resources that is banking, but that's up for debate of course. One could argue whether the problem of central entities controlling finance is actually a problem worth solving, but assuming it is, PoW is unfortunately our best bet so far. There are other PoX approaches of course, but their viability is a different discussion.

One can argue about whether decentralized currencies are worth it, but arguing that centralization is what would help cryptocurrencies scale is approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

See above comment but let me add to this because virgin nodes starting up uses DNS to get a list of well known nodes anyway
but you will also note that DNS serves cannot steel coins (Maybe they could thinking about it again) so the white-paper broke
it's number one rule anyway and is government blocked domain names on one server then others would take over like OpenDNS

I'm not sure I quite follow you here. You don't need to rely on DNS to connect to other nodes. You can't use DNS spoofing to fake transactions. Worst case you could probably prevent specific nodes from sending or receiving transactions, but that would require a lot of targeted resources without much impact on Bitcoin as a whole.


Assuming you haven't already, you should really look into how LN works. You might be surprised that it's not quite the plaster you expect it to be.

Here's a good starting point:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-building-a-bidirectional-payment-channel-1464710791/