Topic: First Bitcoin Lightning Network Transaction Tested Successfully (Read 1973 times)

quite possible
people can use LN as a peer-to-peer method of doing exchanges. afterall instead of buying coffee with it. it can be anything EG a different currency.

which then starts a different price market.

much like localbitcoin's valuations are more open to variance compared to centralised exchanges
much like bitcoin-OTC's valuations are more open to variance compared to centralised exchanges

ofcourse speculation cannot guarantee if exchanges done on LN will end up with higher or lower valuations compared to centralised exchanges, but we can expect there to be a variance

I have another concern about the Lightning Network. In the beginning there might only be a small portion of of Bitcoin users that will start using it. Will this not cause a problem in the fungibility of BTC? There might be a scenario where the price of Bitcoins outside LN will be higher than the coins "trapped" or "hindered" in LN. So it might create another market for LN Bitcoins versus "real" Bitcoins. What do you think?

It is very exciting, you know the biggest downside of bitcoin is slow transactions, now they will improve it to instant payment network, bright future is there.

Right. Some balance between "big & liquid" and "small & independent" will arise, and I shouldn't wonder that the LN protocol designers have had this balance in mind when working on it.



Think about it in comparison to electronic fiat processors; we have less than a dozen major payment systems, and a typical consumer will not necessarily get to choose from them all. Despite that, and despite healthy profit at the payment processors, the fees aren't extortionate.

Now, remember what it is that allowed these companies onto the marketplace in the first: heavy licensing regimes. Innovative tech? Clever new business structure? Tough luck, unless you can get a licence, you're any other bum on the street (working for the companies who you could have competed against is your only option).



With Lightning, there is no licence. That means that the natural limit to the size of the Hub market will be what dictates how many Hubs there are, not an artificial limit. In practice, that means any business owner with their own premises is going to give this a go, and the natural dynamics of the clearance system will determine how successful Hubs are distributed, not political decisions.

This could manifest itself in a much more complicated way than simply VISA, PayPal or UnionPay. Depending on the state of the Bitcoin ledger at any point in time, no Hub could consistently always be the cheapest option. The Hub would have to be routing every single other payment in the ledger in order to be able to offer the most efficient routing and in turn the cheapest price.... unless they were the only Hub.... where they would lose incentive to be cheapest anyway... it's a free-market paradox, essentially.

Ok maybe the comparison with Bitcoin mining is a mistake. But I know you get what I am trying to say. It will not stop certain individuals or a group of individuals to form a large payment hub in the Lightning Network. It will be more efficient and channels more reliable because they could have the advantage to take in more people to open more payment channels with them.

If you think deeply about it then maybe the network would perform better if there are only a few but large payment hubs. It will make the routing of payments easier and more efficient.

Reality knows it. If the barrier to enter the market is identically low for everyone, a monopoly is literally impossible. Mining isn't like that post-ASIC, but the only hardware needed to run a Lightning hub is going to be general purpose.

Franky, if you really knew anything about computer science (and not waffling this "I SEE IN CODE" nonsense), you'd know that neither multiplication or division (or even subtraction) can be performed directly in binary logic.

So let's not have any more of this "due to how binary work" nonsense, eh? Because other people know how it works too.

I said I understand it like the way franky1 does. So I speculate that what will happen could be the same, only to some extent, of how the banking system was started in Italy by the Medici clan. I was only trying to say that history is repeating itself.


Again you misunderstand the point I am trying to convey. I was using the bank example just to make a point. This is Bitcoin, it is a different scenario. But that does not mean that certain individuals or group of individuals will not pool their resources together to create a large payment hub or a group of large payment hubs interconnecting with each other.


I do not deny that. I have to mention again that I was merely speculating on what could happen. I mean no harm. If you must know, I am for core, for smaller blocks and support off chain transactions.


You do not know that. Individuals can group together to serve their own agenda and self interests. Just like in Bitcoin's cartelization of mining, a cartelization of payment hubs is possible.

I think the LN system can be designed so that the hub operator would not be able to
determine their own rounding aspect. If the hub operator is concerned with losing out
on a whole satoshi, then at one of the last LN tx they receive prior to the "settlement"
they can jack their fee up a few millisats so that it evens out to a full satoshi. The
"LN fee rise" will still be in accordance with the previously approved hub fee boundaries,
that I outlined in a prior posting.

LN is still an experiment and in development, but I believe that we can get it to work as
envisioned if we work together and create "checks and balances" within "checks and balances".
LN allows us to protect Bitcoin from failure, by outsourcing that potential failure to a secondary layer.

exactly. your getting it..
however i can see hubs not agreeing to lose out on earning by rounding down. which is (before carlton butted in) the point i was making.
that LN has many flaws and needs to address many things to fix many bugs, remove many opportunities of abuse, etc etc

i think using millisats is opening a big can of worms of possible issues, compared to just handling satoshis, to emulate bitcoin and allow signing and settling to happen more fluid

All rounding would presumably be rounded down until they reach 0.0000,0001.
If a hub's fees do not exceed  0.0000,0000,9999, it would always round down to zero.

