pull down to refresh
21 sats \ 23 replies \ @Scoresby OP 20h \ parent \ on: Arké Wallet: Ark wallet using second.tech implementation - Christoph Ono Design
If there were a lot of people using ark (or statechains)...they might not need so much to rely on lightning. Just as getting sats from lightning to mainchain meant closing a channel in the early days, things like Ark haven't been built out very much.
There is certainly an element of first-mover advantage here: if Ark was proposed at the same time as Lightning, I'm not sure what the landscape would look like today. Lightning benefited from a long run of everyone treating it with kid gloves. Maybe it needed that to get to the place it is today -- pretty sturdy, reliable, and impressive.
I agree that calling these other things a replacement for lightning is silly. And no doubt there is a lot of shady marketing going on. But I'm still interested in what people can do with them because Bitcoin is an open system and people will build whatever they like. Some of it will work, some will not, and a lot will work in ways we didn't expect.
But I'm still interested in what people can do with them
Scams, gambling casinos, tokens, stablecrapcoins and all that plethora of bullshit.
reply
yes, but also receiving while offline and low-balance receiving or small amount receiving when you don't already have a channel open. The latter especially is something that lightning has not solved, but it is a legitimate use case.
reply
also receiving while offline and low-balance receiving or small amount receiving when you don't already have a channel open
Ark solves neither of those things, trust and centralization do. Lightning can do the same thing if wallets were to compromise themselves, Ark is just re-branding being compromised.
reply
Please tell me if I have this incorrect:
In LN, if I want to receive a low amount of LN sats and do not already have a channel open, custodial is pretty much the only way to go. Someone who does have a channel must receive the sats on my behalf and I have to trust them. If I keep receiving, I will eventually be able to open a channel, but I will have to pay for it (onchain fees + potential purchase of liquidity).
In Ark, if I want to receive a low amount of Ark sats and do not already have a vUTXO, I can still receive sats as a new vUTXO. Now, what is this thing? Does it have unilateral exit? if it's less than ~200 sats, certainly not. If I keep receiving, I will eventually have enough sats in vUTXOs to be able to unilaterally withdraw; however, this won't necessarily impose a cost on me until I withdraw.
In neither case am I talking about receiving sats from a different protocol or from mainchain. While I agree that it's not self-sovereign as the main chain, it also doesn't seem like the above description fits "re-branding being compromised" any more than LN.
reply
In LN, if I want to receive a low amount of LN sats and do not already have a channel open, custodial is pretty much the only way to go. Someone who does have a channel must receive the sats on my behalf and I have to trust them.
Correct
If I keep receiving, I will eventually be able to open a channel, but I will have to pay for it (onchain fees + potential purchase of liquidity).
Mostly correct.
You haven't received anything yet until its on the chain under your control. You could also spend back your side of the zero-conf trusted channel to a swap and pay the chain fee that way.
Same as you would pay to exit or swap out of an Ark.
I can still receive sats as a new vUTXO
No, you haven't received anything, the Ark coordinator received it with their liquidity and then opened a zero-conf channel with you, exactly as with the above LN example.
Does it have unilateral exit?
Only at the same point in time as you could have opened an LN channel, roughly the same footprint on-chain.
impose a cost on me until I withdraw
Chain costs are incurred when you use the chain for security, same as the LN example, you either upgrade the channel to a secure one, or exit entirely via a swap.
There is a point in Ark where you can have the ability to unilaterally exit your balance while deferring the cost to do so, it's the same cost realized at different times. The trade-off to deferring is that your future receives are still trusted, as they come through Ark's swap bridge. You're trusting them to issue invoices that actually credit you until such time you leave it and use a Lightning channel directly.
The entire premise of Ark scaling or making Lightning better is the insinuation people will defer exit costs forever and do trusted receives forever, that the Ark is a roach motel.
reply
and let's mention also that many of these "unilateral exists" from Ark will be made through a swap ark to LN... So we are back to the same thing, somebody have to prepare that channel to receive from the swap.
reply
I haven't seen them conflate unilateral exiting with LN, but wouldn't surprise me, their scamming seemingly knows no limits.
The ability to unilaterally exit is an entirely on-chain thing as it's the base chain chain security that makes things unilateral.
reply
something, something...
I wonder what will be that "out of the box" thing, if not a swap service ?
So in the end the Ark user will still have to open a channel with the ASP in order to get out of the vUTXOs LOL, instead of making it more simple, is getting even more complicated for a noob.
This will be such a mess.
Thanks for the info.
The entire premise of Ark scaling or making Lightning better
I want to throw this idea out (as I think you do as well). I should have been more clear in my comment above:
I am assuming a case in each example (LN and Ark) where the user who is new and only receiving a small amount of [what goes here? -- not real sats, not real bitcoin, IOUs?] is receiving them from a user on the same network.
So, in the LN example, the LN user is receiving from another lightning user. In the Ark example, the Ark user is receiving from another Ark user.
