Topic: Bitcoin Lightning Network under attack in EU (Read 342 times)

Haha, that was a lethal hit.

Yup, that's a reality that in the name of any nonsense we can expect such things from authorities. Make sure to hide this post from them because if this gets viral I can assure you that they are gonna knock on your home door and start from there. (Just kidding).

TBH it needs to change the traditional mindset of these authorities, maybe they gonna change it sooner if not than next there will be era of rebellions, because the public is close to a dead end, in the end, the entire anger is gonna blow up.

LN has failed the community for numerous reasons.. its not "the solution" as promised, its more of a niche service for only a select case utility of a few, falsely promoted above its means by brand stealing bitcoins fame trying to appear as being better/above/greater than bitcoin

the best option now for those preferring subnetworks is for subnetwork devs to learn from all mistakes so far, and start from scratch offering a different subnetwork that operates differently without the issues and doing it in a proper and truthful way to ensure people know exactly how it works and what its real limitations, flaws and bottlenecks are so people can be truly informed of the niche utility to make informed decisions of when and how to use a subnetwork and when not to

there are ways to create subnetworks that dont operate in a middleman routed model. thus defeating the jurisdiction us/eu are trying to define right now for subnetworks and services

there are ways to secure and lock value to the referenced utxo to truly make it preventable for subnetwork peers to cheat each other.
there are ways to do many things to get around many mistakes of LN's design model
but so far its just been band-aid ontop of band-aid.
so the best option now that routing(the main function of LN) is being brought into regulators jurisdiction, is to just start from scratch and do things differently

The Lightning Network is supposed to make BTC transactions faster and cheaper, so this could be a major buzzkill. Gotta keep an eye on how this plays out, ‘cause it might shake things up. Just a reminder that even the top crypto tech isn't invincible.

That does appear to be a long term goal for them, yes.  All of this is small steps towards that.  They don't want any of this to gain traction because it runs contrary to what they want.

As long as we are human, criminality will continue to exist in life ,using that as an excuse to ban what will be beneficial to human and the society at large will not save the globe from hardship but instead worsening the financial and economy needs towards the citizens . Attacking Bitcoin always is because they have tried their best to control and have Bitcoin it to themselves, but it's not possible.

Attacking the Lightening network in EU can't change the fact about Bitcoin existence or it's decentralized way. They know the real criminals , i don't see how Bitcoin technology can be abused by criminal,what about other technologies/firms e.t.c, that are not Bitcoin or layer 2. All the EU could have done is to focus on how they can control cyber crimes, because in one way or the other Bitcoin has helped the economy.

there is proofs.. just read the regulations, policies and compliance procedures licenced MSB/PF have to follow.. then look at the details. you will see its not "government" watching everyone. any MSB/PF has to develop systems to monitor its customers and then comply to standards to report suspicious things to governments
in short governments dont get details of all transactions, just the juicy details of transactions a business has deemed suspicious enough to think government authorities might be interested in

this is the whole 'if your not doing anything wrong you got nothing to worry about' because if your not doing anything deemed as suspicious the government wont get a SAR report about you thus they wont see your interactions.. they only see/handle the suspect ones
though its the services and businesses that are collecting alot more information on users so its the businesses that are the main data collectors of all transactions..

businesses collect and store masses of data and keep it for many years. meaning if you operate legitimately without suspicion the government wont know about you. however if for say 4 years* you operate ethically.. but then involved in something suspicious, the business will SAR the suspiscious transaction, the government will investigate and if they find it meets a certain level of possible criminal involvement they can get a court order to ask the business for all 4 years* of data related to you. and then the government will get to know alot more about your activities which the business has collected about you and data assumed to be related to you

*random number i chose.... but most business store data for 6 years


even china doesnt have enough government employees to watch all transactions.. even china delegate that task out to businesses that do the payment services

governments have always delegated monitoring tasks to financial businesses.. but when crypto was legitimised as a currency, then those same policies began to be put in place for crypto businesses to comply to also.
for instance river financial, bitrefills, bitfinex, etc will need to gather info on its LN users and partners and retain and share data on the routed packets.

