Topic: Lightning Network Observer - page 22. (Read 13809 times)

Are you familiar with the metric system? In this system, such conversions are very common and required. An example:
If you convert 99,999 millimeters (ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine - written without comma in Europe, just to clarify) to meters, what do you get? 99.999 meters (99 point 999 meters). Or 99 meters, 9 decimeters, 9 centimeters and 9 millimeters.
Anyhow; if we don't like (or can't work with) fractions, we need to use rounding. When rounding to the next meter, the conversion result would be 100m. We can't do that in Bitcoin or Lightning, since we can't create sats (or fractions of them) out of thin air; therefore we round down.
The conversion needs a factor of 1000x, indeed, since we go from msat (read: millisatoshi) to sat. milli standing for 'a thousandth'.

You are working with the same unit here, though. No conversions. I can order 100999mm of cable from you and you deliver 100m or 101m, depending on how you round, if your machine can only cut cables in sections of 1m, for instance.

Sure; other cryptos also have a blockchain. So? What's the point?

It 'functions' on other blockchains, too; I personally doubt they're a good fit though, since I doubt their decentralization and security. Therefore to work well and securely, you need a good and secure base layer which only Bitcoin provides.

Wait, your argument now changed from being confused about unit conversions to arguing about a malicious Lightning implementation being able to steal user funds? That's hilarious. You can also deploy malicious on-chain wallets; that's not Lightning's fault.

So... I have Franky on ignore because in the past I feel like he has just been so much noise.  But obviously he has been getting some engagement recently and I see the quotes.  This is fine, of course.

But it's too bad.  Seems like a well meaning guy.  But he is not arguing his points in an open minded way.  His general thesis is basically:  Lightning is NOT Bitcoin.  And then he makes arguments that do not mak sense from that premise.  Like the last one quoted:


The whole reason for a second layer network is to build functionality the utilizes the FIRST layer but offers a different set of tradeoffs.  Just looking at the LN as a trust minimized, distributed network designed to allow a record to be kept of off chain transactions with minimal trust for the purpose of small commerce.  The archetypal coffee transaction.  And then these transaction can be settled on chain later.  It was never designed for you to hold value there for 10 years.  The tradeoffs it has are not as well suited to that and layer 1 cold storage.

Let's look at the argument in a similar context.

One could use the same basic logical framework  (somewhat generous really ) to argue that a Opendime with a balance on it "is not Bitcoin".  Or that Opendime "transactions" are not Bitcoin. I can have 0.01BTC on one of those and give it to you, and you can give it to someone else...  This is a physical layer 2 product.  And IT TOO has a different set of tradeoffs than the Bitcoin base layer.  It gives way better privacy for example.  But the hardware can fail... it can be seized.  It would be harder to fly across borders with it.  The hardware could be counterfeited, and so on.   And it too, after many "uses" can have the little hole punched, and then the balance on it will be "settled on chain" when you move the funds to cold storage, for example.

So Franky is right in some senses that LN is not Bitcoin.  Just like transacting with Opendimes is not bitcoin.  If you are defining "Bitcoin" as transactions on the base layer.  But just like the Opendime.  Ultimately what we are transacting on the LN IS BITCOIN.  Period.

Looking at complex systems with a polarized, binary, black and white lens is a mistake.  I would also argue that LBTC (Liquid) is also "Bitcoin".  It might be a further, riskier abstraction of Bitcoin than LN or an Opendime.  It certainly introduces new risks (AND advantages).  And just like the LN one should probably not use it for certain things.  Or at all, if you prefer.  But the underlying asset is still bitcoin.

you are not proving me wrong you are evading the points with utopia. yo pretend there is nothing to see.. as if saying nothing to see = nothing wrong..
only the blind think the path ahead is clear .. until they hit something

as for the 'not used for cold store'

because its not a "cold" system its a "hot" stay online or risk losing..

