Topic: Isn't Lightning Network bad for Bitcoin? (Read 361 times)

Can you explain to me why you're sending phishing links to people?

Lightning Network has solved the problem of slow transactions in Bitcoin and has made the transactions fast.

Okay, got it!   

I wouldn't really describe it as a "debate".  Some people just have a lot of hot air to vent and exceedingly few valid points to make.  An insignificant minority are still holding grudges that they didn't get their way in 2017 and can't let go of the fact that their ideas weren't accepted.  Everyone else has moved on.  The matter is settled, despite all the noise to the contrary.  I wouldn't worry about it.

I can't really see where technology and innovations that helps with Bitcoin scalability would necessarily be a bad/negative thing.  However, there could be unintended consequences.

I didn't knew this question will start such a big debate. And I see the opinions are divided. Thanks to everyone!

so you admit that there are no bitcoin on LN.. ok one step forward.. or was that a foot trip forward,oops you slipped. but thanks for the admission you admit that bitcoins dont leave the bitcoin network.

LN is an altnet because its a different network. its own name indicates it.. hint: the N of LN
its an alternative.. it is not the bitcoin network.. it is not bitcoin!! it is a separate network


gotta laugh at this one: "ontop"

so LN is physical? like an object..?. like a slice of ham ontop a slice of bread.. can you see it in the real world.... nope. its all digital..

LN is actually a digital bridge between multiple blockchains. AKA between beside.

you want to define it as ontop. because thats the subliminal words of being top(best/above/better)

LN can function without bitcoin so it does not rely on bitcoin. people can still use their exact same software they have now, but with other altcoins.

its not a LAYER EG the skin of banana.. because LN is not a protective thing of bitcoin alone. if anything its a branch of a tree that links many fruits together. not the skin(layer)

its funny how they choose "ontop" and "layer" instead of the more widely accepted term "edge".. but yea, having an alternative network at the EDGE doesnt spark the same subliminal imagery as being "ontop"


as for your many posts in many topics pretending it is bitcoin.. well. standard logic, code and just knowing how LN works says the opposite

LN unit of measure when it makes invoices and payments is not even bitcoin unit measure. its msat. the payments are not bitcoin transaction formats but "sphinx onion packets" in a completely non-bitcoin format.

these msats dont even have any network security to ensure that 1000msat converts to 1sat when transitioning from the LN payment to a commitment.

when you make a 5 hop onion packet.. it might show
B gets 5005 C gets 5004 D gets 5003 E gets 5002 F gets 5001 G gets 5000

but there is no security to ensure that your payment which you peg at 5000msat=5sat ensures that CDEFG also converts their balance to be 5sats. they may end up having different commitments broadcast because their wallet has different pegs..
there is no network audit/consensus/ security that when A wants to send 5 sat to G but uses LN to do it. that the conversions are adhered to underneath the GUI by noob users that cant/dont review code of the wallet they were advertised.

be honest. every payment event. do you check the raw commitment and arrange the 'bucket'(LN word dont blame me) into a bitcoin transaction to then check that the numbers correlate.  
noobs dont. and im sure you dont regularly check incase an update or patch or trojan didnt edit the peg.

heres the last funny
doomad. you literally were one of the people misinformed that called it ontop!!! you make it your mission to call out the flaws of bitcoin saying it cant scale and not fit for mainstream.. yes YOU. go read your post history(incase you have amnesia)

That's a feature, not a flaw.  By design.  As intended.  Which is why it's not an "altnet". 



It is a layer on top.  And not necessarily the only one.  I can't recall a time where you've never managed to convince a single person otherwise.  Consider finding some more convincing arguments rather than repeatedly trotting out the same tired old lines.  "Layer" is a perfectly justifiable description of LN. 



You just said BTC never leaves the Bitcoin network.  Try to get your story straight.  If you are using BTC to open a channel, then you are clearly using Bitcoin.  Once a channel is open, then within that channel you use those dreaded, terrifying, ungodly msats with all their scary decimal places.  Despair all ye who enter.  The sheer horror of it.   