you will also find that regulated payment services need to know about their channel partners whom if operating as a route would need to be regulated to. this will cause a cascading effect that routes then only flow through regulated channels where only the endpoints(edges) are then individuals

The way I see this, the more of this the better. I couldn't care less about their investigations. What are they going to investigate? Who bought what? That's private information, but obviously the idiots from EU don't want you to have any privacy. They're becoming second China, with the difference that China is often criticized by them and they claim to be more civilized
This is another proof that governments want to make slaves out of us.

You can't get proofs about that franky, personnaly I think some countries are tracking and monitoring crypto transactions of some of their own citizens themselves and several other countries are doing that on foreign citizens and then they exchange the informations they get with the legal countries of those citizens in order to circumvent their own privacy laws. It allows them to claim they did not violate the laws hippocritically. So people are maybe not tracked by their own country but by another country which will give those informations to their country actually.

Shouldn't be surprised there. The EU actively seeks out and blocks TOR services, blacklists (manually!) sites -- and member states choose to do the same for certain private services. As long as they can't figure out a way to identify you on a service you use, you're at risk.

Even without L2, once there are on-chain tech that obfuscates data, they'll go for it, even if they don't understand how to.

The good news is, it doesn't actually prevent any of us from using. So... almost irrelevant development.

Name one thing that can't be abused.

heres the thing though.. when LN routers are classed as payment facilitators, it then becomes a purpose to collect certain data, and retain it for a legally required time. so its not a use once and forget thing.

if LN routers were not being classed as payment facilitators, users could sue routers who do retain data for no reason.. but by being classed as payment facilitators then gives routers legal reason to retain data in regards to regulated activities such as KYC/aml/tax/accounting and such

as for the onion routed packets.. they are both personal data and financial, as the channel ID and HTLC addresses are the personal as well as the partner the onion packet is passed onto, and the msat amount and fee is the financial

I hope that is not an article from Russian hackers attacking the EU and US via infowarfare propaganda. We should also consider how governments are dealing with these issues in Russia and China.

BTC>The Lightning Network (LN) and GDPR share a goal of empowering individuals to have more control over their personal data. However there are challenges in both technical aspects. For example LN reduces on chain data storage, which aligns with GDPRs data minimization principles.

When it comes to pseudonymity, versus anonymity, data controllers and processors must consider that LN transactions are linked to pseudonymous addresses rather than directly to personal identities. By implementing anonymity measures it becomes easier to uphold another core GDPR principle; the right to be forgotten.

Additionally determining the roles of data controllers and processors is complicated by the nature of LN.

Stepping back for a perspective the question arises; Should messages exchanged in LN be considered "personal data " or should they exclusively be viewed as financial data?

I think the attack is more directed on the lightning network instead of bitcoin itself. Still this might give a negative impact on to bitcoin itself as people have a hard time separating different concepts about crypto.
I too do not understand how this can be used for illegal activities but I will guess that it is because of the off-chain transaction that sets them off. The additional privacy can also be another factor.

How is LN doing data obfuscation, this part needs more clarity. Bitcoin LN for me is not Bitcoin and that is why I won't consider this ruling as an attack on Bitcoin. I also fail to understand why will criminals use LN when they have multiple options available to commit financial crimes, money laundering, convert black to white, etc. This decision according to me is trying to curb more regulation over the existing one and hamper Bitcoin LN adoption in the EU.
 

