[self-moderated] Is LN Bitcoin? franky1: About scaling, on-chain and off-chain

[franky1]

When did I say that it must be the default end goal? This is just you misinterpreting everyone.

first you seemed a little open minded. like it was an option.

Based on all these replies I read, from newbies to Legendaries, I realised that this is something that no one thought of on bitcoin. At least, no one has a solution. Right now we can may payments really cheap, I had made a payment using only 300 satoshis. It took 5 days, but it did. The median is about $2. I've noticed that by paying 1 sat/byte (which is much lower than $2) can take about 1 day to get confirmed. So even if the median reaches $10, we can still make transactions really cheap.

Now, I don't know much about that lightning network, but I'm sure that not every bitcoin adopter will switch on using that.

see your progression from mentioning flaws of bitcoin without a solution and saying lightning is not a solution for everyone..
..to then go full on LN loyalist mode, saying things like:

I just think that the lightning network is a more preferable solution and that most of the Bitcoiners use it.

I find LN really cool as a solution to the scaling issue, but there are lots of people believing that due to its existence, it can be globally adopted as a medium of exchange.

I don't want to say again that Lightning brings new things to the table, but I'll have to: It's an innovative solution and does good to everybody.

LN does not scale bitcoin. LN takes people away from using the bitcoin network.
your advert is like saying exchange custodians scales bitcoin network.. but we all know that is not true. because those using custodial wallets are not even touching the bitcoin network.

if you think that stagnating and immobilising a limit that causes a backlog of transaction delays is solved by removing users. then you are missing the cause of the problem that needs to be addressed

[BlackHatCoiner]

LN does not scale bitcoin. LN takes people away from using the bitcoin network.
your advert is like saying exchange custodians scales bitcoin network.. but we all know that is not true. because those using custodial wallets are not even touching the bitcoin network

I won't answer to this closed-minded way of thinking, but to this:

see your progression from mentioning flaws of bitcoin without a solution and saying lightning is not a solution for everyone..

Take a look on the dates of those posts. They're not the same. In 2020, I didn't even know how Bitcoin works technically. I was literally a newbie.

[franky1]

LN does not scale bitcoin. LN takes people away from using the bitcoin network.
your advert is like saying exchange custodians scales bitcoin network.. but we all know that is not true. because those using custodial wallets are not even touching the bitcoin network

I won't answer to this closed-minded way of thinking, but to this:

see your progression from mentioning flaws of bitcoin without a solution and saying lightning is not a solution for everyone..

Take a look on the dates of those posts. They're not the same. In 2020, I didn't even know how Bitcoin works technically. I was literally a newbie.

and instead of leaning what was stifling BITCOIN progress. where you would know the solution is actually in scaling BITCOIN(increase onchain transaction average). but you instead avoided learning about the technical stuff, heck you avoided learning what a full nodes functions consist of. you just leaped straight to idolising LN and propagandising flaws of bitcoin like it cant scale, wont scale.

heck you dont even know all the LN flaws, so instead shy away from mentioning LN flaws just to over promote it as what "everyone" "most" "everybody" should/does use... sorry but its not the case


..
there is a big difference between these two narratives
LN is the solution to bitcoin scaling everyone should use
vs
LN is a choice option anyone can use
..
the first is like saying bitcoins problems are solved and no bitcoin adjustments need to be made because people will use LN instead.

the second is that options are open. but that BITCOIN still needs more work done on and for the bitcoin network to scale BITCOIN

[BlackHatCoiner]

It's clear that we won't ever agree that Lightning does scale. In my opinion, it does as it minimizes the transactions that happen on-chain and therefore, the weight of the chain. In your opinion, it doesn't as ITs' NoT BiTCoIn! But, that's okay. Everything's relative.

heck you avoided learning what a full nodes functions consist of

Huh?

[franky1]

It's clear that we won't ever agree that Lightning does scale. In my opinion, it does as it minimizes the transactions that happen on-chain and therefore, the weight of the chain. In your opinion, it doesn't as ITs' NoT BiTCoIn! But, that's okay. Everything's relative.

heck you avoided learning what a full nodes functions consist of

Huh?

1. bitcoin network. im going to emphasise this. BITCOIN NETWORK
making people not use the BITCOIN network. is not scaling the BITCOIN network.
it just makes people use a DIFFERENT NETWORK.
this is not scaling bitcoin. its scaling another networks popularity.
decreasing bitcoin network utility/popularity.
you may want to hide the millisats and pretend LN is bitcoin. but LN sends payment messages in millisats. heck even the channelDB that saves channel data saves the data in millisats.

2. your numerous attempts to say that a full node doesn't not need to archive, does not need to offer Initial Block Downloads to peers. doesnt need to regularly check hashes against data... or peers
and instead treat a local utxo set as golden locked. even when this database has no hash to ensure no edits happened.. you seem to have forgot alot of network backbone security/features, just to present a local view of user-only-comfort as somehow being the network full service node for network security and service.

in short YOUR view of a full node is just a local-personal-use-validator

[BlackHatCoiner]

making people not use the BITCOIN network. is not scaling the BITCOIN network.

Alas, they do use it. They use the Bitcoin network to create channels. They couldn't have Lightning if they didn't have the first layer. And the existence of the Lightning contributes to those who want to only use the first layer. The transactions which would occur on-chain by those who use Lightning, did not happen. The chain weights less!

