A discussion about layers \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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4496 sats \ 32 comments \ @Majjin 8 Jun 2023 bitcoin

Over time, there seem to be more new layers being conceptualized and built on top of Bitcoin. I wanted to list all the ones I know here. Some of them everyone is pretty familiar with and are quite old. Others just recently came into being within the last couple of years. What do you guys think of each of these layers. How scalable are they? How private are they? Which ones are likely to win out in the long run? Which are you most excited for?

Feel free to post about any other layers projects/concepts I may have missed.

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612 sats \ 8 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 8 Jun 2023

I'm still excited about the improvements to Lightning to come. Splicing will be game changer for user experience, and async payments ("offline receives") as well. Hopefully later this year.

Fedimint for ease of onboarding should be pretty powerful too.

50 sats \ 7 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023

wen eltoo?

53 sats \ 4 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 8 Jun 2023

I'm not holding my breath or getting excited about anything that requires a soft fork. It's hard enough waiting for things that could be done today to actually hit the market.

260 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 9 Jun 2023

Two weeks ago, in a episode of the @kr show, Maxim Orlovsky (not sure if he is on SN) mentioned why he thinks "Lightning takes so long to adopt all the new things".

We've been for ages talking about channel splits; about channel factories. And they are kind of happening but still they haven't happened for the last 3 or 4 years. Things like Lightning offers (BOLT12) or messaging in Lightning network like they one used by Sphinx chat, they are being discussed to be merged as a standard for already more than 2 years. This all takes longer than the Taproot itself in Bitcoin. The Lightning network which is not a consensus layer network so it can evolve, it doesn't require to be ossified. The Lightning network which was created with an idea of being reckless, quickly in the ???, iterate, experiment even not being afraid of failing, it ended up being more ossified than Bitcoin layer one. That is the funny part. And one of the reasons for that is the way how the standards are structured and how the governance over these strong standards are made.

What do you think about this?

Link: https://youtu.be/Zbk9714iBUc?t=623 (Timestamp: 10:23)

1066 sats \ 1 reply \ @TonyGiorgio 9 Jun 2023

There's some truth to that. My opinion:

There's tons of competing priorities with those mostly* in charge of maintaining the popular lightning implementations. And part of that is normal maintance, improvements on existing features, bug fixes, and non-protocol related features. Normal stuff you'd find anywhere, not to mention many other priorities not directly related to the specific lightning implementation. Like supporting services like Loop/Terminal (lnd), greenlight (cln), and phoenix (eclar). There's existing stuff with existing users to support at a pretty large scale as lightning is already.

It's not about ossifying, nobody wants that and they all improve things on the protocol level at the pace they can support, taking into consideration their level of interests in any few of the many enhancements that exist.

One of the exciting things about LDK's role in this is that they at least can take a step back and not have to maintain user-side binaries. Libraries focused on the protocol work and leave user support to developers. There might be some trade offs but I think in general it's the right approach letting protocol experts in this space focus on protocols, especially if that's where they find the most enjoyment. It's such a gift to have them and for them to excel in that area, and I think we'll see some great protocol enhancements we've been waiting for come out of it soon.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 9 Jun 2023

Well said. Thanks for this great explanation. As always.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @shibe 8 Jun 2023

Which is why I'm so excited about Hierarchical channels. It's a proposal that could add channel factories/multiparty channels without a soft-fork, while still keeping penalty transactions (unlike LN-symetry on eltoo).

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2023-March/003886.html

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @rijndael 9 Jun 2023

now it's "LN Symmetry"

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 9 Jun 2023

Ah so there's one thing that changed about it in the last 5 years

406 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 8 Jun 2023

Don't forget state chains, softchains, handcrank, drivechains and omni lol layers on layers

357 sats \ 7 replies \ @nerd2ninja 8 Jun 2023

What I look for in Bitcoin scalability layers is:

Rug pull risk Rehypothecation risk Attack vectors

Then the very last thing I look at is convenience. Why? Because I firmly believe convenience can be scripted out even if the spec seems inconvenient at first glace.

Right now, lightning on top of Ark seems to be the way to go.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @rijndael 9 Jun 2023

I'm coming around to Ark for lightning nodes (with less frequent pool transactions)

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @jk_14 8 Jun 2023

Ark would be really expensive, calculate the cost of on-chain tx every 5 seconds...

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @nerd2ninja 8 Jun 2023

5 seconds is a suggestion Burak made because he wanted it to feel as fast as lightning, but I:

Believe Ark is useful only for opening and closing lightning channels
Foresee that batching being 1 every day (not 5 seconds) or just adjusted based on what the lightning channel creators (LSPs probably) are needing for those variables to be.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @jk_14 8 Jun 2023

the very last thing I look at is convenience

And there is no bigger mistake than that... ;)

"Technology pioneer and guru Steve Jobs had a profound understanding of the importance of UX. He held the belief that technology should either be beautiful or remain invisible."

https://cointelegraph.com/news/from-barrier-to-breakthrough-solving-ux-can-catalyze-mass-adoption-of-crypto

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @nerd2ninja 8 Jun 2023

I fucking hate Apple products
There is a lot of human misery involved with that approach

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 9 Jun 2023

But UX matters for widespread adoption though

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nerd2ninja 9 Jun 2023

Do it right first.

Its like I was saying, I'm of the belief if you do it right first, the UX stuff can be scripted out.

158 sats \ 0 replies \ @OriginalSize 8 Jun 2023

Most excited for what's working today and which has clear trust requirements. Lightning is best for quick payments and Cashu for easy onboarding with bitcoin-denominated value.

158 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Jun 2023

I will always remind you this...

https://i.postimg.cc/sXmH6BvR/vader-power-dark-side.jpg

64 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 8 Jun 2023

There's also sovryn, rgb, and taproot assets. I'm sure there are others depending on what we mean by layers.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @IanMalcolmPhd 10 Jun 2023

To understand layers deeper (and how bitcoin is superior to gold), Layered Money by @NikBhatia is an excellent read. (linked in case he ever joins)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryptoquick 9 Jun 2023

Good list. Also bullish on RGB.tech and Carbonado.io. Arguably, Nostr is a social layer, similar to Venmo, Cash App, or Strike (for sending and receiving payments to identities)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinosphere 9 Jun 2023

Blockstream's ElToo is an interesting one. It goes between L1 and others like lightning, Making them L3. It's whole purpose is just boosting scaling but it would do a great job at that.

https://blockstream.com/eltoo.pdf

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Maximux 9 Jun 2023

Of those I only knew Lightning Network and Liquid Network😱

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Busybe3z 8 Jun 2023

𝐇𝗼𝐰𝐝𝐲 𝐝𝗼 ? 🤠 👋

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @lpop4254 8 Jun 2023

any layer gonna to change the consysn f*ck it , we had enoght from tapwizard ,faciliting the ordinal sheet ,the dev are failed in the tapwizard

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @om 8 Jun 2023

Inscribing info into blocks was possible from the genesis. "Chancellor on the brink of the second bailout", you know.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @lpop4254 8 Jun 2023

I know ,I said taproot facilities the ordinal shit , so the taproot was a failure so the dev making this failure by implenting it in the consys