Lightning Network Observer

[fillippone]

The other day I hit the hard wall of reality: I didn't get what Bos was talking about:


https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/1439605208292593667?s=20

My understanding is this: the activity of my LN nodes has grown so much, that the channel management made me spend a huge amount of money in on-chain fees. If LN didn't exist I would have never spent those fees, so probably LN is helping new business emerge, lowering dramatically the marginal cost of a single transaction, allowing for a whole new class of businesses being run over LN.




Wonderful news!


https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/1166762645736738816?s=21

As per Andreas, I bet he's trying the already known framework of rigorous technical writing coupled with easy tu understand explanations.
I am skeptical of the longevity of the book, given the rate of change of the technology of the LN.


As per roastbeef, hope his writing is not as fast of his dialogue ^{As a foreign speaker, I found roastbeef almost unintelligible while speaking. Something like I need to listen to at 0.5x on Youtube.}

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[n0nce]

My understanding is this: the activity of my LN nodes has grown so much, that the channel management made me spend a huge amount of money in on-chain fees. If LN didn't exist I would have never spent those fees, so probably LN is helping new business emerge, lowering dramatically the marginal cost of a single transaction, allowing for a whole new class of businesses being run over LN.

I understand it like that as well. Alex runs a big routing node, one of the largest as far as I remember. By paying those fees, he saved tons of people a multitude of that amount in on-chain fees. If LN wouldn't exist, he would probably just have HODLed the amount that he locked into channels and would thus have paid no fees at all.

Wonderful news!


https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/1166762645736738816?s=21

As per Andreas, I bet he's trying the already known framework of rigorous technical writing coupled with easy tu understand explanations.
I am skeptical of the longevity of the book, given the rate of change of the technology of the LN.

I'm excited as well, was looking forward to the book for a long time and checked GitHub from time to time to look up things and see how the state is. Now I'm not sure if they're rewriting it from scratch or just finalizing it together.
The rapid development of LN is surely going to be a challenge. After all, Andreas likes (and I as a reader enjoy) code / command examples to try out etc., which will be difficult if the clients change much. It works well for Bitcoin Core, but not sure about lnd and c-lightning.

I also remember Rene was having big difficulties finding a good paying Bitcoin job, while he's super knowledgeable, so I'm glad to see he has a cool Bitcoin project on his hands now

[fillippone]

Wonderful news!

Looks like it is not a news at all. It’s a tweet from 2019 I totally overlooked.

Strangely enough, the tweet from an Italian bitcoiner that relaunched this and originated this post has strangely disappeared.
Embarrassment, embarrassment everywhere.

[ndalliard]

Wonderful news!

Looks like it is not a news at all. It’s a tweet from 2019 I totally overlooked.

Strangely enough, the tweet from an Italian bitcoiner that relaunched this and originated this post has strangely disappeared.
Embarrassment, embarrassment everywhere.

the news is probably that it goes to print soonish?! at least that is what i heard recently 

[fillippone]

Observing multiple articles observing Lightning Network Growth:


BITCOIN LIGHTNING NETWORK CHANNEL CAPACITY HITS ANOTHER ALL-TIME HIGH


This is interesting also because it is a free issue of a paid newsletter.
It's always interesting to see how the paid content looks like when dealing with those topics, where critical and technical journalism is required to have effective reporting and provide some added value to the reader.

[fillippone]

Another day, another Network Capacity ATH.


https://twitter.com/kerooke/status/1441952895486726145?s=21


This graph is seriously becoming vertical!

[fillippone]

Lightning labs is summarising latest LN developement we wintessed this last summer months

The Summer of Lightning: Reaching the Tipping Point 🏔

Welcome to the September edition of the Lightning Lab, a newsletter filled with Lightning Network updates, community coverage, and, of course, memes! In this issue, we discuss the massive amount of adoption that’s taken place this summer — from El Salvador to Starbucks to Twitter — all thanks to our community of Lightning startups and developers. Number of People Go Up! 📈

It's a good recap, covering pretty much all the aspects we already encountered in this thread over the last weeks.

