The Lightning Network goes on BTC Mainnet
The Lightning Network is a proposed scaling solution that may help cure the bitcoin core protocol’s transaction congestion and rising fees. The idea is to enable off-chain transactions and micropayments through a peer-to-peer network of bidirectional payment channels. Over the past six months there’s been a lot of testing using test-BTC. But lately, there’s been a big transition to main net experimentation and actual payments using real BTC. There is currently 931 mainnet LN channels and 356 nodes with variety of colorful names using real 3.863 BTC (42151.32 USD), according to current data
Lightning Network should reduce the fees by providing off-chain transactions and micropayments through a peer-to-peer network. However, the initial cost to open those channels and close them is quite big.
Lightning Developers Warn Against Mainnet Use
All the hype surrounding the LN protocol being used on mainnet, so some developers who work on the protocol are warning people not to use it on the real network. Lightning Labs CTO Olaoluwa Osuntokun has told people not to use LN on mainnet. The company’s co-founder Elizabeth Stark has also cautioned people who were testing LN on mainnet. With a nascent protocol that’s surrounded by a lot of hype, there’s a lot more work to do as far as trial and error on the live network.
Lastly, last week there’s been a few reports of LN bugs where one LN developer Rusty Russell experienced a bug and asked, “so, who was first to lose money on Lightning Network bitcoin mainnet?” Russell’s question was answered by another individual who experienced a bug sending a transaction as well. “Happened to my node too,” the person replies.
Happened to my node too. It didn't claim its own auto-close tx. Anyway, I manually tried to close the channel. cli said 'it's already ONCHAIND_OUR_UNILATERAL`, BUT it created another transaction (i/p from auto-close tx) and claimed the o/p of new tx.
— Samrat Gupta (@samratgupta) January 22, 2018
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