
Lightning on Stellar: Technical Spec and Roadmap - pknerd
https://www.stellar.org/blog/lightning-on-stellar-roadmap/
======
garyrob
Is there an advantage to Lightning/Stellar as compared to Lightning/Bitcoin? I
understand that Stellar has far better speed than Bitcoin, but with Lightning
being used as the transaction layer, does that speed difference matter?

~~~
agorabinary
Every single project I've seen that is looking into Lightning has simply
offered lofty promises and roadmaps but without any compelling advantage of
Lightning on their coin as opposed to Lightning on Bitcoin. If anything, they
have a big hurdle to overcome - Bitcoin's first mover advantage with regards
to LN development. PLEASE correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I have seen
99% of off-chain development progress has been Bitcoin/Litecoin, with other
coins simply following the progress made and hoping to change a few parameters
to make it compatible with their coin.

And the speed difference you mention is an important point - so many of these
coins have acted as artificial capacity surrogates during Bitcoin's scaling
woes. But with LN, I don't see their use at all...

~~~
tgtweak
I feel the same way about most new coins trying things out. Bitcoin just has
to sit and wait for it to show promise (and stability) before integrating it
and invalidating that coin's only differentiation.

Even things like smart contracts can be integrated into Bitcoin (I believe the
Bitcoin Cash camp is working on this)

~~~
pmorici
The Bitcoin Core developers have been openly been hostile toward the smart
contract use case. They even went so far as to change the size limits on
Bitcoin's OP_RETURN op code in order to screw over Counterparty one of the
original smart contract implementations. Vitalik Buterin, the creator of
Ethereum, is on record saying that the whole reason Ethereum exists as a
separate thing instead of a system on top of Bitcoin is because of the
contempt the Bitcoin Core developers showed toward the smart contract use
case.

~~~
throwawaylolx
Bitcoin has RSK (and Szabo)

~~~
pmorici
RSK (RootStock) relies on side chains. Side chains still have unresolved
issues before they can be used for real.

~~~
throwawaylolx
That's true, but I merely intended to say that there are plans to introduce
smart contracts for Bitcoin, and there is considerable support for this.
Naturally, this is intended as a second-layer solution.

------
polyomino
What’s the point? Stellar is centralized.

~~~
otoburb
I think anybody can run a Stellar validator node[1], somewhat akin to anybody
being able to set up a full Bitcoin node.

Ripple is completely centralized in all meanings of the word, and a lot of
people confuse the two since Jed McCaleb is a shared founder between the two
projects[2]. Having said this, the Ripple Foundation has tried to dispel this
notion and claims that they have a roadmap for the Ripple ledger to become
more decentralized[3], so perhaps it's fairer to say that Ripple is
centralized today but in the future plans to become less so as they try to
onboard 3rd party validators.

IBM seems to have stood up a large proportion of verified Stellar validator
nodes[4].

[1] [https://www.stellar.org/developers/stellar-
core/software/adm...](https://www.stellar.org/developers/stellar-
core/software/admin.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_McCaleb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_McCaleb)

[3] [https://ripple.com/dev-blog/decentralization-strategy-
update...](https://ripple.com/dev-blog/decentralization-strategy-update/)

[4] [https://dashboard.stellar.org/](https://dashboard.stellar.org/)

~~~
staplers
Anyone can deploy a node, but who owns 97% of the tokens?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6bi958/ripp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6bi958/ripple_was_100_premined_stellar_was_97_premined/)

~~~
ewzimm
That information may not be accurate, but either way there's confusion between
two related things: Stellar and lumens.

Stellar is the technology which anyone can use to create tokens which may or
not be exchangeable for other types of tokens created with Stellar. You can
control 100% of the supply of the currency type of your choice within Stellar.

The lumen is the native asset of the Stellar network intended to stabilize the
decentralized network. This is mostly pre-mined. Its intended use is as a
bridge to facilitate exchanges between different currency types. An
inconsequential amount of lumens are used as transaction fees (less than one
hundred-thousandth of $0.01) to fight spam.

------
hahainternet
Perhaps someone could help me.

Lightning seems quite sound in theory, but I have misgivings about the order
in which a fresh transaction is signed, and the secret to the old transaction
revealed.

It would seem that by interrupting this chain before both old secrets are
revealed, the attacker could safely claim all coins in the channel.

I'm probably wrong, but I'd like to know why.

