Lightning bitcoin payment on this forum

[Oshosondy]

I have noticed one thing, that signature on this forum are not yet using bitcoin lightning network payment. Lightning network payment makes bitcoin transaction cheaper and faster and it is supported by some recommended wallets by now, two of the good wallets are bluewallet and electrum. I have not used lightning network before but I will prefer electrum because it is noncustodial and yet open source.

I believe campaign managers will be the best to answer this question, I will like campaign managers to give some valid reasons they are not yet using lightning network for paying, also people can comment about any suggested reasons they are thinking to be the reason.

Or is lightning payment not yet safe?

[AB de Royse777]

I believe campaign managers will be the best to answer this question, I will like campaign managers to give some valid reasons they are not yet using lightning network for paying, also people can comment about any suggested reasons they are thinking to be the reason.

I felt the need today. I am managing a campaign where I was suppose to pay 50+ users in bitcoin. Total amount was something like 0.004 BTC and Electrum was suggesting me a fee of 0.00435457 BTC

Fees for broadcasting 0.00435457 BTC  ( 255.4 sat/byte ) at current sat/byte rate for next block.

This is obviously unreasonable. So I had to change the payment method. With that I am now in some hassle.

1. I had to move the campaign thread from Service board to Altcoin board.
2. Asking LTC address from the participants and many more.

I think in the next BTC paying campaign I will consider an LN payment if I can convince the devs of whatever the project is. One problem I see is the wallet making hassle for campaign participants. Do we have a topic about creating LN channel using Electrum?

[Bitfort]

I believe campaign managers will be the best to answer this question, I will like campaign managers to give some valid reasons they are not yet using lightning network for paying, also people can comment about any suggested reasons they are thinking to be the reason.

I felt the need today. I am managing a campaign where I was suppose to pay 50+ users in bitcoin. Total amount was something like 0.004 BTC and Electrum was suggesting me a fee of 0.00435457 BTC

Fees for broadcasting 0.00435457 BTC  ( 255.4 sat/byte ) at current sat/byte rate for next block.

This is obviously unreasonable. So I had to change the payment method. With that I am now in some hassle.

1. I had to move the campaign thread from Service board to Altcoin board.
2. Asking LTC address from the participants and many more.

I think in the next BTC paying campaign I will consider an LN payment if I can convince the devs of whatever the project is. One problem I see is the wallet making hassle for campaign participants. Do we have a topic about creating LN channel using Electrum?

An alternate option could be to allow participans using custodial wallets where internal transfers are free.
Maybe you can offer some sort of bonus for such users?

[Oshosondy]

Do we have a topic about creating LN channel using Electrum?

There are topics on lightning network on this forum but these two are the best I have noticed.

The Lightning Network FAQ
Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough

[AB de Royse777]

An alternate option could be to allow participans using custodial wallets where internal transfers are free.
Maybe you can offer some sort of bonus for such users?

I need a custodial wallet that allows
1. Mass payment like using Electrum I can pay more then one address in one transaction
2. Fees are less of course.

Any such service?

There are topics on lightning network on this forum but these two are the best I have noticed.

The Lightning Network FAQ
Electrum Lightning Network walkthrough

Thanks buddy.

[sujonali1819]

I believe campaign managers will be the best to answer this question, I will like campaign managers to give some valid reasons they are not yet using lightning network for paying, also people can comment about any suggested reasons they are thinking to be the reason.

Or is lightning payment not yet safe?

I think in coming days Campaign managers will start to use bitcoin LN payment. At first need to start by atleast one manager.

Lightning bitcoin payment still not using in this forum due to maybe most of the people here are not familiar with this. Personally I don't know how actually it work. And I think in near future people will be forced to user Lightning bitcoin due to unrealistic bitcoin tnx fees.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Basics of the Lightning Network
Bitcoin Lightning Network
Lightning network explained. What is Lightning network? (Binance Academy)
Understanding the Lightning network. Part 1: Building a bidirectional Bitcoin payment channel

Eclair application for Android

[cryptobrzy]

i once read a piece on bitcoin lightning network when the cryptocurrency exchange that was available in my country made a blog post about adopting bitcoin lightning to make payments faster. i however didnt pay much attention to it afterward when he transaction and confirmation speeds were still slow as compared to when they hadnt adopted the technology. probably there was something that i did not fully understand.

