[2018-10-26]Lightning Has a Problem: People Are Already Using It

[hugeblack]

In a recent interview, CEO of Lightning Labs, Elizabeth Stark, approximated the developer count on the Lightning Network to be as low as ten individuals – a factor which as detailed by CoinDesk could be slowing down the release of the tech. Perhaps due to this shortage, Lightning Labs has appealed to users to stop sending money over the system, stating that, "It has become an unnecessary distraction for our devs."

"A lot of people want to get on mainnet and it’s hard to tell them that it’s not quite ready and that they should test on testnet," said Alex Bosworth, a Lightning developer. "I wouldn't recommend using mainnet unless you are explicitly testing and fully know what you are doing."

According to Bosworth, who runs two of his own mainnet nodes, one major problem Lightning developers could run into as they move to release a mainnet implementation is needing to be backwards-compatible, so that the upcoming release would interoperate with the current prototypes being developed.

If the nascent mainnet continues to mature – it has doubled in node count in the past 72 hours – it could "reduce the speed of development," as devs would "have to worry about keeping backwards compatibility with previous versions," Bosworth said.

Yet, even with all this in mind, there's no sign active use will stop.

"We plan on keeping our Lightning Network nodes up and running permanently to help support the network," said TorGuard CEO Ben Van Pelt.

Source :https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-lightning-network-problem-people-already-using/

[FrueGreads]

It's hard to go against the devs since they should know what is best for the LN development, but the people that are running the nodes on the main net seem to have a point. Testing it for real could help find bugs and new ways of using it, so I don't understand how could that be distracting the devs. It would be crazy to use big amounts, and maybe if people lost money and started complaining it would have a bad influence on it's development.
I do think that those that are using it, know what they are doing and this is aligned with what the developer said: "I wouldn't recommend using mainnet unless you are explicitly testing and fully know what you are doing."

I still think things are doing well. I just don't know why there are so few devs working on it tough.

[cryptodreams]

Hope this will really solve the issues for Bitcoin

[Irvinn]

Previously, the developers of the lightning network on the contrary, asked to use this network for their transactions, in order to test it faster and report them about the errors of this network. In addition, there was information that the lightning network can only be used for transactions with small amounts, since the network has low security in transactions. Nevertheless, we very much look forward to implementing this network in bitcoin to improve its functional capabilities.

[DooMAD]

It's hard to go against the devs since they should know what is best for the LN development,

While it's true that the group of developers discouraging main-net use are the ones who released the whitepaper, they're not the only devs anymore.  There are (at least) three separate development teams each making their own implementation, but all three are entirely compatible with each other.  One of the dev teams, Blockstream's "c-lightning", seems to be pushing main-net use, while Lightning Labs' "LND" (Lightning Network Daemon), seems to be against it.  I'm not sure if the third team, Blockchain's "Thunder", have formally weighed in on the matter or not, although I'm pretty sure there's a hub called "Thunder" on main-net already, so if that belongs to them, it seems they're at least content to play along.  Ultimately, the permissionless nature of development means no one can stop anyone from using main-net, so I guess they'll just have to put up with the potential extra workload of making any changes backwards-compatible.

[1Referee]

One of the dev teams, Blockstream's "c-lightning", seems to be pushing main-net use, while Lightning Labs' "LND" (Lightning Network Daemon), seems to be against it.

I personally prefer to focus on these two entities over the third involved entity. As you pointed out, main net usage isn't depending on one of these entities specifically, but the main point should be that aside from testing purposes, LN in 'beta' (let's put it that way) carries too much of a risk and may even harm the public image of the development that's happening behind the scenes. I definitely understand that people get excited about LN (I am too), but it just needs to be released for main net use when it's near 100% certain that all potentially critical bugs are taken out. Bitcoin can't and shouldn't be used as a testbase that easily/blatantly, we have shitcoins for that.

[FrueGreads]

It's hard to go against the devs since they should know what is best for the LN development,

While it's true that the group of developers discouraging main-net use are the ones who released the whitepaper, they're not the only devs anymore.  There are (at least) three separate development teams each making their own implementation, but all three are entirely compatible with each other.  One of the dev teams, Blockstream's "c-lightning", seems to be pushing main-net use, while Lightning Labs' "LND" (Lightning Network Daemon), seems to be against it.  I'm not sure if the third team, Blockchain's "Thunder", have formally weighed in on the matter or not, although I'm pretty sure there's a hub called "Thunder" on main-net already, so if that belongs to them, it seems they're at least content to play along.  Ultimately, the permissionless nature of development means no one can stop anyone from using main-net, so I guess they'll just have to put up with the potential extra workload of making any changes backwards-compatible.

I wasn't aware of the existence of three separate development teams. I read a few things on Blockstream's c-lightning (link bellow), and it looked really promising. From what I've understood, it will be easy for developers to create apps on top of LN because of c-lightning, since its API can be accessed through javascript and PHP. It will be easy to see apps being used to facilitate the use of LN on stores for example.

I think that scalability is not the only problem with BTC right now, and using the network needs to be more user friendly, and it seems that c-lightning will do just that.

I do have a concern though, and maybe you know something about it. Since that with Lightning Charge, it will be possible to build apps on top of Lightning, doesn't this mean that it will be possible to create apps like "crypto kities" in the network. I'm not sure I would like to see these things on LN, since it could create congestion on the network, and ruin the true purpose of this solution.

What do you guys think?

Link I've mentioned:
https://blockstream.com/2018/01/16/lightning-charge.html

LN in 'beta' (let's put it that way) carries too much of a risk and may even harm the public image of the development that's happening behind the scenes.

I thought about this as well, and this is probably the main reason why this team of devs is opposing these tests. If something went wrong, and money was lost, it could harm the image of the so waited solution to BTC current problems. This way they are making clear that LN is still not ready to use.

[J. Cooper]

CEO of Lightning Labs, Elizabeth Stark,

I swear I read Elizabeth Spark ROFL.

On a more serious note though.

In a recent interview, CEO of Lightning Labs, Elizabeth Stark, approximated the developer count on the Lightning Network to be as low as ten individuals

That's only partially true. Sure there are only 10 devs working on Lightning Labs but I'm positive (and it has already been mentioned by someone in this thread) that there are atleast one or two other groups working on lightning as well.