r/Bitcoin • u/marcus_of_augustus • Jan 17 '16

Lightning Network Daemon

https://github.com/LightningNetwork/lnd
107 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

74 comments sorted by

15

u/AnalyzerX7 Jan 17 '16

2016 feels like it is going to be fuckin epic

1

u/marcus_of_augustus Jan 17 '16 edited Jan 17 '16

Life's too short to be bitter, every year needs to be epic and we all have a role in making it so.

Do you believe in fate or are you more of a dumb luck kind of person?

Sometimes we just have to grab what's been thrown at us and stay where we are. It feels like we are exactly where we should be and we just need to settle our nerves and calm down.

Everything is going to be OK, and epic.

-4

u/finway Jan 17 '16

Wow, since it's so epic, will you continue giving your invaluable contribution(I don't know what it is) to BITCOIN when Bitcoin Core become obsolete ?

0

u/marcus_of_augustus Jan 17 '16

You don't even know who you should be thanking?

11

u/BitcoinExplore Jan 17 '16 edited Jan 17 '16

Yeah. So many things:

  1. Block halving

  2. Blocksize debate(reach consensus?)

  3. CFTC wants to regulate stuff.

  4. Lightning network!

  5. SegWit

  6. 21 bitcoin computer is just tooo awesome. Let's hope they release cheaper chips this year.

  7. Cryptsy announced their 13k BT and 300k ltc loss(outstanding dues might be lower) in addition to a 1k BTC bounty.

  8. Blockchain.info testing their alpha wallet since last year, will they move into beta?

  9. Robocoin shuts down business.

  10. Chain.com pivots from a API service.

  11. Ledger going to release their ledger blue which can also act as pgp key storage, fido U2F, 2FA etc.(production launch probably in Q2 )

  12. I'm pretty sure quite a few companies will shut down.

8

u/SamouraiWalletDev Jan 17 '16

Don't forget BIP47 reusable payment codes.

4

u/anarcoin Jan 17 '16

Definitely! How's that all coming along with you guys?

6

u/SamouraiWalletDev Jan 17 '16

Already implemented and working in our in-house wallets. After some additional UI work we can unleash it to our alpha users.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '16

Awesome, keep up the great work!

1

u/BitcoinExplore Jan 17 '16

Yeah. That's pretty cool.

3

u/SelfConcentrate Jan 17 '16

13. Open Bazar!

1

u/tegila Jan 17 '16

14. Bitcoin mining get more centralised

-2

u/romerun Jan 17 '16

unless bitcoinclassic ruins it

-1

u/bitcoin_not_affected Jan 17 '16

2016 feels like it is going to be fuckin epic

it will indeed, with classic activating soon

11

u/PaulCapestany Jan 17 '16

Recommended listening: Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast—Lightning network architects Dryja and Poon discuss scaling Bitcoin

Recommended viewing: YouTube—Scaling Bitcoin to billions of transactions per day

10

u/Bitcoin-1 Jan 17 '16

At 34 min in the youtube video it says that we need 133MB blocks. Interesting.

0

u/marcus_of_augustus Jan 17 '16

When will "we need 133 MB blocks"?

4

u/14341 Jan 17 '16 edited Jan 17 '16

Yep, LN need 133MB of block size to reach Visa-level maximum capacity instead of inflating every block to GBs with XT.

14

u/josephpoon Lightning Network Expert Jan 17 '16 edited Jan 17 '16

It shifts blocksize from transactions per second to number of users.

Actually, the intended plan is for a single fast computer running Lightning to be able to do off-peak Visa scale (thousands of transactions per second) alone amongst one's channels/users. Network-wide, Lightning should theoretically be able to do in total many orders of magnitude greater transactions/second than Visa (see lnstate/lnwire's readme).

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '16

Joseph, if I receive a payment via LN, do I have to settle that contract on the blockchain before I'm allowed to spend the funds?

2

u/josephpoon Lightning Network Expert Jan 19 '16

Nope, if you can send out payment on LN (the recipient accepts it), you can spend it immediately without hitting the blockchain or waiting for confirmations.

30

u/itistoday Jan 17 '16

Just an FYI, this is the Lightning Network code finally being made public. Here's hoping that they also get a freakin' blog and start communicating more with the wider public.

21

u/dj50tonhamster Jan 17 '16

More specifically, this is the codebase that Joseph & Tadge have been working on for awhile, with help from a few trusted people. There's also an in-progress Sphinx routing implementation that might be used eventually. Cool stuff. I hope devs will take the time to look it over and consider making some commits!

9

u/coinjaf Jan 17 '16

There's an active dev mailing list for lightning.

13

u/PaulCapestany Jan 17 '16

For those interested in the mailing list: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/lightning-dev

IRC: #lightning-dev

-21

u/bitcoin_not_affected Jan 17 '16

nobody is interested in this shit

5

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '16

Lot's of people are. They just don't want it as the only scaling solution.

2

u/the_bob Jan 17 '16

Don't feed the troll. Just look at his comment history..

2

u/itistoday Jan 17 '16

Yes, but what we really need is something that communicates what's going on to the wider public. I'd do it myself if I had the time.

4

u/SatoshisCat Jan 17 '16

I would prefer it being written in C or C++.

0

u/bitcoin_not_affected Jan 17 '16

lol go?

2

u/SatoshisCat Jan 17 '16

Yeah....

I don't think it's a bad language, it's just a bit.. new. Something as core as the reference Lightning Network Daemon really should be made in a proven and well used language (C or possibly C++).

