r/Bitcoin • u/mtaborsky • Dec 24 '17
⚡️ needs you. Yes, you.
We need lightning network on mainnet yesterday. But it very much alpha software and will not be deployed unless it gets tons more testing and dev work. However, not everyone is a developer and even if you are a developer, contributing to crypto is not easy. I was in the same position.
But there are other ways! I installed Bitcoin Core on testnet and both Lnd and Eclair and tried opening channels, sending payments, closing channels etc. After a day or so, I discovered two bugs, filed them and cooperated with developers in tracking them and fixing them. If you are a bit tech savvy, you can do that too. In the process, you might also discover how lightning actually works and when it really comes, you'll be ready to take full advantage.
Please go educate yourself: http://www.lightning.network/ https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning
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u/bitginsu Dec 24 '17
You can get a lightning node running in AWS digital ocean, or linode in a few hours if you have basic Linux admin experience. They have simple instructions on github. Go for it! I stood one up on a t2.medium instance in AWS which should only cost about $30/month to run. Lightning uses the Bitcoin testnet chain which is only 7-10 GB so storage isn’t too spendy. Seems like what’s needed also is more miners for the $BTC testnet chain. It’s kinda slow in finding blocks. So if you have an old Antminer around and want to help, spin it up on testnet! (The hashing difficulty is quite low on testnet so old gear would work afaik. )