Topic: Concerns regarding SegWit + Lightning Network? - page 2. (Read 1238 times)

Let's assume the fee is $40.  Which option is cheaper?

• Option 1:  Sending 4 standard Bitcoin transactions to the same person over the course of a few weeks and spending $40 in fees each time
• Option 2:  Paying $40 to open a channel, sending 4 transactions for free because it's a direct channel, then paying a second $40 to close the channel
• Option 3:  Because you've used Lightning regularly and already paid to have a channel open with someone else for a completely different transaction, but they also happen to have a channel open with the person you need to pay, you don't have to pay $40 at all, and just pay a few satoshi for each hop along the way for each of the 4 transactions you need to send.

Hmm... Is it possible that both of the options involving LN are cheaper?  But by all means, continue to be completely obstinate, don't learn anything, use Option 1 and keep telling us that Lightning is a bad idea.

Well when i first started looking at Lightning the cost of on-block transactions was $40 and more so yes I would assume people would only want to open
one channel and you are making assumptions if you think they won't rise that high again and a words smith FYI is someone that plays with words.


Charges on BTC needed from the counter party to finance a bi-directional channel is interest on the money and as for understanding Lightning I gave you
the link to the white paper so argue with that and see who's losing credibility here.


YES YES YES Both unfixed Tx fees and interest or noddy fees if you want to call it that instead of interest and if those that host the block-chain
can push fees up to $55 by acting as a cartel then what do you think they are going to do here. Yes miners host these banking hubs and here is a map
lnmainnet.gaben.win

Alice now has 2,000 friends and $200,000 to finance all of the channels needed for each of her friends and poor old Bob has to pay a banking hub
(guessing) $10 a month even if he no longer wants a cup of coffee from Alice anymore.


Not an option for us to pay $1.00 for a coffee and $0.10 in fees on-block because it won't scale and I am not about to pay
some miner/banker $10 per month to keep my channel open in case I buy 50 cups a month but only purchased one and I didn't
change the game from a year ago where pay-as-you-go was possible.

We have been feed problem-reaction-solution and I am not buying it with no blank guarantee like we had before when fees
hit $55 just to send $10 and see the block-chain itself becoming more like a central bank leaving the mini-banks to do what they
please by tweaking the so called "Smart Contracts" that allows them to up the fees just like we see now with near zero base rates
from central banks but borrowing money cost you or me 10% plus and it's our own money in the first place to make maters worse.

Mr Angry Bird I give you logic and reason along with facts but it seems you have "steaming shit all over" your ears
and need to clean them out because your gutter talk only shows that you have lost the debate and have no answers.

If, of your own volition, you only use one channel when multiple channels are available, it's wholly unjustified to then complain about centralisation.  It's your choice.  Use as many channels as you need.  If you only had the choice of using one hub, then yes, that would be centralised.  I would be right there with you saying what a terrible idea it is.  But there isn't one hub.  So it isn't centralised.  So it's fine.  I don't know who 'Words Smith' is, but he won't change this fact.  



Still not the same thing as "banks charging interest", but if you want to continue to harm your own credibility by calling it that, be my guest (but I'll continue to point out you're wrong).  Plus, anyone who actually understands Lightning isn't going to believe you, so you're only doing yourself a disservice in the long run. 



Yes, there are fees.  If the fees with LN are smaller that using a standard on-chain transaction, then use it.  If not, don't.  No one is saying you have to use Lightning 100% of the time.  Just use it when it's cost-effective for you.  But the more you use Lightning, the more advantageous it will become to you.  If you don't want to take advantage of it, by all means use something else.  If you don't like having fees at all, go use DogeCoin or some other altcoin entirely.  Everything about this is 100% optional.

But what's definitely not an option is thinking we're going to sit here and accept you taking a steaming shit all over Lightning by cherry-picking the parts of the whitepaper that sound negative based on your limited comprehension of it.  Troll harder.

I don't think that the exodus wallet will offer these option let alone would anyone understand input/outputs
unless they have taken years to learn about Bitoins.

Your rudeness shows that you have lost the debate and if a user only pays to open a channel to one banking hub at a time
because these things cost money then if the banks goes down then the user is stuck. Words smith will not change this fact
and is known in technical terms as "Centralization"    

Maybe it is because I have taken the time to look at how it works instead of looking for candy.


Again I can only refer you back to the lightning white paper, specifically the part about bi-directional channels needing BTC from both
parties in the ledger or do you think that some nice man you don't know is going to tie up his money for you free of charge inside a ledger.


$5bn missing in Bitcoin did seem like big news but I am sure fraud is never involved when it comes to Bitcoins because we have the block-chain
to protect us right.


Mr Angry Bird is now trying to give out advise on how to debate but was he to read the white paper
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
and to do a word count on the term "Fee" or "Fees" then he might notice that it is mentioned forty five times
in the document and then lets see who's "Making shit up" here.

