Is Lightning FUD overblown? \ stacker news ~lightning

2534 sats \ 35 comments \ @siggy47 28 Mar lightning

This post isn't about every criticism outlined in an article like this: https://protos.com/critics-claim-buggy-bitcoin-lightning-network-is-slowly-dying/

I know the lightning network has problems. It just seems to me that the argument that there are fewer bitcoin on the network (approximately 300 less than the peak) seems to ignore the reality that bitcoin's fiat price has more than tripled over the last 18 months. We don't live in a bitcoin world yet, so the typical lightning transaction contains a hell of a lot more buying power than it did. The article I linked above denigrates the average dollar value of a channel ($5542) by comparing it to bitcoin's dollar value. I don't get the relevance, since lightning's use case is for smaller payments, and I assume that average channel value is a hell of a lot higher than it was last year. I'm not a lightning expert. I have run my own node for the last 2 1/2 years. I basically use it for my own payments. I don't have the knowledge to run a big routing node. I focused on fewer, large channels from pretty early on. Obviously, my capacity has grown tremendously recently. Without me doing much beyond making sure my channels were balanced to keep my inbound liquidity up, my node routes far more than it used to. I'm also earning more fees. Most importantly, I rarely have a failed transaction any more. I know my experience doesn't mean much in looking at the bigger picture. I'm curious to know, though, if stackers think it's just a matter of time before the lightning network becomes meaningless?

view all related items

309 sats \ 0 replies \ @_vnprc 28 Mar

Yes.

We have entered the trough of disillusionment. Nothing has changed except that people are seeing past the hype and noticing all the worts.

149 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 28 Mar

Yes, the FUD is overblown and yes Lightning was full of hype. This is the way things happen. Has nothing to do with Lightning or Bitcoin. Its human nature. It happens in most new things. Lightning isn't free and doesn't solve every problem. Even if no one uses it in ten years I'm sure the lessons learned will pave the way for something else. At this point though I don't see anything else that rivals it. There are other things but they have different goals and trade offs.

With all that said I do think their is value in thinking about the game theory. I have been. Thinking about the limits. But its foolish to make anything short of perfection into failure. That's jus dumb.

318 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 28 Mar

ofc is overblown FUD

These people writing these articles have no idea how many types of LN nodes are, how many types of LN implementations are, how to run a LN node and the economics behind it. They just see the things from surface.

Just ignore them. Bitcoin and LN will be here, no matter what they will say. Bitcoin cannot evolve without LN. Transacting onchain will be much and much harder from now on. LN cannot exist without Bitcoin mainnnet. LN is the payment network for the Bitcoin mainnet (onchain, final settlement).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Darthcoin_Cash 28 Mar outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.

87 sats \ 0 replies \ @nikotsla 28 Mar

No "skin" in the game, just connected dots in a way to clickbait.

217 sats \ 2 replies \ @freetx 28 Mar

LN still works fine. Maybe even better than ever.

However, I think its pretty clear that the dream of millions of self-custody nodes isn't going to happen. Managing liquidity and routing is too complex and costly for average person.

In the end I think LN is going to be mostly used in a custodial format for users and used as an "interconnect / bridge" technology between services and layers.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 28 Mar

I think you nailed it, barring some breakthrough by the guys here like @TonyGiorgio,@benthecarman, and @supertestnet

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 28 Mar

Wallet of Satoshi!

86 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 28 Mar

dup: 👀 #480142

26 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 28 Mar

I missed this. I'll check out the comments. You got a lot of them.

86 sats \ 2 replies \ @south_korea_ln 28 Mar

since lightning's use case is for smaller payments

That's how it was sold to me. I wonder if that's still the only usecase though. I feel like LN is actually getting very good at recurring B2B larger payments. Small payments might end up being mostly custodial... I closed my node though, so not too aware of current behavior.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 28 Mar

In other day, I sent a 1M sats using MPP, perfectly fine. Is all about to choose wisely your peers and use the correct apps for the right use case. I use custodial and self-custodial without any problem and amount.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Krv 29 Mar

Sent $3m sats worth recently, using Bitfinex to Phoenix. It worked.

176 sats \ 3 replies \ @Lumor 28 Mar

Switched from Core Lightning+Zeus over Tor to Phoenix wallet recently. Never really took the time to find good peers, grew tired of all the payment failures.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 28 Mar

I use lnd+ zeus on my hybrid node and Phoenix. I use both, though I admit I like the ease of Phoenix.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 28 Mar

Your lack of knowledge about LN routing, it doesn't mean LN failed. I wrote several guides about these aspects, exactly for users like you.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lumor 29 Mar

I've got other things going on in life. I'm behind in many areas. Not saying LN failed.

76 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 29 Mar

I'm hearing bad talk from Bitcoiner friends about LN lately, many of them haven't even used it, I think the FUD is excessive.

76 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 28 Mar

Yes, but I think some of the shine has come off of lightning and most recognize it isn't a be all and end all scaling solution. Also, I haven't seen a lot of new projects using lightning spring up. Maybe it is maturing and the basic b to c give me your attention and I will give you some sats rewards (zbd, thndr, etc) and social zapping (nostr and sn) is transitioning into a more c to b and b to b (payments).

I also think everyone is sleeping on lightning login. It should never be the primary function of lightning but lightning login is so much better an experience than inputting credentials it could become very popular and thus be a gateway for people to use the network for its monetary function.

All this being said I fully support development of other layer 2 solutions. To get where we are going we will need to have multiple tools in the tool kit.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 OP 28 Mar

Good point about login. I thought it would have been used more widely by now. Maybe it will become more popular in time.

76 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 28 Mar

Has to be pushed by the next breed of companies. Incumbents love the current system where you give them all your information and they keep it locked away in their server farm somewhere.

76 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinosphere 28 Mar

I don't think it'll become meaningless in any way, but it should not be taken for granted that lightning will become the dominant L2. Technically, Fedi may be more desirable to more people than lightning, and something could be created in the future that is more usable than both of them.

If anyone is unaware of lightning's shortcomings (mainly channel balancing maintenance) then they typically are overly excited at first and then harshly disenfranchised when they come to understand the challenge. That's the majority of the FUD we see, IMHO.

76 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 28 Mar

For me LN is the thing that's brought me back to Bitcoin. So, anything I see against is emotionally makes me think it's only fud. But, let aside my emotions, LN has problems mostly for those who want to attach profit with everything. You know those money-seekers.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 28 Mar

You know those money-seekers.

Like you...

76 sats \ 2 replies \ @theinstagibbs 28 Mar

Still working for me

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 28 Mar

Are you the real, one and only, instagibbs? :)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @theinstagibbs 29 Mar

Of course!

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @Muuny 28 Mar

I know for a fact that you don't even need to magange your ln node very often and use a zeus or phoenix and lightning just works. the hype is that shitcoins should be dead and their not. So there's a lot of error rate in all that noise.

10 sats \ 6 replies \ @jgbtc 28 Mar

This article is pure FUD. There's no reason to read past the first sentence where the author makes it very clear they think lightning is a failure. To summarize the whole thing: Lightning isn't perfect right now, therefore it's a total failure. Clearly a shitcoiner wrote this piece of trash.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Darthcoin_Cash 28 Mar outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.