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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

Well that would be double, as you have to set up and tear down the lightning channel with a transaction for each operation...

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Your comment is so obviously disingenuous. It makes absolutely no sense to open a Lightning Network channel to send one transaction and then immediately close it.

It was a joke.

OTOH lightning is IMHO a joke as well, for many reasons. Funds need to be tied up, nodes generally need to be online, routing is a (mathematically) hard issue, and the channel open and close transactions (or 'add funds') would certainly become an issue on the main chain if lightning became popular.

Why? If I want to send money to Bob in Venezuela I need a connection to him. And I'm not interested in sending further transactions to him. And he is in Venezuela and cannot rely on institutions (this is the real scenario that advocates keep bringing up). How am I going to pull this off without an on-chain transaction?

You both use your lightning app connected to a LN payment processor which already has the necessary channels open with other nodes and/or payment processors.

Can't do it in Venezuela. The whole point of that scenario when raised as a reason why btc is awesome is that you don't need an attached institution and your transactions cannot be censored.

An LN payment processor is not institution, it's just a LN node which has channels open to many other nodes and to which you as a user can connect to, so you don't need to open separate channels with everyone you are doing transactions with. And if your LN node becomes unreachable due to censoring: they are often available over Tor too.

Such a node becomes a payment processor, and must have a lot of BTC tied up in its channels in order to facilitate these payments.

It's basically a bank at that point. Or a worse Visa.

It doesn’t need a lot of BTC tied up in channels. It’s enough to have one channel open with another well connected node. Transactions can jump over several nodes to reach their destinations. And everybody can become a bank/payment processor for their friends and family with an LN node, no need for big centralized institutions.

We were talking about the well connected nodes, they need funds tied up in many channels. That's what makes them well connected. And effectively institutions. If it takes off don't be surprised if such entities start charging fees.

It's up to each node how many channels they open and how much bitcoin is used for those channels, but lots of channels doesn't make it an institution. An LN node has to play with the same rules as every other node, it cannot enforce rules like institutions. And if you don't like some LN node's transaction fees, you choose a different node for your transaction to go through. As a result the high-transaction-fee node will soon lower its fees. Btw, every LN node is already charging fees.

>> It's up to each node how many channels they open and how much bitcoin is used for those channels,

If you want to be paid you have to find a route that's willing to lock up enough coin at their end for that.

So they are exactly like banks - if you want good ability to transact you have to pick one that works for you and pay appropriate fees.

It really is a hack.

Solution: Multi-Path Payments.

You clearly don't understand how the Lightning Network works.

...and the cost of those operations?

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