Or, back in the real world, that distinction is only important to you and no one else really cares that much.



Seems a touch disingenuous to compare a decentralised Lightning Network with an entirely centralised Luna.  The risks are very different and you seem to have conveniently glossed over them in your "dystopian" fashion.  In a centralised system like Luna, there was clearly a business model designed to derive profit.  Lightning is a protocol with development from a number of independent development teams (which you should be pleased with, seeing as you'd like to see multiple dev teams working on the base protocol).  LN does not have a business model.  It is not designed to derive profit.  Further to this, anyone in charge of centralised tokens, particularly stablecoins, can alter their issuance of new tokens and radically change the total capitalisation at will.  Lightning does not have that issue.  It is a peer-to-peer(to-peer-to-peer-to-peer-etc) network and not centrally planned.  As such, it is highly unlikely that LN would be susceptible to the type of fiasco that befell Luna.  But anything to sound like a sensationalist madman, right?  Credibility be damned.  You know yours ran out years ago, so just keep spouting nonsense and hope some of it sticks, eh?

 

You keep claiming that other people are suggesting that, but I only ever see such comments from people who are misinformed about Bitcoin.  Every time some slightly ignorant noob comes along saying that Bitcoin is slow or expensive, people rightly point out that there is a cost for the security offered by Bitcoin, which other blockchains are unable to match.  However, it's also not wrong to point out that people have the option to sacrifice some of that security and use LN if they choose to, because it is potentially faster and cheaper.  It's a valid choice.  You don't have to like it.  You don't have to use it.  But nothing you're saying bears any resemblance to reality when you claim "people on the forum are telling people to use LN because Bitcoin is broken".  That is either a total fabrication on your part, or you're paranoid-delusional to the point where you infer meaning that isn't there and you somehow believe you're telling the truth.  I honestly can't tell which it is at this stage.

You've done it in this very topic with your reply to tadamichi.  They never said the words that Bitcoin was broken, but you somehow managed to insinuate it anyway. 

Are you sure you've completely ruled out the chance that you might just be a total headcase?

The question is pretty good, but I think so far miners are still getting a significant amount of rewards for mining, and for the fees as well because most transactions happen on-chain. Moreover, I agree with witcher_sense that it's reasonable that small payments would be made via an off-chain solution like the Lightning Network, and there are still plenty of transactions for miners to confirm. So I don't think it's anywhere near being a threat and discouraging miners who could've got more payments in transaction fees.

K I’ll do this discussion once, just to make sure you really didn’t get it or if you just let ur bias rule you, then im out, because i was really always fair to you and now you try to put words in my mouth.

I never said there is „the” solution. It is one of many solutions to transact outside of Bitcoin and in my personal opinion an elegant solution for doing just this. It is not a necessity for anyone to do this and shouldn’t ever be a necessity, it should be an optional, voluntary and informed choice for whoever wants to do this. For the purpose of doing some transactions, not a replacement for anything else.


Again i never said this or suggested this or tried to suggest this. Lightning and Bitcoin are two different things. Developed independently. That’s the point of layers, Bitcoin is still being developed independently and needs to be functional without lightning in mind. It should make decisions independently from lightning, like it didn’t exist. Everything should be done to develop their own project as best as possible. I don’t think you understand the engineering principles behind this. Bitcoin shouldn’t avoid anything and be developed as well as possible, and the same goes for lightning. You can use the base layer aka Bitcoin either way, no one will lock you outside of it, or halt it’s development. If one upper layer can specialise to serve different use cases better in practice, then some people might want to use it. Just because i use the word layer doesn’t mean Bitcoin and lightning are one thing, it’s the opposite.

