My first adventures with Lightning Network! ⚡⚡
My first adventures with Lightning Network! ⚡⚡
Bitcoin
The one, the only, the original. The grand daddy of coins, the unkillable honey badger. The Apex preditor of money. The crypto of Dragons. We all know it.
(image generated with Midjourney, used with permission)
Bitcoin will never die.
Old fashioned?
"But Bitcoin is old and slow!" you say "It's crusty and old fashioned, and my Derpcoin gets 20 billion transactions per second!"
Nope! Bitcoin was smart, and kept layer one slow, so that nodes could be light weight and the coin could stay decentralized. I'll admit it took me a while to wrap my brain around this.
Instead, a layer 2 was created, called The Lightning Network!
The Lightning Network! ⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡
The Lightning Network is a second layer protocol that runs on top of Bitcoin that allows for fast and cheap transactions. The transactions can be instant or nearly so, and transaction fees are very tiny, fractions of a penny.
In Lightning Network, you create a "channel" which is a transaction on the main bitcoin network. In this channel, you can transact as much as you like, at some point, the channel could be closed, which is a transaction on the main network that will settle funds and move them to the correct addresses.
Finally tried it out
This Lightning Network has been around for a couple years now, but it's been in beta and still being worked on, and it's been hard to use, improving, but hard to use. I finally found something easy and tried it out.
How I did it
I used Alby, which is a web browser plugin that makes it pretty easy.
https://getalby.com/ Get it here. With Alby, you have a choice to link it up to a variety of lightning wallets, the easiest is just to pick the default Alby wallet.
Careful, the default Alby Wallet is custodial
I will note that the easy option is also custodial, meaning that Alby is holding your coins for you, so keep that in mind and only keep a small amount of coin in it. The non-custodial options look like they require a bit more work, I will investigate them, and hopefully describe one in a future post.
(The logo of Alby)
Alby is fully open source:
https://github.com/getAlby/lightning-browser-extension
How to fund your wallet
Once you have your lightning wallet set up, you need a little bit of coin in it. How to do that? Of course there are a lot of ways, but there is a very easy way for a person in Hive to do it.
V4Vapp
There is something called the V4Vapp in Hive that let's you trade between Hive/HBD and Bitcoin lightning sats.
https://lnd.v4v.app/
I've used it a couple times, and it's pretty cool. Written by @brianoflondon. Please vote on his hive proposal for development of this app.
https://peakd.com/me/proposals/244
Fun with Lightning
Once you have this funded app going, you can play around with Lightning. You can tip people, convert money between Hive and Bitcoin quickly. Try out some apps, like Nostr, Stacker.News, Lightning Poker...
Happy Lightning!
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Read this post at lightning speed.. The innovation on this service looks interesting. Could try it out in the future and any project done in opensource surely is treading on the right path. Well done @brianoflondon
This is so nice to know about the lightning and thanks for sharing.
I was sleeping when it happen, I got the notification when woke up at 5 am
BTC is the granddaddy of all coins no doubt 🙂
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you have to try it then because if it allows us to make transactions much faster as well as cheap, it deserves our full attention. Lightning Network also already the name alone is very striking
Pretty cool, I had already been shown this option to exchange Hive and HBD with BTC, but I didn't pay much attention, so my attention was elsewhere. However I knew it was something I was going to come across later on and your description has been very neat. I am now quite clear.
pd: already voting for the proposal
This is good to hear. I follow @brianoflondon so I've kept up with what he's doing (and I've already voted on his proposal), but he usually talks over my head on how this all works. lol It's nice to see a simpler explanation of the steps needed to use this. I'm definitely planning on trying it. This post just got me a couple steps closer.
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I guess Ethereum seems to be more slower than bitcoin
Full non-custodial Lightning is hard because it truly means running your own node which is an always on always connected server and managing channels.
The best halfway house is the Breez phone app which does manage to run a node on a phone and you hold the keys.
https://breez.technology/
However I really don't recommend going down the Lightning rabbit hold of running your own node unless you really have some time to devote to it. Actually having a node which is useable requires a significant investment in time and BTC to have enough liquidity to do useful things with it.
Sup Brian, hope you're well!
The Lightning Network seems easy to apply to tip both in Bitcoin and in Hive. In addition, added to the fact that transactions are faster and safer
i voted on the brianoflondon proposal and best of luck to him in the development of the app
I've heard of the lightning network but knew nothing on it. This post gives a beginner friendly explanation of how it all works, thank you sir.
Woohoo 🎉, i really love how you fully described Bitcoin as the grand daddy of coins, it is indeed very factual in all aspects...
With the word lightning network, it is quite easy to detect it is associated with speed and allows faster transactions...your testimony of it will make thousands of people want to give it a try...
This is indeed great and beautiful, welldone 🚀 sir and kudos to brianoflondon.
Honey Badgers are insane creatures. V4V is great, I already used it too. I would really like to shop at some stores or eat at some restaurants that accept payments through the lightning network, but it might be difficult to find places like that in Central Europe. It seems that European Union laws really try to protect traditional banking for daily interactions.
Pretty much use lighting daily on Fountain App. It works great 👍