Topic: A critique on the Lightning Network from a regular poster. Long. - page 2. (Read 977 times)

Indeed you can open your own payment channel.
Indeed The Banks cannot disallow you to open your own direct payment channel to someone in another country.
To open an account with a bank in order to make any payment you have to deposit first something onto your account. And just a little more then half-century ago there was [mostly] no other way then put a cash.
And of course you were free to give that cash directy to someone in another country.

Why would you have fiat if you could do groceries with Bitcoin?


Why would you have fiat if you could buy online with Bitcoin?


As long as Bitcoin keeps going up, there's no point in having fiat, unless completely needed (such as situations where Bitcoin is not accepted).

EVERY time that you spend fiat on something, you are choosing to buy that thing INSTEAD of having bitcoin.  Therefore, you have that thing, and you have less bitcoin than you would have had.  That is NO DIFFERENT than if you had that same value in bitcoin instead of fiat, and then used bitcoin to buy the thing.

Every penny that you hold in fiat (because you need it for those merchants that don't accept bitcoin) is a penny that is being held in an inflationary and centralized currency instead of a deflationary and decentralized currency.  I want more merchants to accept bitcoin so that I don't need to hold as much value in worthless dollars.

Agree. People stress about scaling Bitcoin, when it's just a secondary thing. Why would I do groceries with Bitcoin when I have fiat? Why would I buy online with Bitcoin when I have fiat? etc etc. As long as Bitcoin keeps going up, there's no point in spending it, unless completely needed.

But earth is big and big chunks of population don't have fiat, or a functional one at least. In this case, they could go directly to a Bitcoin based economy in which they bypass the traditional fiat model and just use LN for payments. It all depends on the context. What's clear is: Fucking up the blockchain so these poor people can transact on-chain is insane, and that is why BCash and all these other forks lead to eventually.

I cannot wait for that. I want to see your point of view. Thanks.

But depsite your argument, I believe the Lightning Network will not be used for the sake of "decentralized offchain transactions". People will use it because transactions confirm instantly and because it will be more private than onchain transactions.

Plus the fees will be cheaper.

the lightning network DNS will have a hotlist of prefered well conncted nodes to hand out to new users.

now who do you think these DNS managers are going to decide are top of the list... themselves


hint blue nodes are all one person/entity

both my edited image and the one provided by quin do not prove decentralisation, but prove distribution.. there is a difference.
think of the blue dots as a bank branch of a bank corporation. each blue node has a separate bank branch manager that
authorises payments of its customers of that bank branch. but its all part of a bigger corporation... oops i mean "factory" cough cough

also carlton banks hints at the "grid" concept.. which is done via the DNS list choosing best nodes(to be the corners) to promote to fresh users.
put short.. you cant have a grid unless your controlling who connects to what.
in a decentralised network there would be no control of who connects to what. thus impossible to create a grid in a true open decentralised randomly selected network

yet LN has a autopilot feature, a DNS seed,
and remember if you imagine a grid of squares.. who do you think will be the (hubs) well conected corners


P.S just wait until the explanation of 'channel factories' gets the ELI-5 treatment. then it all becomes clear to average joe

You're only going to become a hub if people choose to open channels with you. They are unlikely to know or care how much BTC you have. Merchants, exchanges and other large sites will most likely become hubs simply because they are the businesses people want to transact with.

Centralisation means under control of one body which the LN can never be. I find that most people that accuse LN of being centralised have no idea what a decentralised network is.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Dettsr71gKg/maxresdefault.jpg

If the Bitcoin Core Team is acting as a centralized authority of Bitcoin then BTC is not counted as a decentralized currency in the first place. I think the writer thought that LN is the way of the Core on having some kind of banking authority with regards to transaction, which he is wrong about. The concept of having a middleman in LN transactions are totally avoidable, the short solution is opening up your own channel and pay directly to who you are sending your money with. So technically you are still in total control of your money. Also I guess that some hubs involving a "middleman" is good as you know some transactions here in the forum uses Escrows, and by having middlemen involve it would surely eliminate the use of these escrows.