The thing is that normies will believe whatever the government comes up with because they couldn't be bothered to make their own research and make up their own opinions because it meant they would have to go against what the government is offering.
I cannot wait to hear what insane reason they can make up to try and bad mouth crypto particularly bitcoin.

cryptocurrencies dont have eyes, ears or brains. they are just code. governments cant control the crypto because decentralised code has no brain. and authorities dont have the manpower to control, monitor all of crypto
however authorities can control the businesses and people that interact with crypto

government and law enforcement do not track suspicious transactions of any/all crypto currency themselves..
you will not find any office where cops or government leaders are sat at computers monitoring crypto transactions..
.. they delegate and use businesses to monitor their own customers and share information and then that information is used to investigate suspect crimes reported to authorities by the businesses
laws are made to cause businesses to become the monitoring services of their own customers
EG river financial/bitrefills and all other known services that do/will operate on lightning offering payment facilitation services such as routing and 'renting balance' will become the monitors and reporters

laws are made to cause a barrier of entry for small business/individuals to offer services, so that the larger businesses that are licenced(regulated/delegated) where they are set up to KYC/monitor customers actions become the defacto gateways that customers use to enter/exit/use crypto

Yes I have been surprised when I read that yesterday, I really thought polices and law enforcement agencies had some means to track suspicious transactions over the Lightning Network but it seems to be very difficult for them actually. That's a pretty good news for the Lightning Network technology because it means it must also be difficult for private surveillance and intelligence agencies to track people and the transactions they do when they use this network, unlike what it can happen with blockchain transactions.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/EU_Innovation_Hub_First%20Report%20on%20Encryption.pdf

One would hope that a thoughtful court of law (should it come to that) would recognize that the usefulness to the public of greatly reduced time to complete a transaction ( a few seconds at most), along with  transaction fees that are a tiny fraction of main chain fees, would overwhelmingly dwarf the negative impact of the few illegal transactions that may be occurring (much like with cash).

This is why I am kind of unimpressed with Phoenix wallet running away from the US market so quickly after the Samourai charges, when they weren't requested to block  US cutomers or charged with anything.

I really believe this option is still on their cards if their attempts to enforce a more Law Abiding Bitcoin end up failing.  It is clear as day they are afraid of alternatives to the Fiat system that they can not have control over.  They want to make sure they know each and every little thing about you.

I am very thankful Cash is still an option as long as it remains available.  I am very thankful of Lightning Network, Monero and Pre Paid cards.  When all of these are banned, hell will be on Earth.

Not just EU, every government will slowly try to control the circulation of cryptocurrency in their country. United States has started. EU has passed many bills regarding Anti Money Laundering approach and included cryptos in them. So what is happening was very much fixed from the beginning.

It's very normal for the government to start and attack on something that they cannot fully control. EU is not an exception. But at least they haven't imposed a blanket ban on cryptocurrency. That would have been disastrous.

Their job is to attack anything they don't like or don't understand, and anything to do with cryptocurrencies is an obvious target for a simple reason - it doesn't fight back in most cases. At one time, they even attacked their own currency because they concluded that the EUR 500 banknote is mainly used by terrorists and criminals, so they decided to remove it from use and years later they concluded that they were wrong. I wonder why Switzerland has a 1000 franc banknote and they never thought of such nonsense.

When you mention trash, in my capital city, which was taken over by incompetent green politicians, they even established "green spies" who go around and dig through trash cans - and the people mockingly named them after a notorious communist organization that spied on everything possible at the time. However, in the elections for the EU parliament, we saw that the average EU resident has had enough of the green agenda and the policy of mass immigration.

you might want to learn what their regulations actually are. i have seen a few topics of people creating clickbait/fearbait titles nothing to do with the actual regulations but instead are OP's misinterpretation just to click bait discourse for views

it then becomes harder to campaign/ petition against real negave changes of jurisdiction/treatment by government if these silly clickbait topics are distracting people away from the real issues

EG
the EU going after LN routers has nothing to do with bitcoin.. it about LN routing(totally different software needed(not bitcoin node) its also about a different network(not bitcoin) its also about the payment method and model is different to bitcoin

LN routers process payments completely and utterly different to how mining pools and bitcoins nodes relay bitcoin transactions..