Sometimes things have to be confronted head-on before they snowball.  All it takes is a few impressionable newbies to come into the thread, read the FUD and go away with completely the wrong idea.  Then they go around the boards spreading the same FUD because they don't know any better.  Hell, I was probably guilty of it myself a few times in the past back when I was a newbie.  It's so easy for this sort of thing to get out of hand.  It can't be quietly swept under the carpet either, or people start to think it's some sort of conspiracy and post it even more.  It's best to catch it early before it becomes more serious, even if you have to be a bit blunt in the process.  And a little humour always makes it less of a chore for everyone else to read.  At the risk of sounding too cornball about it, it's never a waste of time to educate and inform.

You seem to have your fun in responding to the fud.

I was always wondering, why lightning nodes should be banksters and centralization (cause they take fees! Chorus of outrage), where miners are not.

The ideology of these people is hard to be discussed at a non emotional level, and always has some Monthy Python elements. I stopped to argue with fundamentalistic people. They appear to be too many levels below scientific levels. And in these discussions they pull you down to their level of (non-)understanding, and beat you there with experience. Waste of time?

Assuming you aren't foolish enough to spend from anything but the most recent commitment transaction, there won't be any disputes.  Once the software is more user-friendly, chances are it won't even give you the option to mess it up. 



Your logic is the only single point of failure here.  There isn't one single hub that controls everything.  There will be many channels.  Lightning will never "go down", just like Bitcoin itself never will.  You'll simply take another route through different channels and probably won't even notice.



Again, not an actual issue if you understand how it works.



There are no "banks" charging "interest" for "keeping BTC in the ledger".  Most people would struggle to fit that much wrongness into a single sentence.  If you genuinely want to gain an understanding of how fees and revocation in LN work (but I'm starting to suspect there's nothing genuine about your posts at all), there are plenty of resources available.  I strongly recommend stackexchange. 



What part of my earlier post did you fail to comprehend?  Either Kleiman and Wright had a joint business venture together, or Wright defrauded someone into giving away a controlling interest of the company after Kleiman died.  Whichever it turns out to be, it's completely irrelevant to the conversation at hand.  If you think Lightning works like a joint business venture or defrauding someone out of a controlling share in a company, I'm afraid there's not much we can do for you here.



Start what, exactly?  Making shit up?  That's not how you debate.  You need to educate yourself about the subject you want to debate first.  Then you might be able to make some valid points.

As a big blocker it is not surprising critique on lightning, just that this was already discussed here

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.29325656

 - no need to pick it up again.

Mathematical Proof That the Lightning Network Cannot Be a Decentralized Bitcoin Scaling Solution:

https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800

Well most of this won't stand up to debate so lets start
"apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times"
Like taking 3 days to settle an account that is in dispute your talking about.
"there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact"
Bank/hub is down = no transaction, it not working
"there's no interest, there's no overdraft"
No overdraft (YET) but call it what you like but bank charges money for keeping BTC in the ledger and most people call this "Interest"
"there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed"
Banking hubs are a single point of failure, network down = bank holiday
"personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers"
Read today's news and then answer your own question https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
"central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency"
So printing fake USDT to then buy BTC must be the new way to go
"there's no PPI"
No instead we have fees that for all you know could reach as high as $50.00 per transaction like we have already seen

if it looks, talks and sounds like a bank, it's a bank and yes you have financial freedom with main stream banks and
can always move branch but that's not to say the system is like or is working is it now.

Yes, apart from the bits where you're completely in control of your own funds at all times, there's no one to seek permission from before you can transact, there's no interest, there's no overdraft, there are no holidays or weekends where Lightning is closed, there's no junk mail asking you to sign up for a credit card or to tell you about other products and services, there's no "know your customer" crap requiring every company you've ever transacted with storing and likely losing your personal and financially sensitive data to thieves and hackers, there's no AML, there's no money printed from thin, there's no supporting a $1.2 Quadrillion Bankster Derivatives Market, there's no central bank who has to be trusted not to devalue the currency, there's no PPI, there's no LIBOR, there's no hyperinflation, there are no "banker bonuses", there's no "too big to fail", there are no bail-ins or bail-outs.

But yeah, other than all that, it's just like banking.  

fractional reserve banking stopped working years ago with main stream banks and they no longer need money on deposit to print new notes but your argument is like
saying that because a street light is left on at night that it's not night time because you can see in the dark.

Interest + fees = Banks and not only is this centralized in the case of hub-banks going down but it is also off-chain so may I suggest that perhaps you
need to read the white paper again instead of letting them pull the wool over your eyes.


It stinks of banks, face up to the facts.

While people have erroneously compared it to "interest on loans" in their attempts to understand all this, that's categorically not what's happening in Lightning.  "Loans" and "interest" imply fractional reserve and there's none of that in LN.  If that's the impression you were left with, perhaps it's you who needs to take another look at the whitepaper.

I don't see the relevance in your linked article about Craig Con-Man Wright.  There was no weakness exploited in Bitcoin itself.  Dave Kleiman was sadly just friends with someone he evidently didn't realise was a scumbag.  If you do business with disreputable people, no choice of financial medium will save you.  Whether it had been PayPal, credit card, crypto, precious metals, cash, or whatever, Wright still would have stolen it.  Also, none of that has anything to do with Lightning.

