Can Lightning network work decentralized ?

[kumara]

This article was just posted, pretty much what I've been saying too: https://www.coindesk.com/lightning-network-may-not-solve-bitcoins-scaling-trilemma/

Thanks for the like and it says

Lightning developers are designing a routing facility that identifies which network nodes have sufficient funds to make a payment, calculates the shortest viable route to the payment destination across those nodes, and sends the payment. If this works, it would resolve the bitcoin trilemma.

This is quite logical and deal with inter bank movement of money between banks and if the software is smart it might even
enable more liquidity between the banks in cases where the ledger between banks has become exhausted because the movement
of money has all been in one direction and for all I know the banks could reduce the transaction fee being charged if they need to fill the
buffer of BTC back up to the top.

I have absolutely no trouble with this at all but anyone lending "sufficient funds" and charging a fee is a bank and will incur costs
as they make a profit from you the customer so lets call "Channels" lines of credit and hubs by the rightful name of "Banks" with
routeing being inter bank settlement which really become settlement with central banks much like the FED or BoE

Can no one see why I am screaming

YES I CAN. Yesterdays crypto rebels and pioneers are becoming todays pirates and profiteers. Greed and the lust for money and material things is the root of all evil. But if the masses participate in the LN and keep their own hubs online, then the banks will at least have some competition, keeping the network in check

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[Anti-Cen]

Wait, I'm not following you. Let's say Alice and Bob open a channel, both put 0.1 BTC in it. They both do some payments and then Bob is broke, and Alice still has 0.02 BTC. They want to close the channel, now what's the rule regarding who pays the miner fee to close/settle the channel? I always assumed they'd just split the miner fee automatically? But since Bob lost all his money already he doesn't care about settling so unless he's forced to pay, then the payment will be for Alice ?

Well money needs to move from Bob to Alice on the main block-chain so Bob picks up the $30 miners fee and Bob has no option but to settle the bill
because he (His wallet really) signed the micro transactions that happened on the private ledger to agree to payments and the $30 fee comes out
his BTC on the public block-chain

in this case Bob's 0.1BTC was lock on the main BC and is sent to Alice and at the same time her original 0.1BTC also gets unlocked on the BC
as an atomic transaction so maybe Bob and Alice were forced to leave $30 in the main BC for each new channel they open to cover the $30
miners fees, sorry not sure.

[sjefdeklerk]

Wait, I'm not following you. Let's say Alice and Bob open a channel, both put 0.1 BTC in it. They both do some payments and then Bob is broke, and Alice still has 0.02 BTC. They want to close the channel, now what's the rule regarding who pays the miner fee to close/settle the channel? I always assumed they'd just split the miner fee automatically? But since Bob lost all his money already he doesn't care about settling so unless he's forced to pay, then the payment will be for Alice ?

Well money needs to move from Bob to Alice on the main block-chain so Bob picks up the $30 miners fee and Bob has no option but to settle the bill
because he (His wallet really) signed the micro transactions that happened on the private ledger to agree to payments and the $30 fee comes out
his BTC on the public block-chain

in this case Bob's 0.1BTC was lock on the main BC and is sent to Alice and at the same time her original 0.1BTC also gets unlocked on the BC
as an atomic transaction so maybe Bob and Alice were forced to leave $30 in the main BC for each new channel they open to cover the $30
miners fees, sorry not sure.

Sorry if I misunderstand you but it seems you don't understand the concept of LN (maybe you do but then I don't understand your post). The money doesn't move 'on chain' from Bob to alice. Both deposit 0.1 BTC into their channel, THAT is an on-chain transaction. When everything is settled the money needs to move from the channel to, in this case, Alice. What I don't know though is how these fees are divided. Do both pay $30 for opening the channel (when they both wire money into the channel) ? I think this might be the case since both move money into the channel, so that's 2 transactions on-chain (one on-chain transaction from Alice and one on-chain from Bob, both into the channel). When closing 1 transactions from the channel to Alice takes place, but who pays for this one ?

