The lightning network will be far less effective than people are hoping. You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it, and b) each stake capital in that channel for it to be functional. This is useful only in specific scenarios like exchange-to-exchange transfers. Exchanges are going to be very unlikely to ever set up channels to customers. They haven't even implemented segwit yet, there's no way they are going to bother setting up the infrastructure needed to charge for and activate lightning channels.
> You have to a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it
This simply isn't true. You open one channel and then payments are routed over channels to your destination. It's no different to TCP/IP in this way and the reason why that analogy is used a lot in describing the network
Having a one channel single destination can be done with Bitcoin alone and the new timelock transactions - the purpose of lightning is automating these transacations and the routing between channels
Opening a channel in lightning is no different to having a balance in a wallet or a bank account - you don't notice that it is "locked". Channels can also create other channels using channel factories[0]. This all happens under the hood much in the same way somebody accessing YouTube knows little about routing infrastructure.
There really is a lot of FUD about Lightning and they get repeated a lot by people who should know better. There is now a series of simple infographics that explain what Lightning is and how it works so there shouldn't be any more excuses for such simple misinformation being repeated[1][2][3][4][5]
Your specific claim about one channel = one receiver is addressed in [5]
I think the HN audience should go out and try it themselves and read the paper. It's the most eye-opening tech experience i've had since reading the Bitcoin white paper.
If you've been kicking yourself about not getting into Bitcoin early - you have a new opportunity with Lightning now. There are only hundreds of nodes at the moment and only a couple of vendors accepting payments on the testnet and a ton of opportunity to build an entirely new infrastructure around it.
> a) pay to open up a channel with each person you wish to use it
I think you only need a path to the person you want to pay, not a direct channel. eg if Alice wants to pay Bob, and they both have a channel to Greg, then Alice can send money to Bob through Greg.
> They haven't even implemented segwit yet,
The wikipedia[1] page seems to say that most miners implement segwit now.
It's named network because you do not need a channel with every individual user. You have a channel with one or more LN servers, they in turn have connections with yet more servers.
As the other guy said, there only needs to exist a path of channels between you and the entity you're paying, and the payment will be routed through the network.
I demoed [0] receiving one tenths of a cent's worth of bitcoin (0.00000010 BTC) instantly, and on Bitcoin's mainnet (not a test network).
I also demoed [1] purchasing swag from Blockstream's store [2] which is powered by their newly released Wordpress e-commerce plugin [3] that enables Lightning payments.
I did not screencapture the videos because Qubes dom0 does not come OOTB with screenrecording software, and I don't want to enable networking in dom0 to install software that does.
It exists in its early stages, but it's terribly impractical, hence no exchange or end user is in a rush to adopt it. Its design is almost like someone took a hard look at Bitcoin and concluded "Gee, this is not cumbersome enough for people, we need to make transacting a worse and more confusing experience".
hmcdona1|8 years ago
nikcub|8 years ago
This simply isn't true. You open one channel and then payments are routed over channels to your destination. It's no different to TCP/IP in this way and the reason why that analogy is used a lot in describing the network
Having a one channel single destination can be done with Bitcoin alone and the new timelock transactions - the purpose of lightning is automating these transacations and the routing between channels
Opening a channel in lightning is no different to having a balance in a wallet or a bank account - you don't notice that it is "locked". Channels can also create other channels using channel factories[0]. This all happens under the hood much in the same way somebody accessing YouTube knows little about routing infrastructure.
There really is a lot of FUD about Lightning and they get repeated a lot by people who should know better. There is now a series of simple infographics that explain what Lightning is and how it works so there shouldn't be any more excuses for such simple misinformation being repeated[1][2][3][4][5]
Your specific claim about one channel = one receiver is addressed in [5]
I think the HN audience should go out and try it themselves and read the paper. It's the most eye-opening tech experience i've had since reading the Bitcoin white paper.
If you've been kicking yourself about not getting into Bitcoin early - you have a new opportunity with Lightning now. There are only hundreds of nodes at the moment and only a couple of vendors accepting payments on the testnet and a ton of opportunity to build an entirely new infrastructure around it.
[0] https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/67158/what-are-c...
[1] https://i.imgur.com/L10n4ET.png
[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/bitcoindesigned-prod/media/what-are...
[3] https://s3.amazonaws.com/bitcoindesigned-prod/media/lightnin...
[4] https://s3.amazonaws.com/bitcoindesigned-prod/media/lightnin...
[5] https://s3.amazonaws.com/bitcoindesigned-prod/media/lightnin...
Paul-ish|8 years ago
I think you only need a path to the person you want to pay, not a direct channel. eg if Alice wants to pay Bob, and they both have a channel to Greg, then Alice can send money to Bob through Greg.
> They haven't even implemented segwit yet,
The wikipedia[1] page seems to say that most miners implement segwit now.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SegWit
Natanael_L|8 years ago
As the other guy said, there only needs to exist a path of channels between you and the entity you're paying, and the payment will be routed through the network.
whalabi|8 years ago
Bitcoin's lightning network doesn't require you to open a channel for each person you want to pay https://unlikekinds.com/t/bitcoin-s-lightning-network-doesn-...
Operyl|8 years ago
grubles|8 years ago
I also demoed [1] purchasing swag from Blockstream's store [2] which is powered by their newly released Wordpress e-commerce plugin [3] that enables Lightning payments.
I did not screencapture the videos because Qubes dom0 does not come OOTB with screenrecording software, and I don't want to enable networking in dom0 to install software that does.
[0]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/955611467889422337
[1]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/954933507863863296
[2]https://store.blockstream.com/
[3]https://blockstream.com/2018/01/16/lightning-charge.html
Mahn|8 years ago
VarFarYonder|8 years ago
wyager|8 years ago
brokensegue|8 years ago
josu|8 years ago