Topic: Lightning Network Observer - page 3. (Read 13809 times)

the very original concept of LN was that before opening a channel both parties would agree on a key set and create a multisig and both fund that same multisig address to both have mutual control of funds... that concept didnt last long

now when you open a channel you lock your value to keys YOU own and assign some of your value to a key (future) destined to JJG..
if he also opens up some value on his side to then give you inbound balance he has his own value with some assigned to your key(yet to be settled).. this would be a bi-directional channel with 2 funding locks one for each of you..
but if only you open and channel to JJG its just YOUR utxo value lock.. IOUing JJG
..

funny thing is, you are arguing.. yet proving my point. the value is still locked on your side.. whilst you are alive and JJG has not closed o you
yes he keeps a signed copy of a UNCONFIRMED transaction(thus an iou).. but he does not have the value yet. he just has a copy of a yet to be confirmed transaction.. (emphasising again thus IOU)

after you die. much like withdrawing from a CEX ... by having a transaction broadcast onto the bitcoin network. THEN he has the chance to get btc.. but until then. he doesnt have btc

learn inbound.. it means something is coming yet not arrived to its destination.. it is not JJG yet
..
and then you want to talk about strike
strike(jack mallers) scammed the el salvador leader into using LN as the backbone of chivo wallet  in summer 2021..got it set up by autumn.. but by christmas 2021 el salvador leader got pissed off with strikes antics and ditched it.. many el salvadorian citizens got very annoyed by the broken promises, all broken due to the LN experiment thrust on el salvador under the pretence of saying "sending bitcoin".. they learned very quick that this was a lie.

heck even strike had to change its business model due the el salvador failure

..
if you think LN is going to become the super highway where all subnetwork bridges converge. you are only fooling yourself

if you realise why so many dev teams have tried LN, seen it fail and decided to make other subnetwork bridges. you will soon see why they will avoid using LN as the intersection of their subnetwork bridge

pretending LN is trust minimised is a lie

the promise 6 years ago of trust minimised never flourished. infact all tests for first 4 years didnt battle harden LN, it instead realised it couldnt work well under trust minimised concept.. and they changed LN's business model to need hubs, factories, watchtowers, custodians even more.. meaning more trust is needed. not less
...
nice try to positive spin LN flaws like using sham buzzwords such as "battle hardened" but by spinning it you have actually proven that it has weakened not hardened

. you sound like a great comedian but not a great sales pitcher.. you made me laugh

if you think that LN is instant and irreversible settlement of satoshis. you are not talking about LN
LN doesnt settle irreversibly.. thats what the bitcoin network does after/when exiting LN

i did laugh the most when you used strike as an example..
its funny how much you are making the failure points for me, while pretending to be a LN adoring saleman trying to promote LN

you should try comedy

your sales pitch was the equivelent to saying CEX are trust minimised services that use irreversible settlements.. when reality is the settlement are withdrawals to escape and move away from CEX service. to then confirm value on the bitcoin network
withdrawing from a CEX is not a feature of proving CEX is non-custody.. its actually the case people need to withdraw/settle to get out of a services custody, because whilst in CEX/LN the funds are not the promised recipients(yet)

by you even thinking whilst in LN recipients get instant irreversible settled value.  shows you have alot more to learn

You're and than.  And you are wrong. I understand the functionality quite well.


You are 100% WRONG.  You are exposing a deep misunderstand of how lightning works.

When I open a channel to JJG's node both MY node, and HIS enter into a transaction. In my original example I send ALL the sats but we BOTH hold keys to the HTLC (Hashed timelock contract).  Under normal circumstances we both keep records of the transactions inside that channel.  These are the IOUs you refer to.  But to disprove your point that I would own the keys and the bitcoin on the blockchain let's consider a hypothetical.  Let's say I open that channel, and I die, and my node burns up in a fire.  All the value is mine in that channel, and if JJG decided to force close the channel all the value would go to an address that I alone hold the private key for (though I am now dead... I do not like this story a lot).

BUT!  And if you want to point to something more like a flaw in the LN then you could start here.

If JJG KNEW I was dead and my node was unrecoverable then he could broadcast the FC while claiming the sats in that channel all belonged to him.  And unless a watchtower got involved his node would execute what it is designed to do which would be to send all the sats in the channel to an address only he controls.

So your assertion that the sats were "mine on the blockchain" is just wrong.  We both share the channel and have rights and recourse to recover the correct amount of sats to our respective addresses, and even if none were his there are ways he could simply take them all.

Perhaps you will reject my above proof that you are wrong, but even if you did not I am sure you are salivating and ready to point to the above and say "Aha!  See?  the LN sucks and people can steal from each other".

Here's the crazy thing.  You call me a fanatic promoting a sham.  But I am not.  I think the lightning network is overly convoluted, and has some serious problems.  In fact, I do not personally believe that the LN will be the final way Bitcoin is transacted between parties with low fees.

