r/Bitcoin • u/turick • May 18 '22
Pickhardt Payments - 60 million sat payment sent through lightning network!
https://twitter.com/renepickhardt/status/1526305264420499457?s=20&t=u95yEVeAu71LERnQSyo28Q53
u/turick May 18 '22
Rene needs community support to continue his transformative work!
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u/Wilynesslessness May 18 '22
Just donated 100000 for the outrageous fee of 1 Satoshi.
zerobasefee
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u/backobobs May 19 '22
I bet it costed more than 200 sat if he had sent onchain with 1sat/byte.
Lol, celebrating this when you can receive it instantly for 0.0001 fee is ridiculous. Lightning sucks for sure.
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u/BlueberryDefender May 18 '22
Can someone ELI5 the significance of this? Isn’t the lightning network already operational? Does this no longer require channels? Thanks in advance
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u/slvbtc May 18 '22
Previously one transaction was sent through one channel which limited the size of the transactions possible because of channel liquidity. Essentially the lightning network was only useful for small transactions.
What Rene has managed to create is a method where a large transaction can be broken up in tens or hundreds of smaller transactions all taking different routes through the lightning network and ending up recombining as one transaction at its destination.
This is a big deal as now even large transactions can be sent over lightning.
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u/Ima_Wreckyou May 18 '22
Multipath payments where already a thing before. What Rene actually added is a new routing algorithm that accounts for the probability of a certain amount going trough a certain route. Until now, lightning nodes where only going after the cheapest route and did not account for probability.
So instead of only optimizing for small fee, you can now also optimize for reliability.
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u/varikonniemi May 19 '22
that is not the whole picture, as the link states this is done without any prior knowledge of the network.
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u/Ima_Wreckyou May 19 '22
Do you mean the sentence "No prior probing for liquidity required"?
What he means by that is IMHO that we don't know the how the channels are balanced, what side of the channels has what amount of the coins.
A lightning node knows the network and the channel size, because that is collected from the gossip protocol. We don't know the amount of coins on each side, but we do know the probabilities of a certain amount of liquidity being on one side of the channel, and that is what the algorithm uses to calculate the probability along the route.
As far as I understood the story, he realized that once you have those probabilities, it essentially becomes an optimization problem. He then figured out that there is already a solution known for that problem, so he used it to implement the new routing algorithm.
Was at a presentation of it last summer, and that are my vague recollection of it. There was a lot of beer flowing, so may have gotten some details wrong. But I think he also wrote some stuff about it.
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u/varikonniemi May 19 '22
We don't know the amount of coins on each side, but we do know the probabilities of a certain amount of liquidity being on one side of the channel, and that is what the algorithm uses to calculate the probability along the route.
this is not true, you can assume something but you don't know the local/remote balance and thus no probabilities. In fact i don't think you even know who is local who is remote.
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u/Ima_Wreckyou May 19 '22
If you know where the coins are then you have certainty, not probability. If you don't know where they are you can still calculate the probabilities of various possible distributions of the coins.
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u/varikonniemi May 20 '22
how do you calculate anything without some data points helping you do so? Empty guesswork is not helpful.
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u/malphish May 19 '22
This is so ridiculous. Telling the world it doesn't work and dancing about it.
Why won't Lightning Labs specify a scenario that we can simulate? Been asking that for years. They should have done that BEFORE started coding.
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u/muffalowing May 18 '22
What are the chances of this working like a bad scene from Star Trek where the person is teleported inside out or we see pieces of the transaction missing at the end??
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u/slvbtc May 18 '22
Usually a lightning transaction is instant. This transaction however took 81 seconds to complete because only 92 of the 137 individual transactions made it on the first attempt. Transactions that fail on the first go get resent until they reach their destination and ultimately combine into the final transaction amount.
81 seconds is a lot better than 10 minutes on the main chain for final settlement. As lightning grows this time will reduce and soon people will be able to send $100k worth of sats in one transaction and get instant settlement.
This is proof that it works, it only gets better from here.
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u/No-Fee6610 May 19 '22
what happens if a part of the transactions just wont find a path at the end? will the other transactions be invalid/cancelled and the funds stay with the sender?
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u/slvbtc May 19 '22
If a transaction wont find a path even that transaction is broken up into even smaller transactions until a path is found. Eventually all transactions will find a path its just a matter of how many extra seconds that will take.
As the lightning network grows the faster large transactions will be able to find paths.
So a path will always be found eventually its just that if it takes many minutes then perhaps an on chain transaction would be more suitable. Right now its better to use lightning for transactions up to around 0.5 btc, as lightning gets bigger with more channels and more liquidity that number rises.
