Will the Lightning Network Solve ALL Scalability Issues?

[titular]

Obviously other currencies have been aiming to tackle the scalability issues that Bitcoin is being presented with.

Obviously if the Lightning Network is not successfully implemented, the likes of coins like XRP will fill in the gap that banks need for fast cheap liquidity.

Will the lightning network be game over for the rest of the ALT coins that are borderline built on scalability?

Let me know what you guys think.

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[crwth]

It will not be a game over other projects but another "stepping stone" that different coins will face during the improvement time. If the lightning network is applied everywhere, I don't think there would be another hater of BTC that would say it's only suitable for a store of value type of asset but an actual currency as to what we want. If that happens, I think replacing or dominating the cryptocurrency scene by BTC is even more apparent.

[bolawin]

lightning is one of the solution

[odolvlobo]

Bitcoin in its current state is not capable of supporting world-wide adoption of Lightning. Other solutions will need to be developed.

[hv_]

It s just introducing many new issues, problems & flaws

[NeuroticFish]

Will the lightning network be game over for the rest of the ALT coins that are borderline built on scalability?

Many altcoins are kinda useless anyway. However, I don't expect LN have a crucial effect on them.

And LN is not a perfect solution. It's a step forward, but it will have its opponents and its problems too. Even the fact that it stays that long labelled as "beta" is a bit worrying.
Many won't understand that it is normal that it needs coins locked and on-chain transaction for finalize everything (I don't know how to say it better), many won't understand why it doesn't work just like that from <insert-wallet-name-here>, many (will) cry that it creates centralization and basically works only with custodian wallets.

All in all, many will prefer altcoins, even centralized altcoins, that do the same job. And if some of those altcoins will work seamlessly for payments at merchants, maybe also allowing some sort of atomic swap with Bitcoin, they could easily become a strong competitor for LN.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin in its current state is not capable of supporting world-wide adoption of Lightning. Other solutions will need to be developed.

Just to put some numbers on this: Let's assume all the following (which is completely unrealistic):

• Everyone uses Taproot
• Every channel opening transaction is one-input-one-output
• Every transaction being made is a Lightning channel being opened, and no one makes any other type of transaction
• Every block is optimally full
• Everyone only opens a single channel which they keep open forever

Even assuming all that, then at most you can open 9,000 channels per block, meaning it would take 17 years just to let everyone in the world open a single channel. As soon as you consider that obviously some people need to have multiple channels open for Lightning to work, and obviously people will want to close channels, open new ones, top up their channels, and so on, then that number increases exponentially.

Lightning is great, but it cannot support global adoption without further changes to the base layer.

[remotemass]

The Lightning Network is said to be able to take the transactions per second figure of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to unprecedented heights of at least 1 million transactions per second.

Compare that with Visa that does around 1,700 transactions per second.

'El Salvador' and Jack Dorsey will be pushing this technology and also we will soon have the book Mastering the Lightning Network by Andreas Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and René Pickhardt available on the bookstores' shelves. 

All that is working synergetically to make LN solve all the bitcoin scalability issues.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The Lightning Network is said to be able to take the transactions per second figure of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to unprecedented heights of at least 1 million transactions per second.

Note that “1 million” isn't something fixed. It's a decentralized network and you can't know for sure how many transactions it can hold. The fact that it doesn't have a limit makes it even more interesting. I guess that the more LN nodes, the more transactions it can hold per second.

~snip~

Can't I receive money from you through LN without having to open a channel? For example, a family of four wouldn't have to open four different payment channels, the father could open one and then send off-chain funds to the other members.

[dkbit98]

Usage of Lightning Network is rising every day with number of nodes (over 21,400) and channels (over 49,800) being at all time high, but I doubt this will solve all scalability issues with Bitcoin.
It is not so popular with regular people, more development is needed, and more merchants and websites need to accept LN payment to see the real potential and fix all bugs.
It's always possible to have some new mainnet scaling solutions in future, or some better alternative to Lightning Network.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The Lightning Network is said to be able to take the transactions per second figure of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to unprecedented heights of at least 1 million transactions per second.

Lightning could process this number of transactions, yes, but the limiting factor is on-boarding everyone on to Lightning as I explained above.

Can't I receive money from you through LN without having to open a channel? For example, a family of four wouldn't have to open four different payment channels, the father could open one and then send off-chain funds to the other members.

You don't have to open a channel directly with me, no, but you still have to open a channel to someone. If the other three members of the family open a channel to the father, and he opens a channel to me, then I can send money to any of them, but the 4 of them have still had to open 4 channels.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You don't have to open a channel directly with me, no, but you still have to open a channel to someone. If the other three members of the family open a channel to the father, and he opens a channel to me, then I can send money to any of them, but the 4 of them have still had to open 4 channels.

Excuse me from being a LN newbie. Can't you open 1 channel funding 4 multi-sig addresses?

[avikz]

Obviously other currencies have been aiming to tackle the scalability issues that Bitcoin is being presented with.