The lightning network is not suited for average individuals.  One must be fairly technical to use it, or use a compromise solution like WoS.  But I have said for a long time that technology will find a way.

And today... three years later after that post,  I think I have a better view on how that is unfolding.

And I am sorry to disappoint you but the lightning network will remain an integral part of it.

Frankly (lol) I think the lightning network is just one or two steps too convoluted for it to be the final stop on the bus of cheap transactions.  Yes it CAN work, and it does.  Quite well, in fact.  But things like the necessity of having a node ONLINE to receive payments and the fact it is a hot wallet on the internet mean that average Joe might not be able to really handle the responsibility of using it for payments in a non-custodial fashion.

But the fact remains that the LN is a trust minimized cryptographic method for multiple entities to move value.  And it has been battle tested and hardened now for 4+ years.

What I see happening at this point is the LN is becoming an intermediate step at first, and then a POWERFUL tool as it matures for transmitting value.

Strike is a perfect example of a use case that the designers of it saw WAAAAY before the rest of us.  And before you start flailing and talking about custodial blah blah I would encourage you to stop thinking in black and white and only one level ahead.  Strike uses the LN to facilitate the movement of money all over the globe for as close to free as you can possibly get.  Strike is not a lightning wallet, or a LSP or any other level one thing.  Strike is a centralized business that is taking advantage of the LN to be able to move significant value anywhere an in practice instantly.  They are a money transmitter.  and instead of going through the old ways of doing that they are bypassing all the trouble by using the LN.

Strike is NOT LN.  It is NOT decentralized.  It is NOT a lot of things we bitcoinners hold as central.  It is a business.  A business that uses the lightning network to bypass ENORMOUS amounts of friction that exists in the traditional rails of finance.  And at it's heart it uses BITCOIN to do this.

It would be a good use of terminology to call Strike a "layer three" technology.  And just because strike is a centralized "layer three" does not mean all of them will have to be.

We are going to see the following over the next Bitcoin Epoch:

Multiple decentralized, trust minimized methods for moving value emerging.

--Chaumian mints in things like e-cash and cashu and the like.
--Multiple implementations of the Elements code base like Liquid.
----These will become interoperable with each other on some level.
----They will also use the LN and implementation of the LN on their own layers to do settlement and interoperability.

Then you have other sidechain, drivechains, and more emerging as we sit here arguing over one of the core technologies that will make it all work.

And of course, technology only dreamed of may emerge that obsoletes many of the above rails INCLUDING the LN while retaining or even improving the trust models and decentralization.

AI may even find a place in all this.  I could see it working to improve lightning insofar as channel balancing and functions like watchtowers for example.

Franky you are still stuck on level one.

Bitcoin at the base of all these technologies is absolutely essential.  It IS the killer app.  It IS the part of all this we could not do ANY of it without.  And it MUST remain maximally decentralized and minimally trust based.  And all the tech we build on top of it can make as many tradeoffs as we could dream of.

The lightning network trades complexity, and the need to be online for a way to provide INSTANT and IRREVERSIBLE settlement of satoshis.

Stop fighting it, you fool.

Singing Christmas trees and lightning bitcoin payments? A blend of technology miracles and Christmas magic!🎄 Christmas tree activated by composing music by paying through the #Bitcoin Lightning network.




picture X

your saying buzzwords without understanding functionality.. those IOU's(weak contracts) are not as smart as buzzworded.. and thats the sham.. they pretend LN is better then it actually is



you have not "given" him btc. he has not "gained" btc
the funds are still locked in YOUR funding utxo of keys YOU own. where the channel then has a UNCONFIRMED, UNSETTLED tx template showing a output where JJG MIGHT get btc in the future when you both mutually close.. but until then he does not have BTC
 
inside LN YOU still own the coin. its not his coin on the blockchain. its still YOURS
you are 'crediting' him with a IOU of future settlement. but you have not given him BTC yet

its the same as CEX custodians, he might see a balance of value owed.. but if its not in a UTXO he has key control of.. its not his
#not-your-key-not-your-coin

thats why we tell people to withdraw and gain control of value owed

also LN has many flaws that do not guarantee the recipient will ever get the inbound owed balance..
LN devs admit it, its why they then use work arounds of then needing centralised watchtowers and hubs and stuff..
but even those have flaws.. flaws building on flaws, still not resolving the underlying issue

oh by the way breez also opens channel and credits users with inbound balance without needing a X confirm funding locked value utxo
which is another flaw

learn the problems when services say they can give instant inbound balance. it means they are not locking value to their partners keys

when LN stopped their initial plans of co-funding a multisig(2-of 2, both partners own and control) and then both needing mutual sign off.. more LN flaws appeared

---

rather then you posting a message asking to be hugged and spoonfed.. and waiting hours for a response. you could simply spend 30 seconds on google and find the answers yourself

i am not your mother. i do not need to spoonfeed you or hug you.

if you actually want to learn. GO LEARN

Surely you are presuming a lot.


