Bitcoin Q&A: Lightning Network scaling

Another must watch vidoe from Andreas. Much essential information here. Thanks Andreas. Now that the Lightning Network is threatening the transfer/payment based alt-coins, we will likely experience a wave of people trying to cast doubt on the LN.

I build a Coke vending machine that accepts Bitcoin payments through Lightning Network. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fb6Xww2P7c or https://twitter.com/ricardoreis007/status/1046482231043215366

bitcoin cash smears the competitor LN, WHAT A SURPRISE!

videos about LN are appreciated VERY MUCH!

great info. Camera is a bit too close to your face. Too much face, bring it back bud.

Hi Andreas! Preveously you were saying LN has onion routing in it. And now you are saying it is not secure to create only one channel, because next node will see all transactions. So does LN have onion routing or not?

..Or just use Digibyte. No need for lightning!

Axa pays blockstream .wake up.

Are there any smart bcash supporters?? Sounds like a contradiction to me.

M

There is hubs, read the lightning paper. They talk about routing hubs as separate from orginating hubs.

So let me get this right. Increasing the maximum block size is not a viable solution to scaling Bitcoin, because you'd run in to problems in the future. But LN is, even though there are problems that still need to be solved in the future?
Now if you realize that LN can also work on BCH because segwit is not the only solution for the malleability problem then does that not mean that on chain + off chain scaling will yield a higher chance of success then only off chain scaling? If Bitcoin-BTC is ever going to raise their max blocksize people will say: Well BCH already did that years ago …. which would mean that BCH is the Bitcoin that is going things the right way because it allow both on chain and off chain scaling which gives everybody more freedom then when you prevent on chain scaling my keeping the max block size limit (non segwit) so low.

"We don't need to report transactions to the blockchain…unless there's a dispute." Problem: there's not a dispute until AFTER the transaction. You don't know going into your transaction whether or not a dispute will arise later. Again, LN is not a solution. DigiByte anticipated these scalability problems with BTC and solved them in advance, all while keeping all transactions on the blockchain. MoveToDGB.

Andreas thanks for your Insight. What would happen if lets say all the lightning nodes or a signfication amount of nodes are getting closed down due to outside influence or let's say a mayor bug or some crisis, what would happen then? Do you have any thoughts on that to make the best out of such situation?

andreas how long would it take for 5 billion people to open a LN channel? so much for scaling BTC with LN! Come on Andreas, you are so smart but you can not see the basic problems. you do not have to be a rocket scientist to recognize them.

Are you sure you are not Shatoshi? My God, you are so awesome.

Wow, it's a Bitcoin inside a Bitcoin!

4:23 aantonop.exe has stopped working

>>smart
>>Bcash supporter
— Pick one —

Thank you Andreas for your answers.

Thank you for your pragmatism, I love watching your videos.

I am in agreement that we need second layer networks, you certainly cannot scale infinitely on-chain. I personally view the blockchain like the bank, it's the ledger. 2nd layer (or LN) is akin to cash, where the cash is taken out of the bank, completely untracked, can be exchanged an infinite number of times fungibly, and finally deposited back into the bank at a later date. I will be trolled by suggesting that LN is more p2p cash then bitcoin, but I am suggesting it – because cash is not tracked on any ledger in the real world as it changes hands, you can move it from one physical wallet to another without a cost, etc. On chain transactions being recorded immutably is actually the very antithesis of cash.

Where I disagree with BTC (and ultimately why I support BCH), is that the community chose to not care – at all – about merchants or users who wanted to use bitcoin in commerce. Congestion creates a terrible experience for the internet (hence networks (not to be confused with access) are generally overdimensioned), it creates a terrible experience for city traffic, creates a horrible experience for banking – and ultimately created a horrible experience for Bitcoin. Despite accusations that there is no congestion problem and that it's all SPAM, there is a realy problem and the data supports it.

