The lightning network was bombarded, and BM said its purpose was to "hijack the core protocol of Bitcoin"

In the past few months, many cryptocurrency supporters have praised Lightning Network (LN) as a "one-stop solution" to address BTC's existing scalability issues. At the same time, however, there are people like EOS founder Dan Larimer (BM) who believe that the technology itself has a series of problems.

Therefore, in this article, we will look at some of the key issues raised by BM and whether they are as serious as he said.

(Source: Virginia Tech )

Take a closer look at the problem

In a recent exchange with the Reddit Global Encryption Community, BM said that the purpose of the Lightning Network (LN) was to "hijack the core protocol of Bitcoin . " Not only that, but in his view, there are "a series of other problems" in the current LN framework, but due to "time constraints," he refused to elaborate on this.

In addition, it should be noted that BM is not the only one who holds this view, because recently cryptographer Peter Rizun also published a blog on Medium, highlighting some of the main issues related to LN, a second-tier extension solution. problem.

On this issue, he said:

“Lightning Network is a solution to high transaction costs and is only effective when transaction costs are low.”

Not only that, but Rizun continues to say that if in the near future (when the BTC blockchain is mainly dominated by blocks and high mining fees) the lightning entity/service provider begins to lose client funds due to a flaw in the existing technology framework, he Not surprised.

He went on to add that in the next 5 to 10 years, we may see LN operators take the following measures:

● Prevent customers from transferring funds

● Charge customers too high "routing and liquidity fees"

Due to the above issues, the BTC network may become more and more centralized.

Other important findings highlighted by Rizun

Technically, Rizun points out that LN payments below $0.02 are not “untrustworthy” – so we may see some issues related to this issue in the future. In addition, because Hash Locking Contracts (HTLC) are not well suited to small transactions, if a hacker can find a way to break through this vulnerability, some of LN's local security protocols may be severely compromised.

Finally, according to the current situation, the default minimum rate for LN is 10 nBTC/vbyte. Therefore, it is currently quite uneconomical to require "routed micropayments below the 2000 nBTC threshold".

Other notable questions

● Rizun and BM also stressed that Lightning Networks lacks “absolute trust”, so this expansion technology may not be the best solution for large-scale currency transfer.

• When it comes to LN, there is still a liquidity problem – so payment failures may become more common, especially as the technology continues to be widely used.

●Rizun believes that lightning hubs will magnify centralization issues, but will reduce routing and low liquidity issues.

At last

In addition to these criticisms, it should be noted that other developers who admire LN believe that although some issues surrounding this emerging technology need to be addressed, they are not primary and can be easily resolved.

BTC supporter David Harding said:

“Although lightning networks do have some problems, they are not worth worrying about right now.”

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