Criticisms of the Lightning Network

[arbiter5]

Mostly here and especially on r/Bitcoin, I've been seeing mostly, around 95%, positivity when it comes to the lightning network.

I'm just curious. For a change, let us look at the negatives. What are your criticisms concerning the Lightning Network? Do you think it's likely to succeed?

Personally, I think it's likely to succeed, though I think it will take a lot longer than people are expecting. I think it's going to be difficult for the developers to make LN easy enough to use for the end users, to the point that they couldn't even differentiate if they're using LN or just normal transactions.

[mocacinno]

I guess it's biggest drawbacks are:

• The learning curve (pretty steep)
• The software: most of it is still in alpha or beta phase... This doesn't show a lot of trust from the dev side (at the moment)
• Not enough open channels to relay all payments effectively

I've been running a site that accepts LN for a rather long time now, and so far everything works fine... But then last week i tried to get payed by a person i personally see as technically competent, and so far i haven't been able to get him to the point where he can succesfully make a LN payment.

[Wind_FURY]

I believe what might be a "weakness" in Lightning is that users will need to stake their Bitcoin to provide liquidity in LN, therefore removing liquidity outside LN.

Plus I also believe that fees in Lightning will not be "unfairly cheap" at some point. It will be higher than altcoins.

[arbiter5]

• The learning curve (pretty steep)

Precisely. Bitcoin in itself is quite complicated enough for the typical non computer literate person. LN is going to be a lot harder to use for them. Hence my point of the challenge here is mostly on the user experience category.

[bitmover]

I used lightning network once, and I have some critics about it.

The fees to topen/close channels were higher than I expected, and they were also not transparent.
I set a low fee (like 3 sat byte) but later on when closing the channel I was charged high fees, and I don't know where they came from. I couldn't set them also.
I was using Éclair wallet and had no problems with the software (ui seed etc, all fine)

[Rath_]

The fees to topen/close channels were higher than I expected, and they were also not transparent.
I set a low fee (like 3 sat byte) but later on when closing the channel I was charged high fees, and I don't know where they came from. I couldn't set them also.

It's Eclair's fault. I am not sure about c-lightning, but LND allows users to set the closing transaction fee through --sat_per_byte parameter. Even if the implementation supports a certain feature, clients also have to implement it. What was the recommended transaction fee at the time? @LoyceV pointed out that Eclair Mobile overcharges for the closing transaction depending on the mempool state.

[Welsh]

I guess it's biggest drawbacks are:

• The learning curve (pretty steep)
• The software: most of it is still in alpha or beta phase... This doesn't show a lot of trust from the dev side (at the moment)
• Not enough open channels to relay all payments effectively

I've been running a site that accepts LN for a rather long time now, and so far everything works fine... But then last week i tried to get payed by a person i personally see as technically competent, and so far i haven't been able to get him to the point where he can succesfully make a LN payment.

This is something that needs to be improved before they roll out of the Beta phase. User interface, and general usability should be streamlined so even the average computer user can use the software, otherwise its just going to get a bad reputation for being only useful for those that are technically competent. The concept of the lightning network is an interesting one, and its by no means a perfect system, however its probably the most interesting development at the time being.

The lack of open channels will hopefully become more redundant as time passes, and more users are using the lightening network. This I wouldn't be too concerned about considering the early developments of the lightning network.

[Carlton Banks]

the "chicken & egg" problem


New users to Bitcoin cannot directly receive Lightning payments to get involved, they must first buy BTC, then open a channel. Only then can they receive (or send) over Lightning.

Solutions

• the "Statechains" concept can apparently solve this problem, but comes with it's own compromises
• negotiate a channel opening, buy BTC from a seller that sends to you to settle the deal, send the BTC to the channel opening address to establish the channel

so really the solutions are not ideal, and Statechains depend on eltoo. Needs a better solution.

[HeRetiK]

I think its lacking ease of use is LN's largest detriment. Even on-chain payments still seem like rocket science to many people, despite having come a long way from just a few years back.

I'm fairly positive though that we'll get there eventually, just like wallet software improved over the years. With more and more users getting familiar with cryptocurrencies and LN ease of use improving we'll end up somewhere viable sooner or later. We still have a long way to go though.

Once we're there though -- which is probably still years from now, so the developer community will need a long breath -- liquidity, routing, etc likely won't be a problem anymore.

[mocacinno]

It's Eclair's fault. I am not sure about c-lightning, but LND allows users to set the closing transaction fee through --sat_per_byte parameter. Even if the implementation supports a certain feature, clients also have to implement it. What was the recommended transaction fee at the time? @LoyceV pointed out that Eclair Mobile overcharges for the closing transaction depending on the mempool state.