[Quickseller]

Or is lightning payment not yet safe?

Yes LN payment is safe. The current bitcoin economy does not currently allow for LN payments to be efficient.

In order to receive a payment via LN, you need to either have spent money on LN or have someone else open a channel with you that gives you inbound capacity (usually for a fee). Also, if you receive a payment via LN, it will generally mean you intend to spend most of that payment in the near term, otherwise you will deplete, and eventually exhaust your receiving capacity.

Some bitcoin merchants accept LN payments, but most do not. Personally, I would be open to receiving LN payments if I had inbound capacity, and intended to spend bitcoin at a merchant that accepts LN shortly after receiving the payment, but absent these two requirements, I would tend to prefer an on-chain transaction. 

[pooya87]

Or is lightning payment not yet safe?

That may be a small reason at this point but the main reason is that using LN doesn't make sense here. LN is useful if you are going to send/receive multiple payments with the channel you open. But if it is a one time payment every week/month then it makes no sense and it also costs more than the on-chain transaction.

Lets say your signature campaign wanted to do this, they have to:
1. Open a channel for this week/month 's payment which means sending an on-chain transaction to that channel (fee #1)
2. Send out the payment to each user on LN (a tiny LN fee for each tx)
3. Close the channel since there won't be any payment until next round (fee #2)
4. Each user (or at least most of them) that receives the payment has to close their channel and move the coins to their wallets (fee #3)
This means using LN in this case replaced 1 on-chain fee with 3 on-chain and a tiny LN fees which makes no sense.

[UserU]

I think in coming days Campaign managers will start to use bitcoin LN payment. At first need to start by atleast one manager.

Lightning bitcoin payment still not using in this forum due to maybe most of the people here are not familiar with this. Personally I don't know how actually it work. And I think in near future people will be forced to user Lightning bitcoin due to unrealistic bitcoin tnx fees.

The same could be said with people not familiar with Bitcoin back then. How to setup a wallet, customize those fees, etc... now everyone is doing them like a pro

If you've sent XLM before that has an additional Memo field, LN is pretty similar with its Invoice.

[Quickseller]

Or is lightning payment not yet safe?

That may be a small reason at this point but the main reason is that using LN doesn't make sense here. LN is useful if you are going to send/receive multiple payments with the channel you open. But if it is a one time payment every week/month then it makes no sense and it also costs more than the on-chain transaction.

Lets say your signature campaign wanted to do this, they have to:
1. Open a channel for this week/month 's payment which means sending an on-chain transaction to that channel (fee #1)
2. Send out the payment to each user on LN (a tiny LN fee for each tx)
3. Close the channel since there won't be any payment until next round (fee #2)
4. Each user (or at least most of them) that receives the payment has to close their channel and move the coins to their wallets (fee #3)
This means using LN in this case replaced 1 on-chain fee with 3 on-chain and a tiny LN fees which makes no sense.

Fee #2 will not be necessary because the payor can receive a LN payment to make the following week's payment. Similarly, Fee #1 will only be required the first time a payment is made.

Fee #3 will apply to anyone not intending on keeping the bitcoin in the LN network, in which case a LN payment would probably not be appropriate.

[hugeblack]

Sending payments via the lightning network will complicate matters further because many members withdraw their coins as soon as they receive it, either because they want to pay their expenses or because they want to increase their privacy.
This option would be suitable for those who want to hold currencies for a long time, but relying on the lightning network for huge sums is still dangerous.

Generally, if the user is going to keep his coins for a period of two or three months, then using the lightning network will greatly reduce the fees.

[BlackHatCoiner]

3. Close the channel since there won't be any payment until next round (fee #2)

There are users that don't want to instantly spend their weekly payment. Thus, the manager could save lots of funds from those. Everything else you said is true. Although, using LN for signature campaigns could be a great adoption, IMO. I doubt if the majority of the participants have used LN before.