[hv_]

Wait, I'm not following you. Let's say Alice and Bob open a channel, both put 0.1 BTC in it. They both do some payments and then Bob is broke, and Alice still has 0.02 BTC. They want to close the channel, now what's the rule regarding who pays the miner fee to close/settle the channel? I always assumed they'd just split the miner fee automatically? But since Bob lost all his money already he doesn't care about settling so unless he's forced to pay, then the payment will be for Alice ?

Well money needs to move from Bob to Alice on the main block-chain so Bob picks up the $30 miners fee and Bob has no option but to settle the bill
because he (His wallet really) signed the micro transactions that happened on the private ledger to agree to payments and the $30 fee comes out
his BTC on the public block-chain

in this case Bob's 0.1BTC was lock on the main BC and is sent to Alice and at the same time her original 0.1BTC also gets unlocked on the BC
as an atomic transaction so maybe Bob and Alice were forced to leave $30 in the main BC for each new channel they open to cover the $30
miners fees, sorry not sure.

This routing issue through a decentral random network is a NP hard and unsolved math issue.

It is trivial in a few big clearing hub central mesh...

Easy to see where this will end.

Guess its not NP hard to educate enough on this but if media get this soon... wtf

[Anti-Cen]

But if the masses participate in the LN and keep their own hubs online, then the banks will at least have some competition, keeping the network in check

So would you let a total stranger borrow $1 from you even if you know you are 100% guaranteed to get it back
which you are in this case like

Me ----------$1.00 -------> You ------$500 ----->Bank One.........>

if you act as a hub/bank for me then your deposit at the banks goes down to $499 which is not a big deal and you could even swap banks
without any trouble if another bank offered you lower fees or the old bank kept going off-line without upsetting me as shown below

Me ----------$1.00 -------> You ------$155 ----->Bank Two.........>

Just opening yourself up as free hub would have you flooded in seconds so it would have to be some type of manual
process you would need to use when deciding who to let people in but yes it works but what if this then happens

Me <----------$49.00 ------- You <------$205 -----Bank Two<------ $50 --------- My Mum

Your balance with the banks goes up to $205 and now your balance with me becomes a credit of $49 to me
and I then close the channel and your left holding the baby and having to pay the $30 transactions costs

Do you think a bank is going to let you pump 100 transactions a hour through them given that they too are
forced to pay fees and won't charge you this fee plus a profit margin and you might be nice and don't mind
lending your BTC out in the private ledger with me for free but banks don't work like that so in effect deposits of
opening a channel do not pass up the chain so even if I deposited $1000 with you then it does not mean that
you can spend $1499 with bank one.

Forget the development team programming and testing this "thing" because they have not even put out a document
that crosses all the dots and signs the tee's that anyone can understand so all we get is wishful thinking and visual
propaganda from Lightning being fast and yes it could speed it up but this is no racing car that's for sure

[sjefdeklerk]

Do you think a bank is going to let you pump 100 transactions a hour through them given that they too are
forced to pay fees and won't charge you this fee plus a profit margin and you might be nice and don't mind
lending your BTC out in the private ledger with me for free but banks don't work like that so in effect deposits of
opening a channel do not pass up the chain so even if I deposited $1000 with you then it does not mean that
you can spend $1499 with bank one.

The idea is that everybody who functions as a hub in a route gets a small fee for it. So you gain like 'interest' on your money that serves as a hub. I don't see a problem in this part.

[Anti-Cen]

Sorry if I misunderstand you but it seems you don't understand the concept of LN (maybe you do but then I don't understand your post). The money doesn't move 'on chain' from Bob to alice. Both deposit 0.1 BTC into their channel, THAT is an on-chain transaction.

Correct and it locks an amount for Bob and Alice on the chain (I assume that will be free, lock manager)

When everything is settled the money needs to move from the channel

It was never in the channel as such, just locked on the main block-chain to ensure each party
had money to cover settlement so what really went between Bob and Alice was IOU's backed by insurance if you like

Do both pay $30 for opening the channel (when they both wire money into the channel) ?

