Lightning Network -- Basics (documents, data pages, files, plots)

[tranthidung]

I am thankful to your contributions in this thread.

Lightning Network


Table of contents

• Lightning Network Home page
• Lightning Wiki
• Lightning Network Developer
• BitMEX 's reports (6 parts)
  
  • Motivation, basic technical things
  • Routing Fee Economics
  • Where Is The Justice?
  • All Adopt The Watchtower
  • BitMEX Research Launches Penalty Transaction Alert System
  • Over 60,000 Non-Cooperative Channel Closures

• BitcoinVisuals.com ^{Click on links, hover mouse on charts to see details}
  
  • Download link
  • Nodes
  • Channels
  • Network Capacity
  • NEtwork Capacity per channel
  • Distance Measures
  • Completeness Measures
  • Clustering Measures
  • Connectivity Measures
  • Channels per Node
  • Capacity per Node
• Total value locked in USD or BTC
• State of LN network (main net)
• Central Point Dominance
• History of the open network, biggest nodes, biggest crashes
• Real time Lightning network statistics
• Other sources
  
  • Basics of the Lightning Network
  • Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough
  • Youtube video on Lightning Network
  • Overview of lightning network nodes owned by forum users
  • The Lightning Network FAQ
  • A fortnight of lessons on the lightning network
  • Understanding The Lightning Network, Part 1: Building A Bidirectional Bitcoin Payment Channel
  • A Beginner's Guide to Bitcoin's Lightning Network (Binance Academy)
  • Bitcoin Lightning Network FAQ
• News site (links to pages for LN)
  
  • BitcoinLightning.com
  • Bitcoinist.com
  • BitcoinMagazine.com
  • TheBlockCrypto.com
  • Coindesk.com
  • Cointelegraph.com

Contents

Lightning Network Homepage
Get more details from its Homepage. There are Documents page on which you can also get documents (paper, summary) for

• Lightning Network paper
• Lightning network summary
• Lightning network technical summary

Lightning Wiki
Get more details from its main page

Lightning Network Developer
Get more details from LND Overview and Developer Guide

BitMEX's 6 parts
BitMEX's part 1
Read details there The Lightning Network (Motivation, basic technical things)

BitMEX's part 2
Read details there Routing Fee Economics

BitMEX's part 3
Read details there Where Is The Justice?

BitMEX's part 4
Read details there All Adopt The Watchtower

BitMEX's part 5
Read details there BitMEX Research Launches Penalty Transaction Alert System

BitMEX's part 6
Read details there Over 60,000 Non-Cooperative Channel Closures

Bitcoin Visual
Daily CSV data file
Download data file (daily) there and play with it.

Nodes

Get it at https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-nodes

Channels

Get it at https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-channels

Network Capacity

Get it at https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-capacity

Network Capacity per channel

Get it at https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-capacity-per-channel

Lightning Network Eccentricity

Get it at https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-eccentricity

Lightning Network Density

Get it at https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-density

Clustering Measures

Get it at https://bitcoinvisuals.com/ln-clustering

Connectivity Measures

Get it at Lightning Network Cut Channels

Channels per node

Get it at Lightning Network Channels per Node

Capacity per node

Get it at Lightning Network Capacity per Node

Total value locked in USD or BTC
You can get Total values locked (in USD, BTC) from defipulse.com page for lightning network

Two charts show something happened with total valued locked but I've not yet digged to find what happened in late of 2019.

Sum of channels, number of open channels, LN channels additions/ closures per block
Get the State of LN network (main net): Sum of channels, number of open channels, LN channels additions/ closures per block.

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[tranthidung]

Reserved

[tranthidung]

Reserved

[mk4]

+1

You might want to add some beginner-friendly Lightning wallets that people could try out:

[1] Phoenix Wallet: https://phoenix.acinq.co/   <--- totally a fan of this. Made a topic about it here.
[2] Breez Wallet: https://breez.technology/
[3] BlueWallet: https://bluewallet.io/

[Rath_]

Could you add "The Lightning Network FAQ" to "Other sources"? There's plenty of useful information there.

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

Great documented information. You can also try to add [Complete] A fortnight of lessons on the lightning network by jackg in Other Sources.

It was a beginner friendly guide and I was able to learn a lot more about the lightning whitepaper in layman terms. Along with mk4's suggestions, try adding a few mobile wallets like Eclair so that this guide can serve as a one stop documentation for all the lightning network related information.

[Pmalek]

You seem to be very much into stats and graphs based on the majority of your threads. I can't say that I am, but I appreciate and understand that it takes a lot of time to design and arrange all this.

Lightning Network Homepage
Get more details from its Hopage.

You might want to edit this Hopage into Homepage.

[bitmover]

bitcoinvisuals is a nice website, thanks for sharing.

Sadly they do not have their own API, the data is available only in CSV.

According to most charts LN keep growing.
Time for me to open a channel again (specially to receive donations in my website). I will get a mobile wallet to do, probably  Phoenix Wallet recommended by mk4.

Two charts show something happened with total valued locked but I've not yet digged to find what happened in late of 2019.

From June to December 2019 the price was in strong downtrend. I believe there is a  considerable number users who just sell their btc during that time. So they get btc out of their lightning channels.

You can see a clear correlation with the price in both chartst (BTC locked and USD locked)

[tranthidung]

bitcoinvisuals is a nice website, thanks for sharing.

Sadly they do not have their own API, the data is available only in CSV.

You are welcome, bitmover. It is not for real-time data analysis but at least with their CSV dumps, you can use such data set and merge with other available datasets that you have, then play with the merged data.

From June to December 2019 the price was in strong downtrend. I believe there is a  considerable number users who just sell their btc during that time. So they get btc out of their lightning channels.

You can see a clear correlation with the price in both chartst (BTC locked and USD locked)

It seems to be right but that price fall is not as bad as dump in late of 2018. In 2018 (late months), total lightning channels look stable and even increased very quickly after that fall. People probably were more panic in late 2019 or some other things happened.

[tranthidung]

I just discovered Jameson Lopp has a page on his website for Lightning Network (visit that page to get more sources than given ones here)

• Understanding The Lightning Network, Part 1: Building A Bidirectional Bitcoin Payment Channel
• A Beginner's Guide to Bitcoin's Lightning Network (Binance Academy)
• Bitcoin Lightning Network FAQ
• Statistics
  
  • Central Point Dominance
  • History of the open network, biggest nodes, biggest crashes
  • Real time Lightning network statistics
• News site (links to pages for LN)
  
  • BitcoinLightning.com
  • Bitcoinist.com
  • BitcoinMagazine.com
  • TheBlockCrypto.com
  • Coindesk.com
  • Cointelegraph.com

[tranthidung]

How to use Lightning with Fold
Fold. You can buy gift cards on Fold with Lightning Network payments. Fold's support.

[Karartma1]

For the time being Fold App is only available in the United States and I saw in some thread I can't recall there's another company called last bit that offers two different apps to connect LN to credit card payments or wire transfers.

Lastbit - Pay or Get Paid in Bitcoin or Euros