There is no the solution, but personal choice. Sidechains have advantages, but also disadvantages. I saw some interesting proposals there, but for now once they gain traction they will face the same issues as the main chain in terms of decentralization, security and scalability, this could be fixed in the future tho and then they’re maybe better than lightning overall. I personally like lightning for the use case of fast and many small payments, for the rest the main chain is better in my opinion. That’s why i won’t use sidechains anytime soon, because i have the mainchain for this.

I made it clear enough now that i don’t want this and that im not parroting this.

Ik.

I won’t ignore other options and will gladly listen to different proposal that are made, i want more of them, not less.


It’s not Bitcoin 2.0 and won’t ever be, and there is no Bitcoin 2.0. And i don’t want a Bitcoin 2.0. It’s still appropriate to describe lightning in layered architecture kind of way despite this, in my opinion.

Im not, why would i even think Bitcoin is bad. LN is elegant if we want a lot of fast payments being done outside of Bitcoin. It’s also pointless to deny that it’s hard to scale the main chain at this particular moment in time 29th june 2022, i want this to change in the future. But scaling can’t come at the cost of decentralization, if we have a provable way to scale the main chain today, without becoming centralized, then this would be the best way. But we don’t yet and letting a few more payments in now, won’t change the basic problem.

I talked about Bitcoin 99% of the time, for you it’s too much if i mention lightning just once or a few times positively.


To me the basic idea and design principles are elegant. To me it’s just normal that software takes time to harden, because i work in this field. It is not a elegant solution for the things you mentioned, these were added because they had to be. Just use it optionally for one purpose: fast payments and then it depends on how often you make these kinds of payments to decide if it’s worth opening a channel or not.

I said that lightning is not a good way of storing funds and just an option for payments, which exactly implies what you said.

And Bitcoin can function without lightning, that’s the point of layers. Reducing complexity and being better at one specific thing, for example transaction speed, this has tradeoffs, otherwise we wouldn’t need a another layer in the first place. And then there’s use cases where this trade off is tolerable. I said Bitcoin lightning, because im aware it can be used for other coins too. Bitcoin lightning = using Lightning in a Bitcoin context. That was the meaning.

Nah and if that is your fear, i think you shouldn’t be concerned about it, because more people will use Bitcoin in the future, lightning is an enabler/entry point for many people and not a threat.

Bitcoin utility is increasing too, regardless of lightning.

I said several times now that Bitcoin is the best money ever created, doesn’t sound like crap to me. Lightning needs Bitcoin not the other way around(Bitcoin is the popular thing). But it’s also foolish to imply that lightning had no single positive impact on Bitcoin overall.

Im not an idiot, i know that they’re not the same and that lightning has flaws. But i can have the opinion that fast payments with small and many amounts are necessary for some use cases, even if it means it’s done in a less secure way, because this can’t easily be done on the main chain now without tradeoffs.

The fact is the mainchain cant process an unlimited amounts of payments in a reasonable time frame, so there needs to be some ways to get around this limit, for the time we need/ want to.

Wow guys, I didn't expect to receive so many answers (and so complex). I've read them all, some things are too technical for me, but now I have another view on LN. Thanks to everyone for them

so you say you dont see LN as the SOLUTION .. but then you go and say its a solution.. in the same post..

i didnt even have to check your post history to see how far your leaning into the LN camp of scripted words where you do see it as THE solution, where you pretend its the best/elegant/top, better option..
..but i could search your post history for other quotes..

i can even quote you calling it subtly and overtly as bitcoin2.0 when i see you many times talk about the "bitcoin L2" "bitcoin layer" and "ontop bitcoin", and "bitcoin lightning network"

heck the way you say bitcoin cant cope bitcoin cant scale.. your soo deep in the salepitch BS of Ln you are literally saying "bitcoin bad LN elegant"

for someone that pretends they are promoting bitcoin adoption. you are certainly trying to call it crap. and advertise another network instead..