For some reason, I don't even perceive myself as having any real and/or meaningful problem, as you seem to be projecting such a status upon me.


You seem to be referring to my lightning wallet usage on Bluewallet, Phoenix and Breez.  I researched and found those to be something that I was willing to try out, and surely I rejected several others and a few times, I wrote some posts regarding in the times that I was going through my decision-making process around setting them up.. the first time was around mid to late 2022 when I ended up getting started with Bluewallet, and then the second time was around February/March 2023, when I ended up setting up Breez and Phoenix (which came after Bluewallet had communicated that they were no longer going to custody their customers coins - meaning that Bluewallet was gong to able to use their lightning wallet features by channeling through your own node or a known node that was not Bluewallet's)..

Yes, I prefer non-custodial, but if there are some custodial aspects in terms of some of the wallet choices (or services) that I might end up making, and that might be the closest that is available for my circumstances, then I will go with the closest available until maybe some other reasonable and/or feasible option might come about.   I am not do or die stuck upon one way of looking at the matter, and sometimes there are going to need to be trade-offs, especially if some of the technologies and practices are still in early stages of development.. which still seems to be the case with lightning network, even though it has been live nearly 7 years now...and yeah some of the recent bug findings in lightning network, maybe from a few months ago, are still trying to be figured out if there is any way to resolve them.. and sure it could be ongoingly problematic if the recently discovered bugs cannot be resolved (and/or work-arounds cannot be made).

It seems to me that there is ONLY so much that any user of these systems, including yours truly, might be ready, willing, and/or able to do in terms of learning how to run a node or even some of the other technical learnings that might be needed (or due diligence) and to actually follow through with such, even though that might be something like running a node could be something that I could end up considering at some point.. perhaps? perhaps?  But at this point, it might even be questionable how much lightning network is going to continue to operate if there might not be work-arounds for some of the latest bugs.. at least from my understanding about some of the current difficulties and/or questions that exits.

In any event, currently, I am mostly continuing with Phoenix, and maybe I will re-fund my Breez channel at some point in the future.. right now they are charging 25,000 sats plus 1% for any of the initial channel creations, which seems to be quite a bit higher than when I originally had created the earlier channel that got closed on me.


Sure, that might be more or less a fair rendition.  It seems that if a person has an established lightning channel, then it might not be very expensive to make quite a few transactions, but then if there are force or surprised closings, then that could end up costing way more, and then I had heard that there had been quite a few fees in channel management over the years too, but I am not going to suggest that these were any kinds deliberate attempts to scam anyone, but instead deliberate attempts to engage in various open-sourced and decentralized ways to try to get this somewhat decentralized system to work as a second layer to bitcoin.. so yeah, maybe it is ending with less and less success and maybe even difficulties finding a path forward if there might be irresolvable technical issues (bugs) that have been found to exist.


Who said that I am not being honest to myself?  Besides you?  I had really ONLY recently begun to try to use Lightning network wallets, and I am not trying to persuade anyone to do anything, even though I had helped some people to get set up with various kinds of wallets that I was using (lightning network wallets), and then I also had done a few lightning network transactions.. not very many but a few.


What is the harsh truth?  Frankie was right all along?  Is that what you are trying to say?  Are you trying to say that you knew LN was not going to work and you knew about the bug?

We don't really seem to be getting anywhere with your seeming to just want to deal with black an white which would include you as the good guy and the one who is right about everything.. that just does not seem to be very helpful... Maybe it makes you feel good to be interacting with other people in those kinds of ways?


Of course, you don't want to provide links because you think that people should figure things out for themselves, and yeah, I still would question whether whatever that you are even referring to is related to this thread or not? and your failure/refusal to either provide a thread or some kinds of specifics, causes me to conclude that it probably is not sufficiently related and/or even worth looking into further.


Not sure what this means.. except that I am both a advertiser and I like to be advertised to by the various incorrect talking points and you are not going to participate in this except to just be critical of any actions that any forum members taking as not doing enough research, but making their decisions based on superficial ads and then luring in other forum members with such superficial talking points.. supposedly that is what we are doing, from your perspective, when we participate in various lighting network discussions.


No problem.  When I am ready to look into some of the amorphous matters that you are talking about, then I will try to figure it out.  I am sure, if you are so in-touch with the latest happenings, then some of these matters will come to light, even if you do not specifically point anyone to any specific place to look.


Again.  You are assuming various problems?  Why?  You want to say I told you so about something?


I guess you got me figured out.


Ok.  I will try to take more responsibility for myself and for my actions from here on out.  

By the way, Wen LN replacement?

Ignored this spammer...

This is incorrect.

Lightning channels are a smart contract between two entities.