Still yet to hear any compelling arguments about how payment channels are banks.  I mean, sure, Bitcoin has definitely been marketed as a way to "be your own bank", but that's about as far as the analogy can go.  That phrase was always more to do with highlighting the importance of removing the reliance on centralised banks, not coming up with a highly elaborate and convoluted way of creating new centralised banks.  If you think that's what we're doing here, then no wonder you think we're crazy.  We'd think that's an insane thing to do, too.  So it's a good thing Lightning definitely isn't an attempt to create centralised banking.  Try to understand that, or if you still can't, then maybe just give it some time, wait and see.

Banks rely on creating money out of thin air to lend at interest.  Lightning will rely on source-routed payments of existing funds, with no magical money creation.  Completely different concepts.

Comments vanish around here due to censorship and vested interests but Lightning fans are free to
argue with the white paper because this is where my facts come from so "yadda, yadda, yadda" that one
in search of a few more merits

yadda, yadda, yadda - we already had other people posting about "banks" in exactly the same constructed,weird messages. At the end they somehow disappeared for good reasons.
Fundamentalistic behaviour in a religious manner - waste of time...

I tend to think that people who won't address the obvious truth have a vested interest and never act in good faith and the motto “Be your own bank.”
must also be printed on all VISA cards if this claim of yours was true when it comes to Bitcoin because fees + interest != “Be your own bank.” and
you can argue as much as you want but this remains a fact.

Truth is treason around here so I am happy to be called a troll by you.

You have not taken the time to read the white paper and you are free to call lightning hubs what ever you like
but they charge both transaction fees and interest on BTC loaned out and the rest of the world tends to call these
"Banks"

Nothing about these bank/hubs is decentralised and if Bitcoin is so safe then maybe you won't want to read this
https://www.rt.com/business/419901-satoshi-sued-cryptocurrency-theft/
or watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g




 

I like how we can actually go onto Github and see these things ourselves; where the developers are that is. Below are some stats for the last 30 days.

Bitcoin cash Github
https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc/pulse/monthly 0 Merges 2 Proposals 6 Closed 4 New

Bitcoin Github
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulse/monthly - 101 Merges 61 Proposals 68 Closed 54 New

BitcoinXt
https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/pulse/monthly 28 Merges 1 Proposal 2 closed 1 New

Bitcoin Unlimited
https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimited/pulse/monthly - 27 Merges 7 Proposals 4 Closed 3 New

I welcome you to support your flavour of Bitcoin you wish to, I am happy we have freedom of association in cryptocurrency. But it's best if we can keep things to fact as much as we can. Looking at those stats it seems to me that Bitcoin is evolving rapidly. The misc forks seem to be getting much more development love than bitcoin cash too(although I think these other githubs work together on bcash to be fair, I'm not sure). The point still stands though.

I myself have begun reading the LN whitepaper, trying to understand as much of it as I can and I really love the technology, the only issue I have with it is offline payments. But I am sure that will be sorted out, Rome wasn't built in a day. And as for centralization; you would be very dumb to try make a lightning hub and run 100k channels funded with 50k BTC. You are begging to get hacked and the fees you collect would not justify the risk at all.

You raise an excellent point, DooMAD.  I myself try to do what I can, e.g.:



However, please realize that the people who attack Lightning with such vitriol are not acting in good faith.  Ulterior motives readily explain why they spread malicious disinformation misrepresenting Lightning as if it “consists of banks” (quoted above), whereas they ignore the issue of exchanges which are banks in any sensible definition of the word.

Lightning is like an off-chain P2P private wire transfer network connecting people who adhere the Bitcoin motto, “Be your own bank.”  Settlements for Lightning-wire consist of on-chain, armoured-car transfers of bit-bullion.  This analogy is intended to be roughly conceptual, not technically rigorous.

(I also find it curious that known troll account #1801074 “RNC” dug up and quoted a post of mine from when I had just passed from Newbie to Jr. Member.  I can hear the gnashing of teeth over how e.g. there is now a Meta thread titled, “Who the hell is ‘nullius’ the guy is too smart around here :)”.  I am also involved in some long-term running flamewars over there.  But in Development & Technical Discussion, I try to avoid such things due to my respect for the moderator’s policy of maintaining a high S/N ratio for technical discussion.)

It's a tad presumptuous to claim someone is going to delete a post before you've made it.  How about you just make the argument and we'll decide if it holds any water.



I don't recall any banks announcing that they were going to run Lightning nodes.  That would be a pretty major headline I'm pretty sure I would have noticed.  Like most people involved in Bitcoin, I'm not a fan of banks.  I'd be dubious of anything that resembled traditional finance and fractional reserve making their way into Bitcoin.  Thankfully, the closest thing we have to that are called Exchanges.  If only people directed their misplaced vitriol at those instead of attacking Lightning, which could well lead to completely decentralised exchange.  There are no banks in Lightning.