Rick Reacts to Lightning (Again) and brings up a previously undiscussed flaw

We Are All Satoshi · 14.1K views · 2018-02-25 · 25:14

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Overview

Rick Falkvinge responds to viewer feedback on his earlier Lightning Network video and raises a flaw he says was not previously discussed. The main thread is the network's unsolved routing problem.

On Hacker News

HN commenters cite it, with a pointer to the section from about 10:00, when arguing that Lightning has no solved routing algorithm; most mentions are critical of Lightning.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2018–2019

Topics

Cryptography Networking & internet infrastructure

What people said

davidgerard · 2018-02 · Recommendation
> Dont be an ignorant big blocker. Look at the smartest people in this space. The real technical folk. What are they saying? I'm seeing them zoom in on the key technical problem: at no point has LN fixed the key technical issue, how to route. Every transaction invalidates the routing path, because it changes the amount of liquidity available in the channels. Rick Falkvinge nails this point. Key bit from 10:00 on, though the rest is well worth your time (and I say that as someone who hates watching videos on YouTube): [VIDEO] LN proponents explicitly compare it to BGP - but BGP is a completely trust-based protocol, where a lot of telecoms engineers have an agreement that they'll keep the network going no matter what, and bad actors are dealt with by hand. Trust-based and fixing problems by hand is the diametric opposite of the cryptocurrency model.
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snthpy · 2019-04 · Reference
I think this is the right direction as I think all money is a form of debt - usually coupled with some settlement mechanism. Once we get a good implementation of debt settlement then I think we might actually get a usable decentralised money. As a few comments have pointed out this similar to the Lightening network and Ripple. One comment mentioned that Ripple never found a routing algorithm and that is also a major criticism of Lightening, see for example [1]. How are you planning to address these challenges? [1] [VIDEO] P.S. I only came across Rick Falkvinge today so I don't know how controversial he is in the crypto space. Given that he backs BCH I guess he might be.
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badge · 2018-09 · Criticism
The lightening network inherently suffers from limitations on transaction rates and an inability to scale up. [LINK] It's one of the most basic computer bugs, and LN design is incompatible with a fix for race conditions due to decentralization. There's also the aspect that the Lightening Network's design inevitably turns it into a banking network, designed to extract fees for the wealthy. [VIDEO]
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