No they are free to open, real BTC on the BC never moved and the $30 miners cannot be split because
money on the BTC block is always sent and the sender pays the costs to send just like sending a letter

Think about it this way. We walk into a casino and both deposit $100 each with the cashier and she gives us both
100 cheap plastic tokens each so we pick a table and play flick the coin but it's only a two player game (Private ledger) and I end up with 190 tokens
and your only left with 10 so then we return to the cashier and the nice lady give me $190 cash and you $10 (Our original
money back) and she then looks at you and says it's custom here for the loser to pick up the settlement charge for us lending
you the table and you now owe the nice lady $30 please (Miners transaction fees)

[sjefdeklerk]

Correct and it locks an amount for Bob and Alice on the chain (I assume that will be free, lock manager)

Nothing is locked on the chain. A payment channel is really nothing more than a specific type of a BTC address. So when you open a channel, you simply wire money from your own BTC address into that BTC address, that's all there is to it.

[Anti-Cen]

The idea is that everybody who functions as a hub in a route gets a small fee for it. So you gain like 'interest' on your money that serves as a hub. I don't see a problem in this part.

Well to be a useful hub/bank you need to open lots of channels, have the hardware and money to fill the buffers (Trading Capital)
and a 24/7 program running plus network bandwidth and this set up shown blow just won't achieve anything

Claire--David--Pam--You--Harry--Deb--Peter--and Paul

Because if Deb runs out of money on deposit then "You" cannot spend even if your in credit with Harry and
even if we ignore internal fees on the private ledgers we are still in lots of trouble because Pam can close the channel
with you when she is in credit with you for just $1 and you then get to pay the $30 miners fees

Your combined deposits don't propagate up the channels only your spending or earnings propagate

[Anti-Cen]

Nothing is locked on the chain. A payment channel is really nothing more than a specific type of a BTC address. So when you open a channel, you simply wire money from your own BTC address into that BTC address, that's all there is to it.

No, no and no because the only way you can move money on the block-chain is to pay the fees and
this then results in a transaction on the block-chain which then solves nothing.

it has to be locked to ensure that you can settle with the private ledger later.

what your suggesting would in fact result in two transactions on the BC if you spent $50

Bob-BC ---------------> Temp address ----------->Alice-BC
                Monday                                Friday

                                                   

[sjefdeklerk]

what your suggesting would in fact result in two transactions on the BC if you spent $50

Bob-BC ---------------> Temp address ----------->Alice-BC
                Monday                                Friday

That's how LN works. A payment channel is really nothing more than a specific type of a BTC address: it's 'multisig' which means it needs more than 1 signature. And there is a contract stating how much in the channel is mine and how much is yours. Think of it as an escrow account that gets released after, say, 1 month, but in this 1 month both users can change the percentage in the escrow that belongs to me and how much belongs to you.

An example: Let's say we both open a payment channel and we both wire 1 BTC into it. That's 2 onchain transactions, 1 from me into the payment channel and one from you. Now the channel is open, we have 2 BTC in it and the relationship is 50/50. Now we do a bet for 0.25 BTC. You win the bet. So now 1.25 BTC in the payment channel money is yours and 0.75 is mine. We both sign that 'transaction', so we agree that that's the new status of our common money. We keep on betting and I lose time after time. Now 100% of the payment channel is yours. Now we close the payment channel and one ON CHAIN transaction takes place, where the 2 BTC from the payment channel is transfered to your BTC wallet. That's all there is to it.

So in this case there were 3 on chain transactions and we've betted several times, these were free each time. But in the end our bets did cost 3x miner fee.

[Anti-Cen]

This routing issue through a decentral random network is a NP hard and unsolved math issue.
It is trivial in a few big clearing hub central mesh...
Easy to see where this will end.
Guess its not NP hard to educate enough on this but if media get this soon... wtf

Any banking hub holding private ledgers is centralization unless all wallets open up ten
alternative channels they can use so forget propagating my IP-Address or the hubs
public address around 20,000 mining nodes because they are not only burning CPU's out
these days but the bandwidth is massive already

Star type topology of a number of specialist nodes to act as a type of cluster DNS servers
has got to be baked into this cake and I don't really object to that much but they are not
doing this or are but are not being honest about it. Others may not agree with me here

20 billion pings a hour to act as beacons would suit the designers because they are into
complexity, and wasting CPU's, energy and bandwidth as it is so please don't suggest this
to the team.