I have a c-lightning node, and i quickly looked up the man...

It does look that, without editing c-lightning sourcecode, you cannot set the fee for the onchain closing transaction... I never even tought about this problem, i very seldomly close a channel, and when i do, i have never tought about changing the fee...

LIGHTNING-CLOSE(7)                                                                                                              LIGHTNING-CLOSE(7)

NAME
       lightning-close - Command for closing channels with direct peers

SYNOPSIS
       close id [force] [timeout]

DESCRIPTION
       The close RPC command attempts to close the channel cooperatively with the peer. If the given id is a peer ID (66 hex digits as a string),
       then it applies to the active channel of the direct peer corresponding to the given peer ID. If the given id is a channel ID (64 hex digits
       as a string, or the short channel ID blockheight:txindex:outindex form), then it applies to that channel.

       The close command will time out and return with an error when the number of seconds specified in timeout is reached. If unspecified, it
       times out in 30 seconds.

       The force argument, if the JSON value true, will cause the channel to be unilaterally closed when the timeout is reached. If so, timeout
       will not cause an error, but instead cause the channel to be failed and put onchain unilaterally. Unilateral closes will lead to your funds
       getting locked according to the to_self_delay parameter of the peer.

       Normally the peer needs to be live and connected in order to negotiate a mutual close. Forcing a unilateral close can be used if you
       suspect you can no longer contact the peer.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, an object with fields tx and txid containing the closing transaction are returned. It will also have a field type which is
       either the JSON string mutual or the JSON string unilateral. A mutual close means that we could negotiate a close with the peer, while a
       unilateral close means that the force flag was set and we had to close the channel without waiting for the counterparty.

       A unilateral close may still occur with force set to false if the peer did not behave correctly during the close negotiation.

       Unilateral closes will return your funds after a delay. The delay will vary based on the peer to_self_delay setting, not your own setting.

       On failure, if close failed due to timing out with force argument false, the channel will still eventually close once we have contacted the
       peer.

AUTHOR
       ZmnSCPxj <~redacted~> is mainly responsible.

SEE ALSO
RESOURCES
       Main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning

                                                                    04/30/2018                                                  LIGHTNING-CLOSE(7)

[bitmover]

.
I am not sure about c-lightning, but LND allows users to set the closing transaction fee through --sat_per_byte parameter. Even if the implementation supports a certain feature, clients also have to implement it. What was the recommended transaction fee at the time? @LoyceV pointed out that Eclair Mobile overcharges for the closing transaction depending on the mempool state.

The fees were high at the time (like 40 sat).
But I opened the channel with very low fee. I didn't thought that eclair would just use a "recommended fee" (I hate this idea) to close it. It costed me about 0.0004 BTC to close it.

I believe every wallet, lightning or not, should let you decide which fee to use.i would use 1 sat byte to close the channel, and waiting 5 days would be ok to me.

[legendster]

I guess it's biggest drawbacks are:

• The learning curve (pretty steep)
• The software: most of it is still in alpha or beta phase... This doesn't show a lot of trust from the dev side (at the moment)
• Not enough open channels to relay all payments effectively

I've been running a site that accepts LN for a rather long time now, and so far everything works fine... But then last week i tried to get payed by a person i personally see as technically competent, and so far i haven't been able to get him to the point where he can succesfully make a LN payment.

While I am personally yet to use LN myself, for any purpose, but the fact that it almost went viral on twitter and was wildly talked about was pretty rad. People were having fun with just like they were having fun with btc transactions back in 2016-17, people were transacting just for fun and that caught on.

The learning curve will get easier once this grows beyond the immediate geek-squad niche and move into more of a commercial side of things.

I believe every wallet, lightning or not, should let you decide which fee to use.i would use 1 sat byte to close the channel, and waiting 5 days would be ok to me.

This can be a problem. I know for a fact about one gal that custom set the fees on her greenaddress wallet and waited like a week to see her transaction get the first confirmation. Something like that can happen on the LN too.

I think there should be a noob friend, fire and forget kinda solution for LN.

[gentlemand]

Mostly here and especially on r/Bitcoin, I've been seeing mostly, around 95%, positivity when it comes to the lightning network.

I reckon 99% of that 95% have never used a lightning network. They're positive about it because it's something to deflect present criticisms without having to put any thought into it.  

I sampled a testnet wallet before it went live. I couldn't get it to work. It's an extra layer of noodling that I quickly abandoned. It may be way better now but I'm in no hurry to return to it.

If people believe Bitcoin itself needs UX work, that's nothing compared what LNs need. BTC feels rather more fire and forget.

[mindrust]

As long as you use a custodial service like bluwallet (ios), using LN is pretty easy but custodial services has always been easy to use anyway.

