Opinion: Lightning network does not need consensus, it is time to start the Bitcoin revolution.

The writer is John Carvalho.

John Carvalho is a dedicated and outspoken bitcoin creator who has defended Bitcoin for six years and maintains the ethical standards of the blockchain world. John is currently the Chief Communications Officer of Bitrefill.

For bitcoin or not for bitcoin

In the "scale debate" before the SegWit2X user activated soft fork (UASF), Bitcoin companies first tasted the bitter effect of bitcoin review resistance.

They want change to become easier. They want their influence to be effective. They want to take shortcuts. For them, unfortunately, Bitcoin was born to resist control. Entities trying to oppose Bitcoin are choosing a path that is always hypocritical and frustrating.

• Bitfinex 2000 BTC transaction is suspected of money laundering and Mixing, multiple exchanges directly or indirectly
• Under the general price, there is no egg
• The USDT fell to the altar, and the new currency was added to the stable currency. Who can laugh at the rivers and lakes?

People who follow me in the interview may have been tired of this statement, but every Bitcoin company can choose to make Bitcoin their best friend or the biggest enemy. The signers of the New York agreement chose to make Bitcoin their biggest problem. To this day, most of them will only get worse in this regard.

How do you distinguish between real bitcoin business and enemies? Very simple. Sincere Bitcoin companies focus on providing utility for Bitcoin and Bitcoin makers, while rival companies maximize the ability to leverage customers by keeping as much bitcoin value as possible.

This is the battle line. They are participants who want to compete with the old system, but there are also real bitcoin entities whose job is to delete the old system.

At the time, some big block proponents claimed that they just wanted to lower their fees and make room for billions of people screaming in front of the virtual Bitcoin gate.

But most of these companies are waiting to activate SegWit, and some large companies have not even properly processed batches. They pollute our blockchain and hinder their customers from increasing efficiency. Instead, they use the trap to pounce on the new entrants when they arrive, actually bribing them to understand useless junk coins and tokens.

The customer's preferred KYC business is a wolf in sheepskin, they try to free you from the BTC, but they should free you from the custodian bank.

Bitcoin exists to eliminate hosted trust and provide a new circular economy.

We have to eat their lunch

Exchanges and other custodians basically act as the second layer of Bitcoin's original. They increase core efficiency, but the risks are: hacking on the exchange, exiting the scam, closing the account, censorship, and unexpected kyc requirements.

Fast forward to the present, we have developed a new model based on Bitcoin, namely the lightning network.

The Lightning Network is linked to Bitcoin and offers a new way of trading. It's faster, cheaper, and able to handle higher capacity. This is the first time we've really used Bitcoin in a peer-to-peer fashion, in real time, in a very, very different protocol environment where you don't need to provide trusted hosting to receive centralized services.

But the former NYA SegWit2X players mostly ignored the Lightning Network, the most notable exception being Bitfury and their Peach project. It is said that more than 50 companies hope that the size of Bitcoin can be expanded and support for biting bitcoin. Most of these companies now do not help in the development, financing, products or services of Lightning Networks.

I don't believe that fiat companies like Coinbase (companies that cater to those in power) can turn from bitcoin enemies to allies. They have made in-depth investments in national and traditional finances and adopted strategies to leverage their relationship with the government. They don't know how to design a new type of business that can actually benefit from providing utilities to Bitcoin. Fortunately, some of us really understand that we have to eat their lunch.

I am very excited that we can build everything on the basis of lightning. The fact that most VC-backed companies in Silicon Valley are not interested in lightning is embarrassing. We have a huge lead, but we need to start taking more purposeful and strategic actions to capture it.

 

Dude, it’s time to start the Bitcoin revolution.

Supporters of the big block like to ridicule lightning supporters, pointing out that the completion of the lightning network seems to be 18 months. This is an unfair point of view considering the progress we have made. It may be foolish to think that the programmable currency will always "complete".

However, we must be careful not to prove that they are correct.

In my opinion, Bitcoin and Lightning Network are at a turning point, and it is time to start the Bitcoin revolution. We must balance the endless manufacturing of technology with the endless manufacture of toys. It's time to start solving problems with people with actual products. It's time to stop making functions to showcase technology. It's time to start helping people break the rules with bitcoin, making lightning irresistible to businesses and consumers.

The war of deleting hosted bitcoin as a concept has begun. When I typed, the foundation of the Bitcoin circular economy has been laid. Pick up the hammer and come in!

We have always said that blockchains, not bitcoins, are stupid. We have been laughing at ICOs. But these projects continue to receive all the investment funds, and this situation is about to change.

 

Convenient bitcoin business

In this new economic era, a new bitcoin business is emerging that will address the following product cycle issues: Trust > Hybrid Trust > Trustless.

To date, many companies have focused on providing trusted services that require or encourage customers to waive their custody of coins. Lightning expands business opportunities, making hybrid, or temporary, trustworthy, and untrustworthy services possible.

