Don’t Sleep on Lightning \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Don’t Sleep on Lightning versionone.vc/dont-sleep-on-lightning/

635 sats \ 15 comments \ @swami 10 Jun bitcoin

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Jun

Up until late August, Lightning Labs had capped the channel capacity and payment size for users of their popular implementation of the network to ~$2000 USD and ~$500 respectively to better protect user funds with experimental software.

When I see articles talking about LN in USD terms... I just laugh and stop reading anymore the rest of the article. Those OP are still living in the fiat mindset and will NEVER understand what is the role and the goal of Bitcoin.

FUCK'EM'ALL those that are still doing that. FFS over Bitcoin network we transact ONLY satoshis not dollars or any other crap fiat currency !

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @swami OP 10 Jun

I knew there was a channel size limit, but I did not know there was a payment size limit. Is that true?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 10 Jun

you don't get it... is about talking in USD and not in sats. There's no limit in opening channels.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @swami OP 10 Jun

I do get what you are saying.

wumbo limit is 0.167... BTC not usd

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @MaxAWebster 10 Jun

I haven't read this in a while! @south_korea_ln, you're absolutely right that this deserves a longer follow-up examining what I got right/wrong and how my opinions have changed.

I did write another LN post in Oct '21. But even that is now dated.

A few high level points that come to mind immediately:

I wrote OP paper in 2020 when I was working for another fund which focused on Ethereum and DeFi. At the time I was mostly into BTC, but did not yet have 100% conviction as I currently do. I was also trying mightily to get my fund interested in LN development, which was surprisingly challenging given how well they were doing (on paper at least) with DeFi projects like Uniswap
I eventually developed enough conviction to go all in on BTC/LN and launch my own fund in 2021 dedicated to investing in the ecosystem. Since then I've invested in >40 companies in the space and have never looked back :) At some point soon I'm planning to launch an updated website with all of my portcos. It's been really rewarding to invest fully in what I believe in
I'm still super bullish on LN though growth has been a bit slower than I imagined. I now see it increasingly as the glue between many different BTC neobanks (e.g. Cash App)& mints. I'm particularly bullish on ecash mints (Cashu and Fedimints) connected via the Lightning Network. @rodarmor was the first person to turn me onto this idea. Note I still do hold hope for non-custoidal LN scaling to the masses at some point
I'm particularly bullish on Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) as the messaging layer for LN payments. I should have a new post on this soon
An area I've changed my mind on is how LN will interop with identity/data. Originally, I thought an LN pubkey would be universal identity for the Internet. And that BTC would grow in layers: BTC > LN > data. Similar to what @dhruv & @ryanthegentry discussed at the BTC Conference in 2021. I now think that Nostr will provide the pubkey identity and that the data will be transferred via Nostr with attached LN payments. Or as Dhruv explains nicely, I'm now more bullish on putting the payment inside the data rather than the data inside the payment.

Although in the long run, who knows?

Longer piece necessary, but TL;DR, I'm now bullish on a stack where:

Bitcoin is value
LN (+ ecash) is payments
Nostr is identity + data

Here's more on why I'm so bullish on Nostr as the identity/data layer: https://hivemind.vc/identity/

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @0fje0 10 Jun

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Looking forward to that longer piece.

putting the payment inside the data rather than the data inside the payment

I haven't seen this phrasing before. I like it.

121 sats \ 7 replies \ @south_korea_ln 10 Jun

I'd love to have the author (Max Webster) revisit this 2020 opinion with how things have developed over the last 4 years.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @swami OP 10 Jun

What do you think has been the biggest development in lightning over the last 4 years?

302 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 10 Jun

In random order of importance:

Splicing
Better path-finding
Huge improvement in payment success rates
Realization that LN isn't perfect, yet is the best working thing we have
Increasingly being used for large transfers between big players rather than the misguided early marketing focusing only on near-free small payments

I'd say the biggest development is that hype has been replaced by realism, which is usually a good sign as most maturing technologies go through such phases.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 10 Jun

I'd say the biggest development is that hype has been replaced by realism, which is usually a good sign as most maturing technologies go through such phases.

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 10 Jun

Suddenly remembered where I heard his name before: Hivemind, a Bitcoin-focused VC company.