Topic: Difference between Lighting Network and Bitcoin (Read 583 times)

 

That seems more a definition than an explanation of how the network works. But yeah, you're absolutely right. However, trying to explain how it works in a few lines, I think it's practically impossible! I mean, in a way the common mortal can understand!
There is someone in the Lightning Network Experience thread trying to learn the basics of LN without doing pretty much any research. That's the feeling I have! He's hoping to understand how it works simply by people spoon-feeding all info! And I think I'm going to give up explaining too much more if I feel he's not making any effort on his own!

Neither is the lightning fee. It is based on the amount you're moving. If you try to move something like 0.01 BTC via lightning, it'll be way more than the on-chain equivalent.

I think I can do it in one sentence too, in laymen terms: lightning is a second layer solution which takes advantage of the Scripting language of Bitcoin and makes it possible to trustlessly transact off-chain as long as the peers (or their intermediary partners) share a funded multi-sig address.

Lightning network is faster because only the opening and closing transactions happen on-chain, every other transaction is off-chain and doesn't have to go through the normal BTC transaction confirmation process. Take note also that BTC transaction fee isn't fixed, it depends on the size of your tx and the BTC network congestion as of the time of broadcasting your tx.
LN cannot change the way BTC is used, it is a Layer 2 solution only, and surely most transactions will happen on the main blockchain.

The Bitcoin is a primary crypto currency that operates on decentralized block chain, whereas ,Lightning net work serves as an effective  layer-2 scaling solution of Bitcoin to increase speed of and reduce the transaction fee. It has been designed to address of Bitcoin's scalability limitations issue , thereby improving overall efficiency of the network. The main goal of lightning network is to increase network scalability and increase its usability.

That's exactly why I gave him some basic topics where he could start reading. And then, for sure he will find peripheral information that will complement that one and will give him a pretty good start!
Trying to explain LN in just a few lines, I'm not sure it is possible, because in the way, you start to feel the need to include one more subject, and then, another, and one more, because you simply have to... And when you notice, you have a book written! :p

I think there is nothing wrong with this type of question, it's not spoon-feeding at all because there are a lot of misleading information about Lighting Network and it's hard for a newbie to understand what's true and what's false, especially when search engines don't work the way they should.

By the way, I want to give you all a good description of what Lighting Network is in real life:
Imagine, you are a western union and own office in two countries, in France and England. England and France have 100K-100K Euro. A customer comes in Western Union office, in England and pays me 20K to send it in France. What England does is that England knows that French office has 100K in reserves and ask France to take 20K from its pocket and give it to French customer. Now, England has 80K, France has 120K (actually, England has 120K and France has 80K but this is because they change numbers online and use their own cash reserves till the end of the year). Now, imagine that French customer sends 10K, then 30K and then 20K, then English customer sends 20K and 50K back. Now, in numbers, France has 130K and England has 70K but actually, England has 130K in cash and France has 70K. Now, the year ends and they have to correct the Balance. So, England collects 30K Euro, England hires a helicopter and sends it to France. They finalized everything and both of them paid fees that it takes to transfer money from England to France via helicopter, before that, they were just changing numbers and paying zero fees. Now, France actually has 130K in cash and England actually had to give away 30K.

I hope this explanation isn't very confusing.

If I go to an interview and the interviewer describes the above for me and asks me to identify what he was saying. I will confidently tell him that he was describing the Lightening Network. Or atleast the idea that birthed LN.

Several years ago, shortly after hearing about Bitcoin for the first time and before I knew about this forum, I read an article which represented the blockchain like a wheel, and stated that it was being developed a second, smaller wheel, that would be able to interact with the first one and make little changes in a way that mistakes made during the process wouldn't pose a risk for the blockchain.

Was this the early representation of a layer 2 solution and/or has it something to do with modern LN? Or was it related to something totally different like forks? Sorry if the question doesn't make much sense, but I would like to learn.

I think the best way to describe it, is to say that Bitcoin is layer 1 and the Lightning Network (LN) is a layer 2 solution that are built on top of it.

There were some times when the Blockchain were very congested and transaction confirmation were very slow and expensive, so developers created a layer 2 solution that handles that. You now have a off-chain layer 2 solution that are better suited to a use case where you can use Bitcoin as a currency, with faster and cheaper micro transactions. 

This is over simplified to get you to understand the reason for the creation of the Lightning Network. 

Of course they are completely different, because the Bitcoin lightning network is a second -layer to the Bitcoin Blockchain. Also, this lightning network is faster compared to Bitcoin, and also cheaper compared to fixed cost bitcoin.

       And in the lightning network the process is fast while in Bitcoin it is not, but it will take a few minutes before the confirmation when it comes to the matter of Speed. Although the lightning network is currently still under development, it has the potential to change the way bitcoin is used.