.. LN is not elegant. it has bugs and flaws. and after 5 years+ LN still cant guarantee payment success 100%
even now people are needing to add more channels or wait for other days when their route parter a few hops away comes back online.. where they need to close channels or rebalance because OTHERS have used up YOUR funds.
setting up and using LN is not elegant. its worse then setting up a bitcoin wallet.

Ln has less security then bitcoin. it has many things against it that make it nothing like bitcoin. but you continue to try to make it sound better then bitcoin.

LN can still function WITHOUT bitcoin. it is not essential to bitcoin. LN is its own network that can function without bitcoin. accept that fact. you tagging on the word bitcoin does not mean LN is purely a bitcoin thing.

..
when you talk about LN. you are mainly saying about how LNs FEATURE/BENEFIT is to get people away from using bitcoin..

a solution to scaling bitcoin and increasing BITCOIN utility. is not to take people away from bitcoin and stifle bitcoin scaling to stop more people adopting it, simply because another network can adopt the people instead.


emphasis
for someone that pretends they are promoting bitcoin adoption. you are certainly trying to call it crap. and advertise another network instead..

put it simple..
if i was to call LN.. bitcoin "SV".. and that is all i have scenario'd.. a name change.. from your bitcoin "LN" simply changed the lettering to "SV. .. suddenly you might see the light of day of the game being played by LN supporters.. trying to get people to stop making bitcoin transactions to instead make transactions on another network.. you might start seeing the debate from the other side

give it a try.. give yourself a month of calling LN "bitcoin sv".. knowing people are trying to take people away fro bitcoin to your "sv" network. it might enlighten you. you might even start getting risk aware and looking for the flaws other people see inn your "sv" rather then hyping it up and ignoring the flaws

your last paragraph makes my point. most of you LN fans are screaming sales pitches that LN is "the" solution and nothing else should be done because LN does it all. trying to make Ln the only direction people should go for daily use. and avoid scaling bitcoin avoid expanding bitcoin avoid helping bitcoin, because lightning is the go-to thing.

there is not a necessity for "lightning". specifically.. it is not "the" solution
other networks can make stronger protocols that are more secure in a "off chain" method. but lightning has more flaws then other models.
im not a fan of the sidechains, but even with their flaws and i emphasis their flaws. lightning has more flaws in comparison

by presuming that LIGHTNING is the necessity everyone has to offramp to. is the human flaw of just parroting the utopian hype advertising scripts.. of getting people to adopt msat pegs instead of real utility btc, or pother options bitcoin could take.

lightning is not a thing everyone should shift to and no one should be trying to shout that bitcoin should not scale because lighting can take the scale away by diverting people away. (yet many do, including you)
trying to get everyone to shift to lightning is narrowing options and removing bitcoin utility from users.

there are many ways to solve large transaction amounts.. without lightning. even if you fear and want to cry if anyone mentions scaling bitcoin and you just want an off-chain solution.. it doesnt have to be lightning that is "the" offchain solution. because the lightning model is more flawed then other models.

for instance if a better more secure "off-chain" network was to be made. people can diversify over several regional variants of that network protocol and then co-communicate across them "offchain" . but heck i know the response is to ignore any other option coz you think lightning is the only direction. (standard mindset of lightning fans)

Lightning network is not bad for bitcoin. Lightning network has too fast transcation. You can easily paid your shopping payment, restaurant bill, or any others bill even any online payment  in a second. So it can never be said that the bitcoin lightning network is bad. It can be considered as a sophisticated feature for bitcoin.

Nah, anyone who goes into lightning should know the risks and then make a personal choice. It’s an optional choice for using Bitcoin off-chain, like when someone makes personal agreements with someone that aren’t officially backed up. This could be done without lightning too, but lightning is the better approach for this, because it makes the process more reliable, easier and more scalable.

Not ignored, but in practice, how many times are there issues when sending regular amounts around? And lightning is no complete replacement for on-chain transactions, so it’s fine.

It is, now on-chain fees are cheap, but when they will increase again, the savings get higher.