If JJG and I both run lightning nodes and I open a channel to him in the traditional way where all the liquidity in the channel starts on my side, then we BOTH own that channel until it is closed.  And I have given incoming liquidity to JJG.  And when someone makes a payment to him and it uses our channel then some of that value is distributed to his side.  At the same time in the background one of MY channels gained that same liquidity (plus a fee).

So in this example I have not changed my total balance (aside from the teeny fee) but just shifted it around a little cryptographically.

JJG on the other hand has GAINED BTC while the sender has reduced his own total balance.

THAT is all Breez is doing.

You phone runs a full node (Neutrino).  And when Breeze opens the channel to you eventually when you settle whatever balance moved over to you ends up on a BTC address you control.

Of course the bitcoin in THAT channel is not yours right away.  Not until someone makes a payment!

It's simple franky.  I do not know why you can't see it.

It's worth noting that the field of blockchain and cryptocurrency evolves rapidly, and new tools and services may have emerged since my last update. If you're specifically looking for the latest information on Lightning Network Observers, I recommend checking recent sources and community forums for the most up-to-date information.

well ass kissing didnt get you far.. and there are far too many ass kissers telling you empty promises, so maybe you need a refreshing prospective to wake you from the fluffy utopian dream adverts..

remember this version of you, and notice the issue (not verbatim, but summarised)
"i dont like custodial wallets so for the last few months i have been using 3 custodian wallets advertised to me"
"i was told fee's were sub-penny amounts and instant. but ive experienced expensive fee's moving funds from wallet to wallet that needed 24hours to close one wallet and needing to move funds again and get possession of funds to then move again to open new wallet costing me more then a few dollars"

just be honest TO YOURSELF about your real experiences. not what you think you should say to make other people happy.

by the way
idiots doing the childish mantra of "here's a utopian dream to believe in, father christmas is real, LN is the solution, be a good boy, kiss devs ass and your dreams will come true" is far more patronising then being told the harsh truth

---

firstly.. there are many projects

secondly no i was not presenting any single project. (unlike your preference to be advertised to)

thirdly, you dont need to guess.. google is your friend. you can do research and find answers without guessing. thats how research works

i know you want to be promoted to, advertised to and handed the cheat sheet. but thats not how the real world works.
because so far the cheat sheets and promotional material handed to you have not helped you thus far

...
it also has not gone unnoticed how you have been TOO determined to just go in circles wanting to talk about "franky's personality" while avoiding the LN flaws conversation.. your not the first to try this tactic to avoid admitting your own negative experiences of the utopian dream you were promised

..
one last fact about me, seeing as you prefer to talk about 'franky personality'

i am not your mother. it is not my job to hug you and spoonfeed you. i know you have experienced forum daddies teaching you bad ways and telling you which toys to play with. but i am not your mother.
so take responsibility of your own learning and progress

Thanks, and at least you can get some insight into Franky's presentation style, and sure there could be some ways that other things are being "built" on and around bitcoin, but instead Franky chooses to be coy about the matter (so that someone like me, and perhaps even you too have to guess) rather than his choosing to be straight-forward in regards to what he is talking about and how what he talks about might relate to this thread rather than some other thread... since this is not the "all things to fix" (or unbreak) bitcoin thread.

https://sbtc.tech/

i think this is what franky is talking about

Oh gawd you are such a patronizing twat, which makes you so adorable.   

YOU are the one mentioning shitcoins.. if you dont know the difference between mainnet coins vs subnetworks.. thats on you. and something you should spend some time on
grow up and look outside the group and realise there are more subnetwork bridges to bitcoin and for emphasis im not talking about shitcoins
(little hint mainnets like bitcoin altcoin and shitcoin use blockchains. subnetwork bridges dont)
(bridges that use a blockchain are called sidechains)

when you realise that even LN devs admit to flaws they wont be able to fix(hence their centralised services as workarounds) you will soon learn why others started other subnetworks and tried different things, rather then putting up with the "be patient" hopes and empty promises garbage for many years

i know it might be tough for you, to go against the grain and research things outside of the groupspeak of blind adoration of certain things.. but try

personally i see the subnetworks as NICHES for small utility of a subgroup of users and not something everyone should move to, to avoid bitcoin..
all i stated is that there are more subnetworks than just LN.. and many with more liquidity because you seem to be reciting the dumb mantra that LN is THE subnetwork..
time to wake up and challenge yourself to not sound like a muppet in 2024.. are you ready to try
please try in 2024 to escape from reciting the troll buzzwords which you have admitted to not fully even knowing. it has not helped your cause. you end up just sounding like a mindless echo of snake oil salesmen that didnt meet their sales quota

You are being a bit amorphous in regards to your attempt to provide evidence in regards to the supposed death of lightning network based on the many supposed discontent folks in the forum who are vocalizing such discontent or otherwise. 

Also your reference to various subnetworks is quite ambiguous regarding the meaning of such.. You seem to be referring to the use of shitcoins in order to make transactions for lower fees than can be accomplished on chain bitcoin or through lightning network.  Perhaps if you either provide some links to reference what you are talking about or maybe if you speak a bit more clearly regarding what you mean, then I might understand what you are saying a wee bit more better....   