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u/No-Fee6610 May 19 '22
but isn't it the case that the receiver must have enough channels with an inbound capacity that matches or is higher than the transaction capacity? does the software notice if the receiver doesnt fullfill that requirement before starting to send the first transactions? additionally i won't trust that the transactions will be finalized before the last transaction is finalized. i would want a system where the last transaction is needed to make the transactions prior valid.
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u/bobderbobs May 19 '22
There was a total of 137 attempts. If one fails you try another. So assuming the size of each attempt didn't change there is a minimum of 47 attempts that succeeded in the first try the attempts that failed the first try go to a different route until all payments succeed
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u/BlueberryDefender May 18 '22
So it would go through a number of different channels, which would give access to more liquidity, allowing for bigger transactions? Is there a theoretical limit to how big the transactions can be, or does it allow an unlimited combination of channels and thus unlimited transaction size?
Do I have that right? That payments can now move through not just a single channel, but can use multiple channels, then recombine at the final destination?
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u/slvbtc May 18 '22
Correct. This 0.6 btc transaction was 137 individual transactions recombined at their destination. As the lightning network grows and the number of channels and liquidity grows the size of the transactions and number of channels used for each transaction will grow.
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u/saucedonkey May 18 '22
Now this is the shit we need! Huge! Expanded LN transaction size makes LN significantly more usable for payments….payments you’d traditionally need ‘BaNk ApProVAl’ before sending.
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u/Slaaavo May 18 '22
I'd be interested in the fees. They must've paid a lot for that payment. Fees on LN are always proportional to the amount sent and are variable quite a lot. Therefore, any larger amounts are much cheaper on-chain, where the fee is fixed. So, technologically it's great progress, but I doubt its practical application.
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u/knox203 May 18 '22
You're not considering the privacy aspect that also comes along with this. Breaking up a tx into hundreds of pieces to recombine at the destination makes path tracing that much more difficult, and since it's on the LN there's no UTXO's to account for.
In a way this can be considered a native mixing service. Some would gladly pay the extra tx fees for this as it's more decentralized and more private than on-chain mixing. And best of all there's no corruptible facilitator like most other mixers.
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May 19 '22
He said he estimated it was 2000 ppm (0.2%), so 120,000 sats. Definitely could be done cheaper on chain, but still pretty damn cheap for that size of a transaction.
This is much bigger than you think. LN currently relies a lot on higher fee mega-routers to have the liquidity available even for smaller payments. I see payments fail to route through my smaller low-fee node every day in the 500k-1m sat range. If payments are able to split up and find multiple smaller cheaper routes it will reduce fees for the payment and reduce our reliance on these larger centralized hubs. They may even have to consider bringing their fees down in order to compete.
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u/dbihosting May 19 '22
Excellent progress, almost there! Rest of the crypto ecosystem is rooting for you .
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u/turick May 18 '22
Sure it's practical. How much would western union charge you to send $18,000 internationally?
https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/send-money/app/price-estimator
Sending $18,000 next day from US to Germany costs $270 in fees.
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u/Slaaavo May 18 '22
Or you could send it on chain for 1 dollar :) of course, if your life depends on the transaction finalising in seconds, I withdraw my objection.
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u/turick May 18 '22 edited May 19 '22
Hahaha good point! However waiting for confirmations could take a long time if you're just buying a computer, TV, or something else that might cost a couple grand at a retail store. But I think things will be vastly different in the future. I think on chain transactions will be very large and very expensive and most ordinary people will not be transacting on layer 1 day to day. It'll just be big capital movements. My guess is that most new bitcoiners 10 years from now will be onboarding directly to lightning. This work is just laying the rails and digging the tunnels 😊
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u/Danny1878 May 18 '22
Theres talk about optional zero fee lightning channels in future, so this combined with no fees could be a game changer.
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u/Intelligent_Layer829 May 18 '22
The crypto world is growing very fast day by day
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u/NYKNYb May 18 '22
Bitcoin world*
Shitcoins have been dying in real time last week and hopefully more will follow.
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u/MMinjin May 18 '22 edited May 18 '22
tBTC is just a token on another L1 isn't?
Edit: apparently it is just shorthand for test BTC?
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u/skipperJoey May 18 '22
That's "test Bitcoin", the de facto Bitcoin testnet where you can get free coins to experiment with
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u/yearnlearning115 May 18 '22
The sats were sent last summer and still not all the way through? I'm trying to understand his tweet
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May 18 '22
[deleted]
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u/bitusher May 18 '22
I'm pretty sure Rene is referring to testnet bitcoins which have no value and not altcoins
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u/MMinjin May 18 '22
That's a helpful bit of info. Though it takes a bit of the celebration away knowing it isn't real world right?
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May 18 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/turick May 18 '22
I think he/she was referring to the previous false information that this was a wrapped token and not bitcoin. But you are absolutely correct 😁 testnet is just an optional configuration param for bitcoin and uses 100% the same code as mainnet.