The total accumulated micro fees will only be important at the settlement unto the bitcoin blockchain.
For example, total hub fees for the day:
(1) 0.0012,7187,4912 recorded in LN = 0.0012,7187 settled to bitcoin chain
(2) 0.0012,7187,9999 recorded in LN = 0.0012,7187 settled to bitcoin chain
(3) 0.0012,7188,0000 recorded in LN = 0.0012,7188 settled to bitcoin chain

You are implying fractional reserve banking that can be applied to the bitcoin blockchain?
That would violate the agreed 21 million coin cap limit, so all rounding must go down.

one sat is stored on a hard drive as binary 0000001

you cannot get smaller then binary 1. and you cannot rewrite old blocks to be where 1 sat is 1000 units. (binary 0000001111101000)
if you tried to re-write old transactions. the signatures wont match, the txid's wont match and the blockhashes wont match. requiring rebuilding bitcoin from the start.
we should not even be discussing such a stupid idea that you(carlton) seem to desire.

so how about you think about it from a coding level where there is no division.. at code level it is multiplication
at GUI level people can play around by renaming combined clumps of units to "appear" as divisions. but from a practical, logical and realistic point
of view GUI representation is not fixed. thus meaningless.
nothing is stopping anyone from calling a bitcoin, a butcoin or a fish coin at GUI level..
nothing is stopping anyone from calling a bitcoin, 100,000,000,000 sats and make it so it appears there are only 210,000 bitcoins.
but to the code level there are still only 2,100,000,000,000,000 units(sats) and that should not change, because it screws with many things.

again code level, units need to be multiplied(due to how binary work)
again GUI/human level, they can play around with it in any way they choose to rename the clumps of units to anything they want. thus faking division while diluting peoples holdings to expend miners rewards for a longer period.. but at coding level its still multiplication

but why am i even trying to answer you. it has become obvious you hate bitcoin and want side chains, altcoins.
its obvious you loved the fee war, its obvious you love the idea of increasing the units to be created by miners.
its obvious you love anything that can mess/screw and destroy bitcoin.

i really think its time you just settle into your altcoin/fiat life because it seems you have no reason to care about bitcoin.

now back on topic. lets hope blockstream NEVER propose to increase bitcoins unit cap.. and instead the only thing we ever have to debate is who gains most from rounding the LN coins when forming the settlement transaction to be transmitted (in satoshis) onchain

The first thing that comes to mind after reading the discussion in this thread, is, if we can't even agree amongst ourselves exactly how it's going to work at the moment, how long is it going to be before anyone can successfully explain it to an average member of the general public?  Let alone making it stick and getting them to actually understand it?  I'm sure I recall a section on bitcoin.org stating that as the technology matured, it would become more accessible to the general public.  It feels like that particular goal is going to take somewhat longer now while we're in the process of making the learning curve that little bit steeper.

Franky, no amount of smoke-screen garbage about doing binary arithmetic is going to alter the basics that you're not grasping: divisional point. There is one. There are no new units, only finer division of the existing units.

Yes, the code deals with 64-bit unsigned integers, and yes, that may have to be changed to a variable type that can handle an amount of monetary deflation. You still can't turn division into multiplication with your magic maths, lol. This really is scraping the bottom of the barrel, a child could detect your comic propaganda, Saddam-era Iraq is missing a PR man, lol

Yes, I am not a programmer.
I have been advised on multiple occasions that if we needed to go below a satoshi and needed more divisibility,
it would be possible to do so. From a strict code point of view, you are correct since the whole system relies on
the denomination of satoshi to determine everything, currently.

I do not think Bitcoin developers will just add additional zeros into the current code, thus inflating the bitcoin supply
way ahead of schedule. That is not in anyway reasonable or acceptable. But why couldn't a decimal be placed
after the satoshi point, such as 100000000.00000000? Prior blocks and other systems that relied on a strict
satoshi denomination will remain and after a certain block in the distant future, the new format will take effect
which can include a new secondary "carryover block" which will contain the amount below a satoshi. Old nodes
that never upgrade can still exist and work at relaying the old format, but will ignore this secondary block. (which
doesn't matter since its intended only in/for second layer micro payment systems).
So future systems will have the "extended format", and old systems can still relay as before.

As for the issue of "milisato" and the LN micro fee system being below the satoshi denomination and does not
really exist, thus is an IOU, can't the LN burn 0.0000,0001 btc, and thus create 0.0000,0000,9999,9999 LN-btc
within the LN system? Isn't it no longer an IOU if that satoshi was burned? Like a Burn for Conversion into an
extended format only within the LN, and then round up to 0.0000,0001 only when so many extended 9s are made?