I will agree that various shitcoins could well serve as temporary solutions, and sure maybe there would end up being various ways that they might just serve in that kinds of way during these kinds of times in which onchain fees are so high.. and when it is also difficult to open LN channels in regards to costs (and some LN channels are being forced closed).  If LN channels already exist, then it seems that those kinds of systems would work pretty well during times like these, yet I am not claiming to know all of the nuances of various comparisons and contrasts since I am not claiming to specialize in the study of these kinds of matters.

yet again you have avoided talking about the LN issues and spun it back to "franky"
if you use your eyes to observe this forum you will notice the amount of users discussing bitcoin scaling and being annoyed by the spam and junk on bitcoin and lack of tx count increases on bitcoin,, is a higher forum user count.. compared to the smaller subclass of muppets evading LN negative discussion and trying to promote LN

and then when you look at the liquidity of other subnetwork bridges to bitcoin you will see LN is not the top. and more users and services use other subnetworks.

so while you want o pretend LN issues is just "franky whining" there are whole countries that tried and dropped LN
wake up to reality

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here is a fun fact that will get your braincells tingling.. the way breez works is THEY set up channels to credit you with an allotment of balance. which THEY control(its called inbound balance)... it was never your channel

I suppose that maybe I am wanting people to use lightning network, but still either they do or they don't.. how am I really much of an influencer, beyond just talking about some limited experiences that I have had so far in terms of one of many people who might be having some experiences, whether negative, positive or otherwise.  And if we get down to the practical (and the nitty gritty), you are suggesting that we stop using LN and try to transact on what?  the main chain?  We get rid of segwit too?  I know that I asked some of these questions earlier, too.


Oh, just a modest increase in the block size, and not as much as BSV.  O.k?  that's your position.

How likely is that?  Perhaps not very much.  So that is why you are going to continue to complain and whine that you are not able to buy coffees on the main chain as "had been intended" from your perspective.  Is that it?


I'm just going with what is available rather than whining about what could have been, and I suppose your proposal is that everything is just reversed and we slowly go back to some kind of franky vision of what bitcoin should have been?  whatever that is? or however we might end up getting back there.


I doubt that I said any of that.


I did not say that either.


Yep.. I am a muppet.  I am just following various aspects of what is happening, and I don't claim to have any kind of broad fix since I am mostly just a user of some of the products, and not even the ones that were being used in El Salvador, even though I would not mind to visit there in order to see if there is very much use of bitcoin on the ground. 


I have not heard that lightning is dead yet by any reliable sources, and it still seems to be working, so yeah call me a muppet if you want, or a muppet wanna-be... because I can see that systems are likely to continue to be used while they are in place and while potentially other systems are building around them and potentially competing, so I have no problem to merge over to other systems if there ends up being some use cases for other systems.  Do you have any suggestions?


I guess it helps.  Was it one of those fucktwats that closed my breez channel? and cost me around 42,245 sats (which was then around $18.55)


Even if lighting ends up being a failure and/or replaced by something else, I doubt that your ongoing campaign against LN is actually a very productive way of contributing to bitcoin and how bitcoin has evolved to date... but hey whatever, you are surely free to do as you like and to keep up your campaign.. and we surely seem to be devolving into repeating ourselves in various ways.

you are having bad experiences of LN but you still defend it and want anyone scrutinising and critiquing it to stop..

and you wonder why i see you as a non independent thinker..
we are seeing this year the exact problem of segwit.. the meme/json junk.. and yes it was a known thing even before segwit was force activated..
but your lack of knowledge then and 7 years later still not seeing the problem. shows you just want to repeat a side of a debate you dont understand so just fill your debate with buzzwords other people made trend, jsut so you can promote the continued participation of LN even when deep down you know users will experience bad things

as for your buzzwords
no rational proposal has ever been made to leap to gigabyte blocks.
no one wanting bitcoin scaling ever made that suggestion
the scripts of leaping to visa/gigabyte levels in x months has been the empty debate strawman created from the side you defend and idolise
done so to quash any proposal for scaling because the corporation sponsored roadmap was to offramp all users to subnetworks
and 6 years later your still playing their scripts

rational people are not begging for bitcoin to replace fiat, to then need "visa level tx/s"
so when you use "visa tx/s" scripts it shows you are just repeating scripts instead of understanding the logic, rational thought of understanding the nuances


so instead of looking into WHY payments didnt go through in el salv(LN liquidity bottlenecks) you want to poke an opinion that you think it was due to political corruption of the chivo side of the wallet..
hmm yea i noticed your bait and switch to avoid talking about a LN flaw of the el salv situation and pretend its due to something else..
its the blind pro-LN stance, the 'avoid negative' mindset that shows how much you sound like the muppets

