Is Bitcoin Core, EVER going to release Lightning? Or Is Scaling Dead w/Inaction?

[Searing]

Can anyone post here on IF/WHEN/EVER Bitcoin Core is going to release Lightning? I mean is it even going to provide a scaling solution in any meaningful time frame

or does Bitcoin Core not give a damn? The lack of information and concern, and their need to go at a snails pace, seems to me a poor way to move your vision...

but hey, I'm not a bitcoin millionaire coder....anyway, annoyed at this 'let them eat cake' attitude and we will get to it when we get to it mindset.

others? or is this just a slow stall and nothing of note is going to come from lightning?

Again, damn dumb way to promote your vision....deafening silence....

brad

feel free to take the poll

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[aleksej996]

It is quite worrying that such transaction congestion was allowed to happen even tho it was simple to fix.
I like Segwit and Lightning Network as solutions to the scaling problem, but if they knew that Bitcoin Core would not be able to implement even Segwit in time, it seems quite logical to increase the block size in the meantime.

It is simply not optimal to make Bitcoin unusable for a while, until the most optimal solution is fully developed. There are a lot of people over the years who integrated Bitcoin in their daily lives and this is a sort of a punishment for it, which shouldn't have happened.

I understand that some small portion of people might not want to update their clients, but the choice was either they will not be able to use Bitcoin or most of us wont.

There isn't any good reason to leave Bitcoin in this state for months until Bitcoin Core implements Segwit and they are planning to fully support it in May.
It just doesn't seem sensible to me.

[Foxpup]

Of course not. Why would they? The Bitcoin Core developers release the Bitcoin Core software. Lightning Network software is being developed by different people, and they will release it. Why would you think Core and Lightning are the same thing?

[jseverson]

It is my understanding that the network is ready for the Lightning Network with no further soft, much less hard forks necessary. The problem seems to lie on the software client, which isn't ready yet.

I have no idea how long it will take for it to be ready, but considering the silence, I think it would be safe to assume that it would be a while. I don't know why it's not being fast tracked either, despite the fact that it's likely to solve most of our current problems.

[gentlemand]

It's not going to be like a Tesla launch. It's being worked on by multiple teams and will slide out in stages. This is what open source stuff looks like.

[Saimabutterfly]

Lightning network are different people and have nothing to do with bitcoin core people. I hope you understands now.

[silverstar43]

LN was tested on mainnet and they working on increasing greater adoption.

[btcgreen63]

Systems like this take time. It has to be carefully designed and tested.

[Searing]

Of course not. Why would they? The Bitcoin Core developers release the Bitcoin Core software. Lightning Network software is being developed by different people, and they will release it. Why would you think Core and Lightning are the same thing?

Does not Bitcoin Core have to have a working lightning fix for lightning developers to use it?

Unless I missed something, that is NOT in place yet..thus where I was coming from.

Correct me if I'm wrong

Systems like this take time. It has to be carefully designed and tested.

So Bitcoin Core Devs are trying to make the 'perfect solution' regardless of how long it takes? (ie fiddles while Rome burns...kinda thing?)

[Foxpup]

Does not Bitcoin Core have to have a working lightning fix for lightning developers to use it?

No. What's a "lightning fix"? What are you even talking about? There's like half a dozen Lightning implementations in testing right now. I think some are already testing on mainnet. You can expect stable releases "soon".

[illinest]

Of course not. Why would they? The Bitcoin Core developers release the Bitcoin Core software. Lightning Network software is being developed by different people, and they will release it. Why would you think Core and Lightning are the same thing?

Does not Bitcoin Core have to have a working lightning fix for lightning developers to use it?

Unless I missed something, that is NOT in place yet..thus where I was coming from.

Correct me if I'm wrong

That was Segwit, activated last year. Actually, Lightning didn't require Segwit technically. But all Lightning development was done with Segwit in mind, since it had a fix for transaction malleability.

So Bitcoin Core Devs are trying to make the 'perfect solution' regardless of how long it takes? (ie fiddles while Rome burns...kinda thing?)

I don't see Rome burning, though. It will look like Rome burning if LN wallets are widely deployed without proper testing.

[aleksej996]

I understand that Core is not developing LN and that it is not their job, but they are supposed to make Bitcoin scale.
If they put all their bets on LN then they are responsible if that doesn't work out.
You can't really say that Core is just supposed to kick back and relax if LN doesn't deploy.

I understand that LN is being developed (did some tests on testnet with it). But it definitely has a lot of critical bugs, even the most developed implementations.
Personally I got segmentation fault when using c-lightning developed by Blockstream. And fees are already way to high on Bitcoin and don't seem like they are going down anytime soon.

I still like these solutions, it is just worrying that it takes so long for even Segwit to be implemented in Core, which is their responsibility.
With Segwit we would be fine with fees until LN gets developed, but segwit is not going to be fully implemented in Core before May in v0.16.
So we have few months of practically unusable Bitcoin, at least. Which is quite of a kick in the face for people who supported Bitcoin for so long and tried to implement it in their everyday lives and now they are left without it.
So these people (everyone who uses Bitcoin regularly) suffer from taking a long, but still perhaps optimal, solution.