Come on it now costs 90KWH just to process one transaction and I ran the numbers myself
and came up with 70KWH but forgot to add ISP network  switches into the calculation so yes
it does seem right

[Anti-Cen]

That's how LN works. A payment channel is really nothing more than a specific type of a BTC address: it's 'multisig' which means it needs more than 1 signature. And there is a contract stating how much in the channel is mine and how much is yours. Think of it as an escrow account that gets released after, say, 1 month, but in this 1 month both users can change the percentage in the escrow that belongs to me and how much belongs to you.

An example: Let's say we both open a payment channel and we both wire 1 BTC into it. That's 2 onchain transactions, 1 from me into the payment channel and one from you. Now the channel is open, we have 2 BTC in it and the relationship is 50/50. Now we do a bet for 0.25 BTC. You win the bet. So now 1.25 BTC in the payment channel money is yours and 0.75 is mine. We both sign that 'transaction', so we agree that that's the new status of our common money. We keep on betting and I lose time after time. Now 100% of the payment channel is yours. Now we close the payment channel and one ON CHAIN transaction takes place, where the 2 BTC from the payment channel is transfered to your BTC wallet. That's all there is to it.

So in this case there were 3 on chain transactions and we've betted several times, these were free each time. But in the end our bets did cost 3x miner fee.

I am trying to follow you so where physical are you saying these private ledgers are held ?
20,000 servers all replicating 10,000,000 private ledgers and trying to keep in sync or
one copy in my wallet and a copy in yours if we are working without middle men (Banks)

The private ledger is 'multisig' so you can prove that I agreed to send you $1 worth in the IOU's we
are using in the private ledger and these IOU's are as good as gold because they are backed
by real BTC on the block-chain that are now locked (Cannot be moved)

Yes just read what you said again and that's three transactions at a cost of $90 instead of one so I
am sure the miners would love you. Locks replace the first two you mention and when the channel
settles the BTC moves on the BC and the miners get $30 at this stage.

[sjefdeklerk]

I am trying to follow you so where physical are you saying these private ledgers are held ?
20,000 servers all replicating 10,000,000 private ledgers and trying to keep in sync or
one copy in my wallet and a copy in yours if we are working without middle men (Banks)

The private ledger is 'multisig' so you can prove that I agreed to send you $1 worth in the IOU's we
are using in the private ledger and these IOU's are as good as gold because they are backed
by real BTC on the block-chain that are now locked (Cannot be moved)

You really overcomplicate things. Really, from the bitcoin ledger perspective there is NO difference if you send money to me or to a payment channel. Both are just transactions from your BTC wallet to another BTC wallet.

[Anti-Cen]

You really overcomplicate things. Really, from the bitcoin ledger perspective there is NO difference if you send money to me or to a payment channel. Both are just transactions from your BTC wallet to another BTC wallet.

You did not answer my questions and I love KISS so maybe you need to go back and read what I said again
to understand it because from what you just said I cannot work out if your saying we need one, two or three
blocks of data changed on the BC even if we do play a game of dice over the channel and we roll the dice
700 times

See this link and watch the video about Bob buying Coffee from the coffee shop every day for a month
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2776719.msg28395400#msg28395400

[sjefdeklerk]

You really overcomplicate things. Really, from the bitcoin ledger perspective there is NO difference if you send money to me or to a payment channel. Both are just transactions from your BTC wallet to another BTC wallet.

You did not answer my questions and I love KISS so maybe you need to go back and read what I said again
to understand it because from what you just said I cannot work out if your saying we need one, two or three
blocks of data changed on the BC even if we do play a game of dice over the channel and we roll the dice
700 times

See this link and watch the video about Bob buying Coffee from the coffee shop every day for a month
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2776719.msg28395400#msg28395400

I just watched your video. The problem is that a lot of articles/video's do explain the basics but don't explain it all so that's what can be confusing. When I started learning about LN I had to read several articles and piece the info together to really figure out what's going on.

This is the key though:

"A payment channel is a method to make off-chain transactions between two parties. To build up one you need to transact Bitcoins on a 2-of-2-Multisig address. For example, 0.1 bitcoin. 2-of-2 means that both you and the other party have to sign a transaction to make a payment. Like with bank accounts used for your rent deposit.

