Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 2 from 2 users
Re: The Lightning Network FAQ
by
LoyceV
on 27/05/2019, 09:22:38 UTC
⭐ Merited by stompix (1) ,d5000 (1)
Is it just me or has there been way less enthusiasm for Lightning in the past 1 or 2 months?
Last week, I've installed a LN wallet (Eclair) for the first time. It didn't all go exactly as I expected, but all in all I'm quite impressed. I've made more transactions in a week just for testing LN than I've made in Bitcoin in months. I'm convinced low fees for small transactions is what Bitcoin needs to grow (be it with LN or some other system).

Some of the unexpected things I ran into:
1. After funding the channel, I had no receiving capacity. I only got that after sending some funds.
2. The amount available to send was less than what I deposited. I first thought it was a reservation for fees to broadcast it to the blockchain, but later on the available amount went up a bit. It's still not as much as I've put into the channel.
3. I'm not sure how long the channel will stay open if I don't close it. Maybe forever, unless the other party closes it?
4. I have no idea how high fees will be to close the channel, maybe I can manually set them, maybe I can't.
5. Synchronizing Eclair takes quite a while after installation, but it also takes longer than for instance Electrum when I start it up.
6. Eclair somehow didn't use my full balance to open a LN channel, it left 600 satoshi in a change address. I'm pretty sure I chose to use the maximum amount, so it shouldn't have created Bitcoin dust.

Good things:
1. I bought virtual flowers on https://niffler.co/bitcoin-graveyard/
2. I painted a few pixels on https://satoshis.place/
3. I gambled a few Satoshis on https://lightning-roulette.com/ (my 100 Sat deposit never arrived at the site, I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure this isn't LNs fault)
4. I bought some Doge coins at https://www.coinplaza.it/ (this seems to be a great way to increase or decrease funding or receiving capacity of a channel). For this transaction I paid the highest fee until now (10 satoshi).
5. Most of the transactions worth a few satoshi were sent without any fee.
6. Speed! It took a few seconds at most to send or receive funds.



I dislike the "fighting" that happens in many LN-threads though. Some people like it, some people don't, but for some reason the people who don't like it feel the need to keep posting about it, while the people who like it feel the need to keep responding to them. Let me put it this way: as a Bitcoin user, I don't care if small transactions are handled by a centralized organisation, in a second layer, or on-chain, as long as it's low-cost. The risk is low anyway (because of the small amounts involved). I trust several organisations with much larger amounts than I'll ever put into a Lightning channel.

What I'd like to see, is a topic with just information about LN. I'm not experienced enough yet to make one myself, but I'd like to see one that's heavily self-moderated.