Saturday, 23 March 2019

Addressing Lightning Concerns

I've been on the bullish side of LN for over a year now, but find myself unable to address certain criticisms

Rick Falkvinge's new video in particular, pulled me closer to the fence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzaEd2RQuRw

Can we have an honest discussion about his points? (not his character) Which are valid/invalid?

Must be Online

Possibly solved by a trustless contract? (lets call it 'Loop-To') Where a failed route to an offline merchant auto redirects funds to their:

A) LN node when it comes online

B) On-chain wallet

B) is certainly possible (Loop-Out) but not ideal. People who are least likely to be online, are least able to afford moving funds from L1 to L2 often

Routing = Unsolved

With channel liquidity constantly in flux, how will routing scale to hundreds of millions/billions of users, while preserving privacy, speed and decentralization

Nodes: Legal Liability

Rick claims people are now admitting this, but couldn't name anyone (let alone anyone of importance)

The worst I've heard, is Andreas saying it may carry some risk in already oppressive countries. (China, North Korea, Venezuela, etc)

Reactive Security

Eltoo solves/greatly improves this IIRC?

Cold Storage

The answer to this is always:"Hot wallets for spending money, and Cold wallets for savings"

For individuals, "spending money" may mean hundreds of dollars (depending on cost/time to move new money to LN) That's a big enough target on its own, but what about merchants dealing with many thousands of dollars?

Loop-Out is a good enough solution to this, but there is still risk in the interim. (Unless they constantly Loop-Out, which won't be cheap)

Are there any other proposals to improve LN security?

Not Production Ready

Yeah, you can't rush innovation, and BTC/LN are certainly doing more of that than BCH/BSV

but is nobody else worried about the increasing expected time to completion?

(Most recently Andreas said 2 years)

Bonus Round - Concerns not mentioned in RV's video

Receiving Capacity

You have to find $1000 somewhere to receive $1000 through LN... It feels wrong.

(Or constantly Splice/Loop-Out, which won't be cheap)

If we get trustless LN Liquidity Providers to create a channel for you with $X receiving capacity, then great, but if not, many will wonder why this is better than VISA

Please don't take this as FUD, Bitcoin is resilient because it faced, shrugged off and adapted to a decade of attacks

Now is Lightning's time to prove its resilience!

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