2. your numerous attempts to say that a full node doesn't not need to archive

Another misinterpretation? What else have I said? That I want your death, because I requested a ban? That I hate Bitcoin, because LN iS nOt BiTCOiN? That I'm Satoshi, because <irrelevant reasons>? Quote me wherever I cursed Bitcoin principles for one more time and I'll show to everyone you just misunderstood my sayings...

[franky1]

making people not use the BITCOIN network. is not scaling the BITCOIN network.

Alas, they do use it. They use the Bitcoin network to create channels. They couldn't have Lightning if they didn't have the first layer. And the existence of the Lightning contributes to those who want to only use the first layer. The transactions which would occur on-chain by those who use Lightning, did not happen. The chain weights less!

again lightning can still function without bitcoin

people can deposit fiat into an exchange, buy an asset realise bitcoin is expensive and swap to an altcoin and then use LN.
people can have channels opened for them with 'inbound capacity' without the user needing to have bitcoin. (thor)
heck people can even have channels that are suppose to be pegged to bitcoin transactions without there even being a confirmed transaction to peg to(turbo).

so yea LN is not strictly and 100% hooked to bitcoin.
calling it a layer offers a imaginary pretense of it being a protective skin for something. but LN is not a skin of bitcoin. its a bridge , a transport bypass to exit the area



you want people to think of it as a skin of bitcoin to protect bitcoin utility and add to bitcoin utility
where you see "LN bitcoin" as a separate network from "ln litecoin" as if LN is a skin for each coin
also you probably view it as a skin that has more 'nodes' than the encompassed coin has

yet its actually a bridge between different crypto's to take people away from one to then access another
where there is less nodes than the actual blockchain nodes


funny part is a smart PR guy could actually sell its actual view as its niche, positively. rather than just lame tagging LN as bitcoin to pretend its made for and is for bitcoin and helps bitcoin.

taking utility away, yea it does decrease the weight. but thats not scaling the weight, thats removing the weight. meaning getting rid of transactions, removal, exodus, exit.

users buying their coffee with lightning apps on cell phones are not protecting bitcoin, monitoring bitcoin, helping bitcoin. its doing something else away from bitcoin where users never touch the bitcoin network. yep LN's niche of cellphone apps for people to buy coffee (not home nodes offering services) is where users never touch bitcoin. and when its time to move on from LN decide to exchange to a altcoin like litecoin to then move to an exchange to change to fiat,

[n0nce]

same goes for LN people using a phone app to buy chewing gum. they dont care about being full nodes(validation AND archiving)

I don't know what's favoring them, but I'm sure they want their chewing gums. They will use what satisfies this need. They could be using PayPal instead or some other payment processor, but they choose to use a cryptocurrency 'cause it comes with benefits. However, they're more attracted by PayPal, because it's faster than the on-chain transactions.

These people won't change by increasing the block size.

Imagine anyone using '2MB Bitcoin' in a brick-and-mortar store, waiting 10 minutes for confirmation..
Or what about buying $1 coffee with $0.08 (absolute minimum!) fee? Sounds like nothing at first, but it's an 8% fee.
Block size doesn't change confirmation time and transaction cost, no matter if the mempool will always be empty or not. Because 1sat minimum is not negligible, especially in the future!

How about microtransactions at the cent-level to e.g. pay for music or movie streaming by the second? Or low-value digital items? Every time a fee of at least 250 sats? At the moment it's only 8 cents, but if Bitcoin reaches $1 million, that will be ~$2.5 for every transaction at 1 sat/vB MINIMUM FEE!

Much rather opening a channel for 2 bucks instead and use it basically for free afterwards..

Also let's not forget in other countries / economies, $0.08 is not 'nothing', like for us. Wages can be >10x lower, so that would be already like $1 for them, at low low Bitcoin prices of $30k. Imagine what happens at $100k or more.

The vast majority don't even run a node. They're probably satisfied by SPV solutions.

These are not mutually exclusive either. You can be a super hardcore Bitcoin supporter with even multiple full nodes, but prefer to pay through Lightning (from one of those nodes or LN app, whatever), in stores, for micropayments or other stuff, for example.

yet its actually a bridge between different crypto's to take people away from one to then access another
where there is less nodes than the actual blockchain nodes

It's just one extra capability of LN. If people want to switch from Bitcoin to another coin, it should be their freedom to do so and it's possible already today through something that we call 'exchange'... Don't you think?

taking utility away, yea it does decrease the weight. but thats not scaling the weight, thats removing the weight. meaning getting rid of transactions, removal, exodus, exit.

You got it! We scale Bitcoin by taking some weight off its back (the blockchain)... We take actual, real Bitcoin transactions and move them between users without storing every movement on the ledger. This is why we call it 'scalable'.
Any on-chain scaling mechanism is limited to some very hard bounds and thus can't be called 'scalable'.
Like, a 2x throughput increase (2MB blocks) is not 'scaling'. That's a freaking tiny constant factor. It's not nearly enough for global adoption.

I see, you like numbers. Let's go ad absurdum.
Assume every node operator has a 100Mbit internet connection (not all do) and unlimited computing power so a block is completely verified in 1 nanosecond.
This means in 10 minutes (600s) he can transmit 60,000Mbits or 7.5GB. This will be the absolute biggest block size.

