Topic: Lightning Network Observer - page 3. (Read 13021 times)

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.

i have many opinions about many things.. i dont just suck up to one groups roadmap.. and just echo their hymns of heaven
by you using the same buzzwords as a group makes me think you are not independent at all, well occasionally you try, but then backtrack

i called you out on this ages ago. but you keep sinking back into the hole again

maybe instead of falling into traps, you start to learn about things first. then use it with nonsense small amounts to test the risk.. instead of falling flat into a trap and then suffering the consequences of trying to dig yourself out

this is why people dont want the suck-up utopian sales pitch but do want  the scrutiny included critique so that people can actually learn the limits before the limits hit them in the face

i know your accustom to only reading ass kissery friendly posts from others, who will dupe you into crazy things. and your shocked at my approach so want to plead ignorance of what i write and just claim it must be misleading if you are hearing 12x other voices swaying you into traps

as for you pretending i dont know what im talking about. .. i know a heck of alot more then you do. because i do my research

heck i was telling people that most LN close sessions are 2 payments.. but you had to learn the hard way,
maybe next time dont just jump into the newest fad without realising what its going to cost you in the long run. do some research

part of lightning observer is to look into and research and watching it.. not just jumping into the newest hyped service and then paying the entry/exit fee's and losing out

I doubt that your sticking to the same complaints makes you any kind of a genius. I am thinking that you probably have not even tried anything related to lightning network?  such as running a node or using any of the lightning network wallets?  My own experiences still are pretty limited, but I try to follow some of the lightning network happenings, to the extent that I understand matters.. sometimes it can be more difficult to follow some of the discussion if you are not using some of the systems that are being discussed..


Thank god for that.


Are you trying to torture me?


Could be.  At some point, I might recharge it with additional funds, yet right now I am using Phoenix for my quasi-self-custody lightning network wallet.

problem is he didnt use a self custody node, but used a mobile wallet that is managed from a central server, terms of which would close inactive channels
in short to avoid having to lose value paying closing sessions you need to continually spend value through the service.. catch 22

sounds like you havn't been franked yet. go back and read frankys posts. the root of your problem with Breez walllet is that its build on a network with fundmental flaws.

funny part is i was calling out the segwit flaws in 2016.. and look what happened JUNK


LN has bottlenecks and flaws that then require watchtowers and custodian hubs.. and look whats happening, majority of LN nodes are centralised custodian hubs

you may not like that i dont ass kiss things.. but there are too many ass kissers already. other people actually want to learn how things actually work and not just be told the utopian sales pitch of ass kissery dreamers

i sorry if im ruining anyones opportunity to syphon money from victims of these flaws, but im more sorry for the victims getting fund syphoned from folk that care more about greed than a payment system thats secure

When you start out with such ridiculous, then it can be quite difficult to go along with some of your other points, even though some of them may well be valid.

I am pretty sure that liquid was developed by blockstream, but not lightning network, even if blockstream is involved in lightning network in a variety of ways and even though blockstream did back segwit, which apparently made lightning network easier to introduce as a bitcoin second layer solution.


Yeah.. what else is new.  Franky1 is already known for being both a segwit and a LN party poop, and it had been kind of ambiguous about his big blocker promotional status, even though he claims to be an "independent thinker" but he gets into a lot of trouble regarding his repeatedly spreading misleading information about some of the technical aspects of bitcoin, and not seeming to want to account for points made by others - including even repeating some of the suggestions that LN is being promoted as if it were the same as bitcoin, which we know that it is a different tool in the shed that may well be used for different purposes, even though surely not any kind of perfect tool.


Some of us are likely just getting used to using lighting network, even though it has been running for nearly 7 years (in January is the b-day of its going live)... so yeah, there are some user-friendly (or lack thereof) aspects to lightning network, and so far I have ONLY some limited exposure to it myself... . and maybe I should have had posted my question about my Breez wallet here (here's a link to the other LN thread for my Breez wallet question).

i got no problems with functional subnetworks that meet promises for certain niches..
but the empty broken promises being sold as 'the utopian solution everyone should use'.. just tarnishes bitcoins reputation by association, because when people do use these snake oil sales pitched stuff, they have bad experiences and they wrongly think their experience is of "bitcoin"

el salvador in 2021 said they wanted to get into bitcoin. but were schemed into using LN as the backbone of payment processing in september 2021.. and by december 2021 el salvador experienced the lies and empty promises and all the flaws.. they dropped using LN
they now use a CEX as the payment processor and account balance custodian

and yet years later idiots still promote LN as the thing el salvador use and pretend LN is used by most people trying to move funds offchain. when in reality there are millions of people prefering CEX and stable coins and other bridge subnetworks

i have no mental implosions when i see how the LN affiliates, promoters and corporations operate.. i just feel pitty for the victims and just face palm the idiots promoting LN using old-outdated sales pitches

my only wish is that devs actually stop ass kissing each other as gods. and instead ass kick each other into actually innovating

maybe you are overly critical of these subnetworks and LN, they don't need to provide the same level of security bitcoin itself provides. and what SHOULD BE doesn't really matter, regardless of how you feel about it, the masses might never understand or benefit from Bitcoin layer 1. they might all be offramped into a Layer 2 that isn't permissionless, requires middle men to work properly, etc...And "THEY" will have watchtowers watching over everyones transactions with government mandates imposing spending limits for various goods. "they" will have won!

will your head explode when that day comes?
are you going to be OK?
 

wow that got dark.

