Topic: The Lightning Network FAQ - page 62. (Read 33714 times)

This is something that will keep fees down.

If a txn has to pass through many 'hops' to get to its destination, each node will compete to have the txn pass through the node. The cost for one hop is low, but as LN matures, it will be more common for txns to have many (20, 50, or 100+) hops, especially to merchants with low transaction volume, and the cost to make the txn can add up. This plus the possibility that bitcoin goes up by 10, 100 or 1000x.

Afaik the lightning network uses 12dp (so a decimilli Satoshi or a pico bitcoin).

I thought it was a number followed by the exponent so 1m (by example) would be 0.001 BTC...

But if you made a channel on YouTube and were being paid in bitcoin, surely you'd just have a channel directly open with them and not have to have your transactions on the chain... And they'll be wanting to save on fees.

I found a great answer to the question why Ethereum uses 18 decimal places:
In all seriousness though, I don't see much point in that many decimals. As far as I know LN "only" uses 11 decimal places (up to millisatoshi), which is already smaller than anything I'll ever care about no matter how mainstream Bitcoin will become.
I sure hope "Pay by the minute" won't reach the point where I have to make a transaction every few minutes, but I also doubt it would be that low if it is going to happen. Why would anyone want to make millions of billing transactions just to earn a fraction of a cent, while uploading videos on Youtube can earn you up to several cents per view already.

Apps in Lightning for streaming data, and paying by the minute/3 minutes/5 minutes? Plus the macro-economics of Bitcoin does point it to a price-discovery to 6 digits, and maybe 7 digits.


It didn't stop Bitcoin from being developed. Here we are.

yeah it could allow for more transactions per day which would help btc scale as a currency.

Is it my preferred solution no.

I prefer

 btc to be like a 10000 USD treasury bill
 LTC for 500-10000 USD transactions
 Doge for smaller USD transactions

I am willing to do some LN support as a hedge against my preferred monetization of BTC+LTC+DOGE

I am in the position to do it so why not.

I mean I'm just saying they have it for compatibility?

I don't care about what it actually implies sending such small amounts.

Cute, but unless BTC is worth $10 million what does that realistically achieve? Where are you going to spend $0.0000000002?
Does that have a practical use case besides being a proof of concept?

On the bitcoin acceptance by the mainstream before, I've just been quoted a balance to the 16th decimal place (could this be the step in moving to using the lightning network or have I just ignored them doing this)? By coinbase pro.

Afaik the lightning network currently supports the 15th decimal place...

I didn't say Apple as a comparison, but their process of developing software might have their advantages for faster adoption.

For context, https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.54948994


Although, it would help widen Bitcoin's influence among ordinary users.

Plus they didn't "just develop a good looking device", those "just good looking devices" changed the way we interfaced with computers, simply because of their process of developing hardware and software.

Must have read the first sentence, got excited and did not read carefully the rest. Thanks for the clarification


Are you really comparing a billion dollar money making giant with an open source monetary revolution?

The idea to work on UX first is nice, but Apple did not invent the wheel in the industry or anything like that. Just developed a good looking device. Makes little sense to generalise that this would be the right way.

That's not always true. I believe Apple did a good job on hardware, and software, by starting from the UX, then engineer everything around it.

There should be real easy-to-use-software for ordinary users to help for a faster adoption rate. Everyone can't be problem-solvers, searching for solutions from community-forums like Linux users.

I did not, that was the point I had to use *BitPay* not btcpay to do it.
Sorry if I did not make that clear.
But, the issue you are having kind of makes the point. It's easy to integrate a lot of payment methods but so many things in the bitcoin world are just more difficult then needed.

-Dave

I have been looking for a btcpay server implementation on shopify and the closest thing I found was this: https://github.com/djseeds/btcpay-shopify-checkout
But orders have to be manually reviewed as they are not completed automatically.
How did you implement it?
Sorry if it's OT but just had to ask.

I will never reply with a good comment about anything that ever comes out of Apple.

But this is where you get into opinion.

