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309 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 2 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: Update on Lightning Network mempool issue bitcoin
One thing that occurs to me is that there might be a difference vulnerabilities with LN as it exists in practice (quite highly centralized; few people running nodes; custodial solutions dominate) vs LN as it could exist in theory.
That's definitely a recurring theme.1 Most protocol people will tell you (not on their websites or loudly in public) that you probably shouldn't be opening lightning channels to untrusted nodes. They've done their best to minimize the risks of certain low-medium probability attacks but they have not neutralized them.
The ideal requires trustlessness. The reality is Block and many of the other big players are establishing channels only after forming legal contracts with their channel partners.2 Others have designed their infrastructure in such a way that, for their use case at least, they've solved the risks inherent in the protocol.
Lightning before or after Antoine's disclosure is not a perfectly trustless scaling solution.
To be the cynic ...
It's an occupational hazard but I tend to weight opinions by the opinion holder's incentives/history. Fact is lightning companies (many of which are approaching late stages) have incentives to minimize bad news. Even bitcoiners broadly have incentives to minimize bad news about our primary scaling solution.3 I'm not saying that they are meaningfully minimizing bad news here, but there is undoubtably at least some low velocity PR spin going on.

Footnotes

  1. You're describing the cause of most disconnects when discussing product IME. Opinion holders all have an opinion on product quality Q but Q is expected to change at some time t in the future where Q(t) is probably a sigmoid. I've found that when earnest people disagree unproductively on Q, they are usually holding a different t. ↩
  2. Not exclusively for theft prevention I imagine, but they undoubtably have clauses about that. ↩
  3. I'm included in this group. I'm weary of even myself. ↩
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402 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 2 Nov 2023
The ideal requires trustlessness. The reality is Block and many of the other big players are establishing channels only after forming legal contracts with their channel partners.2 Others have designed their infrastructure in such a way that, for their use case at least, they've solved the risks inherent in the protocol.
This point is so interesting! I'd never considered it in this way, but it makes sense, and is consistent w/ everything I know about reality and how systems change. Whatever btc is or becomes will be tied with a million tiny threads into what exists now. These LN operators can make legally-binding contracts, and that is useful in certain ways, so of course they do, and in this fashion the system morphs into something even more complex and layered, with its own virtues and vulnerabilities.
It has never been the case, in anything I'm aware of, where the existing thing, no matter how corrupt, just got shit-canned, and you started fresh. Not after the fall of Rome, not after the nuking of Japan. The new is built on the rotting flesh of the old. It's so hard to think clearly about this, and yet it's right there, in the open, dominating everything.
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