Obviously if the Lightning Network is not successfully implemented, the likes of coins like XRP will fill in the gap that banks need for fast cheap liquidity.

Will the lightning network be game over for the rest of the ALT coins that are borderline built on scalability?

Let me know what you guys think.

For scalability- yes the LN would apparently solve the issue. But you need to understand that LN is a sidechain. It collects the payments in bulk and broadcast into the bitcoin network at one go. So LN is a temporary solution for now. Even though LN is live since last few months, it has not yet received enough attention that it deserves.

Secondly people are already using altcoins for their daily transactions because they are fast and cheap. Why do you think BNB coin is constantly rising up? Bitcoin is mostly considered as an investment unfortunately so even LN would not be able to bring down the alts in any way!

[o_e_l_e_o]

Excuse me from being a LN newbie. Can't you open 1 channel funding 4 multi-sig addresses?

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking here - I think you might have your terminology wrong.

It is possible to open multiple channels with one transaction, if that is what you mean, although not yet commonly done. It is also possible for more than 2 users to open a single channel by using something called Channel Factories, which allows more channels to be opened and closed between all these users without requiring any further transactions to be broadcast to the base layer, but I don't know if this has actually been successfully done by anyone yet.

[Carlton Banks]

Let's assume all the following (which is completely unrealistic):

• Everyone uses Taproot
• Every channel opening transaction is one-input-one-ouput
• Every transaction being made is a Lightning channel being opened, and no one makes any other type of transaction
• Every block is optimally full
• Everyone only opens a single channel which they keep open forever

Even assuming all that, then at most you can open 9,000 channels per block, meaning it would take 17 years just to let everyone in the world open a single channel. As soon as you consider that obviously some people need to have multiple channels open for Lightning to work, and obviously people will want to close channels, open new ones, top up their channels, and so on, then that number increases exponentially.

if we're working with assumptions, then let's assume that Eltoo lightning gets a soft fork:

• slightly fewer than 9000 channels per block, but far more than 2 participants per channel
• the overhead for adding extra channel participants is negilgible
• Eltoo therefore radically improves the number of people opening channels in a block beyond the 18,000 possible with taproot channels

If "radical" even halves your 17 years figure, and I think it will do far more, then Eltoo will do the job. Considering how fast taproot was activated, we can expect something similar for eltoo (which is now a pretty mature spec with years of technical discussion behind it)

[Rath_]

Excuse me from being a LN newbie. Can't you open 1 channel funding 4 multi-sig addresses?

Sure, you can! I have recently opened two channels in a single transaction. As far as I know, LND, which seems to be the most popular implementation, requires the operator to construct such a transaction manually using PSBTs. That's probably why it's not so popular. C-lightning has a dedicated multifundchannel command which is fairly easy to use. I don't recall seeing a mobile wallet which would support this feature.

[Timelord2067]

Increasingly I am finding it harder and harder to connect to Lightning Network nodes with a sizable number now hidden behind onion addresses (that's fine, that's their choice).  Both my Eclair and Zap wallets are reporting sites (not hidden behind Onion addresses) are showing as "incompatibility" errors.

If Lighting Networks want to be considered a powerhouse for Bitcoin use (as opposed to being a novelty as it is now) then there needs to be a formulisation of protocols and procedures.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking here - I think you might have your terminology wrong.

I might, but what I want to say is that even if we make all those assumptions you wrote, it's still impractical to open a channel for every future Bitcoin user. We'll probably have to move into another smarter way like using 1 multi-sig address for a family; each member could have their own balance in their phone, but they'd all spend from the same channel.

Sure, you can! I have recently opened two channels in a single transaction. As far as I know, LND, which seems to be the most popular implementation, requires the operator to construct such a transaction manually using PSBTs. That's probably why it's not so popular. C-lightning has a dedicated multifundchannel command which is fairly easy to use. I don't recall seeing a mobile wallet which would support this feature.

There's a lot of development in LN these days as I can see. I'll dive into the details this summer, because I've stayed behind. I have never setup a lightning node like LND and C-lightning; I'll start with these.

[Carlton Banks]

We'll probably have to move into another smarter way like using 1 multi-sig address for a family; each member could have their own balance in their phone, but they'd all spend from the same channel.

that's what Eltoo is, except everyone still gets their own channel too

simply put: one channel that contains multiple channels

[Kakmakr]

Obviously other currencies have been aiming to tackle the scalability issues that Bitcoin is being presented with.

Obviously if the Lightning Network is not successfully implemented, the likes of coins like XRP will fill in the gap that banks need for fast cheap liquidity.

Will the lightning network be game over for the rest of the ALT coins that are borderline built on scalability?

Let me know what you guys think.

I think one of the drawbacks of a add-on type of technology like this.. is the complexity. People are already struggling to understand the basic concept of Bitcoin and now they have to over complicate it, by adding more things to it. 

Technology should never be too complicated on the "user" side... or adoption will be hampered. People want a wallet and they want to deposit and withdraw... that's it...     (Running Lightning Network hubs and all that nonsense is for techies... not for your average public out there)