Lightning network is exposed to amazing defects! BU chief scientist says users may lose all funds innocently

Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) chief scientist Peter R Rizun claims that the Bitcoin Layer 2 expansion solution Lightning Network (LN) users may lose all their money without making any mistakes.

As a two-tier solution, Lightning Networks allows users to make payments under the chain, ensuring that bitcoin transactions are faster and cheaper. The Lightning Network relies on the underlying technology, the Bitcoin blockchain, which was created primarily to meet the needs of small transactions. It eliminates the need for users to record payments on the blockchain until the payment is completed. In addition, Lightning Network can also be used as a future multi-currency routing network.

Peter R Rizun commented on LN on Twitter:

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“In a high-level and unstable network environment, lightning network users may lose all their money, and this is not their own fault. Whenever the block space demand surges, the BTC block size limit Will result in high fees and instability."

In this regard, Cornell University professor Emin Gur Sirer said,

“Zhong Bencong did not design the block. Most of these blocks were full. Later developers failed to design a fee mechanism to bring stable and predictable fees.”

In addition, Redditor user Jungans questioned whether this was the same as spreading the chain of funds across several UTXOs. Peter Rizun explained that the two situations are different. He said ,

This is different.

Suppose you open an LN channel with a $50 balance. Maybe you made some payments to your channel partner, now you have $25 and he has $25. But then the fee goes from $0 to $10, so you transfer $10 from your $25 to the "fee bucket." Now you only have $15. Then the fee went up to $20. So you take $10 from your balance and put it in the fee bucket. Now you have a balance of $5.

However, the handling fee is still rising. And your channel partner is worried that you will not have enough balance to pay the fee soon, and he will not be able to recover his $25. So he will forcefully close this channel when you have no money. As a result, all your balances go into the fee bucket, then the channel is closed, and $25 is returned to your channel partner, but nothing is given to you. Your channel partner is waiting now, hoping that the fee will drop.

After one week, the handling fee will drop to around $0. You lost $25 and your channel partner lost $0. At this time you lost money, but this is not your own fault. Lightning Networks recently became the focus of the cryptocurrency industry after the channel capacity value exceeded $5 million, presumably because the bitcoin bull market has arrived. In addition, Lightning Network received support from Zebpay, the leading cryptocurrency exchange, after the company announced lightning payments in approximately 131 countries.

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