Currently, Ark is barely used, so it's far more likely that a user would receive LN sats. But in the case where Ark is more widely adopted (which is how I always thought it was being pitched), the Ark user might be receiving from other Ark users...in the same Ark
Aha. I think I just understood one of your criticisms: Ark users in the same Ark may have similar trust assumptions to LN users; however, if an Ark user is paying another Ark user in a different Ark they have to use the main chain or LN to transfer value. This distinction is something I haven't been thinking about: all LN users are more or less on the same network. The same can not be said of all Ark users. In fact, it can only be said of Ark users using the same Ark.
In the case where payments are made between users are in the same Ark, do you feel that it is still a trustodial waste of time?
reply
is receiving them from a user on the same network
Not really an appropriate framework, one is an open-network, the other is a closed network.
LN users are more or less on the same network. The same can not be said of all Ark users
Bingo, this ties back to the end of my previous comment, their entire premise is that the Ark is a roach motel and all activity will go through them, a centralized entity running a closed network.
do you feel that it is still a trustodial waste of time
Yes, much of Bitcoin's value, and all of Lightning's value, is in it being an open network with no central point of failure or trust needed to enter.
Closed networks are centralized applications, which is why they're leaning now into the "DeFi" nonsense as their latest narrative pivot. The use-case for in-Ark payments is user-to-user within a given application, like a shitcoin exchange that has its own network effect of buyers and sellers.
DeFi is a scam word unto itself because there's no actual decentralization.
Entry into their closed network is inherently gated in the case of LN, because of the swap. I don't believe this is the case with on-chain, you could make a sufficiently sized on-chain payment to enter it (paying a chain fee up front). But if you could afford to make that chain fee up front to enter, you for the same cost have just opened a Lightning channel.
reply
Yes you are getting closer.
Keep in mind that all the moving around in a ASP are just virtual sats, aka IOUs, same as cashu let's say. But cashu is more simple because is linked directly to LN (no need for any swap), but yes is a custodial.
Only when you get out of that ASP, onchain or LN you get real sats.
reply
do not already have a channel open, custodial is pretty much the only way to go
No. Take example of how Blixt, Zeus is doing and also Shockwallet. You can have a JiT channel (just in time). The LSP is taking care of opening the channel. And these are the 0-conf channels we were talking about.
And this procedure can be tuned even more to make the newbies experience even smoother.
reply
but if you are only receiving a small amount (say less than 100 sats), what channel can possibly work for you? It doesn't matter if it's jit or 0-conf. A channel isn't a channel if it's not big enough to cover fees, right? (Possible, too, that I totally misunderstand how this works)
reply
That depends of the LSP.
For example Blixt is opening from start a max 400k sats channel.
The interesting part will come when LND will support splicing too. As I said, we are barely scratching the surface of LN, many new things are expected to come soon.
But the cost of liquidity will always be an issue. Because LN is also an economic flow of capital.
And that's why LN will always be THE payment network of Bitcoin.
reply
but aren't those different use cases than I'm talking about?
I'm interested in the newbie who wants to receive a few sats fast. For instance, if they were on nostr or here on SN and I want to zap them.
I agree that custodial is the easiest and smoothest way to do this.
But there is still a lot of friction in the move from custodial to their own channel. Zeus does a great job, but somehow the user still is going to have to deal with a fee when the channel is set up, and then more fees if they push their liquidity all the way to one side of the channel and they may want to know why they are paying it and then it really gets confusing fast.
I'm curious if Ark makes that experience better. First small receive is not self-sovereign. You can't get to the chain with just a few sats. But I'm not yet convinced that the centralization trade-offs ark makes are absolutely worthless.
Again, for me is very clear: Ark will always depend of LN to go out in real world to make payments.
Yeah maybe will be few solutions for merchants to use vsats only with other ark users inside an ASP, but that will make them just an isolated niche.
And as usual I have a prepared meme.
reply
Yes. I understand this better now. Basically, Ark needs very large and widespread ASPs or it has to use LN.
I shouldn't be calling it Ark so much as Arks. There isn't any single Ark like there is a single LN network. I think I knew this, but I wasn't thinking about the implications.
Maybe there is a world where Arks pay each other onchain in batch settlements once a day or something, but it starts to look even more like custody at that point.
reply
Ark is copying somehow the same concept as Liquid. Think it like that.
reply
also i get your meme now.
reply
We already have hosted channels, 0-conf channels, cashu etc
There are many ways to onboard "zero sats" noobs.
Do you know that I can open a 0-conf channel with your node and in an instant I can send/receive sats without even leaving a trace onchain and never close that channel?
Zeus also have a nice onboarding strategy: with the graduating wallet 0-sats user start with cashu, stacking slowly.
When the balance is high enough the user can open a 0-conf channel with the LSP or any other node and have a proper LN channel.
But very few people are studying all these aspects and use cases.
Few years ago I did an experiment with a school. Onboardingn an entire school kids and teachers starting from zero sats.
I used a LNbits, a bunch of empty wallets and opening 0-conf channels. In few days they start having each some sats, without knowledge, without buying any sats from exchanges, only from an ad-hoc bitcoin circular economy. And nobody says that LN is hard to use !
reply
if Ark was proposed at the same time as Lightning
It'd have been laughed off the stage as the centralized trust-based nonsense it is, since then we've been over-run with DeFi-brained clowns and unprincipled VC's that pivoted from Shitcoins 1.0 to Shitcoins 2.0
reply