The smallest possible Bitcoin transaction is 166 Bytes in size.
A 7.5GB block (biggest 'scaling' you can do on-chain) can thus contain 7,500,000,000/166=45,180,722 transactions, or 75,301 tx/s.
This would suffice for worldwide usage.

Though then we run into a storage issue: 7.5GB/10min is 0.75GB/min or 1080GB/day. After 10 years, the blockchain will have the size of 3,944,700GB or 3,944 Terabytes. This requires over 200 18TB Seagate HDDs, basically buying 20 of them every single year. This is a rate of around 2 Seagate 18TB HDDs per month.

At current MSRP of $600 per drive, that gets rather expensive.
And don't forget about the magical instant-multi-GB-block-verifying CPU and fully saturated 100Mbit/s internet connection (this is the most realistic bit about this whole thought experiment now that I think about it).

Now, you will say, we don't need 75k tx/s. That's true. What if we want to replace VISA and Mastercard (no normal bank transfers)? From what I can gather, together they typically have 5k tx/s.
So if we go from 75k to 5k, that's just a factor of 15. Meaning instead of having 3,944 Terabytes of data after 10 years, we will have only 263TB. That's still 15x $600 drives, driving your node cost upwards of $9000.
If this doesn't drive centralization, I don't know what will.

users buying their coffee with lightning apps on cell phones are not protecting bitcoin, monitoring bitcoin, helping bitcoin. its doing something else away from bitcoin where users never touch the bitcoin network. yep LN's niche of cellphone apps for people to buy coffee (not home nodes offering services) is where users never touch bitcoin. and when its time to move on from LN decide to exchange to a altcoin like litecoin to then move to an exchange to change to fiat,

So you think every Bitcoin user has to 'protect' and 'help' Bitcoin? And that nobody should be allowed to use Bitcoin if they're not running a node at home?

Also, as I said earlier, running a node and using LN is not mutually exclusive.

[franky1]

never said that no one should have choices.
i always said to not advertise LN as
"its bitcoin"
"it is the solution"
"bitcoin cant do this, come use something else"
where the motive and narrativce is not choice. but being shown an exit

if you want to play with millisat messages and channel databases that are measured in millisats. where you dont actually save a blockchain formatted template to your hard drive. but be under the illusion that you think its 'bitcoin' that your choice.
just dont go trying to tell everyone that LBN is the future end place people should all move to with silly excuses of 'bitcoin cant scale'

oh and the 'big block' '100mb block '2mb block" is again ignoring what bitcoin scaling is. its about transaction count increases and decreasing the fee per use.. but yea you will shy away from talking about onchain transaction increase discussions. as many LN fans always do.
and instead make the conversation sound more like "bitcoin weight" vs LN capacity.
just to set an image in peoples minds that bitcoin is about bloat and LN is about capacity.

as for you saying that bitcoin is 0.08 minimum

250byte = 1sat/byte =250sat is ~9cents. but. here is the thing. 1sat/0.01kbyte. can make transactions 25sat for a 250byte tx.
after all bitcoin already has fee calculation code cludge that doesnt actually count full length raw data as full length. so new fee mechanisms can be added to 'round' bytes up to the next significant number
i didnt even say everyone should be full nodes(archive and validate)
i have always said
dont advertise
less than full nodes as being full
that everyone should prune where its falsely portrayed as still full
that people should use other networks, which would decrease the current diversity/population of full nodes due to users dropping full nodes in replacement for altnet lite apps for their daily use

[n0nce]

oh and the 'big block' '100mb block '2mb block" is again ignoring what bitcoin scaling is. its about transaction count increases and decreasing the fee per use.. but yea you will shy away from talking about onchain transaction increase discussions. as many LN fans always do.

I'm not shying away! Then we say the blocks stay at 1MB?
Let's say you magically get a transaction down to 10 Bytes each (impossible but let's say it).

That's 100,000 tx/block (maximum 'transaction count increase'). This would yield 166 transactions per second. Clearly not enough.

[franky1]

oh and the 'big block' '100mb block '2mb block" is again ignoring what bitcoin scaling is. its about transaction count increases and decreasing the fee per use.. but yea you will shy away from talking about onchain transaction increase discussions. as many LN fans always do.

I'm not shying away! Then we say the blocks stay at 1MB?
Let's say you magically get a transaction down to 10 Bytes each (impossible but let's say it).

That's 100,000 tx/block (maximum 'transaction count increase'). This would yield 166 transactions per second. Clearly not enough.

LN is not processing (166-7) 159 transactions a second. so bitcoin does not need to be 24x transaction capacity. to meet demands..
.. sorry but LN is not that popular
real world utility puts real people only buying 1-5 things a day. meaning with real life usage of 33000 LN nodes (actually less users due to some having more then one node, but lets pretend each node represent a user)
33,000*5 (yep im helping your side by exagerating) is 165,000 A DAY!! (not a second) which actually becomes 2tx/s extra demand to cope with LN users if all LN users retreated back to using onchain.

and no. dont 'do a rath'. by showing a users "events" (success or fail) as an example of a users real life usage. those events are counts of routing. where 1 persons payment for a coffee appears as events on multiple peoples logs. but is still only one actual payment had been made.