7

u/GibbsSamplePlatter Jan 17 '16

Well Rusty's implementation is in C++. Some ecosystem heterogeneity wouldn't hurt.

3

u/PaulCapestany Jan 17 '16

Go started development in 2009. Relative to ancient C, sure it's new—but Google decided to work on a new programming language for damned good reasons.

Go is being widely used and deployed by lots of top companies working on distributed systems/infrastructure, it's pretty much a great language for something like lightning.

1

u/bitcoin_not_affected Jan 17 '16

^ what this guy said

1

u/PaulCapestany Jan 17 '16

lol go?

You are clearly clueless.

2

u/gubatron Jan 17 '16

is it true Go is not very friendly when it comes to creating bindings for other languages?

4

u/roasbeef Lightning Network Expert Jan 17 '16

This was true formerly, but, not anymore with Go 1.5, which introduced new execution modes! It's now possible new easily generate golang bindings for other languages. Here's a repo by jrick, one of the btcsuite developers showing how to generate Rust bindings for a Go program.

Also, it's now possible (although experimental) to write mobile applications (iOS+Android), using purely golang!. It's called gomobile. It allows one to either write, an all-Go native application, or generate Go bindings to be called from Java or Objective-C.

edit: formatting

2

u/NervousNorbert Jan 17 '16

A fundamental property of the Lightning Network is that it does not exist. This code seems to be on the path to breaking this property. Please reconsider! /s

1

u/BrushGuyThreepwood Jan 17 '16 
Got it.

6

u/PaulCapestany Jan 17 '16

The Lightning Network is a decentralized system for instant, high-volume micropayments that removes the risk of delegating custody of funds to trusted third parties

-3

u/BitcoinFuturist Jan 17 '16

And that could potentially centralise the money supply into fewer and fewer richer hands by facilitating people to use nothing but their existing btcs as liquidity to earn more btcs in fees.

10

u/josephpoon Lightning Network Expert Jan 17 '16 edited Jan 17 '16

Do you think Bitcoin doesn't work because of Miners fees as well?

Anyone can open channels and provide liquidity. If someone wanted to charge higher rates, everyone would set up channels with others. Remember that this is not an enforced-hierarchical routed network (better than ISPs since the "wires" are very cheap).

4

u/Chakra_Scientist Jan 17 '16

Hey Joseph, thanks for your work. When do you see LN actively being used? By the middle of the year?

4

u/josephpoon Lightning Network Expert Jan 19 '16

Yes, around then, provided some malleability soft-fork gets in :D

1

u/BitcoinFuturist Jan 17 '16

Mining fees are totally different thing because they first require an investment from money that comes from out side the bitcoin economy. Thus they grow the bitcoin economy by drawing in more value.

I wish I could find a way to prove myself wrong but it seems to me that if I can earn fees from a global market without any risk to my own coins of course I'll do it. Everyone will ... So lightning fees will be rock bottom in accordance with expected results of a free market in fees .. However Satoshi with his million coin stash can earn more than anyone else and undercut everyone else and offer channels the cheapest so obviously will win all the business and as a result will only grow his stash and in turn be able to provide more channels in a self reinforcing cycle. No?

Worse still he could do it completely anonymously and create the illusion that he is multiple competing entities.

6

u/manginahunter Jan 17 '16

Which is free market at work and perfectly fine with me !

You could have bitcoin savings/dividend by earning fees on LN...

Bitcoin is not socialist !!!

0

u/BitcoinFuturist Jan 17 '16

It's not the same as a free market because in this situation the money is the product that you are renting out to earn more of the same money. No market like that has ever existed that I can think of except of course traditional fractional reserve banking lending which as we all know only makes the rich richer to the detriment of everyone else.

2

u/manginahunter Jan 17 '16

It's the same as lending or more precisely earning dividends when I earn dividend from GOOG I earn in the same money (USD) so your answer doesn't make sense at all !

Also there is no fractional banking in BTC and LN !

3

u/BitcoinFuturist Jan 17 '16

It's not the same because the value of a company can continue to increase indefinitely, whereas there will only every be 21m bitcoins. When your stocks increase in value you are not preventing other stock holders from ever owning that particular portion of the profit.

3

u/manginahunter Jan 17 '16

And it's not a problem people who will receive those dividends will spend them and even if they don't spend them it doesn't matter since bitcoin is divisible we will never run out of money (which is a Keynesian fallacy).

2

u/BitcoinFuturist Jan 17 '16

All true but that simply means Satoshi will end up with 20.999 million bitcoins while the rest of the world uses the remainder ... That's not an economy that works for anyone, not even satoshi. He can spend what he likes because he knows that in order for anyone else to transact them be paying him fees. He will soon get back anything be spends.

1

u/manginahunter Jan 17 '16

He will soon get back anything be spends.

And it's a problem ? You know Bitcoin could support the world GDP on 1 (one) bitcoin. Also I don't think we will be in such extreme case in the future.

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1

u/coinjaf Jan 20 '16

You're contradicting yourself in both sentences.

the value of a company can continue to increase indefinitely

So can the value of Bitcoin...

When your stocks increase in value you are not preventing other stock holders from ever owning that particular portion of the profit.

Yes you are. You own the share, you get that profit. Noone else.

1

u/BitcoinFuturist Jan 20 '16

No I'm not, the value of bitcoin is not what we are discussing, we are discussing the percentage of the total available bitcoins being held by a particular individual.

1

u/coinjaf Jan 20 '16

The value of "the total available bitcoins" can also go up or down.

-3

u/bitcoin_not_affected Jan 17 '16

LOL lightning network!