however in that "hot" system you love.. you do want people to stay locked in with value for months and not settle up to real bitcoin..
so its not a cold "store".. its a hot "store".. with all the risks that come with it

so your utopia is about storing value long term.. just in a insecure method that can be stolen just for sleeping

and your first silly responce to nonce in your last post .. is again you BOTH only talking about the rounding of 999 msat. ignoring the point of the whole 1:1000 conversion rate

seems you have not even mentioned the 1:1000 and instead just evaded it to only wanna tak about rounding insignificances

seems if you cant tell the difference between rounding
1,000,000,999msat
=
1,000,000sat
where its still the 1:1000 rate jut rounding the excess

where as
1,000,000,900msat
=
10sat
by changing the 1:1000 rate which is not about "just rounding error"
because more then 0.900sats are lost


meaning the other guy or miners get 999,990 extra. by just editing a few lines of code that no one notices in a app update until months later when they finally settle up. because for the months before settling up they ware paying/displaying only msats that have no 'coin control' to ensure there is a guaranteed peg back to a promised value, leaving users thinking its a 1:1000 rate.. until its too late

Not only that, but even if 1 sat becomes more valuable in the future, there's still on-chain transaction that needs to take place, which will cost more than 1 sat. I doubt this will ever be a serious concern for the node operator.

Then don't use it for that purpose, you shouldn't either way. Nobody is going to treat Lightning as a cold storage. The point is the exact opposite; to use it regularly for day-to-day transactions. But besides that, if you don't like Lightning, and you can't find reasoning in our arguments, then just stop getting involved in these discussions. We're perpetually proving you wrong, buddy.

rounding is not a /1000
also there is no hard rule that is consensus defined and locked to ensure converting is done at a 1000 rate

i am laughing that you call a change by a factor of 1000x "rounding"

ok you give me $1999.. and ill "round that down for you to $1.90
and give you back $1.90 and tell you its the same things just rounded

do you observe how going from near 10,000 down to 10 is not "rounding" its division.. and when that rate is not fixed by any hard rule that is unbreakable. its called pegging. and if you ever done any clothes drying in the back yard you would know pegs break. as many sidechains and some stable coins have learned.. and its a shame you have not learned this

scaling bitcoin is not "stop using bitcoin often and use another network"
as thats the same as saying drop bitcoin and use litecoin
if you are telling people to not use bitcoin your not helping bitcoin

smart contracts of 2party signing a payment is OLD tech

also LN can stop operate.. as proven by setting pup channels with no utxo backing..

and how other cryptos have LN


i wont repeat myself. just look at my last paragraph of this post.

i do laugh that you still think LN is a sole feature of bitcoin and only compatible with bitcoin and relies on bitcoin to function..

i also laugh that you think telling users to not use bitcoin and then shout some FUD about why bitcoin is not fit for use, just to advertise LN as the solution to bitcoins unfitness.. very very shameful tactics


WBTC
LBTC
ln-mast

are not bitcoin

That's not what is happening, though. 99,999msat are rounded down to 99sat if the channel state has to be settled on the blockchain (read: channel is closed). Just under 1sat gets lost. No 1000x rates or anything.

Nobody is arguing against Bitcoin. Lightning is an addition to Bitcoin trying to solve the scaling problem. I know that you don't think it exists, because technically, as of now, the blockchain is fast enough. Think of it as future-proofing and / or trying out techniques well before they may be actually needed to ensure Bitcoin's blockchain (that we all know and love) isn't clogged up and rendered unusable due to higher usage / higher number of active users.

Only Bitcoin and its blockchain enables a concept such as Lightning to work. In 2000-2007 that didn't exist, which is why any project aiming to do what LN does, would have failed.

I know you love the blockchain, and we do, too; without it, Lightning is unthinkable.

converting a onion payment amount of 99,999msat
to 10sat is not a rounding error

its a full conversion at a 1000x rate
that 1000x rate is the part im on about not the idio roundong silly petty brush under carpet arguments you think that only happens in LN


yea. its called bitcoin

i dont need to be online all day to "watch" it for theft. heck it even comes in the form of paper wallet

when anyone wants to make a internet payment then yes go online. but the rest of the day-month-year, you dont need to stay online just to ensure a partner/middle man isnt trying to steal against you

its crap like LN that is the only system in cryptocurrency that so you need to be online to reduce the risk of someone stealing your funds.

. in bitcoin i can disapear for a decade and come back and know my finds are safe.. LN channel cant say the same

i dont think you LN folk realise that LN "tech" is actually the failed projects of cypherpunks 2000-2007.. it was then bitcoin and blockchains that solved a problem for smart contracts..
its not where smart contracts are solving a problem of bitcoin.