There’s always some responsibility of users to check the software they’re using is safe. We could also say Bitcoin is unsafe just because scammers could create wallets that can steal peoples private keys. But it’s not. Scamming will go on, but that’s why it’s important to not trust, but verify what you’re using is appropriate, for what you’re trying to use it for.


No one did this, it makes people use Bitcoin more and finally broke the fud that altcoins are spreading, that Bitcoin cant scale. I know newbies that got into Bitcoin, because of lightning, it was demonstrating that Bitcoin was able to find a better solution, than any scam project could. And combines its features well with other solutions. This generates trust to tackle future problems and keeps people out of altcoins(not everyone).


Exactly, but no one is suggesting something else here.

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Also franky i have no problem with that you’re trying to rise awareness for issues, but think about it. Scalability/ low fees isn’t the only requirement for Bitcoin to be used on a daily basis too. Speed of transactions is another factor too. Did you ever pay in a store via wire? It’s slow and expensive, no store is accepting this. Online stores do, but people still choose the fastest form of payment preferably, to get their stuff shipped earlier. Physical stores either accept debit/ credit cards, gift cards, cash etc. Despite their PoS terminals having potential problems for example: fraud potential, chargebacks or transactions not going trough. And you can still use ur debit/ card even if it’s not verified that you have enough funds yet(lightning is way better than this). This is something people are used to, and they’re handling it on a daily basis and it works in practice.

Even if lightning fees wouldn’t bring in savings there’s still a necessity for this, that can’t simply be solved in a better way, by using a chain again. With this Bitcoin has a huge advantage over any altcoin, because the acceptability of Bitcoin lightning is way higher than any other method for this. How will you solve a huge amount of transactions that need to be processed fast at the same time, in a better way? Not every payment needs to be recorded forever, just like cash. You could possibly have fake bills and yet we’re using it. The point is, there’s abuse potential in almost every form of payment there is. People will just adapt, and learn how to use it securely. Everything has pros/ cons, and we will need different solutions for different problems. You can’t fit every requirement perfectly into one solution, or we would already have it. So specialisation is the logical path forward.

completely avoiding the bad sides of another network(which it is) to sell the utopian hype of getting people to use bitcoin less, just to promote the other network.
predictable.

funny how they all ignore and avoid the liquidity issues of routing.
how more channels are needed, more hops required as the network expands to reach everyone and more balance just to get small payments to succeed.

let alone the later bottlenecks and thinks like the snowball effect of reblancing that then unbalances other people which sets off a whole stream of events of just moving funds for sake of moving which causes other peoples to do and so on. (goodluck finding a solution to the rebalancing flaw)

heck the sily uptopia is that when they show off that their LN fee channel is 0.001sat fee per sat.
they are not telling people that it soon adds up

take a $10 amount. LN is not going to cost them 0.001sat(1msat fee per sat spent) to make a payment. of $10
($10= 0.00050000). 50,000sat = 50,000msat....so 1 hop away is 50sat fee
and in the A-F example in my previous post thats 4x 50sat = 200sat yep just 5/6 hops away ends up being the same as a bitcoin fee

so is it really multiple times cheaper than bitcoin.. where a 250byte tx at 1sat/byte is 250. but is confirmed and settled in minutes/hours. instead of promised to be settled after closing in 1 month on LN
..
again some are ignoring:
if 10mill btc were locked up i GUARANTEE not all of that 10mill of coin would be utilised by the person locking it to actually spend on their own personal needs

you those people cant all use that pegged msat for their own purposes. because its already used up by others making their payments. and rebalances. leaving some users unbalanced(causing a cascade effect).

i guarantee you people will scam each other by getting people to download specific software offering "special features" but are just used to do bad peg conversions beneath the gui, and to offer channels with no locked bitcoin (because its already been done)

suggesting the solution out bitcoin is to stop using bitcoin and to trust another network without consensus, without security and without many of the things that bitcoin has got. is not a solution..

