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Topic: The Lightning Network FAQ - page 63. (Read 33714 times)

Wind_FURY

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Quote from: wwzsocki on August 04, 2020, 09:27:34 AM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on August 04, 2020, 04:21:05 AM

I want opinions, how long to wait before Lightning surges in usage among the "Bitcoin mainstream"?...

I think we can find answers in LN statistics and the main one for going mainstream will be merchant/wallets/sevices adoption.

https://lightningnetworkstores.com/stats

As we can see there are actually 382 registered stores that are using LN.

When we look further at https://lightningnetworkstores.com/ site, we will find that there are additionally 30 wallets and 9 services.

Not too much taking into consideration 3 years from mainnet.

https://lightningnetworkstores.com/wallets

For LN to be widely adopted it has to be easy to use and maybe one day it will but despite efforts at least for now it is still way too complicated and buggy.

I have just read @Bitcryptex walkthrough of the Lightning Network support in the recent Electrum update and for me, it is just obvious that 90% of people will never touch it until everything will be working in the background without them even noticing it. Until we have to set up something and additionally the process involves a lot of steps then there is not much hope for mainstream adoption.

Of course, this is only my opinion and I will be happy to hear yours?

I believe the problem with open source projects is that the majority of problem-solvers are engineers, without input from front-end/UX designers. We then get a solution primarily from an engineering standpoint that doesn't look pretty, and/or it's not easy to use for ordinary users.

Carlton Banks

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Quote from: wwzsocki on August 04, 2020, 09:27:34 AM

For LN to be widely adopted it has to be easy to use and maybe one day it will but despite efforts at least for now it is still way too complicated and buggy.

I agree with this to a certain extent.

Distressed LN user types

Some people will find the "{route,channel} failed" errors annoying ("don't care Mr. Error, gimme lo feez pleez"), and quit trying
Others will persist, because using Bitcoin cheaply is something they need to do, even when they don't understand or care about the network errors

But I think an inflection point will come about as improvements to the basic LN node software improves the reliability of the network as a whole, such that the 2 type of distressed users above will no longer occur.

Quote from: wwzsocki on August 04, 2020, 09:27:34 AM

I have just read @Bitcryptex walkthrough of the Lightning Network support in the recent Electrum update and for me, it is just obvious that 90% of people will never touch it until everything will be working in the background without them even noticing it. Until we have to set up something and additionally the process involves a lot of steps then there is not much hope for mainstream adoption.

Electrum has always had a somewhat complicated interface, but that's their way. This new release at least puts Lightning into the hands of previous Electrum users who already use it for onchain transactions (and demonstrates the business incentive for wallet developers; you could fund development of your open-source wallet by running a watchtower server for your users). It's also labelled as an experimental feature in Electrum for the moment, you can be quite sure it will undergo improvements in future.

I would also echo @LoyceV's post: other LN wallets exist, and some have a far more simplified user interface (Zap/Eclair, and the Lightning Labs desktop wallet, I forget the exact name)

LoyceV

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Quote from: wwzsocki on August 04, 2020, 09:27:34 AM

Try these mobile wallets:
BlueWallet (custodial LN) (see topic: A great lesser known wallet! [BlueWallet])
Phoenix Wallet (non-custodial LN) (see topic: Opinions on Phoenix Wallet?)
Those are the easiest LN wallets I've tried. Just don't deposit more than you're willing to lose.

wwzsocki

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on August 04, 2020, 04:21:05 AM

I want opinions, how long to wait before Lightning surges in usage among the "Bitcoin mainstream"?...

I think we can find answers in LN statistics and the main one for going mainstream will be merchant/wallets/sevices adoption.

https://lightningnetworkstores.com/wallets

For LN to be widely adopted it has to be easy to use and maybe one day it will but despite efforts at least for now it is still way too complicated and buggy.

I have just read @Bitcryptex walkthrough of the Lightning Network support in the recent Electrum update and for me, it is just obvious that 90% of people will never touch it until everything will be working in the background without them even noticing it. Until we have to set up something and additionally the process involves a lot of steps then there is not much hope for mainstream adoption.

Of course, this is only my opinion and I will be happy to hear yours?

DaveF

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Quote from: jackg on August 04, 2020, 04:28:26 AM

It'll probably become mainstream when it starts to be accepted by exchanges..
There're probably people actively researching and contributing to it on exchanges like binance and coinbase (I'd assume) this stuff is probably on them and a few others to start accepting. I don't know what the miner sentiment on lightning is either which could be a reason for the delay.

The issue with Coinbase / Binance / gemini accepting it is that they get paid for trades, they don't want your $1.83 transaction they want your $1830.00 transaction.
What we need IMO are more bitrefill^* and fold^* like places that make lightning appealing by giving discounts.

