Lightning Labs (LND) associated with WEF?

[n0nce]

So, I found out today that Lightning Labs, the company (?) behind LND and other products, is apparently associated with the World Economic Forum (WEF).

https://www.weforum.org/organizations/lightning-labs

I don't know if this move was discussed here before or not and if it's anything new at all or if I just missed them joining forces. But I always had a slightly negative image about the WEF in mind, when it comes to Bitcoin, so it seems odd. I am also quoting a Twitter user which shares the rough impression I had about WEF and Lightning Labs as well.

@wef works closely with govts around the world & want total surveillance of individuals. @lightning has been hindering LN privacy & P2P improvements (BOLT12, package obfuscation, decentralized liquidity ads, rendezvous routing/blinded paths).

What do you guys think about this?
For my part, I haven't used LND much so far, and right now run everything on C-Lightning anyway. The other products I haven't tried. I did follow BOLT12 development though and noticed LND was never really interested much in it, while it seems a very valid thing to implement.

Edit: The page is up at least since September 2021, so maybe there was discussion on it already?

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[witcher_sense]

So, I found out today that Lightning Labs, the company (?) behind LND and other products, is apparently associated with the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Bullshit. They could have mentioned almost any bitcoin company just to make it look bad because these evil guys from the world economic forum know they won't face any consequences and they definitely won't get in trouble for doing so. This is just one of the numerous ways with which they can attack bitcoin and lightning network, but the thing is if they mentioned bitcoin instead of a company, it would be good for bitcoin because everyone knows Bitcoin is decentralized, no company behind it and no point in partnering with bitcoin. Just ignore and don't fall into this FUD.


UPD:


https://twitter.com/roasbeef/status/1495153767729143808

[franky1]

it all kicked off with the hyperledger stuff many years ago (many side projects since then)

do you think government ministers of countries that want to develop CBDC do coding themselves?  
or spend time interviewing individual coders?
nah.
they just hire existing developers they know that have experience doing the stuff they want to do. maybe even just fork off publicly open code and expand the project for own needs.

but shh we cant talk about it because fangirls with pitchforks come out to cry

edit:
dang it.. n0nce beat me to it (below) Elizabeth Stark and her team
yea starky we know your not into bitcoin/blockchains - smart contracts are your jam

[n0nce]

https://twitter.com/roasbeef/status/1495153767729143808

they gave us some random award, literally unprompted, zero prior comms

no one at Lightning Labs works with, nor is affiliation with the WEF

after seeing all the uproar about this, seems all the WEF needs to do in order to sow discord in the community update their website?

That's good to know, thanks! Still questionable to 'accept' a random award from them. As we can see, they only did it to have an excuse to put Lightning Labs on their website. Maybe this will be a lesson to other companies not to even take free stuff from these types of institutions such as WEF.

And not to 'interviews & workshops with them'.

[DaveF]

I am going to go back to two things.

1) The saying 'There is no such thing as bad publicity':
It put Lightning Labs name out there and it put it in front of a lot of people who may not know about them But they do know about WEF
As a group here, since we think a bit differently about BTC, but others may see it as giving L2 solutions and BTC in general a boost.

2) We are all BTC enthusiasts here and understand it better.
The average person who saw the superbowl commercials last week and decided to check out BTC / crypto probably never saw this forum or even heard of it.
They do see press about the WEF.

Not saying it's good, just that it is.

-Dave

[BJ2gCFtGbiVK]

I'm not overly concerned whether or not LL has attended events organised by, or cooperates with, industrial and/or political groups. My primary interest is in products.

At the moment, there is an understandable desire to bring bitcoin to as many individuals and corporations as possible, as quickly as possible. Nation-state adoption adds to this pressure. There is a temptation to accept trade-offs that are not desirable and may not otherwise be considered.

My concern is that a combination of the building blocks currently in production or being proposed may lead to the blacklist functionality that is a hallmark of oppressive and totalitarian regimes:
1. Reputation systems for protocol services, which are all based on persistent identity, whether by IP alone or by tying IP/node to a physical identity;
2. Covenants, which would provide for a set of individuals or corporations to be denied access to services based on reputation or other criteria;
3. Web applications based on a persistent identity based on node, physical identity or a combination of both.

These ideas are evident in applications such as Lightning Labs Pool, Lightning Labs LSAT, BOS and the Coinpool proposal launched over the past few days.

I understand the issues with lightning liquidity and node maintenance, particularly in terms of a simplified user experience. I worry more that the trade-offs being proposed, and sometimes accepted, are perhaps inadvertently creating tools to remove the element of permission-less access that sets bitcoin apart from the fiat financial system as is.

I am not an anarchist and believe humans should be free to commit to social contracts, however, I am strongly against the enforcement of ID-based solutions at protocol level. Where strictly necessary, they are better implemented using existing web standards and national legal systems that can be modified by democratic engagement.

I'm very grateful for having benefited from the work done by open-source developers. I don't have the technical ability to contribute to core or second-layer development, but on a more constructive note, perhaps the solution lies in the direction of:
- RISC-V single board computers for Pi-like functionality
- educational resources similar to Raspibolt
- offering greater functionality on mobile interfaces as incentives to run nodes
- on-chain bonus payments followed by regular lightning-based salary payments, for fairly balanced channel usage
- app-based warnings of ID leaks for lightning, similar to existing on-chain privacy warnings
- a cautious, prudent approach to scarce OPCODE availability

[dkbit98]

So, I found out today that Lightning Labs, the company (?) behind LND and other products, is apparently associated with the World Economic Forum (WEF).

WEF parasites infiltrated everything so it's no surprise you see them connecting with LND and maybe some other Lightning and Bitcoin related projects.
If you want to see if something is deeply connected with them do a search on their website, you will find countries, politicians, even executive board member of ethereum foundation Aya Miyaguchi is part of that wef religion.
They obviously want to track and control everything and you can also find wef page for Chainalysis with several connected posts:
https://www.weforum.org/organizations/chainalysis

[franky1]

So, I found out today that Lightning Labs, the company (?) behind LND and other products, is apparently associated with the World Economic Forum (WEF).

WEF parasites infiltrated everything so it's no surprise you see them connecting with LND and maybe some other Lightning and Bitcoin related projects.
If you want to see if something is deeply connected with them do a search on their website, you will find countries, politicians, even executive board member of ethereum foundation Aya Miyaguchi is part of that wef religion.
They obviously want to track and control everything and you can also find wef page for Chainalysis with several connected posts:
https://www.weforum.org/organizations/chainalysis

look deeper and you will find alot of ethereum devs got involved with the BIS m-bridge/CBDC of many countries too.

again it all started around the time of the hyperledger stuff ..

[NeuroticFish]

look deeper and you will find alot of ethereum devs got involved with the BIS m-bridge/CBDC of many countries too.

Developers are not necessarily enthusiasts or people/companies with strong beliefs. Some of those devs may be just people with skills working for money.
Just saying that's (too) easy to jump to conclusions or throw stones...