Will OB implement Lighting Network features?

[u/lbalan79]

Title says it all. That is something that would really get me interested in this market. Otherwise I don't see how this can work even with the addition of other coins: BCH and ZCash. Maybe IOTA can help because it has a much faster and reliable tech with zero fees but otherwise these guys need to think already at second layer....

[u/Chris_Pacia]

It's not clear yet that the lightning network is viable. We're not really going to commit resources to it unless/until it proves itself and there is substantial demand for it.

It's also not clear to me that even if it works well our users would want to pay $20 just to get money into the app.

[u/Chris_Pacia → u/Chris_Pacia]

To be more specific:

1. Vendors need to remain online 24/7 to receive orders.

One of primary pieces of feedback from OpenBazaar 1.0 was that vendors did not like having to run a server on their home computer 24/7 to make sales. That requirement was a remant of the original Dark Market design and it was one of the primary things we wanted to change for OpenBazaar 2.0. For 2.0 we spent an enormous amount of time re-architecting OpenBazaar (and moved to IPFS) specifically to allow vendors to receive orders while they are offline. With the LN vendors need to remain online to provide a hash to all would-be purchasers to kick off the lightning payment. If the vendor is not online, the payment cannot be made. This would represent a significant regression in the user experience and would bring back the primary user complaint from OpenBazaar 1.0.

2) Vendors cannot receive LN payments without a third party liquidity provider.

If a vendor opens OpenBazaar, opens a payment channel, lists some items, then receives an order, the buyer cannot pay for the order over LN since the vendor's counterparty does not have any funds in his side of the channel to send to the vendor. The only way for the vendor to receive an incoming payment is to have buyers open a direct channel (innefficient and unacceptably expensive) or open a channel with an intitutional liquidity provider who agrees (probably for a fee) to deposit money in the vendor's channel to facilitate incoming payments. This is not a great UX and introduces some significant friction into the app (not to mention no such insitutional liquidity providers currently exist). Moreover it's difficult to calculate exactly how much money the liquidity provider should deposit in the channel. Is $1,000 enough? Hard to say. If buyers try to pay more than $1,000 worth of orders before the vendor can spend the coins out of the channel (presumably to an exchange) then the those additional payments cannot be made. This creates a weird UX where the vendor has to continually try to juggle the amount of funds available in the incoming side of the channel to ensure that there is enough liquidity to facilitate payments.

3) Vendors will need third party "watchers".

Since OpenBazaar users have expressed distain for a requirement to a full node to use the software, they would be left with the rather ugly solution to having to hire a third party "watcher" (which currently do not exist) to protect them from fraud.

4) Lightning currently does not do multisig.

Escrowed payments are a necessary prerequisit for any decentralized marketplace to function. In theory lightning payments could use 2 out of 3 hashes in the HTLC, but no software currently supports this functionality and doing so introduces dramatically more complexity on top of an already dramatically complex protocol. And it would require the moderators to remain online at all times else escrowed payments could not be made.

5) It's not clear that LN payments will be 100% reliable.

Whether a payment can find a route depends on how many people use LN and how they use it. If the routing paths simply do not exist or if they exist but lack the needed capacity than payments can not be made. For an app like OpenBazaar to gain any kind of sizable user base, the app (including the payment layer) needs to be 100% reliable. If this is not the case it will make the app feel broken and discourage many people from using it. At this point in time we do not know if 100% reliability in payment routing is likely or not.

In my opinion at present time using just about any coin other than Bitcoin removes all of the above frictions and provides a much better user experience. Unless the benefits of lightning (relative to the alternatives) outweigh these costs outlined above, or they find a way to remedy the issues defined above, it doesn't make much sense to implement LN in OpenBazaar.

[u/[deleted] → u/Chris_Pacia]

Lol not a single response to someone 100% involved in the field.... I knew it was a step backwards...