[fillippone]

Arcane Technologies Posted a very interesting piece of research:



https://twitter.com/arcaneresearch/status/1445442967582302213?s=21


There are so many interesting graphs and updates.
 I will post only one here and it's about Network Centralisation, a widely debated (negative) feature of the LN, everyone has been discussing about, even amongst the authors of the report (Christian Decker wrote about it a few times ago)

The figure above illustrates the average clustering of the Lightning Network. A value of 1 indicates that nodes form cliques. In layman’s terms, a clique is a closed group of nodes, not reaching the broad network. A value of 0 means that the average node is a hub, with none of its peers being connected. The average clustering coefficient has trended down since February 2019, aligning with the growth of cut channels in the same period, witnessed in Figure 22 (previous page). The declining clustering coefficient indicates that peers on the Lightning Network make increasingly more rational decisions when opening new channels. In general, channels now tend to be opened with nodes that are connected to a subset of nodes, which the channel creator has not opened a channel with. The opening of this channel gives the channel creator a route to this subset of nodes and the ability to route transactions to these nodes. Given these nodes also tend to be connected to another subset of nodes, the channel creator gets the ability to route a transaction more efficiently on the broader network. While this increases the importance of hubs and increases the percentage share of cut channels, it also contributes to making the Lightning Network a more efficient and well-connected payment network.

[cAPSLOCK]

Thanks for that Arcane Tech link fillippone.  This is good stuff.

I have been thinking a lot about the clustering idea and where it will lead, and what it's natural balances are.

So far the LN is an open protocol that anyone can join and there are different costs and incentives for joining different ways.  As a custodial service customer to a profit seeking node.  But there are also lots of service provider roles we are seeing appear as the network matures.

Take Strike.  They are a service provider that uses the LN as the backbone for really a traditional finance product they offer.  So their incentives for running nodes on the network are different than, say, WoS, Fold, or your average tinkerer like me.  Yet what they do potentially benefits the network. 

It is also possible nodes like Strike's could do net damage to the network (I am not seeing this happening now/yet).    They could sequester traffic or deny traffic etc.

So I am thinking through all the incentive theory etc that we are seeing appear.  I am not sure there has ever been a network like the LN where nodes can benefit from simply participating.  Even the base layer of Bitcoin is much different in it's incentive structure.

But it is natural in systems like this one that traffic (read: information) is going to find the most efficient routes to flow, and the network as a whole will determine what is and is not really advantageous. 

SUPER interesting stuff in my opinion.  I think the LN as a business is where bitcoin mining was before say, Asics.  What i mean is back then mining was unfolding and moving from CPUs to graphics cards, and owning a mining business was an interesting and constantly changing game.  The LN is not the same as this at all... but it's evolution will follow a path, and we are very early still.  What will be the big game changers on this path like ASICS were for the base layer nodes?  What incentives will appear and change for the LN? 

These are the questions that are interesting, and possibly profitable, right now!

[fillippone]

Thanks for that Arcane Tech link fillippone.  This is good stuff.

I have been thinking a lot about the clustering idea and where it will lead, and what it's natural balances are.

A lot of the clustering debate originated from this paper ^{I might have already posted it here?}

Lightning Network: a second path towards centralisation of the Bitcoin economy

Maybe you could find useful insight, even if I am afraid the taxonomy of the network has changed a lot since the publication of the paper.

[cygan]

here is a nice summary of the arcane research which was posted before from my italy dude fillippone

The usage of the Lightning Network is growing faster than seen in the available public statistics, according to Norwegian crypto-focused research firm Arcane Research. As the network is increasingly used for everyday purposes, we could be on a path of Bitcoin (BTC) adoption that will see hundreds of trillions of Lightning transactions each year by 2030, they estimate.

https://cryptonews.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-is-growing-faster-than-you-think.htm

[ndalliard]

Something is wrong before everyone corrects their behavior. When mistakes happen, some people learn immediately and change their habits, while others do not. But gradually, over time, there are fewer central points of failure and the whole thing becomes more resilient. A similar situation may arise here. If any of these primary nodes fail, people are more likely to use smaller nodes in the future. All I can suggest is to keep a close eye on it, see what develops, then make a backup plan if it seems to get worse.

i nearly reported your post. what are you saying? why should primary nodes fail? why should i make a backup plan after looking what develops? if what gets worse?  i am confused...

[n0nce]

Something is wrong before everyone corrects their behavior. When mistakes happen, some people learn immediately and change their habits, while others do not. But gradually, over time, there are fewer central points of failure and the whole thing becomes more resilient. A similar situation may arise here. If any of these primary nodes fail, people are more likely to use smaller nodes in the future. All I can suggest is to keep a close eye on it, see what develops, then make a backup plan if it seems to get worse.

i nearly reported your post. what are you saying? why should primary nodes fail? why should i make a backup plan after looking what develops? if what gets worse?  i am confused...

Looking at the profile, it seems this person is posting random quotes from the internet. I shall check for plagiarism later.