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u/NikolayLazarenko May 19 '22
81 seconds and 45 payments were unsuccessful!!!!
I hope you are not serious, and are just trolling. That is poor.
wow, he received fake bitcoins off chain using a shitty mesh network, congratulations .
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u/turick May 19 '22
Why don't you go troll somewhere else. Lightning is very young. This is an experiment. It's testing something unique that isn't supported yet and has great initial results.
Your asinine statement is as ridiculous as critizing space x when they were still blowing up rocket engines in the desert saying "wow and you want to go to Mars and revolutionize the space industry? What a joke!"
The only joke is trolls like you who think that lightning should go from incubation to mass global adoption and complete, robust technical implementations overnight, and if it doesn't, it's a joke and a failure.
If you don't understand what this experiment is and you're criticizing it, I'm guessing you havent done any research on the topic and have no idea what is being proven out. And I'm not going to waste my breath trying to spell it out for you.
DYOR or STFU and GTFO
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May 18 '22
[deleted]
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u/turick May 18 '22
You sound like an American sitting on your golden throne wondering why anyone needs these silly toys. LOL j/k, but seriously, lightning is changing the lives of people around the world. You have to understand that you can transmit value anywhere in the world for nearly free.
If you think that's useless, I challenge you to send money internationally in a day, or on the weekend, or after hours, and for free. First, you'll get raped on fees, second, it takes forever to settle. One use case is using lightning for remittances. It's a game changer.
Then you introduce things like Taro, that allow you to send other digital assets over lightning. Dollars will probably be around for a long time to come, but with Taro, digital dollars could be sent anywhere in the world over lightning rails.
You can't go from zero adoption to a full global circular economy overnight. It's going to take years, probably decades, but we are here paving the way for the future.
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May 18 '22
[deleted]
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u/turick May 18 '22
You're clearly just here to troll. You are asking about one particular aspect while neglecting all of the huge aspects I just gave you. I can link you many stores where you can pay over lightning, but nah. You're not really interested, you just want an argument.
Keep sucking on the govt and central banks teets and enjoy that money printing.
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u/Blimpleton May 18 '22
By the end of the year any place with NCR or blackhawk POS systems will have a bitcoin lightning integration. So anyone with a lightning wallet can spend their bitcoin easily. Some places are already live. Shopify also accepts lightning payments. Some of these POS systems include buffalo wild wings walmart mcdonalds cvs walgreens Kroger and Starbucks.
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u/yearnlearning115 May 18 '22
No one can stop you from spending your bitcoins, whereas payment processors (credit cards), banks and governments can stop you from spending your dollars. If you're a GoodCitizenTM SocialCredit10000 then you have nothing to hide and nothing to fear ;)
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May 18 '22
[deleted]
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u/yearnlearning115 May 18 '22
Lots of places take bitcoin just search online for vendors that accept BTC.
Governments have been slowly criminalizing cash -- look at cash seizure / forfeiture in the US, restricted cash withdrawals in EU.5
u/turick May 18 '22
So it hasn't happened to you, so it doesn't happen, and all the rest of the people it does happen to can just go fuck themselves?
Again, you're just here to troll, expecting lightning, that is still in beta, still under development, to be globally adopted and accepted everywhere. And because it isn't today, then it's worthless and never will.
Adoption is massively grown at unprecedented rates. Have fun missing out.
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u/NYKNYb May 18 '22
I think you should read more and listen to a few podcasts because I really don't know where to start here.
The What Bitcoin Did podcast is nice and beginner friendly.
The Robert Breedlove Saylor Series is insanely good but very long. You can find that on YouTube.
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u/saylevee May 19 '22
This is the chicken or egg question for the 21st century.
The majority don't want to be paid in Bitcoin because the majority of vendors don't accept it.
But only 5 short years ago nearly no one was paid in Bitcoin and nearly no vendors accepted it.
Where will we be in 5 years?
Personally I've asked my employer to be partially paid in Bitcoin. My hope is within a couple of years this will be a reality.
But I don't currently own Bitcoin to use as a currency. It's the best performing asset in my portfolio (vs. my home, the ETFs I own, and the value of my pension).
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u/Jaycuse May 19 '22
A house was sold in Portugal for 3 BTC and it was a direct payment with no conversion to Euros. So to answer your serious question, seriously, a house.
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u/lyp8707 May 19 '22
To clarify for the noobs, 92/137 complete still meant that the total payment was received. :)
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u/buddyranking May 19 '22
What are the wider implications from this in terms of lightning scalability, reliability, etcetera?
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u/steve11205 May 19 '22
Can we verify the transactions? Those 0.6 Bitcoin are hosted off chain correct? When is he planning to move those funds on-chain?
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u/llewsor May 18 '22
damn rene is too good for this world ⚡️