...
lets word it another way

if you locked 10cents on a stable coin
and it converted to 10,000millicents

would you say its 1:1
would you want to ensure that no walet breaks the 1:1000 rate


if you locked $10 on a stable coin
and it converted to 1,000,000millicents

would you say its 1:1
would you want to ensure that no wallet breaks the 1:1000 rate

i know you will just say "not our problem" if users use a wallet they were told to use by a service that gave them 10,000,000millicents inbound but had no lock to back the value. and when the use spends $10 of real money its his fault if after settled he only vets 1 penny back. its his loss

but when a service can have hundreds of users the lame mindset of blame the user not the service networks lack of security.. you end up revealing the network has lack of security to defend against malicious implementations and serives

bitcoin is simple if there is no utxo there is no tx payment. bitcoin doesnt work on promises that need to settle later to ensure you got paid

bitcoins doesnt need to to be online 24/8 to ensure your channel partner doesnt steal from you

I'm not, we're speaking about the same thing.

I acknowledged that you can indeed lose 1sat. So yes, you're wrong with the bolded sentence; they may get up to 1 satoshi less than the msat amount in their wallet.
Although, this is nothing new and nothing to worry about; 1sat is worth $0.00016USD or 0.016 cents.

Yeah; users can get msats (or sats, whatever) Lightning balance before the opening transaction is confirmed. So if it's double-spent / revoked, that Lightning balance can't be settled / disappears. Easy solution: wait for one confirmation. This is not really a Lightning problem, but just like a merchant accepting 0conf. It's their choice, their risk.

Do you have an idea about an off-chain system which doesn't need to be 'watched' / online? That would be amazing.

You do acknowledge that Turbo is decided after the consent between two nodes, right? Just because Alice opens a channel with Bob, and they choose to settle it unconfirmed (which is what makes a channel turbo), it doesn't affect Charlie somehow. If Alice wants to send money to Charlie, it's Bob who'll give him the money, who doesn't have a turbo channel with Charlie. If Alice screws with Bob, and double-spends her channel opening transaction, Charlie will have normally received the money she sent him; it's Bob who's left unpaid.

Time to take your medication, Franky.

you say about onchain fee's.   (not part of the conversation)

you talk about how an implementation used by nothing is.. and the you use sweep under the carpet blank statements..

thor turbo you say "speeds up" yea.. by ignoring a bolt rule to only start a channel once a tx is confirmed. by ignoring that they can give msats to users with no confirm utxo..

funny how you want to play it down as a feature and not something people should be risk aware of..

as for you saying users dont need to settle up every payment.. well thats the issue its not about broadcasting payment.. its about that while they dont need to broadcast with every ln onion payment to settle.. they are left longer not knowing what the state/commitment behind the GUI is actually promising. all they see is a msat balance in GUI which can mean nothing. much like thor turbo

with all the crap about stable coins de-pegging their reserves or lack of reserves (no funding locked coin) people should be aware of other networks that have week structure to ensure security. but you wanna sweep it under the rug..

shameful

havnt you listened to the news lately..
services and networks that cant prove reserves,
stable coins de-pegging to new low rates of conversion to base asset value
methods to steal/hack funds from counterparties/sister companies

but hey you will keep promoting the utopian dream that bitcoin is unfit for the masses and LN is bitcoin 2.0 right??

shame on you.

maybe one day you will become risk aware and then want other to be risk aware to protect their value rather then a trust system where they have to use emotional choices to either hope their channel partner wont screw them, or lose sleep watching them.
if you have to watch or trust middlemen or other people because your funds are at risk of being lost or spent while you are not watching them. that system is not a good system

When a channel is opened, the initiator of the channel open has to pay the onchain fee. Same with closing. So he pays a minimum of 1sat/vb two times, which is a minimum fee of about 400 Satoshis plus at max of 2 Satoshis lost due to rounding down. Noone cares about this, Franky. Channels don`t have to be closed after every payment, but they can (and often they do) stay open for years.
Thor Turbo is just a Bitrefill implementation, that speeds up channel opening. Nothing to see here. All exchanges are implementing their own software. Most of the trading on exchanges is happening under the hood and is not shown on the blockchain. They can do whatever they want with your money.