LN has had 6 years of chances to flourish and prosper..
hundreds of devs have moved on and started their own subnetwork bridges to bitcoin
millions of people have moved on from or avoided LN to then use other methods to move value offchain

but fine, stay in the past using old buzzwords
keep the religious faith that you think LN will be your saviour, if enough time is given..

oh by the way.. the first implementation experiment of a lightning was done by rusty russel of blockstream ..
to which the financial sponsors like liz stark then headed up her own team of lightning labs
yep as soon as she made the thank you sponsorship payment to blockstream for their bitcoin alterations to get LN started, she went solo

it really does help to know who's funding the scripts you then end up saying to promote the roadmap plan of corporate takeover thats ruining bitcoins progress

..
when you defend script mindsets that bitcoin can cope with junk and junk shouldnt be stopped.. but then they bait and switch to say bitcoin cannot cope with genuine bitcoin payments and those genuine utility should be pushed off network.. it just shows the idiot bus certain people are riding on, getting a free ride to LN town

Pardon me for my ignorance, but I was verbally battling the anti-segwitters and the bigblockers during a lot of that 2017, 2018 time period and some of those same ideas persist, and yeah you have many times asserted that you are against segwit, and also you seem to be also against lightning network for similar reasons, so sorry I don't know you well enough to study the specifics of your various arguments, or even remember what you or anyone else said in the last 6-7 years of these kinds of talking points, including the extent to which your own arguments may possibly have some variance from the BIG Blockers, and the ones claiming that blockstream is in charge of bitcoin blah blah blah.. which you just said a few posts back.  


I don't know about that.  I was here trying to talk about various aspects of lightning network, and I don't claim to have experiences with all aspect of everything else whether it is bashing big blockers or otherwise.


Well, I am ONLY trying to use various systems that seem to be available.  Sure, I can send payments onchain, but it does not seem feasible to send payments of less than $500 to $1k, if the minimum fees are going to be in the $20 to $50 range, but there could be fluctuations, and sometimes it is a bit less urgent to receive when sending to yourself or someone who is trusting that you are going to send the payment or even some situation in which the merchandise or service is not going to be sent until the fee is received but there might not be any kind of strict timeline in terms of when the payment is received as long as the payment is received within a reasonable time, such as within a week or two....

I remember one time in late 2017, sending 2 or 3 payments to a friend (online) who I was trying to introduce to bitcoin, and after about a month waiting for the payment to go through, I was considering other options, and then the payments went through.

I think that some of the systems are better than they were in 2017 for monitoring how much fees to use or even replace by fee and/or coin control, but it still does not cause difficulties in terms of sometimes trying to send for less fees, but if the fees go up from there, then the transaction might end up getting stuck for a long time.  Maybe we are just going through some temporary blockages of onchain transactions in terms of fees, and there surely might be some times in which lower value transactions are intended to be sent, but they might not be practical to do online, and really do you have some kind of solution?  maybe should be putting this on you, rather than my rambling through various solutions that I consider..

I actually did try to send some lightning transactions in recent times, and if a person is just setting up a lighting channel, it may well cost higher fees, but once the channel is set up, then it should be working fine as long as the channel does not get forced closed, as seems to be what happened to my Breez wallet (channel) from a few weeks ago.  I just looked at my Breez wallet, and it appears that right now they charge around 25,000 sats plus around a 1% for set up fees (maybe around $11 or so minimum), and the Phoenix wallet is close to double that based on current on chain mempool fees and back up, yet my phoenix is already working and set up, but if someone is going to set up a new phoenix wallet it would cost around $20 minimum to set up a channel  I agree that those kinds of fees can add up and yeah, other people, besides me, complain about their forced channel closures that might end up causing more fees to set up again. or maybe just to abandon if it is not being used enough to justify setting it up again..


Well, you could be correct that I end up figuring out some of the costs (or the extra costs) along the way, yet it seems to me that interacting with systems are good ways to learn, and with the bitcoin and lightning system it cost money to transact with it, especially these days, and if we are thinking that bitcoin and lightning are broken, then are you proposing any solutions? Get rid of segwit and go back to on-chain transactions, including increasing the block size?  or something else?


I doubt that I adore the lightning network, since I am barely learning about various means to interact with it.


I am not into talking about shitcoins, so even if some shitcoins can use lightning network, that does not get me excited.


Yes, I know that lightning network has the ability to recognize an additional 3 digits to the right past the decimal place, so having 11 digits rather than 8, but msats still have to be resolved in terms of sats in order to be recognized on bitcoin's blockchain.

I cannot really suggest how no extra bitcoins are created on lightning network so if there is a channel created and the channel gets resolved, then at that point there may well be movements of bitcoins from one side of the channel to the other, so the resolution from the time of opening the channel to closing the channel may well end up with bitcoin balances that differ on each side of the because some BTC was moved in one direction or the other.