Quote from: jackg on August 04, 2020, 04:28:26 AM

Quote from: DaveF on August 03, 2020, 06:09:45 AM

Update: All is good. BTC never left my node and there was an error thrown. However, for some reason RTL did not show or see the error.
Going to get off my ass this week and update the entire node and see if it still happens. I thought I was on later versions but I guess I have not updated the daily use node for a while. The ones I play with for testing are fully updated, this one I did not.

-Dave

Was it just a standard send to self error? I'm guessing you didn't pay a fee either hopefully...

I have to look at the logs again but something like that. It was odd because it accepted it, then rejected it but RTL never saw the 2nd part.
As I said, it's on me for not keeping all of it updated. I should probably set some sort of a schedule to do / check for updates as opposed to the "oh shit, this did not work let me see if I am out of date schedule" that I am on now :-)

-Dave

^* Part of that issue is this forum and other places that discourage or even ban referral links. It's just self interest. Think about it, if every time I posted about bitrefill I could post my referral like and hopefully get some BTC you would probably see a lot more posts about them. Yeah, spamming might become an issue but probably no worse then what we have now with a lot of sig campaigns. {full disclosure if you are reading this in the future as of this post I am wearing a paid sig}

LoyceV

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on August 04, 2020, 04:21:05 AM

I want opinions, how long to wait before Lightning surges in usage among the "Bitcoin mainstream"?

I was hoping more established sites (such as casinos and exchanges) would start using it, but it's mainly small/new sites that use it.
I haven't seen a single signature campaign paying in LN either, even though there are campaigns that pay quite small amounts in Bitcoin. Sending small amounts of Bitcoin to many addresses doesn't take that much fee, but using those small amounts can be expensive. LN would be great for that, but as long as it's not just possible to pay several people at once without receiving a payment request, it's not going to happen. Just imagine having to ask 50 people each week to send you a payment request, each for different amounts.

As far as I know LN is still classified as "experimental" and "don't put in more than you're willing to lose". Making payments still doesn't work all the time. Lightning Network Statistics - Bitcoin Visuals shows how LN went from nothing to it's current state in 2.5 years. Even before that, I was looking forward to it already. Given it's slow progress, I'd expect at least several more years to become mainstream. And this will also depend on existing wallets adding LN, and on Bitcoin fees.

jackg

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https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory

Quote from: Wind_FURY on August 04, 2020, 04:21:05 AM

I want opinions, how long to wait before Lightning surges in usage among the "Bitcoin mainstream"? I honestly believed that 2020 would be the year of Lightning.

Quote from: DaveF on August 03, 2020, 06:09:45 AM

Was it just a standard send to self error? I'm guessing you didn't pay a fee either hopefully...

Wind_FURY

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I want opinions, how long to wait before Lightning surges in usage among the "Bitcoin mainstream"? I honestly believed that 2020 would be the year of Lightning.

DaveF

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Quote from: jackg on August 02, 2020, 08:03:08 PM

Quote from: DaveF on August 02, 2020, 07:53:31 PM

With the usual I know I should ask on github but has anyone screwed up and paid an invoice to themselves and just had the funds disappear?
I was sending out some money and sending out some payment requests and I copy / pasted my payment request instead of the one I wanted to, and it looks like I sent the money nowhere.
Using LND / RTL

Odd, but before I dig deeper I figured I would ask here.

-Dave

I get an error in eclare when trying to do it so it might be a problem - otherwise surely itd just say it went through and pay itself.

Does lnd show the funds as gone though? If you know the host of the other node you could ask them to send the same amount to themselves as it could be in the ct on their side.

jackg

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https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory

Quote from: DaveF on August 02, 2020, 07:53:31 PM

DaveF

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cryptomaniac_xxx

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There is a latest Zap Lightning wallet release including Multipart Payments.

Quote

Zap 0.7.0 Beta

@mrfelton mrfelton released this 17 hours ago
Release notes

This release contains several new features including support for lnd v0.10, keysend, multi part payment, payment probes, Tor and more. As usual, this release also contains a number of optimisations and bug fixes.

https://github.com/LN-Zap/zap-desktop/releases/tag/v0.7.0-beta

Notes to help verify the signature,

https://github.com/LN-Zap/zap-desktop/blob/master/docs/SIGNATURES.md

Wind_FURY

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Quote from: Rath_ on July 09, 2020, 12:51:16 PM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on July 02, 2020, 05:16:42 AM

I believe post a list of ALL services available for the Lightning Network in the OP, BitCryptex?

Keeping such a list up-to-date would be a pain. I have already linked a website which does it.

Quote from: Rath_ on June 26, 2019, 04:06:04 PM

When will merchants start accepting Lightning Network payments?

[...] Here you can find a list of merchants who accept LN payments.