** https://cointelegraph.com/learn/what-is-the-lightning-network-in-bitcoin-and-how-does-it-work

Since big exchanges adopted SegWit and Roger Ver and Jihan Wu et al. stopped dicking around with spam attacks, the blocks have been rolling pretty lightly, so there's no real demand for LN usage at all. Who would bother unless you are doing some super niche usage case where you require tiny transactions back and forth when you can just settle onchain for tiny fees. I suspect there will be no real 2nd layer demands until western nations start banning physical cash and people are forced to use Bitcoin to keep any chances of having financial privacy. Then maybe blocks become legit full and there's a transition into LN organically.

Thats what I already said that  o_e_l_e_o 2 replies here can be regarded as short and brief explanation of Bitcoin LN. That's the biggest advantage of being here, you get correct information from authentic people.

Everything that goes between opening and closing of channel's is managed by Smart Contracts.

The transactions are stored by both parties involved in the channel. Lightning software does this automatically.

They are just as immutable as any other bitcoin transaction. Lightning channels are a 2-of-2 multi-sig, so both parties must sign every transaction, and neither party can edit or modify the transaction without invalidating it completely. The risk is not in one party being able to change one of the transactions - as I said, this is impossible. The risk is with one party attempting to broadcast an old outdated transaction which favors them more than the most recent transaction. But as I mentioned above, if one party tried to do this, the other party can take all their coins as punishment.

Great explanation here!
I thought about the question but it seems I bug you much with questions but I have no option because this is where the most accurate answers are gotten.
You will be surprised how some persons who doesn't know anything about bitcoin will confidently explain rubbish outside this forum.

Apart from the said additional complex systems built on LN to encourage honesty, how is the immutability and permanency of the transactions in LN ensured.
In clear words, where are the transactions that happens between opening and closing channels stored and how immutable is it?

It is fully functional. Many of us have been using it for several years now but that doesn't mean it isn't still in an early stage of development with plenty of room to grow.

Plus it is responsible for securing millions of dollars worth of value; such things should not be rushed. Centralized shitcoins regularly have critical bugs which result in huge losses - bitcoin is different.

Block size in bitcoin has already been increased from 1 MB to 4 MB. There are very good reasons to not just endlessly increase block size, but if large blocks is what you want then there are a selection of shitcoin forks you can choose from. The fact that every one of them is constantly losing more and more value against bitcoin should tell you something though.

Well or we can just change how Bitcoin works from the beginning. Nobody says that bitcoin can only have one block every ten minutes and nobody says that bitcoin will forever to it’s block size. Satoshi even talked about changing the block size in the future if necessary.
The whole point is that bitcoin is way more successful than what people would have thought when all those limits were implemented. Lightning does simply solve what the core developers do not want to do at this point. As soon as Bitcoin gets the correct update all the lightning development will be for nothing.

It's been there for quite a while now. Don't know how much more time the developers need to get it fully functional.


Apart from bitcoin there is no decentralized cryptocurrency. Even ethereum recent shift from PoW to PoS confirms the fact that its in the hands of few developers. For pure decentralization bitcoin is the only option.


There is blockchain trilemma between decentralization, security and scalability. Bitcoin made a compromise on scalability but not on decentralization and security. While others are not making compromise on scalability but on decentralization.

Not entirely. It solves scalability issues at the current number of users, but to scale it up to global adoption needs other technology which is built on top of Lightning, such as channel factories.

I don't think so. Rather, it is still in early stages of development.

As BlackHatCoiner points out above, a faster initial confirmation is not necessarily better. Take a look at this site: https://howmanyconfs.com/. Take a look at BCash for example. You might think the big blocks are better since everyone can get in the next block. But actually, the blocks are almost empty (a few dozen transactions each, compared to 4,000 transaction per block for bitcoin's smaller blocks) because no one is actually using it, bigger blocks make the system more centralized, and it takes over 12 days to reach the same amount of security as bitcoin reaches in an hour.

It is trivial to launch a coin with instant transactions. All you need is a centralized spreadsheet which can update balances instantly. That doesn't make it a good coin.

No, the reason lightning hasn't taken off, is that first of all Bitcoin as currency hasn't taken off (while recognized as superior money), and also the cost and security risks of managing a lightning node. To backup your cash in Bitcoin, you just have to keep a seed phrase in paper. To back up a lightning channel, you need to use digital space, which is prone to error. Let alone you need to run a computer 24/7.

No, there are thousands of shit-tokens which have either zero volume which makes their transaction cost minimum, or have enormous block size limits, which makes their whole system fundamentally inferior and prone to centralization.

If we combine your last two replies here about Lightning Network then they are very short and informative explanation about Lightning network.

LN solves Bitcoin scalability issues but the reason why LN failed to take off (which I infer from your last explanation) is since most of the transactions are managed by LN not by the bitcoin network. Bitcoin network has developed its trust over a period of time and there is no other network that is widely trusted by so many people globally.

If solving scalability issue alone can take you to moon then there are thousands of tokens that are super fast when compared to Bitcoin.