Could be that some people confuse lightning network and bitcoin, and surely I am not proclaiming to know all of the differences, and surely I was expecting that there are some folks in El Salvador who have quite a bit of practice using lightning network wallets, but yeah a lot of them ended up using various kinds of custodial wallets (whether the Chivo wallet, Strike, Blink (formerly known as bitcoin beach wallet) or some of the other lightning network wallets that were being used there) so they may well were not even using anything very close to bitcoin or even lightning network, even though lighting network might have been the backbone for some of the custodial wallets that were being used.

I am not much of a fan for custodial wallets either, yet sometimes i am not really in a position to figure out what is the solution, but your criticism and concern about using custodial wallets seems largely in the ballpark of valid, and I might even completely agree with you if I understood some of your tangents in which I doubt that protests are dealing with those levels of technicalities.. but there were people who were losing their funds and even the $30 credit that was being given to all El Salvador citizen's for their downloading and signing up within the Chivo wallet... so yeah, there was some corruption or mistakes made in regards to those arrangements.


You some times bring some of that onto yourself... so I don't tend to go there, but sometimes you seem to deserve such attacks.


You are surely giving a lot of advice here regarding what you believe that I need to do in order to be able to interact with more humility in regards to my various ignorances, and I am not even claiming to know a lot of things, but yeah, I have opinions and experiences about some topics, including some topics related to bitcoin and some topics related to lightning network.  I doubt that I am as much over my skiis as you are claiming me to be.


I would imagine that this thread is about various lighting experiences, whether you want to talk about flaws of lighting (or how we got to lightning) or if you want to talk about various other matters related to using lightning network... and yeah, you seem to be trying to make this discussion a lot more personal than it needs to be or even more personal than I had been trying to make it into.  You also seem to be wanting to get into philosophical debates about lightning rather than more basic topics of broader applicability.. Yes, you are claiming that you want to warn people about the dangers of lightning network, but still is it your goal to stifle communication and participation.. that's what trolls tend to do.. even if you might have good intentions, if you are beating people up for having different ideas, experiences and opinions than you, then it is difficult to see how productive that is going to be.  

the reason i say you and others sound like a particular muppet group is that you all use certain buzzwords and not understand what you are saying

for instance without even thinking you want to pidgeon hole me into "big blocker" group..
a buzzword of 6 years ago that is meaningless and you still are trying to use the term without understanding the whole thing

scaling bitcoin is not about the stupid misdirect trolling of "gigabytes/visa by month x"
yet you are stuck into that rhetoric of "big blocker" where idiots then chim in about "visa" and "gigabyte blocks"

i never even said over reliance of LN.. i said the opposite. i said no one is really using it and they shouldnt because its flawed. however there are idiots years later still promoting it as if its the only solution people should rely on.. which is them saying people should be reliant on LN to solve the bitcoin scaling delays

you would know the difference if you researched more instead of just repeating the same dumb idea's of other trolls over the last 6 year that dont want bitcoin to scale and instead want to claim middle men fee's via other networks

learn who you are getting your words from and understand what they are saying beyond the fluffy advert style scripts you read from them

i dont proclaim/suggest to have superior knowledge. i just dont claim to want to jump ignorantly into things and sort out the mess after falling into traps
EG you after now using multiple LN wallets you still did not even read the basic terms of non-active time of using a channel

would you ever open a bank account if it told you it would cost you $45 to close the account and they auto close the account if you dont use the account for 45 days... no? well most people do look into the details of accounts they want to store funds into.
most people dont actually just throw money at a stranger and say "just do it and ill sort out the mess afterwards"

you thinking people should just throw funds at strangers and then suffer the consequences after is not a good way of operating... but im not shocked that you and others like you that adore and use LN have such mindsets of carelessness and lack of security/precaution

and lastly...
LN is not a sole feature belonging to bitcoin alone. LN is its own network that can and has and does function with many blockchains. so when you state its a bitcoin layer.. you are trying to brand tag it as if its a feature solely for bitcoin.
also to steal fame from bitcoin calling it a solution to bitcoins woes.. thus ruining bitcoins reputation just to fame up LN

LN is not bitcoin. bitcoin never leaves the bitcoin network. bicoin does not understand Msats
yet LN can doublespend/fractional reserve or just create temp channels full of msat..
notice the difference between bitcoin vs LN

it doesnt function the way bitcoin does and when LN fails its promises to uses, people end up thinking bitcoin is the cause of their bad experience(research el salvador protests septembe2021-december 2021)

..
and before hitting the reply button..
please dont sound like the muppet kingdom of "lets talk about and insult franky. he says flaws so lets ignore frankys discussions of flaws and just say he is wrong.. and lets pretend there are no flaws and pretend its just franky saying bad words so we must ignore/insult franky"
(typical childish tactics i seen hundreds of times by the same dozen muppets)

how about grow some maturity and learn about the silly stuff you get involved in which you have had bad experiences of yourself.. and actually learn that there are flaws.. and stop trying to sound like LN is a solution and that its utopian dream of perfection to solve bitcoin issues

its about LN flaws not about franky..