Politicians REALLLLLYYYYY need to get a bitcoin education. When you don't have a clue what you are talking about it is easy to turn a payment method into some sort of criminal facilitator in your mind.

They should have by now been tired of all these because its taking them to nowhere, they have always been setting targets on attack for bitcoin and none availed till now, government will never support anything that can give us the required privacy that we want because its going to completely render them effortless towards having control over the system, we are the ones that should get determined and go for what we want and shift focus on news like this coming from them.

Everything government can't control will be marked as criminal and illegal, that's why decentralization matters so much and that's why LN is doomed due to it's nature of becoming more and more centralized over time.

Law can be abused, so there should be no law.  
The only law mankind needs is the "eye for an eye" law, everything else is here to enslave us.

But is there anything that is not under attack in the EU? Well, yes, things like veganism, new genders (gender fluid and such), bike lanes that create more traffic jams in cities, mass immigration, victim mentality, permissiveness with criminals and aggressiveness against the honest citizen if he gets the wrong bin when throwing out the garbage. Things like that.

If something is bullshit and it comes from the EU, I'm not surprised, given what I've seen. It's business as usual.

both EU and US are categorising LN as payment facilitators/money services in regards to users that act as routers

in the US LN routers are classed as money service businesses

in the EU LN routers are classed as PF (payment facilitators) so those operating as routers to get "commission from facilitating a payment on behalf of someone else", end up having a barrier of entry.. those routers need to either go extreme on privacy tools to evade getting found and demanded to go legit.. or go legit and operate in compliance to regulations to then be able to run without needing to hide

for those taking the evasive option end up doing so many things to effectuate obfuscation of their geo location and peer connectivity, they then fail at being able to promote their service of operating as a router, becasue they have to hide their advertising and connectivity so less people end up connecting to them
 thus get less income compared to a legit service with a licence. this then causes the legit service with a licence to then become the main route paths(institutional centralisation of network). because most businesses drop connections that are not legit/forthcoming, as peering to non legit peers becomes a problem for legit services

Oh I see. They've seen another possible threat to their proposed centralization.

Just because the two-party multisignature payment channels will not allow them to monitor all transactions that looks to be happening behind the scene, they find it as a heavy threat. They are scared because the only thing they might have access to are all finalized transactions.

lol

News Alert!! Criminals are gonna do criminal things!

According to that kind of thinking we better ban cash and setup cameras in everyone's homes for the police to watch for criminal activity.

They selectively attack Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, mixing services and even Mixing protocol, source code like Tornado Cash, in order to attack this industry.

If they apply the same set of rules with knife, gun, Internet and other things in society, they will go to ban all things in human civilization. They will even have to ban their own centralized bank systems because banks and bank products are used by criminals too.

I guessed that after attacking Bitcoin mixers, they will move their targets to Bitcoin Lightning Network but it will not stop here, layer 2, DeFi platforms, bridges will be their next targets.

Do not be tricked by the government's storylines. It is always in their playbook to create fud very much similar to this new EU storyline then when the fear, uncertainty and doubt has been spread, they will begin regulatory proposals and rules on how to control this. This is not about your safety or the capturing of criminals. This is about government control.



A new report from the EU has singled out Bitcoin's Lightning Network and other layer 2 solutions as "data obfuscation" technologies that could be "abused by criminals."

The First Report on Encryption by the EU Innovation Hub for Internal Security, a "collaborative network of innovation labs" from across EU member states, argues that alongside technologies including Mimblewimble, zero-knowledge (zk) proofs, coin mixers and privacy coins such as Monero and Zcash, "layer 2 solutions such as the lightning network might also be abused by criminals."

The report notes that the Lightning Network's "two-party multisignature payment channels will not broadcast all transactions to the blockchain, but only the opening and closing of the channel," adding that it and other layer 2 solutions could cause cause "problems for law enforcement investigations."

Read in full https://decrypt.co/234748/bitcoin-lightning-network-and-layer-2-scaling-could-be-abused-by-criminals-says-eu