As for blackmail, why couldn't the fees be negotiated to only be within a certain ranged amount PRIOR to opening
a channel with that hub? When I go to do business with someone in some types of businesses, I get an estimate PRIOR
to work being performed. If they begin to exceed the agreed estimate, they need for me to authorize that increase
beyond our agreement. Otherwise any work performed beyond our original agreement is a violation of the terms of
the original estimate.

In order to prevent the blackmail aspect you describe, can't the LN system mandate release at the maxed agreed fee
amount? So for example, I want to pay for groceries, I open the LN system and find a "reasonable fee hub", it declares its
rule boundaries and is controlled by them, that when the total amount of fees owed comes close to 0.00001 btc, it automatically
closes the channel without prompting and in accordance with its declared boundaries.
So in the event the hub wants 1 btc to unlock my 3 btc, it will violate its own declaration and causes an auto closure of the channel.

you are failing to grasp the basics.
there are ~2100000000000000 units of measure that will ever be produced.. this has been the rule since the genesis block.
people at GUI and human interaction level can be free to call 100 units 'a bit' or 100000000 units a bitcoin. but at code level there are only going to be 2100000000000000 units created by the year 2141 (binary 111-01110101-11110000-01011010-00000111-01000000-00000000)

again AT CODE LEVEL and LOGICAL level of rarity.

if someone has (1btc) 100,000,000 units linked to their keypair..
(100,000,000sat(1btc) = binary 101-11110101-11100001-00000000 where each unit(sat) is binary 00000001)

its only the GUI that displays (binary 101-11110101-11100001-00000000) as 1btc..
its only the GUI that displays (binary 00000001) as 1sat..
if you want to add more units to bitcoin. you have to mess with the binary of units.

because  the code or blockchains stored ledger entry level does not show "btc" it shows and works with binary units. only the GUI displays btc
so
by adding units to the CODE...(changing the binary unit maths) then a decision must be made about how to display it on the GUI.
by making one sat (binary 00000001) to become (binary 00000011-11101000) so that there can be 1000 millisats (1millisat binary 00000001)
meaning because there are more units. the binary equivelent of 21m btc goes up to compensate
binary 111-01110101-11110000-01011010-00000111-01000000-00000000 becomes
binary 11101-00100100-10110010-11011111-10101100-01010010-00000000-00000000 to allow for 1000 extra measures
means things need to change on the GUI

decisions:
1)is each unit(binary 1) a 100 millionth part of a bitcoin. meaning there are 21billion bitcoins (you will say no)
but saying no, requires some how "crediting" a user with 1000x more units to keep them inline with having one 21millionth of the cap, to pretend there is still 21m btc..
so they dont suffer the rarity decline.
good luck trying to program that 'credit', as it requires rewriting old blocks so one sat (binary 00000001) becomes (binary 00000011-11101000) 1000 millisat to then have bitcoin holders still having one 21millionth of the cap

or
2) is each unit as 1000th of a satoshi.
1btc was (binary 101-11110101-11100001-00000000) but is now (binary 10111-01001000-01110110-11101000-00000000)
meaning that AT CODE LEVEL users who had 100,000,000 units still have only now only (binary 101-11110101-11100001-00000000) which at GUI level leaves them with 0.001btc to keep to the "21mill btc cap"

meaning anyone having funds from the last 7years would have their value diluted either way. but miners now get 1000x more units per reward and able to mine for another 40 years before the units are depleted.

please stop thinking about it from the fake GUI display end and think of it from the code protocol end. because you are really starting to reveal your lack of understanding bitcoin and the rules set in place

I don`t understand this stuff, but i guess that this will improve confirmation time

so it`s a great improvement which will boost bitcoin adoption and price.

What is a lighting network by the way?

Whether or not the value of 1 satoshi is debased or inflated (or equally 1 BTC or any other amount) depends simply on where you place the division point. We've had this discussion before, and you were struggling to grasp it then as well, were you not? You're essentially saying "there's more Bitcoin than 21 million now", but what's really happened is that 8 decimal places has gone up to 11 decimal places. Great explanation, Franky lol

This is really good news if this is true. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the current bitcoin price is rising today. Hope that it will also be succeed in the real launch and all of us will benefit. If that happens, there will be more people that will likely join bitcoin and many more users will use btc for payment transactions because of lightning fast speed added with it's current features and low fees.

carlton.
wake up.

1 unit of measure UP =2100000000000000 cap

lets use gold as an example
1 grain of gold. with there being 2100000000000000 grains of gold in the world.
by even suggesting to add more grains of gold. ruins golds rarity. it even affects when 'all the gold' will be mined

even if you then say 100,000,000 grains was an ounce and now lets rename it so 100,000,000,000 grains = an ounce. doesnt change the fact that there are more grains of gold being created. it dilutes the value of each grain.

but its becoming obvious. carlton secretly wants to ruin bitcoins cap as he is really trying to push bitcoin eventually moving the units of measure as being a positive thing.

personally we should not even think about changing bitcoins unit of measure. and only debate who wins the math rounding of the offchain measures when converting back to real sats