Stop trying to act like you are the ONLY person who thinks for himself.


I doubt that I am claiming myself to be any kind of completely unique thinker, but I do claim that I attempt to do my best to engage in critical thinking.. and as we are growing up and learning new things or even learning areas in which we do not have expertise, then there seems to be some value in attempting to build off of the work and the ideas of others.. and yeah, there still can be some levels of independent thinking while still building off the work of others.


You are being patronizing... and also many times, you have your own faults in your own thinking.


People learn within their own experiences, and I cannot see myself asking for your advice in this direction.


Yes.. According to your own rendition, you have been preaching the death of lightning network before it even launched.  Even though you are proclaiming that we are heading into dangerous territories of over-reliance upon LN, right now there does not seem to be such over-reliance, and there also seems to be abilities to scaling type solutions on other second and third layers to compete with lightning network and some of them already exist and/or are being proposed.  I don't really claim to know which things are going to survive or not.. whether we are talking bitcoin itself and/or various kinds of layers built upon bitcoin, and I don't even claim to know the extent to which shitcoins might get absorbed into bitcoin and/or pegged upon bitcoin, even though sometimes I might have some opinions about these various matters.


I am used to reading a variety of information, and sure some of it is better organized and presents better information than others.


Yes.. Hopefully, I am not getting duped too much, but sure, it is likely that at various points I am going to come to wrong conclusions because I am not able to sort out the good information from the bad or to be able to realize some points in times that I am being mislead.. and other times, as we both seem to be suggesting (and even mentioned) if some of us might not know about the topic, then we might not realize the difference between good and bad information.


I doubt that I am shocked; however, sometimes I conclude that you are full of shit, and I doubt that anyone is telling me that.  I am concluding it on my own.. yeah I cannot be completely sure that I am not biased in my having had come to those kinds of conclusions... but yeah, you so frequently are suggesting that you have superior knowledge to others, which is frequently not true... maybe not always... maybe sometimes you are correct, but I doubt that your track record of being correct is as great as you are proclaiming it to be... Perhaps you also need to take eat some humble pie from time to time?


Sure there are areas in which you know more than me and maybe even a heck of a lot more than me, but surely you do not know a lot more than me in all areas.. and it probably is not even a good look or a good way of presenting to be proclaiming that you are smarter than everyone else, whether referring to me or anyone else.  But hey, whatever.. you do what you like.. and this is not even really seeming to be very much on topic... Maybe i know more than you about methods to attempt to stay on topic?  Ever thought about that?


I doubt that I am suffering as much as you proclaim that I am, merely because I had to spend some sats in order for the channel to close and also in order to transfer my BTC from one onchain wallet to another after it had closed.  So yeah, I lost some sats, and I lost some time dealing with those matters, including writing a post about it.  I am still going to keep using those products, probably my Phoenix wallet has similar kinds of vulnerabilities as the Breez wallet, and I had been thinking that I wanted to have a couple of different ways to transact, but if I am not using them enough then maybe the channels are more vulnerable to getting closed on me.  I am not sure, but I am still going to continue to experiment with those kinds of things because I think that it remains good to try to keep learning with various bitcoin-related tools that are available.


I doubt that I just jumped into using lightning network, and even my first lighting wallet was around June or July 2021 with Bluewallet as a third-party custodial wallet, and so I was less informed about that wallet, but I jumped into using it.. which surely that was about 4.5 years after Lighting network had already been operating... I had also been considering running a lighting node, but I have not gotten around to it, and I started out by running a couple of bitcoin core nodes first.. or nodes that are using the bitcoin core software, but I  don't have too many clues about how to use it yet.. except that it is just running on a couple of my computers... but I was thinking about venturing into some other lightning network node possibilities that include something like the Embassy Start 9 products, but I also travel quite a bit so sometimes it might not be very practical for me to set some of these kinds of things in one location and then maybe having to access them remotely...

So yeah each of us have our limitations and make our choices in regards to what to jump into and not and how much research that we want to do or how much we need to do.  When it comes to bitcoin, I frequently have the opposite advice as you, which is get the fuck started as soon as possible and figure it out as you go... and so it is not always a good idea to overly research something rather than getting started and learning through being involved...so you can claim to be smarter than everyone else and to have the best approaches, but there are also different strokes for different folks, including but not limited to various ways of learning through actions rather than "research," even though each of them can have their places.


Part of the lightning observer is also meant to be open for all levels, and not meant to devolve into too many technicals.  So sure, there can be advantages to learning some technicals along the way, but I doubt that this particular thread was meant to be restricted towards folks having to research before they act or even watching before they act.  So you seem to be just making shit up when you are describing the supposed purpose of this thread in terms of researching and watching, even though researching and watching is part of what can be done in connection with the participation in this thread.