I believe that this will lead to an environment in which smart entrepreneurs can identify the products that people need in the transition period from now to all businesses are not trusted. Over time, their products are new. The technical requirements are getting lower and lower.

Decentralization center

The Lightning Network eliminates the centralized trust aspect and creates a new impetus to leverage trust to reduce risk to pure inconvenience. This is a design tool that we can use. This is what the Bitcoin business has been waiting for.

Familiar with the concept of mixed trust: the temporary trust that companies gain through reputation and the motivation to maintain their reputation.

People need to believe that Bitrefill will provide a turbo channel when they buy, Bitrefill will provide the correct amount of bitcoin in their channel, and Bitrefill will forward any attempt to use that channel. But it all happened in an instant. Then, Bitrefill immediately provides access and lets you spend your coins immediately. If you are uneasy or a small amount of supplies can't pass your expenses, you can close the channel. You can opt out or join at any time, and Bitrefill will only have your BTC custody at the moment you purchase the channel.

The Thor Turbo channel can also follow the product path I mentioned earlier, from the services purchased on the Bitrefill.com platform, to the Bitrefill white label API service, to the local protocol services on each node, which are routed to open immediately. The new path can also be mapped.

Bitcoin has always been a push-based payment system, but lightning allows companies to be creative in this area because we don't have to violate the agreement to change the rules of new products and services.

Lightning network does not require consensus

The prospect of a lightning network is such that it allows sub-networks and external networks to interoperate. Although there is a BOLT specification process , it is only necessary if you want a feature to be agreed by the co-developer, rather than the user's unanimous consent.

The essence of Lightning Networks is a true peer-to-peer network that allows you to have special rules with any peer or group of peers. This is a feature that Bitcoin's bottom layer is not good at.

Lightning network protocol is market driven

Here's a recurring question I accidentally heard at the blockchain week conference in New York last week:

"When do you think they will increase the size limit of the lightning channel?"

"I think the Lightning Lab is ready."

I respect everybody in the Lightning Lab and the team. I saw many of them for the first time last week and it was a great pleasure to talk to them about business. I want to thank them, but I can't let this misunderstanding continue to develop.

There is no consensus on the lightning network. Instead, we have compatibility. This means that you can break the rules of most people, as long as there are other people who are motivated to break the rules with you.

If you want bigger channels, then make them bigger. You don't need a license, what you need is cooperation. You don't need consensus, what you need is motivation.

Let me tell you a little secret. Objectively speaking, Bitrefill is running the most economically relevant nodes on the Lightning Network and demonstrates the concept of Lightning Service Provider (LSP) in its early stages by creatively leveraging hybrid trust to provide utility to real consumers.

“Lightning payments currently account for 5% of Bitrefill’s unique payments, which is a 35% increase per month.”

People are very demanding of us and have high expectations for us. To a certain extent, this is the fault of our role as a lightning cheerleader in the media, but most of them are purely natural market demand behavior. Users are using our platform to protect real utilities.

I am surrounded by all this every day, and now all kinds of calm observations are becoming more and more obvious to me. We don't need to demonstrate trading as we do acrobatics, because everyone likes to connect to us. We don't need to question whether we want to do more with lightning because the market does have high demands on it.

We don't need to wait for permission to produce new lightning products.

Sounds terrible, isn't it? Bitcoin now has a playground, which is a big deal.

While decentralization is necessary to make Bitcoin work, there is no need to promote the practicality of Lightning Network technology.

Competition, cooperation, consolidation

I have seen many lightning projects, wallets, games, labs, and businesses emerge, but I hope to see some integration and collaboration for efficiency and user benefit. I don't want to use different apps for everything, and I don't want my favorite apps to be abandoned.

If lightning is a market for realization and service, it means that there are winners and losers. Entities are competing for the overall absorption of funds, users and networks.

These dynamics are already evident in Bitrefill. Some of our nodes are implemented using Eclair because other implementations do not support the technology required to provide Thor Turbo channels. For the same reason, buyers of the Turbo channel must use the Bitcoin Lightning Wallet on Android. Should Bitrefill lobby all wallets and implementations to add support? Should we submit a BOLT when we already know that some developers don't like this feature? Should we wait for Bitcoin users to complain to their favorite wallet provider for support? Should we take our own wallet and skip these concerns?

I'm not sure if this kind of collaboration will lead to integration or surpass competition in this environment, but I believe everyone will stay agile from all angles.

Since Bitcoin and lightning technology can evolve in line with market demand, we should be more strategic in choosing projects that invest time and money. Start thinking like product managers, UX designers, and business developers. Narrow down, plan, and conscious.

I hope that no one thinks this article is hostile to Bitcoin or anyone involved in the development of Lightning Networks. I tried to share my observations and hope they will accelerate the inevitability of Bitcoin.

If I have time, I will do a follow-up post to delve into the interesting product types, and if you take advantage of some of the unique qualities of Centralization and Lightning, you can create these products.

Or, I will leave these ideas to myself and go back to work!

Compilation: Sharing Finance Neo Editor: Sharing Finance Alian

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