Oh, perfect timing on this discussion. I'm currently researching about this topic.
From what i read, the major flaw about LN is the route will break if one node doesn't have enough BTC amount as seen in this video
https://youtu.be/UYHFrf5ci_g

That said if you have great amount of BTC, most likely many transaction will be routed to you (aka become Hub -> centralization)

However Antonopulos argue that the higher amount BTC in that "hub" the higher risk of attack. And he also mention about re-balancing channel which I have no idea about how that works.
https://youtu.be/D-nKuInDq6g?t=6m40s

What do you think?

Probably the most relevant argument one can make at this point is that it doesn't matter in the slightest if some people think it's going to be centralised or it won't scale, because it's still happening anyway.  The people who believe it's a good idea aren't going to stop working on it just because some other people don't think it's a good idea.  So everyone might as well just wait and see. 

If it doesn't meet your exacting standards, feel free not to use it.  If you think it's so bad that you can do better, go right ahead and make something better.  No one's stopping you.  The various Lightning dev teams don't need permission from anyone to build their projects, neither do you.  Put your plans into action if you think LN is such a terrible concept.  See who takes an interest.

Lightning devs are also working on a routing algorithm that causes the network graph to be arranged like a grid. It's gonna be pretty difficult for hub-like nodes to monopolise routing when that techniques makes it into the protocol, trying to predict which nodes to open channels with could become frustrating experience if the hub operator was trying to make money. It'll make more sense to just open up lots of independent grid nodes, in the hope that you can somehow predict where money will flow on the network, and put nodes in strategic parts of the overall network graph. And the network graph is going to be changing shape (and it's payment flow dynamics) constantly, so the algorithm that places your (supposedly profit making) nodes needs to be able to predict the randomness of payment demands, in essence. There cannot be 100% success rate, let's just put it that way, and it wouldn't surprise me if profit making Lighning nodes is a non-viable business in that scenario.

I think where these people gets bogged down in these arguments, they miss one of the most crucial aspects of the technology. Nobody is forcing you to use a specific hub, you can still open your own payment channels. This is not something that you can do with Banks. The Banks will not allow you to open your own direct payment channel to someone in another country.

Second layer technologies like this will only be centralized, if it was controlled by centralized entities, but the LN is open to everyone. Big difference, right. 

yes the merchant becomes the banker2.0
put all your funds into a richard branson channel so you can buy train, plane and space travel tickets. by the way you need richard bransons signature every time you want to buy something.. oh look richard branson is now a bank

as for other posts
some banks dont use customers funds for internal investing
some banks dont do mortgages
some banks dont do credit cards or debt

these hubs are not best friends you conect to p2p, they are centralised services(HUBS) that the LN dns seeds can send a certain preferential list of hubs to users.
yes you can manually request to join a friend.
but that does not negate the point that hubs do exist and are centralised authorisers of hundreds of peoples funds


a bank is a storage vessel of value that needs authorisation. a central bank is where a central authoriser has powers to authorise or reject payment of other peoples funds. if you wish to object. then i guess another of satoshi's ethos of bitcoin has died "be your own bank"

LN is not a "be your own" concept because it requires secondary authorisation but it is a "bank" because it stores value and requires authorisation

you can play symantics all you like
"dont call it a chargback, use 'punishment' buzzword instead to hide average joes understanding"

but to generalise it
LN is not fit for purpose as a scaling solution everyone should use.
LN is not a 'unlimited use' concept that never needs to close channels.
LN is not a service where it is guaranteed to work if you only connect to one friend(you cant pay anyone by only connecting to a friend(DDos/out of funds issues))
LN is not a service where you can pay anyone in the (imaginable future of 7billion LN users) for just 1-3 hop fee's and only needing 1-3 channels to do that.

