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It pains me to say it after 3 years of building on it but I think lightning is ngmi, at least for non custodial pleb payments. I think ark and liquid are fundamentally a more sound approach to L2 for end users. If it REQUIRES the end user to run infrastructure, even if that is just a phone, it's going to be too janky to actually scale. Not to mention that somehow lightning is already more ossified than L1... If we continue down the custodian route people will get rugged or KYC d I am ready for your hate, but this is my current take. Also would be happy to be proven wrong. Now back to sshing into my node and working on chantools to recover a force closed channel utxo that lnd didn't report. Totally easy for everyday users to solve if they run into this problem...

Replies (56)

This pretty well sums it up. For mass adoption to work, we're going to need a non-custodial solution. Fees are already at a point that this isn't practical for anyone that's not already running a node. There are so many developers out there working on so many awesome tools to solve these problems. If a sound solution doesn't already exist, it's only a matter of time. View quoted note →
Looks like I’m in the minority here, but my Lightning experience has been really positive and fun. I installed LND on the same AWS VM that runs my Bitcoin Core node, set up two outbound channels, one with BitRefill and one with Kraken, and use them routinely to purchase goods and services from various vendors. It's truly a thing of beauty. There was a learning curve and a couple hiccups along the way, but nothing that couldn't be resolved via a quick Reddit post. People might respond, “Good for you, but Aunt Mildred doesn’t have the technical expertise to deploy something like that.” That may be true, but Aunt Mildred won’t have to do things the hard way and go through the early adopter curve like we did. I imagine she’ll just have a little box, the size of an AppleTV or Roku, that plugs into her WiFi network. With that, and a companion app for her phone, she can be using non-custodial Lightning within an hour. Well ok, maybe longer if she has to wait for the entire Bitcoin blockchain to download to the Bitcoin Core node that runs on her little box. I think people are severely underestimating the ingenuity of developers who'll be creating these sorts of all-in-one dedicated devices that wrap up all the nastiness and complexity of Bitcoin and Lightning. Aunt Mildred won't even have to know what a UTXO or channel is. I betcha it'll look a lot like media consumption does today. A few us will download a 4K torrent, place it on our NAS, and watch the content using the Infuse app on our big-screen televisions. But the other 99% of consumers say, “That’s too hard. I’ll just get an AppleTV box with a Netflix subscription, plug it in to a wall socket, and watch Ozark.” I think that's how it's going to be with Lightning, or whatever L2 tech we settle on. Plug-N-Play, baby!
So perhaps a bit of a contrarian here...but...Strike seems to have a viable solution. Essentially seamless (download the app, fund it, and send via lighning or BTC address or Strike account). Downside? Sure there's some fees Strike charges for providing the service - but it solves the problem of setting up and maintaining your own node. But other than that--all the convenience of Lightning with none of the technical hassles for a small fee. Seems (frankly) worth it to me...and perhaps I'm missing something (so would very much welcome the thoughts of others to help educate me if I am). In summary--kind of like Starbucks--you can brew a darn good latte at home, but most of us pay Starbucks for the convenience and saving of the hassle. For me, it seems Strike is doing the same thing for Lightning users....
As much as I believe in Bitcoin, this is why I have also always believed in DigiByte as well. The world needs a coin that can scale on chain and Bitcoin can’t do that in its current form. Lightning has a lot of problems to overcome and is struggling to deliver.
Love my node and running one. Yes, it is hard but who said bitcoin and lightning - being your own bank will be easy. Noderunning is a team sport. Join a community like Plebnet at plebnet.org so you give/get help running a node with like minded plebs. It is a new technology so there will be pains. But, someone has to run the nodes for payments! Install auto node management tool like LNDg to auto-manage day to day node running.
↩ replying to npub1t6c8...55yh
No the bitcoin is secured by a funding transaction on layer 1, layer 2 operates with some concessions, but allows movement of liquidity for lower fees with high confidence that you will not be cheated, and an array of layer 3 solutions have various other tradeoffs and benefits. Layer 3 is where we will select our bitcoin-secured financial products and Layer 2 will be the common commodity rails allowing interoperability between layer 3s, and layer 1 will be the exit to final settlement.