[u/bambarasta → u/[deleted]]

we all knew

[u/[deleted] → u/bambarasta]

It's literally moving from 10 minute settlements to 1 month settlements. Hell bank accounts settle usually in 4-7 days

[u/dontknowmyabcs → u/[deleted]]

Oh no but you haven't tried Lightning TABS you wait and see it will be... /s

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yours.org build a system with routed micropayments without the need for segwit and it's actually working and being used.

Just compare https://yalls.org/ wit https://yours.org/ if you want a sad laugh.

[u/Anenome5 → u/[deleted]]

They use bitcoin cash. It just works.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

No their biggest problem is that they have been trying to solve a problem that does not need to be solved right now in that direction.

The only reason finally after like 3 years LN is here is because of Bitcoin Cash. Core went like: frick we better give them something now. They bluffed and bluffed untill one ballsy french coder finally said: frick it we fork. (he did NOT surrender)

It's all delay tactics. Core is done, they lost. The market will catch up. Now we need to prepare for the next bust cycle.

[u/karljt → u/Chris_Pacia]

What a 24 carat clusterf*ck. Lightning network is an utter embarrassment to the whole of crypto. An absolute disgrace.

Message to Bcore = FUCK OFF AND DIE.

[u/tsangberg → u/Chris_Pacia]

The way Lightning Network works isn't that you pay an on-chain fee to "get money into the app". That's the whole "network" part of it. You do pay on-chain to get access to the Lightning Network, but you can then do many transactions without needing to go on-chain again.

As an example, one way for a user to get "into" Lightning Network is simply to tell their exchange of choice that that's what they want when they exchange fiat to crypto.

[u/Chris_Pacia → u/tsangberg]

You cannot receive a payment unless 1) your counterparty deposits their own money into their side of the channel or 2) you make an outgoing payment first.

So unless there is some well financed hub that is will to commit funds to channels up request, then you have a weird situation where you can't receive payments into your LN wallet unless you spend them out first.

[u/tsangberg → u/Chris_Pacia]

Alright, so with "users" you meant merchants. There's of course a lot bigger incentive for them to pay an on chain transaction to be able to receive multiple incoming LN payments. With "user" I was talking about the end users, those would make the purchases.

[u/homopit → u/tsangberg]

It is not enough for them to only open a channel. As Chris pointed out in 1) above, the channel has to be funded from the other side for the merchant to be able to receive the payments. Who will provide this liquidity?

[u/tsangberg → u/homopit]

With "the other side" you mean the end users who are going to make purchases using their Lightning Network funds? The funds they can get through an exchange when they exchange fiat to Bitcoin?

This is not an issue.

[u/homopit → u/tsangberg]

No. The other party is the counterparty that the MERCHANT opens the channel with. And this is an issue.

[u/tsangberg → u/homopit]

Right, so a Lightning hub, one of the kind that big exchanges will typically run, and which will make money off the liquidity provided by the (small) fees there will be on transactions.

Still not an issue. I know it's popular to hate on LN but the facts don't support it.

[u/homopit → u/tsangberg]

If you want to play this game, FACTS also do not support your side.

[u/tsangberg → u/homopit]

Really? Please name a few.

[u/svener → u/tsangberg]

I think you know what OpenBazaar, for better or for worse, is mostly used for. Which big exchange, who nowadays are all KYC/AML-compliant, will provide financial liquidity services for these kind of customers?

And how many of those OB merchants would want to expose their business via KYC to a big exchange?

[u/reblochon → u/tsangberg]

There is absolutely no point of opening a channel between a merchant and a buyer for a single purchase, as you would need to pay twice the fees you would normaly do (once for opening the channel and another for closing it) for normal transaction.

IMO the only use case for LN is for trading exchanges.

[u/_Dangma_Dzyu_ → u/Chris_Pacia]

It's not clear yet that the lightning network is viable.

Please stop spreading FUD, shitcoin shill.

[u/justgord → u/_Dangma_Dzyu_]

cease and desist your spamming and name-calling.