If the community were committed to the merchants and users (instead of just HODLers), they would solve the issue of today (congestion) while working on the foreseen problem of tomorrow (infinite scale). Instead they chose the later – literally to spite the former, which I will never understand or agree with. Having a networking background I feel source routing for payment channels is very very hard and will lead to mass centralization – it's the only architecture which will make sense. Source routing works under the simplifying assumption that you always know the full state of the network, and it only works under the assumption that your routers will be up after you've determined the route and sent the packet. Even with other routing protocols such as BGP, this protocol breaks apart quickly if the state of the network changes too frequently – it is stable because ISPs who run them make sure they are up all the time – which is not the case for an end user cash payment system.

We already know that bigger blocks will be required, accepting bigger blocks will require a hard fork – and you might consider that what stumped you in this video was exactly how a hard fork will become much harder once layer2 has wide adoption. It would be easier to grow the max block size while we develop the L2 solutions, then when L2 is very ready, slowly SF it back down.

What are your thoughts on bitmain 42% mining? Threaten decentralization properties? Possible solutions?

Security risk with private keys can be mitigated with hsm. See latest released c-lightning version.

Lightning needs an installer like InstallAware or InstallShield (or Iceberg for Mac). It won't have mass adoption if the user has to use Terminal with bash and a long series of obscure commands to get running. This is not good business sense. BTW, I'm a programmer and CEO of my own software business now for more than 2 decades. I find it unfathomable that Blockstream couldn't find someone to create a dedicated installer (with checksums for those of us who worry about file tampering). I've been all over Github looking and can't find any. Please let me know if there's an installer I have somehow overlooked. Am starting to wonder if Blockstream has deliberately sabotaged bitcoin or if they're just inept.

"Btw I'm not calling it bcash, I'm just reading you the question" a necessary disclaimer ?

Thank you Andreas!!!

bcash LUL

Segwit is only at 40%. Lightning If fully developed would be significantly lower. Why the conservative scaling? What species is this designed for cause humans are not patient and hard to gain trust.
There’s too much ideology and not enough reality within these talks. Not everyone can “exit”!

Smash the like guys !!

lightning is like an alt coin and bitcoin the on ramp, it won't be worth closing a channel.. you may as well load up a credit card instead

at the end of the day, we invested in bitcoin with the on chain road map.. if you want something different you should fork under a new name.

Excellent pause… The acceptance that the development advance on all fronts further builds on top of the previously developed foundations. All these developments are tying into and anchoring the network into real world solutions and this continues with every minute that passes. Without a time machine, this network is already beyond competition. Fantastic and it's probably an historic moment.

From what I gather LN doesn't even need BTC when all's said and done. LTC or any other coins that can be swapped can be used and will be. So LN is the only layer that matters if it can switch on the fly.

Thanks again

Thank you so much for all the information you give out to everyone. You are so important to this community. Your work is truly important to millions today – in the future it will be to billions. Bless you, Andreas!

Are you Satoshi N.?

I skimmed an article today saying that 99% of lightning network payments over $300 fail. Should I be concerned?

In bear market days like this, our crypto community needs to refocus on what lies ahead.

A huge thanks to the GREAT Andreas Antonopoulos for yet another very informative videopodcast!

Mario

The whole comment about scaling towards the end reminds me of the whole Y2K dilemma that everyone in the mid 90s were running around frantically about. My IT instructor in college put it into perspective saying that the resources at the time when enterprises were developing systems would have spent much more in resources trying to scale for solving the Y2K problem in the earlier phases of its legacy systems. Once scaling became more cheaper to update systems for Y2K, enterprises made the appropriate updates and the whole Y2K scare went away. It's the whole mentality of "I'll cross the bridge when I come to it" in the IT industry when it comes to scaling.

sub satoshi amounts… wow thats crazy

It's OK to call it bcash, Andreas.

Mihir asks: when will mainstream media stop attacking crypto every time there's a drop in the understandably volatile market that is crypto?

How The Banks Bought Bitcoin | Lightning Network

hard forking with a mature LN…..could it essentially forbid vital btc upgrades?

That long pause! I've never seen Andreas at a loss for words before. Great question, and great answer!

bcash cheerleaders are tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who blame everything on muh ''blockstream'' bilderberg group derrppp. Scary, dumb people.

I know it's hard, but I'd be interested in knowing what Andreas thinks about XRP.

Elastos is the solution for this.