This option would be suitable for those who want to hold currencies for a long time, but relying on the lightning network for huge sums is still dangerous.

Why is it dangerous to hold a great amount of coins with LN? You're locking your funds on a multi-sig address that you can withdraw the final result cooperatively or uncooperatively whether your node wants it or not. Am I missing anything?

[The Cryptovator]

I know Lightning networks would reduce transaction fees. But there are some issues if I use Lightning networks for my participant's rewards. First of all, I have been using Ledger to secure escrow funds where Lightning isn't supported as far as I know. So it's difficult to manage the funds on Lightning networks. Second thing is, most campaign participants aren't familiar with Lightning networks and don't know how to use them. They would face problems later on during moving funds to any exchange. You know very well many exchanges still didn't consider implementing SegWit deposit address. We can't expect they will implement deposits or withdraw via Lightning networks. It will take more time to become popular.

[Oshosondy]

I doubt if the majority of the participants have used LN before.

I believe if a campaign manager makes it as the method of payment, people will find it easy to open and close a channel. For people that do not know about bitcoin, to even make a payment onchain can be very difficult for them, but yet we members here know how to. I do not think lightning payment should be a problem unless the offchain payment is not safe to use.

Why is it dangerous to hold a great amount of coins with LN? You're locking your funds on a multi-sig address that you can withdraw the final result cooperatively or uncooperatively whether your node wants it or not. Am I missing anything?

People still believe it is still at its experimental stage, that is why wallets like electrum do warns people not to use huge amount for it. But lightning network has been existing since many years ago, it is getting low adoption, this still surprising me.

[pooya87]

Why is it dangerous to hold a great amount of coins with LN? You're locking your funds on a multi-sig address that you can withdraw the final result cooperatively or uncooperatively whether your node wants it or not. Am I missing anything?

For starters it could be categorized under "hot wallets" since your keys are on an a machine that is connected to internet and can be similarly compromised. Secondly, lightning network is still in its early development stage and the implementations of it are still in beta and can contain bugs which could lead to your funds being lost.

[nakamura12]

How about making a batch of transaction sending the fund to the receiving addresses and pay less fee than the other services used to sendnthe funds. I have seen a transaction made by a campaign manager about the amount of the fee used to pay is not less which is  0.00175241 btc.

[hd49728]

How about making a batch of transaction sending the fund to the receiving addresses and pay less fee than the other services used to sendnthe funds. I have seen a transaction made by a campaign manager about the amount of the fee used to pay is not less which is  0.00175241 btc.

Batch transaction help sender to save transaction fee because they can save the size of transaction.

Instead of making 100 different transactions to 100 receivers, the sender can send only 1 batch transaction to all 100 receivers and save a lot of fee. The lower fee is caused by a lower transaction size.

0.001175241 BTC as transaction fee is not a big one. You can randomly check batch transactions from Binance and get transaction fee they paid.

[Timelord2067]

@pooya87 is near to what I was thinking in terms of open, send, close a LN channel to send payments for a SigCamp.

I see two options.

Firstly say 25% of your participants would prefer to receive via LN, you could either do the above, or, have a funding solution such as the one Phoenix offers whereby funds sent via the block-chain to a Phoenix wallet address are automatically turned into an open channel which you then send via LN to the participants.   The CM knows the amount ahead of time so only send that amount to a Phoenix wallet (plus a little bit of dust to cover the outbound TX).  Regardless of any corresponding inbound channel created by Phoenix, you don't have to close the channel as it's all inbound capacity.

The second option would be to send the (example) 25% participants funds in one block to an Escrow who would probably do the above (open a channel, send funds (keep open/close channel) ) anyway.


A CM might even open one super LN channel for (example) ten week's worth of payments.  The Campaign funder can see the balance being used to open a channel and that it's still open week-to-week as the campaign progresses.


In the end, it'd be up to the other side to close the channel as they have to bulk of the channel's funds once payments have been made.


I haven't used Electum, so can't comment on the available options that program has.