lmao good day dude love your contrabutions to the fourm.

yet the same devs shouting bitcoin should not be used by unbanked, small payments are perfectly fine with scammers moving a single sat to scam idiots for $200k with added pixel junk in metadata.. strange huh

funny to hear idiots shouting bitcoin should not be used for cupcakes or pizza (0.00005-0.0005) but if someone wants to move 0.00001001 they are told they can and should not be stopped as its "censorship"

and how the junk and spam should continue on bitcoin and how the genuine goods and services should be done on subnetworks

and no im not talking about altcoins.
SUB NETWORKS vs altcoins are 2 different things

im not a fan of any current lineup of subnetworks because they all miss key security features thus should not be the "solutions". they all break promises and are mostly hype..  i was just suggesting that LN is not the solution, nor even the top capacity subnetwork
there will new other subnetworks that fill niches for certain activities(once devs learn from mistakes) but none should be the offramp where everyone should use, instead of or to avoid using bitcoin

and sorry to even inform this topic. but LN has had its day..
its far better people learn from LN mistakes and start afresh to make a better subnetwork without the flaws, and with a proper goal of what niche subgroup of people they want to populate it

trying to be a be-all do-all network but never achieve its promises. will never work
trying to kick the LN tin can down the path hoping it will fix itself will just end up putting more dings and dents into it

I agree not enough focus has been placed on layer1 scaling and that is probably for the benefit of Layer2. but imo establishing early on that layer1 isn't meant for micro transaction, isn’t the worst thing.
but...
what are these other subnetworks besides LN/Liquid?
are you refering to altcoins?

isnt it interesting that when talking about the multitude of subnetworks.. many people just want to know, discuss, mention LN and liquid.. both being products of blockstream

blockstream founded by core devs and funded using HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars to create the gateway(segwit)keys into those particular subnetworks. by which the same devs sponsored to spend years creating the subnetworks and altering bitcoin to add features purely to be used as access keys to those subnetworks to benefit features of those subnetworks.. meanwhile for years ignoring the communities desires for onchain scaling and onchain mitigation of spam and junk

now ask yourself why have core devs done nothing to mitigate spam and junk on bitcoin for years... by either preventing or independently penalising those spammers/junkers.. why instead prefer the whole community get penalised or transact less on bitcoin to instead promote they should use another network
seems to me these devs are no longer bitcoin devs and instead sponsored subnetwork devs..
 
now the next question. follow the money. then you see whom is behind all the shinanigans and who is ripe to receive all the ROI via the middle men routing payment fee's.. to reimburse them for their initial blockstream investment.. well thats if they can promote and populate their subnetwork enough to make it worthy of an ROI

meanwhile other people that just got annoyed by the blockstream roadmap and ejected from proposing idea's that differ from the roadmap, decided to make other subnetworks

and now many people are wising up to the fact that LN/liquids promises are breaking. or never flourished.. are starting to use/create other subnetworks

now if anyone is stil promoting LN as utopian "the solution", you are obviously reiterating a sales pitch of empty promises made 6 years ago. its time you moved forward from those archaic words

After reading a little bit about Liquid and Wrapped bitcoin, i like the idea. it seems like a totally viable Layer2 solution, ofc there are trade offs it is a layer 2 after all, but seems legit. LN gets the spotlight as THE scaling solution, but i think franky1 is right there are other promising alternative scaling solutions. with fees on L1 growing rapidly i suspect these L2 will get alot more action in the coming year. Maybe in the furutre poeple wont be so conserned about which shitcoins to buy but rather which L2 network to store BTC into.

Regarding your points, you are right about the trustlessness part of my earlier statement.
Regarding the usage of centralised nodes and liquidity hubs, that is convenience, and nothing implied at protocol level. Of course there is space for improvement.
Instead I am interested on your first statement, regarding other subnetwork with more liquidity. Which are you referring to in particular? Liquid maybe?

there are many subnetworks.. and LN is not the one with the larget liquidity so its not the sole contender
if you ever want to dare challenge yourself to learn about LN you will learn that it is not trustless

much like people cant trust unconfirmed bitcoin transactions until settled. you shouldnt trust unsettled LN balance
so LN is not trustless
why do you think even the main LN devs are resorting to centralised hubs and watchtowers and factory nodes for channel creation..

stop selling the snake oil utopian dream and instead atleast try to learn what LN is and does, especially what it doesnt do

Lightning Network being a layer-2 payment protocol enables faster withdrawals and it lowers transaction fees due to which its use and popularity is increasing in various countries that legalize Bitcoin. In many countries, payments after purchasing goods are being paid through the Bitcoin Lightning Network, as we saw in a store in Vietnam. A new homemade-style hamburger restaurant located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is in the neighborhood of Thao Dien. This place is famous for their excellent food and friendly atmosphere and good service. A few days ago, the restaurant decided to accept Bitcoin as payment through the Lightning Network.

  picture from

Thank you for providing such valuable information. I am interested in LN but first need to learn more about it and the information you provided is really valuable.

Bitwise published their 10 predictions for the 2024:

Bitwise The Year Ahead: 10 Crypto Predictions for 2024

I guess the most important one is the number 8:





There I see a massive role for Lighting Netowrk. The sole contender for a trustless, fast and cheap way of exchanging micropayments over the internet.

When we will use an AI to generate an image, the micropayment from this AI to the one providing animation of the above image. Will be done autonomously via LN.. or the payment to publish it online, or to add a soundtrack: all powered by LN