I like most of the online restaurant intrgations with Square vs something like beyond menu.
Some people will feel the other way.
But both of them are light years ahead of what it takes to get coinpayments / coingate others to work.
PayPal is 22 years old more or less bitcoin is 10.
15 years ago PayPal integration was simpler then bitcoin is now.

Not picking the 15 year mark out of my ass, I have a website from 2005 that has been moved & updated several times. But the PayPal integration is 99% the same.

You might be a bit cynical, I am too in my own way when it comes to this.

-Dave

examples are scant. usually high-end design software of various kinds are praised for their good UI's, then some management genius decides to either:

1. make that good UI the most expensive option, or
2. get rid of it completely, as if the users weren't good enough for it


but maybe I'm too cynical. tell me an example of a good UI, DaveF (I recommend against replying "macOS")

And using corporate software is no guarantee that the interface is going to be any good either.  Just today, as an example, I was looking for the volume settings in Microsoft Teams to make that stupid notification noise a little quieter.  Abysmal design.  

It's a difficult balancing act.  DaveF raises a fair point.  Ease of use is an important aspect of any software.  But I see the sense in what Carlton is saying as well.  No putting the cart before the horse, essentially.  While Lightning is still relatively new in the grand scheme of things, an under-developed UI is forgivable.  The target audience is primarily still tech-savvy power users.  But over time, probably fairly soon, in fact, it will need to be improved as it begins to attract a larger number of casual users.  It's not the top priority, by any means, but still a crucial consideration moving forwards.  I'm not convinced the problem stems from being open-source, though.

The "problem with open source apps is that they have a bad ui" is kinda funny.

I mean it's not like being open source and being offered with a gui and a separate backend isn't a call to a ui designer to try to look at collaborating on a project.

Tbf I've done a module on ui/ux design looking at heuristic evaluations and peer reviews of other software so I could technically try looking at some applications and doing a he on proprietary solutions such as PayPal (and I think cashapp) but I probably won't be very good... (but I could always make something anyway).

Most systems in cryptocurrency are very expert friendly too so that'd be a tradeoff imo.

You *can* do both you know. It's just requires money and time and some focus groups and some management that can keep the programmers going forward.
This is what people keep missing, how many INFERIOR products have come to market and been dominant because they were more user friendly and simpler to use then the better engineered ones?

-Dave

well, you're both providing a pretty accurate description of the internet itself, circa 1992-97.

you know what the worst kind of software/network protocols are? the ones the focus on UX/front-end before the engineering problems. Your observations only prove that Bitcoin is being developed according to best practices, at least in this facet

I have been saying that for years about many BTC related things.
Wallets, apps needed for processing for business, plugins for websites.
Don't get me wrong, they work. But the level of "fit and finish" leaves a lot to be desired.

I feel the problem is a lot of times the places that spend time & money on a better GUI / easier integration are not always open source because they spent the money and want to sell their product for a profit or make a profit from it. And this tends to generate friction.

Coinomi is a prime example of it going the other way, most people who use it love the GUI, they love the multi-coin intergrataon. Yes, it's buggy, has issues and is for the most part closed source. But a lot of people int he real world think it's simpler to use then other wallets out there.

On the back end I recommend btcpay server all the time for people who want to run their own payment server. However, if you compare that to the amount of skill / knowledge needed to do that vs. adding square or PayPal payments to your website it really is insane. I am not talking install WooCommerce and go (that's simple) I am talking if you need something slightly custom; it becomes a much bigger project. Mainly because the product works very very well, but it was built by programmers who like to program and not run by end users who might not have a clue.

Edit for full disclosure: I *run my own* BTCPay server and for a club I am a member of. But, I still use Shopify for their cart & processing and have them linked BitPay for crypto processing, not because I like them but because they are easy to work with and it integrates well. Could I hack together something, probably. It's it worth the time and effort vs. 1 click an go. Hell no. That is the issue.

Lightning just makes it even more complicated.
Sorry for the rant, but ignoring the issue does not make it go away.

-Dave