Scaling Lightning: To El Zonte… And Beyond!
The path forward for Bitcoin is clear, with a revolution in the ability to transfer value occurring right in front of us.Here’s a philosophical question for Star Wars fans: when Luke fired two proton torpedoes down the thermal exhaust port and destroyed the first Death Star, was it the end of the story or the beginning? On the one hand, the Rebel Alliance had won the battle and was safe after that shot. They even had an awards ceremony. Cue John Williams. On the other hand, that shot really irritated the Galactic Empire and drove them to scour the galaxy for vengeance, setting off the next....
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While bitcoin has run-up to all new price highs in 2020, a great number of crypto supporters have been complaining about the mempool backlog and the high fees needed to send a transaction. Meanwhile, the Lightning Network is far from seeing widespread adoption, and a number of attack vectors have been revealed this year. At the time of publication, the Bitcoin (BTC) mempool (backlog of transactions) shows 113,000+ unconfirmed transactions and the backlog hasn’t been this high since 2017. When the bull run took place three years ago, transaction fees and unconfirmed transactions shot....
In order to develop into a protocol usable by the entire world, certain scaling improvements for Lightning need to be considered.
The Lightning Network is a design improvement for Bitcoin that could allow users to make micropayments in a decentralized manner and help the entire network scale more efficiently over time. While this proposal has received a large amount of attention in the Bitcoin community, there is another, similar option currently in development by C. J. Plooy. Plooy recently gave a presentation on his alternative implementation, Amiko Pay, at Scaling Bitcoin Montreal. During his talk, Plooy noted:"If you look at the basic design of the Lightning Network -- a network of payment channels. This is....
Lightning has seen major growth as Bitcoin’s medium of exchange scaling solution, but is still in its infancy stage as companies build on top of the protocol.
For the vast majority of Bitcoin Core contributors, the Lightning Network is viewed as the best option for scaling Bitcoin to many millions of new users. But the system has not yet been implemented on the Bitcoin blockchain, which has left many to wonder whether it is wise to put so much hope and reliance behind an untested solution. At a recent event at the Coinbase offices in San Francisco, Lightning Network creators Joseph Poon and Tadge Dryja gave a presentation on their design for scaling Bitcoin via a generalized network for payment channels. During their talk, Dryja and Poon....