so yea no need to pretend bitcoin needs to leap from 7 to 166.. and instead just needs more of a 7 to 10 scaling

and also you have ignorantly tried to avoid the 'scaling bitcoin transactions' discussion by stating a silly 'stick at 1mb size' and then adding in an impossible scenario of transaction being 10 bytes.. to make it look like bitcoin cant scale.. which is another sweep under the carpet of actual utility of space.

heres a real option.
4mb is deemed hardware safe.
so remove the cludgy code that still insists portions of data stick in a redundant 1mb space. and actually utilise the 4mb space to allow 4x transaction capacity compared to 1mb

EG the 1.5mb-2mb segwit has not yielded a 1.5x-2x capacity increase of transaction count due to the cludgy code.

if say the devs actually insist on a 2mb block (without the 1mb multiplier cludgy segwit weight math crap) then that 2mb can actually achieve 2x transaction capacity.

other things can be done too. like limit the sigops of transactions. so that a block is not filled by just 5 transactions(if someone wanted to) and instead allow more of the space to share with more users.

also fee formulae can be added. to punish people that 'spam' blocks with just 1confirm transaction spends. thus again allow more room for genuine people that just want to buy things once or twice a day. due to the lack of mixers/spams every block.
trying to make bitcoin the "reserve" where only hubs, exchanges doing batch withdrawals, and mixers doing spam transactions.. where everyone else is forced to use other networks.. is not the direction people should be aiming for

[n0nce]

oh and the 'big block' '100mb block '2mb block" is again ignoring what bitcoin scaling is. its about transaction count increases and decreasing the fee per use.. but yea you will shy away from talking about onchain transaction increase discussions. as many LN fans always do.

I'm not shying away! Then we say the blocks stay at 1MB?
Let's say you magically get a transaction down to 10 Bytes each (impossible but let's say it).

That's 100,000 tx/block (maximum 'transaction count increase'). This would yield 166 transactions per second. Clearly not enough.

LN is not processing (166-7) 159 transactions a second. so bitcoin does not need to be 24x transaction capacity. to meet demands..
.. sorry but LN is not that popular

It's not about how many it does right now, it's more about how many it can do.
Lightning can definitely do that many transactions per second. It would be extremely easy: 160 users send a transaction to their peer at the same time. We have thousands of these channels already.... so if needed, LN can already provide that speed.

As I showed you, Mastercard + VISA perform roughly 5,000tx/s.

I find it a very weak argument that only because very few people use Bitcoin, it doesn't need a way of scaling.
Because that assumes Bitcoin usage will (and should) never change, and at most by a very small constant factor.

To set things clear: you don't want Bitcoin to replace / rival existing banking systems? Because to do so, it does need to reach at least VISA + Mastercard speeds. These 2 networks don't even include bank transfers, which can also be replaced by Bitcoin.

and also you have ignorantly tried to avoid the 'scaling bitcoin transactions' discussion by stating a silly 'stick at 1mb size' and then adding in an impossible scenario of transaction being 10 bytes.. to make it look like bitcoin cant scale.. which is another sweep under the carpet of actual utility of space.

Nononono I already showed how much data it will use if we scale block size. Then you said you want to reduce transaction size instead, so I gave you the best chance with my assumption that we can get a transaction down to incredible 10MB (that was in YOUR favour!!) and that it still only would do ~160tx/s.

heres a real option.
4mb is deemed hardware safe.
so remove the cludgy code that still insists portions of data stick in a redundant 1mb space. and actually utilise the 4mb space to allow 4x transaction capacity compared to 1mb

Okay, so you want to simply incrase block size to 4MB, why did this require 12 pages? Everyone here's trying to figure out what you actually want / propose. Just state right away: 'I want Bitcoin to have X block size and reduce transaction size and that's my scaling solution'. Let's say you can then do around 4x the transactions of pre-segwit Bitcoin (7tx/s), that puts you at 28. This works if adoption only slightly rises.

It also doesn't allow for micropayments which happen much more frequently than 'purchasing X things per day'. For example, when listening to a podcast on Breez, I can pay them 10sats/min (so 1tx/min). I would be sending 60 transactions a day if I were to listen for a podcast a day, opposed to the 1-5 transactions you are claiming. Of course you will say that microtransactions are unnecessary and stupid, but the fact is many people would like something like that. I accept your opinion that you don't need or like it though.

Just trying to say that since LN 'truly scales' (not 4x constant factor, that's not really scaling), you can do things that were not possible before.

other things can be done too. like limit the sigops of transactions. so that a block is not filled by just 5 transactions(if someone wanted to) and instead allow more of the space to share with more users.

also fee formulae can be added. to punish people that 'spam' blocks with just 1confirm transaction spends. thus again allow more room for genuine people that just want to buy things once or twice a day. due to the lack of mixers/spams every block.

This all sounds simple and fun, but it's not a real scaling mechanism. It's small improvements here and there, that maybe bring you from 7tx/s to 28, 50 or maybe even 100. In the end, there will be a constant factor formula to get from block size to transactions/s.

However, if you get the load off the blockchain and people send commitments back and forth off-chain, the throughput will be completely independent from block- and transaction sizes. That's the beauty of it. With the same base numbers, you can handle 10, 100 or 1000s of users and transactions, because they're essentially only limited by their internet connection speeds amongst each other.

trying to make bitcoin the "reserve" where only hubs, exchanges doing batch withdrawals, and mixers doing spam transactions.. where everyone else is forced to use other networks.. is not the direction people should be aiming for

Wait, who is forcing anyone? Anyone can use whatever they want. In fact, I'm wondering why you're feeling so forced to use stupid Bitcoin with cludgy SegWit, silly LN developers and pruned-node-fanatics. There are Bitcoin forks out there with 4MB blocks, no SegWit and no LN.........