I am not saying anything against Core, they know far better than me about Bitcoin, I am just saying that it worries me personally that vast majority of Bitcoin users suffer from unnecessary perfectionism. And I tend to be perfectionist myself, but sometimes I have to fight it for the sake of reason and priorities.

[yoseph]

I understand that Core is not developing LN and that it is not their job, but they are supposed to make Bitcoin scale.
If they put all their bets on LN then they are responsible if that doesn't work out.
You can't really say that Core is just supposed to kick back and relax if LN doesn't deploy.

I understand that LN is being developed (did some tests on testnet with it). But it definitely has a lot of critical bugs, even the most developed implementations.
Personally I got segmentation fault when using c-lightning developed by Blockstream. And fees are already way to high on Bitcoin and don't seem like they are going down anytime soon.

I still like these solutions, it is just worrying that it takes so long for even Segwit to be implemented in Core, which is their responsibility.
With Segwit we would be fine with fees until LN gets developed, but segwit is not going to be fully implemented in Core before May in v0.16.
So we have few months of practically unusable Bitcoin, at least. Which is quite of a kick in the face for people who supported Bitcoin for so long and tried to implement it in their everyday lives and now they are left without it.
So these people (everyone who uses Bitcoin regularly) suffer from taking a long, but still perhaps optimal, solution.

I am not saying anything against Core, they know far better than me about Bitcoin, I am just saying that it worries me personally that vast majority of Bitcoin users suffer from unnecessary perfectionism. And I tend to be perfectionist myself, but sometimes I have to fight it for the sake of reason and priorities.

I recently that the owner of Bitrefill recently used the Lightning network to make a bitcoin payment and it was confirmed at a very fast speed and with no fees charged as well, It is going t be the developers who are going to allow the implementation before the public start using the lightning which am sure will bring back a lot of the investors.

[superbotolo]

Here is one thing that I don't understand and where I would love to have some honest clarification.

The current problem of Bitcoin is scaling. Too many transactions means too much time for each one to be processed, which also means higher fees because these transactions are competing with each other to be processed as fast as possible.

Two solutions were suggested: SegWit and LN. SegWit has been implemented in the protocol, but its adoption is still slow. LN is under development and we don't know when it will be fully implemented in Core. Both of these solutions seem to change the structure of the Bitcoin protocol: SegWit is a different way of coding transactions, LN is a side-chain.

Bitcoin Cash seems (but this is where I would love to get some more info) to have solved the scaling problem by keeping the protocol intact and increasing the block size. Bigger blocks means more transactions that can be stored in a block.

Has Bitcoin Cash found the solution to the problem in a simpler way than what Bitcoin is trying to achieve? (No flame intent, but just an honest discussion)

[aleksej996]

Yet another bitcoiner who don't bother do research and blame Bitcoin Developer.
In case you don't know, LN is available now in Bitcoin network (not testnet), but only very few services such as TorGuard which use LN since LN isn't production ready. LN fees is extremely low, but the only problem is transaction fees when opening LN channel.
But i'm sure LN adoption is extremely slow just like SegWit and there aren't any newbie/user-friendly LN wallet

SegWit also can reduce the problem, but SegWit adoption is very slow even though people know SegWit have lower weight and tx size which means they can pay lower fees and help reduce mempool/pending transaction.

More info :
http://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-fees-mainnet-lightning-network/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7npeh6/lightning_network_megathread/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7p9b1t/day_8_i_will_post_this_guide_regularly_until/

Are you replying to me?
I am very well aware of those brave individuals (not my words, saw it on LN mailing list form a person named ZmnSCPxj) who use it on the main net.
But even on GitHub README page you can see a clear warning that states that it is not ready and as I said, I got a segmentation fault myself few days ago.
So it is not ready for sure, but if you want to use it for most basic stuff and do only exactly what someone already did in exact steps, you will still have a chance of things not working out and funds being lost. I am saying this from the personal experience.

Here is one thing that I don't understand and where I would love to have some honest clarification.

The current problem of Bitcoin is scaling. Too many transactions means too much time for each one to be processed, which also means higher fees because these transactions are competing with each other to be processed as fast as possible.

Two solutions were suggested: SegWit and LN. SegWit has been implemented in the protocol, but its adoption is still slow. LN is under development and we don't know when it will be fully implemented in Core. Both of these solutions seem to change the structure of the Bitcoin protocol: SegWit is a different way of coding transactions, LN is a side-chain.

Bitcoin Cash seems (but this is where I would love to get some more info) to have solved the scaling problem by keeping the protocol intact and increasing the block size. Bigger blocks means more transactions that can be stored in a block.

Has Bitcoin Cash found the solution to the problem in a simpler way than what Bitcoin is trying to achieve? (No flame intent, but just an honest discussion)

It would be hard to say that they found it, since this was a plan all along, this is not some issue that wasn't expected. It was planned by Satoshi and suggested that this type of hard fork is made. It is a simpler solution, but Segwit and LN allow something else as well as solve this, so it was decided to be implemented instead. My only worry is that we will not have Core fully support Segwit for 4 more months at least.