Lightning Network?

Ideas
#1

Hello,

I’m big fan of Lightning Network. I’m also the author of lightningnetwork.pl and “Lightning Network Polska” on facebook.

Would it be easy to introduce LN to NEM? Do you think this is good idea, and generally what do you think about LN?

#2

Hello!

In my opinion, LN is the product of Bitcoin’s inability to Scale! Creating a Smart Contract that allows fast payment between always the same two or more people is supported in NEM’s core with its Multi Signature Accounts right a way. Nevertheless, I find this topic very interesting and here is a small comparison :

  1. Instant Payments: NEM has a 60 seconds block time target. This is already a big difference to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes blocks. Have you tried the NanoWallet? I am quite sure this can be qualified as Instant Payment – correct me if I’m wrong. Not sure what NEM implemented about zero confirmation transactions. Would appreciate some details here.

  2. Lightning works by creating multi signature “channel bitcoin wallets”. You can create such wallets right on the blockchain using NEM! Using NEM for this scenario you would create a Multi Signature Account “payment-channel” with 2/2 co signatories. Those cosignatories are the accounts “channel-bob” and “channel-alice”. And it all stays on-chain.

  3. Scalability: NEM is testing its Catapult release at 3000 tx/s from what I read. It is being developed with high standards (the already released features confirm that.) and I do not fear anything like bitcoin’s scale inability happening with NEM. I would love to see more in-depth studies about NEM’s scale ability as I’m no expert at that.

I would appreciate any comment on this and I am only an observer of the LN features, I do not want to blackmail here, just trying to conceptualize LN ideas with NEM logic :slight_smile:

Have a good day!

1 Like
#3

Hey, thanks for answer! Off course NEM is great crypto and it is even hard to compare with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is just a prototype in the world of cryptos. As a Java developer I like also that NEM is written in Java. I also looked into source code and it looks really nice. Much better than NXT. So NEM is really great, but it doesn’t mean that NEM don’t need Lightning Network.

Why? Because all transactions just can’t be on-chain. This is very inefficient.In comparison to Bitcoin’s 3 tx/s this is great achievement to be able to do do 3000 tx/s but this is not enough for entire world. Only Visa can have over than 30000 tx/s in some peaks (during holiday). World needs millions tx/s. With LN you could achieve not thousands but billions transactions per second. And they would be really instant and almost zero cost.

This is simply impossible to make currency that stores millions tx/s in the blockchain but what is even more important - this don’t make sense. Do this really make sense that few thousands nodes stores replicated information that you payed $5 for coffee?

Do NEM has ability to make turing complete smart contracts? Then it will be no problem to cooperate with LN in the future. LN requires not only multisig addresses but also hash time locked contracts.

1 Like
#4

Hello!

Interesting thoughts. I agree I missed the micropayments part of LN and these are pretty important to my opinion too, let’s have someone else give his 2 cents here to clarify this using nem.

NEM is really easy to build on! Meaning you can see NEM as a plug and play blockchain in that matter, that it is very easy to develop services around the blockchain and/or using the blockchain. So I imagine projects like LN would indeed be needed someday and I really don’t think there would be a problem. But again, for the “Turing Complete Smart Contracts”, I’m no expert as well as for Hashed Timelock Contracts.

All I can say about this is that I haven’t seen any scenario yet that I couldn’t at least conceptualize with NEM, maybe give a more detailed description for these contracts questions and let’s wait for someone else to clarify about the Micropayments part. @jabo38 maybe?

#5

There is description:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hashed_Timelock_Contracts

Basically what is needed is ability to lock founds until someone provide number corresponding with hash.
And also what is needed is ability to lock founds for some period of time

#6

Such scenario is absolutely possible only with Multi Signatures Accounts:

  • Consider a scenario where Charlie wants to withdraw his XEMies from your app to his own account.
  • your app requires Charlie to Authenticate his own account by answering a Riddle (or uploading a passport copy, etc…) before the withdrawal transaction gets authorized.
  • For the Withdrawal, your app creates a MultiSig with 2 out of 2 cosignatories being Charlie-on-your-platform and your app. (“Charlie on your platform”, means the account on your app where Charlie has the money to be withdrawn)
    • Then your app requires Charlie to do whatever is needed to be Verified.
    • When charlie has solved the riddle, uploaded his ID, or whatever…, your app saves Charlie’s third party account as Verified.
  • A signing bot will now see that Charlie’s has verified his withdrawal account and can then sign the Withdrawal Transaction that Charlie issued, only now the funds are sent to Charlie’s external account

This way, the funds are locked until your app’s multi signature accounts unlock them. This provides with numerous possibilities of locking. You could also build something more automated…

  • Charlie wants to withdraw XEM from his wallet on your app.
  • For this, your app creates a MultiSig with 2 out of 2 cosignatories being Charlie and your app.
  • Your app can send a Transaction to Charlie with a message of “3+3”, and only if Charlie sends the Withdrawal transaction with “6”, will your bot sign the withdrawal transaction!

I’m sure you get the point! Hope to help .)

I’m writing these “concepts” without thinking exactly about the details, i simply want to unleash the NEM beast when it comes to compare with “Bitcoin forced technologies”. Bitcoin has proven itself inadequate in such situations, and forced people to build complicated work arounds. NEM comes with a very simplistic approach, and to close on this:

  • no offense to anyone with LN or Bitcoin, I am very amazed to all the academic work, etc. But I like to remind of the importance of simplicity when it comes to new tech :slight_smile:
#7

Wanted to bring this issue again with the perspective of time.

It is not logical for a blockchain to hold each and every payment and transaction.

What is Nem current view on this matter?