HUBS is the concept of getting millions of users 'well connected'

100 nodes with 100 connections and EVERY connection had 100 connections..
then you can be lucky to pay anyone in 3.5 hops(lets call it 4 just for sanity sake)
...screw it 95 nodes 95 connections and every connection had 95 connections = more realistic 4
or
300 nodes with 300 connections and EVERY connection had 300 connections..
then you can be lucky to pay anyone in 3 hops

but not all nodes will be 95-300 channels to pay within 3-4 hops, meaning much more than 4 hops will be required(fee costs increase)
or required to connect to hub(keeps costs down but then use centralised authoriser)

there will be some users with 3 connections (accounts with 3 banks)
and there will be hubs(banks) with 300(or more) customers that the hub(bank) will need to sign for

now imagine each node/hub equally agreed to charge the minimal 1millisat(1MS)
would you prefer a DECENTRALISED network of users with only 3 connections each which would cost upto 22MS but no guarantee of routing
where sometimes route fail due to DDos and funds unavailable in the route of channels

or would you end up using a CENTRALISED system of connecting to 3 hubs(banks) where it could cost you upto 4MS

because some how achow101 has this DIS-belief that LN is a utopian dream of perfect limitless connectiveness of only needing to connect to a couple friends and having guaranteed payment system that costs literally nothing to pay anyone in the world.

before you answer. take the mindset of average joe that can only predict their spending habits for a couple weeks ahead so will only want to risk $60~
would they want to split their funds into 300 channels of $0.20 or have maby 1 or to channels with hubs of $30~ each

its a timeout to not allow a CLTV output to be spent until X time (usually days to allow time for someone to realise a tx got confirmed but have time to still send a new tx with a revoke code to chargeback
hense CLTV concentrates on the 3-5 day before truly settled

github: CLTV " until that block height or block time has been reached the transaction output remains unspendable. "

That is completely false. That is not what CSV is used for. It is used as a timeout during which time a punishment can occur which is not the same as a chargeback. Once an HTLC is resolved or once new commitment transactions are put in place, the payment is final. There is not charging back. Trying to perform a chargeback would mean that you are broadcasting an old commitment transaction which means that you LOSE ALL of your money, not you gaining back whatever money that you sent.
[/quote]

CSV  REVOKES aka CHARGEBACK = punishment
you can call it a "punishment" all you like but all your screaming is tom8o.. the reality of average joe is actualy tom@o(chargeback)
if your waiting to receive funds and it shows its destined to be yours in a couple days.. but then someone else takes it from you. its a chargeback

EG
today 27tth April    multisig btween franky1 and paypal2.0 bank
tx1 CSV allow paypal to spend else 5 days pay franky 1btc..  signed franky1 signed paypal2.0
tx2 CSV allow paypal to spend else 5 days pay franky 1.2btc..  paypal gets tx1 Revoke .. signed franky1 paypal2.0 refuses to sign tx2
because paypal is not being co-operative franky1 sends tx1 as its the only tx franky has fully signed.
its broadcast, gets accepted into block. but franky1 cannot SPEND tx1 until 2nd may as he doesnt have tx1 revoke key

paypal does. so before 2nd of May paypal spends frankys tx1 funds back to paypals pot of funds. franky1 lost out

yep paypal done a chargeback

because its open source and all handshaking is done in private without the community decentralised auditing...
paypal node can tinker with its sourcecode to be the one that requests franky1 is the first to give up the old key first. thus franky1 loses out

if LN was so flawless and trustless. the blockchain(2009 invention) would not ever needed to be invented. because people could just smart contract
in private. and the whole many decades of trying to find a solution to decentralsied money would not be blockchain but LN

come on achow.. are you really saying that decentralised blockchain technology is a dead technology and not required. because private smart contracts are flawless. come on. atleast admit LN has limitations and flaws

as said
its not about YOU making a payment and YOU getting a refund.. its about YOU wanting to withdraw funds from paypal2.0 and paypal taking the money. leaving YOU out of pocket

LN is not the BANK..
LN is the swift network banks use.
hubs. one entity with authorisation power over multiple contracts of value store are the banks

yes you can set up a joint bank account with your wife(p2p) and never need to use the swift(LN routing).. but if you are just going to set up a payment system with someone you trust enough to be a counter-signer. you can just do that as an ONCHAIN multisig  and just use a piece of paper to tally who owes who what and just sign a final cheque/tx to finally settle up.

the purpose of LN is about routing/hubs and hops not about p2p