It is a bit pain if you want full control of your funds and for that you need to own your own node and this is where the fun (some might call it pain) starts.

[legendster]

As long as you use a custodial service like bluwallet (ios), using LN is pretty easy but custodial services has always been easy to use anyway.

It is a bit pain if you want full control of your funds and for that you need to own your own node and this is where the fun (some might call it pain) starts.

Which is why I said

I think there should be a noob friend, fire and forget kinda solution for LN.

People will gravitate mostly towards the easy solutions no matter how hard we beat our drums about privacy and controlling your own funds as opposed to someone else controlling them.
And I think this would be beneficial for the adoption of the tech. The easier the tech, the faster the adoption.

[dothebeats]

As long as you use a custodial service like bluwallet (ios), using LN is pretty easy but custodial services has always been easy to use anyway.

It is a bit pain if you want full control of your funds and for that you need to own your own node and this is where the fun (some might call it pain) starts.

Bluewallet is the only thing that made me use LN for the first and probably the last time. It's so hard to fire it up on your own knowing the technicalities involved to just make it work. Perhaps I'm not that technically competent when it comes to these things but seeing you guys having the same problem as I do somehow makes me feel better (lol). It's a great solution to reduce the load on the main network, don't get me wrong, but with the technicalities involved in getting it right the first time just to send pennies/a few dollars is definitely not worth the effort and the time--unless of course you use a custodial wallet/service that does the messy stuff for you.

[legendster]

As long as you use a custodial service like bluwallet (ios), using LN is pretty easy but custodial services has always been easy to use anyway.

It is a bit pain if you want full control of your funds and for that you need to own your own node and this is where the fun (some might call it pain) starts.

Bluewallet is the only thing that made me use LN for the first and probably the last time. It's so hard to fire it up on your own knowing the technicalities involved to just make it work. Perhaps I'm not that technically competent when it comes to these things but seeing you guys having the same problem as I do somehow makes me feel better (lol). It's a great solution to reduce the load on the main network, don't get me wrong, but with the technicalities involved in getting it right the first time just to send pennies/a few dollars is definitely not worth the effort and the time--unless of course you use a custodial wallet/service that does the messy stuff for you.

Perhaps you should give Wallet of Satoshi a shot. Their tagline says it's so easy that even your mom could use it. And most importantly it is fully custodial.

This is developed by the same people behind RoomofSatoshi.

Look em up.

[bitmover]

I believe every wallet, lightning or not, should let you decide which fee to use.i would use 1 sat byte to close the channel, and waiting 5 days would be ok to me.

This can be a problem. I know for a fact about one gal that custom set the fees on her greenaddress wallet and waited like a week to see her transaction get the first confirmation. Something like that can happen on the LN too.

I think there should be a noob friend, fire and forget kinda solution for LN.

It's not a matter of being noob friendly or not. There was no option to set fees for closing channels. There was only one option to close friendly or unfriendly (something like that, dispute or not dispute, don't remember). I choose the one with lower fees , but even so fees were not customizable.

O believe every wallet should let users customize their fees, on sat/byte.
Because this would really lead to lower fees in general, everyone would look for lower fees unless absolutely necessary.
Free market would really work better.

For now most users just use "priority" or "standard" or whatever navme the wallet choose, but that really doesn't let you control the fees.

[Carlton Banks]

I think its lacking ease of use is LN's largest detriment. Even on-chain payments still seem like rocket science to many people, despite having come a long way from just a few years back.

I'm fairly positive though that we'll get there eventually

There's a limit to how much the UX can be streamlined or simplified. Part of that is because both Bitcoin and Lightning are still under massively active development, and with Bitcoin that's 10+ years of work (and that's not even counting all the ruminating on possible designs that Satoshi possibly did, then the prototypes attempts, all before Bitcoin itself was worked on).


And what that's demonstrating is that we've (Bitcoin users) all adapted to Bitcoin's most simplified concepts, despite how technical and sophisticated those remain. All in the name of independent money. I'm sure that automobiles or telephones or firearms were criticized as overly complicated at their advent, but the potential advantage to be gained was too tempting, and so instead people wanted to learn. And now we're all driving around, busting salvos of M16 fire into the air out of rolled down windows, with cryptographic gold kept in electronic wallets on our keyrings


So I expect Lightning's perceived UX issues to ameliorate a little, but mostly through familiarity-driven self interest.

[squatter]

Regarding criticisms, the need to keep private keys online and regularly monitor channels limits the appeal.

For me, the choice of whether to use Lightning is question of how pressured I am by on-chain fees. For now, the answer is "not enough." I'm hoping by the time that changes, the UX issues will have improved somewhat.

As for success, the jury is out, but it seems inevitable at least as one of several approaches to the scalability question.