~~~
fiatjaf
No one can close a channel before some given deadline, preset at the time of
its creation.

By the protocol, the deadline for all relevant operations on the channel is
set to before the channel close date.

~~~
amenod
So how does the system know what time it is? Host time is not reliable.
Genuinly curious.

This is the reason why Ethereum contract usually set start time, end time and
similar in block numbers. Block number is reliable while timestamp is just a
local time of the miner that mined the transaction in which the contract call
was included.

~~~
TD-Linux
Timestamps in the block header. These timestamps are used to regulate the
proof of work to maintain a block interval, so in the end both measures have
the same time accuracy.

------
jlrubin
Author here. Happy to answer any questions about our protocol design.

~~~
nunyabuizness
Can the final transaction to the network (that closes a channel) be a series
of transactions? In other words, can a state channel allow for transactions
with more than 100 operations?

~~~
jlrubin
Actually, as a quirk of the design, the final transaction MUST be a series of
transactions which are 'conflict free'.

For instance, if the close gives Alice 10 lumens and Bob 10 lumens, these must
be expressed as two transactions. Otherwise, if Bob deletes his account, this
causes a conflict when the transaction is published (and the transaction will
fail). If they are two separate transactions, there is no problem if Bob
deletes his account.

~~~
nunyabuizness
Thanks for getting back to me!

> if the close gives Alice 10 lumens and Bob 10 lumens, these must be
> expressed as two transactions.

As in, in this case, closing requires two transactions, Escrow -> Alice and
Escrow -> Bob?

Can closing allow for more than n transactions, where n is the number of
participants in the channel?

------
clafferty
I'm currently looking into Nano (formerly Raiblocks). Coincidentally they've
also just released their updated roadmap at the same time.
[https://developers.nano.org/roadmap](https://developers.nano.org/roadmap)

At the moment it appears like a lot of cryptos are jumping on the lightning
solution, I'm curious to see if Nano can compete with them by avoiding
lightning all together.

------
homakov
Who decided that "BUMP_SEQUENCE operation" should be implemented? Was there
onchain governance or it was a authoritarian decision?

------
fiatjaf
Isn't Stellar cheap and fast enough to not need any Lightning Network at all?

~~~
runako
Compared to other cryptos, Stellar is fast. Compared to credit card networks,
Stellar is very slow.

If one of their goals is to replace credit cards and other money movement
mechanisms (as I believe is the case), they need to speed transactions up
significantly.

~~~
thinkloop
The question then becomes what the point of Stellar is

~~~
staplers
To give the original creators (who pre-mined something like 17 billion tokens)
a giant amount of money.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6bi958/ripp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6bi958/ripple_was_100_premined_stellar_was_97_premined/)

~~~
EastSmith
Unlike Ripple, where the pre-mined tokens are held by individuals, the pre-
mined stellar tokens are owned by Stellar Development Foundation, a nonprofit
corporation.

Here are some quotes, but do check the link bellow too:

"SDF manages the execution of lumen distribution, with oversight and direction
provided by SDF’s Expansion Board. The initial lumens held by SDF are required
to be distributed to the world in the following manner:

50% for distribution via the Direct Sign-up Program

25% for distribution via the Partnership Program

20% for distribution via the Bitcoin Program

5% held by SDF to support operational costs"

[https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/)

~~~
proofofmoon
How much control does Jed McCaleb have over this foundation?

------
SirLJ
Keep the cash for lawyers...