I'm a little bit disappointed you showed no interest in my 7.5GB... numbers, since you like to post so many yourself, but no worries..

[franky1]

kind of weird really..
n0nce is the only one that mentioned the silly 'transactions of only 10 bytes becomes only 166tx/sec..

I'm not shying away! Then we say the blocks stay at 1MB?
Let's say you magically get a transaction down to 10 Bytes each (impossible but let's say it).

kind of weird that he then carried on with a scenario of leaping in 1 step to large blocks of nonsense amounts..

kind of weird for him to forget what he said in his scenario's and then pretend its what i was saying..

actually, its not weird. its not the first time i seen this lame tactic done.
and im not surprised they do not understand the difference between scaling vs leaping.
and not surprised that they keep pulling on the gb's by midnight or else bitcoin fails propaganda

ofcourse im ignoring his 7gb block theory. as its the same, infact worse propaganda than the "100mb by midnight" theory used to pretend bitcoin cant cope with any scaling by throwing in big numbers where its portrayed that any scaling must be leaps to sky high numbers instead of progressive steps.

but hey, maybe they are not ignorant about scaling, but just soo entrenched in their LN advertising that all they can think about is trying to make LN seem like the utopian place people need to go to.

i guess he also thinks that scaling the real estate market requires 20billion homes to be build tonight 'coz population in 2050'. rather than realise that every 6 months only a few million need to be build at a time.

yea thats basically the LN fans idea of scaling 'leap to 20billions homes by christmas 2022 because they are going to be needed now for the future population' totally ignoring the word scaling. (periodic movements).

but you gotta laugh at the utopianism advert of LN

because they're essentially only limited by their internet connection speeds amongst each other.

actually there are many factors.. liquidity of hops. availability. node honesty.

and also. they are not sending commitments between each other. no LN message EVER contains a blockchain format transaction template.

and as for the 'instant-ness' funny how people using LN are complaining about the lengths of time payments are 'inflight'
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/issues/4381..

oh and if you look at the max HTLC numbers of inflights. a business can only receive 483 payments at a time from its node.
this is why LN businesses run multiple nodes(LNBIG has 26)

yet in bitcoin you dont need 26 addresses to receive thousands of transactions.
LN relies on the lack of confirm payment system, with a later(days-month later) ideal settlement period.

after all  LN does not care about confirmed payments. it only cares about a recipient seeing a zero-confirm signature
yep people can pass around many zero-confirm transactions and the RBF as the 'update' on the bitcoin network

well bitcoin can also send upto 300mb(mempool limit) of zero confirm transactions. if there was a fair comparison.
yet LN peers are limited to a 65kb length to hold all relayed(routed) payments at any one time

[Rath_]

The following post is a continuation of the discussion which started here.

in other topics i showed you there are like 500 different message types(spec compliant) and upto 65,000 custom, and each of those types can be used for a multitude of things

And that's how you learned that "Routing" type messages do not contain any routing instructions or liquidity information.

bolt07 messages: announcement_signatures, channel_announcement, node_announcement, query_short_channel_ids/reply_short_channel_ids_end, channel_update, query_channel_range/reply_channel_range

Their types are: 259, 256, 257, 261, 258, 263, 264 respectively.

None of these messages include "onion_routing_packet", "hop_data" or any other routing instructions.

even simple messages like ping and pong can add payloads of different information, well outside of your "update_add_htlc" mantra where you think everything is done inside

Again, just because you can technically fit some data inside ping/pong messages, it doesn't mean that the other node expects it. In fact, you should not send any data using them:

Code: (https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/01-messaging.md#the-ping-and-pong-messages)

    type: 18 (ping)
    data:
        [u16:num_pong_bytes]
        [u16:byteslen]
        [byteslen*byte:ignored]

A node sending a ping message:
    SHOULD set ignored to 0s.
    MUST NOT set ignored to sensitive data such as secrets or portions of initialized memory.

So, as per specifications, the data sent through ping/pong messages is just a bunch of zeros.

3. maybe the many ways many wallets do it, is not spec compliant to YOUR wallet. but your wallet after all is not interested in privacy, hense why you think your wallet is limited to only a dozen message types.

Feel free to name those privacy-oriented wallets which do not follow the specifications to improve the privacy of their users.

EG W does not tell X about C because WC is private. so X cant tell y and Y cannot tell Z .
so you as Z will just see Z-Y-X-W but not -C..

As Z, you won't learn about the CW channel, but you can still learn about AB, BC, CD, DE from either W, who can learn about them from C, or from some outside node which had received a gossip message about any of those channels. W can safely forward gossip messages from C as those messages are exactly the same for every hop.

[franky1]

So, as per specifications, the data sent through ping/pong messages is just a bunch of zeros.

really??

Rationale

The largest possible message is 65535 bytes; thus, the maximum sensible byteslen is 65531 — in order to account for the type field (pong) and the byteslen itself. This allows a convenient cutoff for num_pong_bytes to indicate that no reply should be sent.