After both parties have transacted bitcoins to the multisig-address, they build a new transaction – for example, one who pays 0.1 bitcoin to each of them – and sign them. Now the tricky part starts; this transaction is not propagated to the Bitcoin network and not confirmed by the miners, but just shared between both parties involved in the payment channel. Instead of sending it to the network, they can modify the transaction as often as they want. These modifications of the transaction, signed by both parties, can be used to make off-chain payments."

https://btcmanager.com/lightning-network-primer-pt-i-building-payment-channels/

So again, the 'payment channel' is really just a BTC address. So from the ledger perspective, there's no difference if I transfer money to you directly or to the payment channel. It's just a transfer from BTC address 1 to BTC address 2. So the ledger just registers

                       1 BTC
BTC address A ----------> BTC Address B

Where BTC address B could be my wallet but it could also be a multisig address (= payment channel). This is why LN can be integrated because from the ledger perspective nothing even changes.

[filo1504]

Andreas here said that there are no incentive to become a huge hub because you must keep your private keys with a lot of fund exposed. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-nKuInDq6g

then he said (min 8:28) that LN tends to rebalance with some tecniques, if use route just in 1 direction and your balance is gone, then ln tends to rebalance using route in opposite direction.
seems that ln automatically open new channel. Someone can explain me this better?

[Anti-Cen]

Andreas here said that there are no incentive to become a huge hub because you must keep your private keys with a lot of fund exposed. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-nKuInDq6g

then he said (min 8:28) that LN tends to rebalance with some tecniques, if use route just in 1 direction and your balance is gone, then ln tends to rebalance using route in opposite direction.
seems that ln automatically open new channel. Someone can explain me this better?

Yes banker hubs will sort of balance out because money flows backwards and forwards in both directions and they have huge
amounts of BTC in the ledgers that becomes very liquid unlike me and you who's just have flows going out

See the network map https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/

This is not mamma and papa banking like they were trying to make out and just now the sub-branch, main branch banks
are getting setup ready for fee paying customers

[pebwindkraft]

This is not mamma and papa banking ...
[/quote]
no its not, sounds more like a childish behaviour trying to hijack every lightning thread here. 
Anti-Cen! Already me and others complained... You try to put your fud and propaganda in every lightning thread. Nobody believes it, but that's a different topic. I propose to open a new task, where you state, that lightning is the piece of shit that you think it is, and explain at a very detailed level, why this is what you think it is. And of course, you can put all your weird assumptions into it (like paying high amounts of pounds/dollars/Euros), and also your excellent predictions of the future. And for sure the funny banksters comparisons.

The advantage of doing so is that you just need to put one comment into all the lightning threads, with a link to your thread ("I already described here, why..."). That gives you a special level of reputation as well. And it doesn't pollute all threads, reduces others from being diverted with funny explanations, which hampers reading experience.  So community would really benefit from a grouping of your arguments into a single thread.

Also, it reduces network traffic, and especially saves space. If you continue to comment on each and every task, it is like bitcoin storing only 227 bytes of tx data on thousands of servers, and based on your own argumentation, this is highly inefficient.

Help us here in the forum to get also more efficient!

[nullius]

This is not mamma and papa banking ...

no its not, sounds more like a childish behaviour trying to hijack every lightning thread here. 
Anti-Cen! Already me and others complained... You try to put your fud and propaganda in every lightning thread. Nobody believes it, but that's a different topic.

Anti-Cen tries to use 512-bit RSA for Bitcoin keys (archive) (again!).  I suggest that his credibility on any technical topic whatsoever is absolutely zero.

I propose to open a new task, where you state, that lightning is the piece of shit that you think it is, and explain at a very detailed level, why this is what you think it is. And of course, you can put all your weird assumptions into it (like paying high amounts of pounds/dollars/Euros), and also your excellent predictions of the future. And for sure the funny banksters comparisons.

And for sure, explanation of how 512-bit RSA is used in the Lightning Network because Bitcoin developers are ignorant doofuses who lack Anti-Cen’s deep experiential knowledge of distributed databases.

(Your suggestion is excellent, pebwindkraft, as would be known to anybody who knows how to successfully argue a point in a persuasive manner—instead of just starting pointless arguments everywhere.)