Everything in the list was mostly gambling sites except, https://bitcoinadultstore.com

The have quite a selection. Cool

Quote from: Wind_FURY on July 02, 2020, 05:16:42 AM

Plus easy solutions to get started, like BlueWallet. It might encourage users to actually try it.

A few days ago, I wrote a short walkthrough of the Lightning Network support in the recent Electrum update. I will add it later to the first post. Did you mean a list of easy to use LN wallets or step-by-step guides for the most popular software?

Different easy-to-use Lightning wallet suggestions that newbies could try, but your walkthrough for Electrum LN is solid gold. Thank you!

Rath_

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on July 02, 2020, 05:16:42 AM

I believe post a list of ALL services available for the Lightning Network in the OP, BitCryptex?

Keeping such a list up-to-date would be a pain. I have already linked a website which does it.

Quote from: Rath_ on June 26, 2019, 04:06:04 PM

When will merchants start accepting Lightning Network payments?

[...] Here you can find a list of merchants who accept LN payments.

Quote from: Wind_FURY on July 02, 2020, 05:16:42 AM

Plus easy solutions to get started, like BlueWallet. It might encourage users to actually try it.

A few days ago, I wrote a short walkthrough of the Lightning Network support in the recent Electrum update. I will add it later to the first post. Did you mean a list of easy to use LN wallets or step-by-step guides for the most popular software?

PrimeNumber7

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Quote from: squatter on July 08, 2020, 03:32:59 AM

Does anyone have thoughts on this recently published paper?

Flood & Loot: A Systemic Attack On The Lightning Network

There are a few things that can be done to mitigate this kind of attack.

Force channels to have a minimum amount of value on each side. For example if each side of a channel always has at least 10% of the total channel value, the cost of attempting to execute this attack might be higher than acceptable for someone to try.

Increase the complexity of the time lock. LN closing transactions could have a special flag, and if the percentage of transactions included in a block include this flag, the block must have a flag to be valid. The time lock for the second closing transaction on a LN channel could be such that it can only be confirmed once xx blocks without said flag. The purpose of this is to allow LN node operators more time to claim coin in closing transactions if blocks are full of closing transactions.

DaveF

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Quote from: LoyceV on July 08, 2020, 05:06:06 AM

Quote from: squatter on July 08, 2020, 03:32:59 AM

Does anyone have thoughts on this recently published paper?

I read about it a few days back, and I haven't read the entire paper. But I'm surprised a single attacker can influence enough channels to flood the blockchain by closing them all. Even if the attacker can't steal your funds, it's just annoying to loose open channels and having to pay fees again to reopen them.

I has that issue at the beginning of the year:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.53754232

Someone was opening really large channels (for the amount I had on my mode) to me.
I rebuilt my node (again) but, I have not funded it yet because I wanted to have enough BTC in it to open some large channels (large for me anyway) but when you think about it there is no real way for me to ask anyone if it's cool if I open a .25BTC channel to them. They might have just put the BTC in waiting for a friend to open a channel but I saw the capacity and jumped in before their friend got around to it.

-Dave

LoyceV

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Quote from: squatter on July 08, 2020, 03:32:59 AM

Does anyone have thoughts on this recently published paper?

squatter

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STOP SNITCHIN'

Does anyone have thoughts on this recently published paper?

Flood & Loot: A Systemic Attack On The Lightning Network

Quote

One of the risks that was identified early on is that of a wide systemic attack on the protocol, in which an attacker triggers the closure of many Lightning channels at once. The resulting high volume of transactions in the blockchain will not allow for the proper settlement of all debts, and attackers may get away with stealing some funds.

This paper explores the details of such an attack and evaluates its cost and overall impact on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. Specifically, we show that an attacker is able to simultaneously cause victim nodes to overload the Bitcoin blockchain with requests and to steal funds that were locked in channels.

We go on to examine the interaction of Lightning nodes with the fee estimation mechanism and show that the attacker can continuously lower the fee of transactions that will later be used by the victim in its attempts to recover funds - eventually reaching a state in which only low fractions of the block are available for lightning transactions. Our attack is made easier even further as the Lightning protocol allows the attacker to increase the fee offered by his own transactions.

We continue to empirically show that the vast majority of nodes agree to channel opening requests from unknown sources and are therefore susceptible to this attack.

How feasible is this attack, in practice? Will anchor outputs be sufficient to mitigate the threat?

Wind_FURY

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I believe post a list of ALL services available for the Lightning Network in the OP, BitCryptex? Plus easy solutions to get started, like BlueWallet. It might encourage users to actually try it.

darosior

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@jackg : a wild guess, but maybe incoming capacity issues ? If you were able to send from both channels, then both can presumably connect and discover routes correctly. If you opened the channels that may be the reason.