Connections between nodes within the network may be long lived, as payment channels have an indefinite lifetime. However, it's likely that no new data will be exchanged for a significant portion of a connection's lifetime. Also, on several platforms it's possible that Lightning clients will be put to sleep without prior warning. Hence, a distinct ping message is used, in order to probe for the liveness of the connection on the other side, as well as to keep the established connection active.

Additionally, the ability for a sender to request that the receiver send a response with a particular number of bytes enables nodes on the network to create synthetic traffic. Such traffic can be used to partially defend against packet and timing analysis — as nodes can fake the traffic patterns of typical exchanges without applying any true updates to their respective channels.

When combined with the onion routing protocol defined in BOLT #4, careful statistically driven synthetic traffic can serve to further bolster the privacy of participants within the network.

Limited precautions are recommended against ping flooding, however some latitude is given because of network delays. Note that there are other methods of incoming traffic flooding (e.g. sending odd unknown message types, or padding every message maximally).

Finally, the usage of periodic ping messages serves to promote frequent key rotations as specified within BOLT #8.

ping and pong can be sent:
1. randomly with any extra data that can be false so that it confuses others
2. with onion routing to have private updates, or (1) because just waiting for a official update can be "no new data for a significant portion of a connection's lifetime"
3. to do other things like changing keys, updating status, heck you can even put in personal info like delivery address or a link to something that someone bought

oh and you forgot the "extension" part of the message. yea, i see you just wanted to codebox the 'type/payload(data)'
yep you can put in lots of stuff into the extension part.. but you keep dismissing this. maybe you dont understand, or maybe your purposefully ignoring what happens with TLV in the extension
yep inside the extension part you can put a TLV which has its own type inside the extension.

As Z, you won't learn about the CW channel, but you can still learn about AB, BC, CD, DE from either W, who can learn about them from C, or from some outside node which had received a gossip message about any of those channels. W can safely forward gossip messages from C as those messages are exactly the same for every hop.

and if C is private. there wont be a BC or CD or CW on the DNS network bootstrap map..
instead of seeing a full network map  tree that links
ABCDE
ABCWXYZ
ZYXWCBA
ZYXWCDE

you would instead see
AB            ZYXW
which is where you would have to "trampoline"


heres the funny part, there is no consensus in LN. so while you play games saying that the rules are strict and network compliant and everyone is forced,default public. where peopel cant just switch on and off their visibility. and where people cant negotiate payments away from YOUR version of pre organised payment setup from bootstrap data. BUT reality is there is no network wide audit, (well there wasnt and shouldnt.. though public loving person you are, you may want there to be. )

i guess you cant think of PR campaign to promote privacy, so you avoid wanting to discuss that its an option. and instead want to quote andreas saying things about how its default and forced to be public.

i still laugh that you think that it all has to be done via the payload of a update_add_htlc

again very strange tactic your playing

[Rath_]

1. randomly with any extra data that can be false so that it confuses others

All messages are encrypted so it doesn't really matter what you put inside (still, the specs recommend using zeros). The overall size of the message is more important as standardised messages have a fixed size, so a third-party might try to guess what you are talking about with some other node.

2. with onion routing to have private updates, or (1) because just waiting for a official update can be "no new data for a significant portion of a connection's lifetime"

I have no idea where you got the "private updates" from. Your quote suggests that you can create synthetic traffic in combination with BOLT04. In other words, for example, you can send ping messages while routing a payment to pretend that the payment was split or forwarded to a different node. You just need to send a ping message with the same size as "update_add_htlc".

3. to do other things like changing keys

Encryption keys are changed every 500 uses. Ping/pong messages count as one use. As ping/pong messages are sent frequently, they are the cause of frequent key rotations. They are not used to exchange new keys. No extra data is sent here.

yep you can put in lots of stuff into the extension part.. but you keep dismissing this. maybe you dont understand, or maybe your purposefully ignoring what happens with TLV in the extension

Let me explain my point again. Here's what you said before:

but there are hundreds of messages.. heck even the simple ping/pong messages can include updates to the fee's cltv's and such.

Yes, technically you can fit this information in there. However, an optional TLV payload was not a part of the initial specs and the Lightning Network works well without depending on it. Here's how I replied to you:

Even the ping/pong messages? Are you sure that we are looking at the same specifications? You might as well put a picture of your cat inside of your "ping" message, but the recipient won't know how to handle it correctly as it's non-standard.

None of the existing wallets or implementations expects information about fees, ctlv timelock or liquidity in the TLV payload. They would ignore it. Sure, you could modify your client to behave this way, but you would still have to comply with the specifications to be able to talk with other nodes without any problems. So, if the TLV payload is not used to exchange this information, what's your next idea?

and if C is private. there wont be a BC or CD or CW on the DNS network bootstrap map..
instead of seeing a tree that links
ABCDE
ABCWXYZ
ZYXWCBA
ZYXWCDE

you would instead see
AB            ZYXW

If we assume that all of the C's channels are private then you are almost correct (you forgot about DE). Although, "DNS network bootstrap map" is not really a suitable name for DNS bootstrapping used by new nodes and a local map of the network maintained by every node. Technically, any Lightning node can be listed in the DNS seeds.

heres the funny part, there is no consensus in LN. so while you play games saying that the rules are strict and network compliant and everyone is forced,default public. where peopel cant just switch on and off their visibility. and where people cant negotiate payments away from YOUR version of pre organised payment setup from bootstrap data. BUT reality is there is no network wide audit, (well there wasnt and shouldnt.. though public loving person you are, you may want there to be. )

i guess you cant think of PR campaign to promote privacy, so you avoid wanting to discuss that its an option. and instead want to quote andreas saying things about how its default and forced to be public.