im not suggesting that another altnet might do better or have a different mechanism to allow free open flow in and out. as a choice. but pretending bitcoin shouldnt be used for users is just shameful

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dont think of these altnets as the "solutions" or think they are bitcoin 2.0. think of them as niche services for temporary, small amount services. not something to lock up and stay on long term.
dont risk more then you are willing to lose, and expect that you are NOT going to get 100% payment success every time.
learn the risks and flaws, understand there is no security of network consensus ensuring the pegs remain 1sat:1000msat. learn from the mistakes of other networks that pegged to coins.  that recently broke their peg
be risk aware. dont let people fluff you with trust and utopian while getting you to risk your value. they are not going to pay you back when it goes wrong

---

You have to think also about what happened in the next 2140 because all bitcoin is mined, it is the same situation as your think (miners don't get enough fees to have a decent profit). so, I think you don't need to worry about this because both chains will work together in each way, the miner will keep mining in the main blockchain, and the lightning network will still be there also, and both will be chosen by user. we need to know when to use the lightning network we have to exchange it first from BTC main chain to LN, this is also a chance to get a decent profit.

I think it can be argued that lightning is mostly positive for Bitcoin and it would be worse without it. There’s always an incentive to open or close lightning channels, when the on-chain fees are low. This means it actually stabilises transaction volume, when it’s low, because then more lightning channel demand will come in.

All of this bashing of Layer 2s is useless, when it’s impossible at the moment to scale the mainchain without getting centralized. Every solution has tradeoffs, but this is one of the more elegant solutions. And Lightning has a ridiculous amount of theoretical troughput, which smokes every chain solution out of the water.

Lightning won’t take all the transactions out of the mainchain. It will make Bitcoin more usable for daily transactions, which in turn will make it more attractive to more users. The mainchain will still have enough demand for other kinds of payments, and when demand there is low, lightning is actually helping out.

Lightning is also not a good place to store all of your funds, the main chain will always have enough usage for this reason alone. This is to make payments easier, not to lure users out.

See:
There is almost 84.000 Lightning channels at the moment. Each of them will require one transaction to open and one to close the channel. Which still gives us 84.000 pending transactions at the moment, that will hit the mainchain at some point in the future. And the amount of channels will probably increase in the future. We can speculate how many, but the potential is huge here. There could be millions of pending transactions just because of lightning. Let’s say one Block can take in 2000 transactions every 10 minutes. Does it seem like the mainchain will be struggling to get enough transactions?

There's only a limited amount of transactions that can fit into a block, so there will always be a fee market, especially since the opening and closing of channels still requires on-chain transactions as mentioned by the others.

This means that miners will get their mining fees either way. It's just that the same mining fee payout will cover for a lot more individual transactions than if transactions where to take place purely on-chain.

It also implies that block size restrictions are necessary for a profitable fee market further down the road.

lightning network is its own independant network. it bridges to multiple networks.. it is not a sole bitcoin feature.
people can still use lightning with litecoin and other altcoins. LN is not something uniquely for bitcoin.
it just wants to tag on the "bitcoin" name and subtly hint its ontop of bitcoin to win instant fame/recognition/trust and steal users over to the LN so they stop using the bitcoin network

rightnow, using the same software i can easily with the same peer(partner) set up channels that are bitcoin pegged, litecoin pegged, ltc testnet pegged, btc testnet pegged..  no problems at all.
thus LN is not "tethered" to only function with bitcoin
..
a solution to bitcoin scaling is not to get people to stop using the bitcoin network. yet that is exactly the job of LN. to stop people using bitcoin regularly

im not saying these altnets(Ln, sidechains, de-fi, pegged chains,federated networks, etc) dont have a small value temporal niche service use. but by no means should anyone be declaring it bitcoin 2.0 and the solution everyone should move over to and lock up all wealth long term. LN is too flawed to act as a full mainstream utility to replace bitcoin