↩ replying to Rich Nost
Encouraging to me that there are people who can see more than one step ahead. Not many of us really lol. Lightning is a cryptographically sound value transfer network. It's not going anywhere. It's only going to get better. and our vision for it will have to change in a similar way to how we've had to learn the limitations of the trade-offs in the base chain. When people apply black and white frameworks to complex systems they fool themselves into thinking the systems are broken but in reality it's their thinking that is broken.
My guess is that the future of bitcoin is more centralized than people are comfortable with. As long as we have the optionality to self custody our savings on chain, does it really matter if we’re trusting someone temporarily with our spending change?
I came to a similar conclusion in about August time. I now believe BIP300 sidechains are our best bet for maximising the user experience for self custody. i.e. low fees, better privacy, and easy onboarding, no liquidity constraints like with lightning. Maybe it won’t catch on, but I think Rootstock, RGB, FediMint and Liquid will have the similar problems as it will lead to federated custodians. Ark may be better than sidechains but honestly I dont understand it works technically.
Biggest bottleneck for me in terms of Lightning: You have to pay to participate. And quite a lot, too. The UX is also ... questionable. It's fun as a "Twitch Bits but open source and free" - but if the easiest solution is a custodial one, how different is it, really? I still run my CLN node, I had a lot of fun with it, but I won't exactly miss it. A little while after spent my sats via Bitrefill, I lost my channel due to an LND bug force-closing the one that Fishcake had gifted me. Ripped me straight out of the network and... yeah, that was that. Now it's just ideling.
I think I'd have to agree. I'm simply a pleb utilizing all these awesome tools that people like you are building but these high-fees on chain have magnified the limitations of Lightning. Ever since fees spiked I have been running into constant hiccups with my non-custodial LN wallets. I personally love using Liquid. I think newbies should start there because you get the exact same experience/flow of operating on-chain but without the enormous fees. Get some reps in before pegging out. eCash will be sweet too once it's integrated further.
i think lightning will make it and i think liquid will help... on chain: zero trust, low scalability. liquid; medium trust, medium scalability, lightning; high trust(sometimes), high scalability. they all have their purpose. too much good things have been built on lightning. remember, good thing comes in threes. in the bible its the father the son and the holy spirit. in freud its ego, id and superego. in platos republic its the guardians the auxiliaris and the producers.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but simply going on a #bitcoin standard even with centralised intermediaries facilitating daily transactions is a win for humanity. It's far from ideal but at least theft through inflation becomes impossible and productivity gains flow more to society, etc
I fully understand the pain.. I've always said it, always been a foot behind when it came to L2. This didn't stop me from getting into Lightning, running nodes and joining in the fun of experimenting with channels (when the fees weren't this high). But Bitcoin's whitepaper, coupled with the accessibility of running verification plug&play nodes, and the investment/PoW necessity for mining is a simple game overall. Lightning has a scalability problem, and it not one down to the tech, but to its accessibility. I think developers like @ZEUS have been monumental over the past year showing an embedded node is well possible. Whether it's feasible is something that's currently being battle-tested. I've always thought of Bitcoin nodes running in households like people buy Wifi Routers, this seems really feasible to me. But having to deal with channels is a whole other game. Personally, for an L2 proponent to succeed, it needs to find a way to be as straight-forward as MAC addresses and Ethernet frames are talking to both L1 and whatever else.
100% agree. But the problem originates higher upstream to Bitcoin itself. The whole reason Lightning exists is because of flawed slow BTC block time. Fork it. Reduce block time to 2 sec. Make block size unlimited. Mint all 21m instantly. TPS goes to the moon. Layer 2 is unneeded. Fees plummet. Energy efficiency soars. And security is virtually unaffected.
What is the main reason Gold doesn’t scale? Because it’s expensive and difficult to transact. What would be one of the cheapest ways for a nation state to kill Bitcoin in the crib? To make it expensive and difficult to transact, just like Gold. 1. Scoop up a material amount of Bitcoin for a trivial price(from the government’s perspective) 2. Flood the network with senseless and wasteful transactions to drive up the cost for everyone. 3. Implement trusted custodians everywhere and force KYC and regulatory compliance. 4. Integrate the same failed monetary policies (fractional reserve banking, etc.) on top of Bitcoin. One of the main reasons Bitcoin is better than Gold is because it is possible for anyone, anywhere, to take possession of their assets instantly and with very low cost. That is what is at stake today. View quoted note →