What's the point of discussing what the Lightning Network could look like if we can't come to agreement how pathfinding and payment routing works at the moment in existing implementations and wallets? Other people already have a hard time keeping up with our discussion, especially that we are constantly switching between private, public and disabled channels in examples.

[franky1]

What's the point of discussing what the Lightning Network could look like if we can't come to agreement how pathfinding and payment routing works at the moment in existing implementations and wallets? Other people already have a hard time keeping up with our discussion, especially that we are constantly switching between private, public and disabled channels in examples.

yea obviously
you only want to discuss the Alice pays bob direct in the same channel stuff.
i tried many times to get you to expand out of your narrow examples. to get you to look outside a small subset of messages. and to see the wider stuff actually happening even as far back as 2019

i havnt even got to the bits about 'trampoline' and other stuff outside of your comfort zone. because you want to keep dragging things back to the small narrative of in-channel commitments to avoid talking about routed payments and payments without a pre defined path(three very different things)

(trampoline is just one example where the sender is not defining a pre-defined path nor needing to know full network before attempting a payment)

i have tried too many times to try expanding your narrative out, trying to get you to see more then just a dozen messages you think are involved. but hey.

its not about "what the network could look like". its that you only want to see/discuss a narrow portion/ small feature piece of the network ignoring the other features,. to only want to discuss bits that suit your narrative

right now. in an existing ability/feature. (not a "could be") if i was set to public or private. your bootstrap map wont show all my paths, though i can allow payments through them.
but im guessing im getting to far ahead of your narrative

[DooMAD]

Bumping the topic as I believe we've achieved a breakthrough.  After many years, franky1 has finally managed to articulate their grievances in a manner which can be interpreted:

2) Run a client which doesn't support SegWit and continue following the current consensus rules
3) Run a client which supports SegWit and proposes a change to consensus if a given activation threshold is met, hoping that others run the same client
4) Run a client which doesn't support SegWit and proposes a change to consensus if a given activation threshold is met, hoping that others run the same client

this is where you get things wrong
well i know deep down you used to know this stuff.. and now your just either incompetent, ignorant or just trolling

2. does not follow the current consensus rules.
what they get from a segwit compliant node (dev buzzwords not mine) stripped/segregated/ downstream version of the blockchain that has no witness data. thus they cannot validate or verify those transactions
they also are not deemed worthy of being part of the unconfirmed tx relay peer system and not part of the seeding of the initial block download for those wanting to get the blockchain. due to lack of having full data

The stance franky1 takes here is that backwards-compatible non-SegWit nodes are not following consensus.  It's certainly a... unique... interpretation, but that's not the point.

Their issue is that they don't like the consequences of their choice.  It's not enough for them that they can remain part of the network while declining to utilise, or even recognise, SegWit.  They feel diminished in their role, despite that being the path they chose.  Almost as though it's a form of discrimination to them.  It might sound like I'm reaching, but this point will be evidenced again below.

READ YOUR OWN WORDS

" Run a client which doesn't support SegWit and continue following the current consensus rules"

how can you say something is following the current segwit rules if it doesnt support segwit!!

also
how can you say something is following the current taproot rules if it doesnt support taproot!!

if it doesnt support it they are not validating things they dont understand. they are just BLINDLY using an opcode trick to accept without verifying the transaction..
thus they are not following the consensus rules becasue they are not verifying all the rules because they dont have all the rules to verify everything. they are no longer full validation nodes

YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD THIS
DEVS ADMIT THIS
so its time YOU ADMIT IT TOO
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0141.mediawiki#backward-compatibility

older software will continue to operate without modification. Non-upgraded nodes, however, will not see nor validate the witness data and will consider all witness programs as anyone-can-spend scripts (except a few edge cases where the witness programs are equal to 0, which the script must fail). Wallets should always be wary of anyone-can-spend scripts and treat them with suspicion. Non-upgraded nodes are strongly encouraged to upgrade in order to take advantage of the new features.

What a non-upgraded wallet cannot do
Validating segregated witness transaction. It assumes such a transaction is always valid

(treat as checked without actually checking)

this applies to taproot too
nodes that do not support taproot do not know the code/rules needed to verify taproot so are (by use of opcode trick) told to accept it unchecked)

PLEASE DO SOME RESEARCH!!

again a segwit compliant node strips/filters out (witness)data and gives the unsupported node a block that has less data than a segwit node has

the unupgraded node then doesnt verify segwit transactions and just blindly gets told to keep data unchecked.
those unupgraded nodes are down rated as less then full node. and not treated as good source nodes for IBD

Again, franky1 reiterates his belief that non-SegWit nodes, with the new addition of non-Taproot nodes, are supposedly not following consensus, yet somehow remain part of the Bitcoin network.  And again expresses anthropomorphised feelings that backwards-compatible nodes are being treated unfairly somehow.  Given the choice between being a part of the network and being forked off the network, I'd have thought most people would be happy with being able to remain.  This, however, is not enough for franky1.  If he can't have what he wants, apparently no one can (except we can and do, in fact, have everything we want, he's simply in denial about it).

