Just thinking about the Lightning Network made me think over its possibilities. I have 2 more questions to ask and I don't want to create another thread for it.
1. If the LN supports cross Blockchain interoperability through Atomic Swap or any other medium, is it possible to use the LN to send altcoins like ETH from one address to another ?
Example: Sending ether from one address to another using Lightning Network
2. Although I have read that LN requires to open a channel between two nodes to make transactions but is it possible to use one channel to make transactions from multiple nodes.
Example: Starbucks opening a channel while the customers use it to make transactions instead of every customer requiring to open a channel with Starbucks.
If any of you guys think that these questions are silly then kindly drop a link below to a thread/article that has a detailed and easy understanding of the LN.
to explain point 2 in simple form its more about having pre connections of users who have connections to other users. if enough users are pre connected. you dont need to make a new connection to starbucks. but you just have to hope that those on the route of the connections already made, have funding and willingness to play the hotpotato game to pay the desired destination on your behalf
so imagine. even before thinking about starbuck
you are one of the green circles
u connected to the red..
red conncts to yellow and so on
imagine starbuck store in your area is one of th blue circles.
so although starbucks only has one connection direct(its nearest red) it is indirectly connected to 39 people.
you dont need to shift around and make a new deposit and new channel with a blue circle directly.
you can just hope your nearest red is online so your able to pay the red node,
hope the red node can pay the yellow node(hoping its online and accepting of the deal),
hope the yellow node can pay the purple node(hoping its online and accepting of the deal).
hope the purple node can pay the other yellow node(hoping its online and accepting of the deal),
hope that yellow node can pay the red node(hoping its online and accepting of the deal)
hope that red node can pay the blue node(hoping its online and accepting of the deal)
thus all fair and equal. if everyone happy to do so. the balances adjust as such, things get signed. and then starbucks treats it as if the funds it got from its nearest red, were from you(technically they werent) but its all about naming who credited the payment at the start
another way to imagine it.
imagine a channel is you and partner where you have 0.010 btc and your partner has 0.010btc
ergo
you[0.010:0.010]partner
and if you wanted to pay say 0.005 it would for this demo look like
you[0.05:0.015]partner
where your partner now has 0.015 and you only have 0.005
..
ok so at the beginning a route from green to blue would look like
green[0.010:0.010]red[0.004:0.016]yellow[0.011:0.009]purple[0.010:0.010]yellow[0.010:0.010]red[0.010:0.010]blueand you want to pay 0.002
so each payment goes through each node like this
green[0.008:0.012]red[0.004:0.016]yellow[0.011:0.009]purple[0.010:0.010]yellow[0.010:0.010]red[0.010:0.010]bluegreen[0.008:0.012]red[0.002:0.018]yellow[0.011:0.009]purple[0.010:0.010]yellow[0.010:0.010]red[0.010:0.010]bluegreen[0.008:0.012]red[0.002:0.018]yellow[0.009:0.011]purple[0.010:0.010]yellow[0.010:0.010]red[0.010:0.010]bluegreen[0.008:0.012]red[0.002:0.018]yellow[0.009:0.011]purple[0.008:0.012]yellow[0.010:0.010]red[0.010:0.010]bluegreen[0.008:0.012]red[0.002:0.018]yellow[0.009:0.011]purple[0.008:0.012]yellow[0.008:0.012]red[0.010:0.010]bluegreen[0.008:0.012]red[0.002:0.018]yellow[0.009:0.011]purple[0.008:0.012]yellow[0.008:0.012]red[0.008:0.012]bluewhere by your funds are technically still locked in with your nearest red and the other participants used their own funds in their own channels. and blue(starbucks) just gets told payment originated from you.
as you can see though if you look closely. the pitfall of LN is that the channel you have with red, shows that red can only make another 0.002 payment to its yellow. meaning if you wanted another starbucks. or one of the other greens did or even if the red themselves did, they only have enough value left that only one more payment of the same amount can be handled before red runs out
so even though you still have 0.008 spare to make 4 more payments of same amounts. red cannot honour or be part of routing it for you. meaning at somepoint either red has to drop out, refill its channel or you have to make a new connection with someone that can route to starbucks
