but there are things such as lightning explorers
they reveal many things, balances per channel, who the nodes connect to. they actually reveal alot more then the bitcoin block explorer does about individuals
its quite funny how much stats you can get out of lightning about a particular node. but you cant get node information out of a block explorer.
using the node information you can see what node just signed some funds and which other node it got attributed to
so have fun looking at lightning network stats/visualisations.
they reveal many things, balances per channel, who the nodes connect to. they actually reveal alot more then the bitcoin block explorer does about individuals
its quite funny how much stats you can get out of lightning about a particular node. but you cant get node information out of a block explorer.
using the node information you can see what node just signed some funds and which other node it got attributed to
so have fun looking at lightning network stats/visualisations.
That's certainly true, mate. Those Lightning explorers disclose more information than block explorers themselves. As such, third parties would be able to see LN node information, which I believe it's a huge privacy risk. This can be used by governments to quickly track a LN node's payments and reveal the person routing those transactions. Of course, many transactions are routed by a LN node, but knowing specific information about the node, would pose a risk to the person running it as the government could easily track him and take the necessary actions against him.
However, I don't think that's something to be concerned about right now, since the LN is as decentralized as it could be. Various nodes distributed across diverse geographical locations, would make it nearly impossible to shut down by the government. Therefore, if a specific node gets shut down by the government, there will always exist other nodes available for users to route transactions. Just my thoughts