true consensus is about agreement by the masses to then activate a feature becasue the masses agree they are ready to accept the new rule

however the mandatory activations, the backward compatibility stripping/filtering of data and the op-code tricks means those not upgrading are not voting at all. they are simply downgraded out of being full nodes and the features are activated without their need to agree/consent

true consensus for emphasis one more time because of your ignorance it needs repeating
was that rule changes did not happen new features did not happen unless the mass of nodes were ready to fully verify new rules new data. as thats the whole point of a secure network

your desires of a network of nodes that are not fully verifying and not needing to fully verify and not keep full archive data while in your stupid eye want too pretend they are still "full nodes" is your incompetence of understanding network security, code, protocols, rules and consensus requirement

It's worth pointing out that Bitcoin's network has no concept of "true consensus" as franky1 chooses to define it.  After all, that's a notion which only exists in his imagination.  It's not a genuine thing here in the real world.  Consensus empirically does not function in the way franky1 describes above.  Yet he continues to argue that it "should" because the alternative is that he feels diminished in his role and that his non-SegWit node is treated as "lesser" because he is making the choice not to take part in that aspect of the available features.

I hope this gives people some fresh insights in how to handle this colossal man-baby and his ceaseless tantrums.

[BlackHatCoiner]

And again expresses anthropomorphised feelings that backwards-compatible nodes are being treated unfairly somehow.

Fairness is subjective, because it's a result from each person's standards. It doesn't surprise me that some people like franky don't find it fair to produce consensus by that manner. Maybe backwards-compatible nodes do, indeed, get treated unfairly according to some, because they might disapprove the change but can't disapprove the transactions of that change (because they can't verify the witness part), and that might seem unfair to them, because they don't get to called full nodes (with the entire sense of the term) anymore.

The thing is: Bitcoin isn't in favor of fairness; it never was. It's in favor of freedom. The moment you start enforcing these consensus rules, that very moment you consent that these rules might as well change by consensus in the future. Like it or not, find it fair or not, that's how this system works. If you disapprove of it, create another one, which is more fair. It's doomed to be less free though, because fairness requires to dictate what's fair.

[franky1]

if doomad thinks bitcoin didnt have a true consensus.. then he is the idiot that does not understand bitcoin
but it is funny how i had to spend years dumbing things down to the most "explain like your 5yo" before he can understand the objections.... but thats on him. not me


he loves the fact that the consensus mechanism of 2009-2016 has been broken and bypassed. where he now wants to pretend it never existed.
that bitcoin never had a consensus (solution to byzantine generals problem)
but thats just his and his buddies that follow his narratives SHAMEFUL, manipulative, malicious, shenanigans and ignorant mind at play

i cannot believe how malicious doomad (and his chums) rhetoric is by saying that bitcoin doesnt and never had a true consensus. .. i understand why he says it. because his favoured subnetwork doesnt have a consensus system to protect their network value.  so he is selling a narrative that systems dont have nor need consensus and pretend bitcoin never had or needed one.. SHAMEFUL sales pitch

very shameful!!

the thing is

YOU idiots want to say that nodes with:
stripped blocks(non witness) that dont offer IBD seeding to peers.
and/or
pruned chains that dont offer IBD to peers.
nodes that dont verify every rule

you malicious deceitful fools are still deeming those nodes as being full nodes, pretending that they fully secure the network fully and are following consensus fully
BUT THEY ARE NOT

you lot do not care about making users risk aware or understand the variances and their impacts


..
consensus is where nodes need to majority be ready to verify new rules BEFORE a new rule is activated so that the nodes can verify the blockchain fully. and fully agree they have all verified all data and came to the same agreed end state

yet you IDIOTS what to have this stupid diluted insecure mashup of variant nodes of one brand, where people are still reliant on one brand even if they are not fully securing the network.

all so you lot can weaken bitcoins system by subversion so you lot can promote your crappy subnetwork as a 'solution' to limitations and flaws added by the devs that should not be putting these limits in but instead should be expanding and evolving bitcoin

take the new RBF. nodes that have full rbf disabled. when seeing a tx. keep the first seen. and thus are left falsely thinking the tx they see pending in the GUI is the one that will confirm. yet other nodes that use RBF will reject first seen and keep the higher fee spending utxo. thus nodes will have different mempools and different trust of whats pending to be confirmed. and thus ruining the risk based tolerance of acceptance of zero confirmation.

yep you lot wanted to break this zero-confirm tolerance because it impedes users that want to accept zero confirm. thus now they cant risk tolerate low value, are being told to use your stupid broke subnetwork as the replacement/solution to the zero confirm acceptance system

If you disapprove of it, create another one, which is more fair. It's doomed to be less free though, because fairness requires to dictate what's fair.

consensus is not about changing the rule and then if you dont like it, its too late go fork off to an altcoin

consensus is majority without manipulation(by pre-rejection-pre orphan miscounting). then would only activate a new feature if there is agreement by the masses(get a dictionary and learn consensus)


now go play with your silly subnetwork and stop abusing bitcoin with your charades that are malicious and only end goal is to ruin and stifle bitcoin to make your other silly non blockchain.non consensus network seem more attractive

you malicious manipulative vile people