you are missing the complete point

much like many thought that LN was soo utopia that there was no way to fractional reserve because all channels had locked and confirmed value.....
.....
until thor turbo proved it was possible and people were getting inbound Msats not backed by a confirmed bitcoin 'funding lock' utxo

when you realise that there is also no network consensus and that msats are not 1:1 rated with sats.. where instead that 1:1000 ratio is not guaranteed either and can be messed with too

where when compiled, and a service tells people to use their app..
EG a service of 1m users al using that services LN app on their phone

people wont know of the rate change while using LN.. they see the msats and dilly dally happily moving msats in onion payments
.until.. they broadcast the commitment and see onchain that they are getting not as much as promised..

then you will see

Why are you so worried about msats? You're aware that msats are rounded down to sats when closing a channel, so you can 'lose' at most 999msats or just less than 1 satoshi?

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/lnwire/msat.go#L19-L25
https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/master/channeld/commit_tx.c#L62

when you look at your LN gui and when you are sending msats in onions to the leapfrog game of middlemen who need to agree.. . you are thinking that you are going to get a 1:1000 rate of sats:msats when its time to broadcast.. right?
how sure are you of this ..

here is the thing. services and counterparties can talk people into downloading specific wallets where it offers certain services

things like inbound balance without a confirmed lock of funds to back it.
where the msat balance in GUI does not peg to a signed transaction of 1:1000

so while you happily play with inbound msat balance by a counterparty.. what you end up in the broadcast may not be what you think

..
have a hard think about that

oh.. and many LN devs themselves have lost funds.. and still have not come up with solutions. just so you know

Oh Franky. You had so much time to learn about Lightning, but you obviously still have no idea how it actually works. You pretty much sound like CSW, when he explains Bitcoin.

please observe

i was discussing the pegging.. and you went full avoidance by talking about other features..

when you start to realise that when people are told to download some free phone app for lightning and see 0 balance and they use an exchange to deposit bitcoin and the exchange then routes them inbound msat.. they think they are getting 1:1000 rated msat..
little do they know how easy it is in just 1 line of code to have the onion payment conversion to commitment actually be a 1:200 rate. and they only learn the hard way when they try to settle the channel..

do you get it yet. lightning does not have a network wide consensus to actually audit payments and value to make sure what someone holds is actually what is owed to them

oh and lightning is federated. but lacks the blockchain bit too
you are federated with a channel partner. and separately someone else is federated to your partner. and they are federated with someone else

you can only make a payment if all federations along the route are online and will agree to authorise payment through them.

LN is permissioned because it needs someone elses permission(co partners signature. route onions approval to forward onion payment and send back acceptance with key
as for trust

well you either hand keys to a watch tower so you can sleep. or stay awake watching your partner doesnt broadcast a old state.. oh wait if you want to sleep without a watch tower.. you need to trust your partner

take the utopia away and try for one month to do some critical thinking. imaging you have value in lightning and you really want to scrutinise it for bugs and flaws. instead of be hopeful and dreamy about it.
start finding the flaws. the ways that a counter party can dupe you out of your value.

then you might learn something

An interesting opinion from Bitcoin Magazine about what has the Lightning network done to solve the base layer scalability problem.


DATA SHOWS THAT BITCOIN’S LIGHTNING NETWORK HAS SOLVED THE SCALABILITY PROBLEM


The article underline the success if the lightning network has to do essentially to the fact that it allowed moving huge amount of traffic off-chain.

Flawed analogy. Lightning isn't a federated sidechain. While operating decentrally, Liquid isn't permissionless in the same way Lightning is. Summarily, Liquid acts as a financial instrument between large Bitcoin companies, which are integral to its operation. It is trust requiring, but it minimizes it, because it divides governance to several trustworthy entities.

Lightning, on the other hand, requires no faith. You need to trust nobody but yourself to transact. Not your partners, not your partners' partners, no one.

and on that note doomad

liquid and binance chain also have locks and pegs to bitcoin..
so i guess you consider those networks "bitcoin" when you want to just talk about "liquid" and "binance chain" in this forum category

dont be silly, understand they are different networks that use locks and pegs to then play with different units of measure on a separate network away from the bitcoin network

LN, liquid, binance chain... are not "bitcoin"