Edit: yes, my suspicion was true. He's reported already: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1926895.msg58124330#msg58124330

[cAPSLOCK]

Thanks for that Arcane Tech link fillippone.  This is good stuff.

I have been thinking a lot about the clustering idea and where it will lead, and what it's natural balances are.

A lot of the clustering debate originated from this paper ^{I might have already posted it here?}

Lightning Network: a second path towards centralisation of the Bitcoin economy

Maybe you could find useful insight, even if I am afraid the taxonomy of the network has changed a lot since the publication of the paper.

I have read this one back around the time it came out.

I think the LN is going to evolve in a way MUCH like the internet.  Is the internet centralized or not?

Yes.

[fillippone]

I think the LN is going to evolve in a way MUCH like the internet.  Is the internet centralized or not?

Yes.

The internet is centralized: Yes.
Is the internet centralized by design: No.

Of course, centralization has a lot of nice features: it's damn easy and convenient.
Of course that is at a cost: privacy and freedom.

In case of centralized actors turn evil, can the users show the middle finger and turn away? Yes.


Lightning network is similar, not all systems are built this way. The banking system is centralized (every dollar exchanged in the world has to go through the NY FED), and you cannot basically escape from it.

This is a relevant feature.

[cygan]

the p2p browser is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2022

Impervious API is a programmatic layer that sits on top of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, i.e. "Layer 3." Developers can leverage the Impervious API to easily build secure p2p data transmissions and payments into their applications and services.

1. Truly peer-to-peer (like the Internet was meant to be)
2. Censorship and surveillance resistant
3. Default encrypted
4. Payments built in

https://www.impervious.ai/
https://twitter.com/Bitcoin/status/1455297028125196290

[cAPSLOCK]

I think the LN is going to evolve in a way MUCH like the internet.  Is the internet centralized or not?

Yes.

The internet is centralized: Yes.
Is the internet centralized by design: No.

Of course, centralization has a lot of nice features: it's damn easy and convenient.
Of course that is at a cost: privacy and freedom.

In case of centralized actors turn evil, can the users show the middle finger and turn away? Yes.


Lightning network is similar, not all systems are built this way. The banking system is centralized (every dollar exchanged in the world has to go through the NY FED), and you cannot basically escape from it.

This is a relevant feature.

Exactly.  My thoughts with the quoted post are just that the centralization of the internet is kind of up to the user.  Thre are arguably fundamental points of centralization such as TLDs, but even then TOR and i2p solve these issues (at least somewhat).

So, you can use the internet in a VERY decentralized way, like using fedarated social media servers (mastadon), and TOR and VPNs etc...  Or you can just plug straight into Google.

And for some things I want the latter.

It will be the same for lightning.  There will be ways to use it in a centralized way and ways not to.

I will tell you this... I have thought about taking my family on the holy trip of the Bitcoiner to El Zonte in ES for a vacation.  If I do I will be taking at least two lighting wallets.  I will try to primarily use my own node (with Zeus), but I would also load up my Wallet of Satoshi to have as a standby. in case something went screwy with my node.

That is a perfect example on the simplest level of using decentralization and centralization to my advantage.

[TheBeardedBaby]

The centralization of Internet is just a phase, we are already moving forward. We are on the Web3 move and soon things will be different.
It's amazing how everything started with an idea of an anonymous guy and a white paper of that idea and it went so global that is changing the world as we know it right in this very moment.

And the LN plays a big role too, not only after the Twitter integration just off-chain transactions is the future, ~0 fees, fast transactions and fast growing network, what would you want more.

I don't get it how people still buy ETH, just moving some dust cost hundreds.. insanity.

The future is exciting

[ndalliard]

the p2p browser is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2022

a p2p browser? we shouldn't try and reinvent the wheel

there is this article from the ceo of the breez wallet, which i recommend reading:
https://medium.com/breez-technology/lightning-the-internet-choosing-the-right-path-bedfa6382316

i am all in favor for a lightweight lightning network and not some "frankenstein network" impervious tries to build. also all their claims are not verifiable, there is no source code (correct me if i didn't look at the right place). don't forget the saying: don't trust, verify

on another point: saying the internet is centralised, just tells me, that you don't understand how the internet works

[fillippone]

on another point: saying the internet is centralised, just tells me, that you don't understand how the internet works

With the term "centralized" I mean only we are all using the same services, programs, and apps to access the internet.
Wonder why it's such a big issue when Google of FB have problems and their services go down?
Because the internet is centralized, if everyone is using Gmail as a mail server