Comment by nosuchthing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nosuchthing | Hacker News Reader

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LN Dev: "We're 6 months away." Dec 14th, 2015

https://mobile.twitter.com/starkness/status/6765995708984197...

Something seems off with what LN claims is a p2p network, as the claim is they've created something better than BGP yet there's going to be many many race conditions if the network is ever actually used at scale and the only solution to those race conditions will be broadcasting updates to inform other nodes the route is inaccessible.. which will raise the bandwidth demand for anyone running nodes needing those updates.

https://youtu.be/Ug8NH67_EfE?t=635

For LN to claim to be p2p seems rather disingenuous, as everything about it is going to favor wealthy centralized payment processor hubs. What's the point than? Why not use venmo / stripe / square where there's less risk of scam for both consumer and retailer? Running a LN node will require a hot wallet with keys in memory, so if a Spectre/Meltdown style attack hits your node your key and funds are at greater risk of being stolen.

LN also opens up the ease of money laundering, so will all LN nodes need to keep KYC/AML logs for future audits?

LN will have all the problems of BGP, fused with all the problems of KYC/AML/legacy financial institutions.

It's truly a beautiful monstrosity. It'd be hard to come up with a more objectively inferior solution if you really tried.

No longer can a new user just send a transaction and have that magical user experience, instead they have to be given permission to transact by monolithic liquidity hubs, who of course must take their own fee. In fact as a rational lightning hub owner, I would want a rate of return similar to stocks but times some multiple to account for the very high risk of my hot wallet getting hacked and losing all my money.

Full disclosure: I'm a BCH/XMR supporter although I no longer own either since I've been sitting out of the scene for the last few months while waiting for all this idiocy to blow over

I noticed you've posted the same thing in many different posts with increasing inaccuracy.

> instead they have to be given permission to transact by monolithic liquidity hubs

Completely false

> who of course must take their own fee

May, and routes aren't prescribed so they may take a fee on a payment that may be routed through them.

> I would want a rate of return similar to stocks but times some multiple to account for the very high risk of my hot wallet getting hacked and losing all my money.

What. This is completely disconnected from Lightning's functionality.

Please stop spreading FUD.

blockcipher is refering to a new type of attack LN enables, which would be a (large) node/hub having the ability to ignore/drop transactions. It's roughly similar to how pool operators can create custom tools to suppress activity passing though their part of the network.

https://steemit.com/ethereum/@dhumphrey/f2pool-manipulates-u...

The latter comment is in regards to the risk of providing liquidity in the more concerning design caveat of exposing keys in memory on an internet connected computer. The attack surface for theft of a LN node is now significantly higher than a normal bitcoin wallet.

The link you've posted

a) Does not work b) Seems to be specific to Ethereum c) According to a mirror, has its information sourced from an unverified Reddit post.

Is there anything but FUD here?

Ah yes the cultish rhetoric of shouting "FUD", pathetic.

Feel free to ignore the prior mentioned methods denial of service within blockchain networks as It appears your comment has rendered all reality moot.

> For LN to claim to be p2p seems rather disingenuous, as everything about it is going to favor wealthy centralized payment processor hubs.

Except this isn't true.

It is inherent to the architecture of the Lightening Network.

Run a simulation with many p2p nodes in an adversarial payment routing network, and the inevitable statistical optimization will be centralized payment hubs controlled by wealthy users.

Smaller less wealthy nodes will not be able to sustain routes and will be ignored. No one wants to keep paying fees to open up dozens of routes as if they're pre-depositing funds all the places they shop.

What's the benefit here?

Why not just use venmo, stripe, square, paypal?

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