0:00 The topic is Lightning Network, the good, the bad, and the ugly. 0:04 And does that mean that each of the people on the panel represent one of those things? 0:08 I'll let you guys be the judge. 0:11 Grant is going to host it. 0:14 And he had the easiest name to remember, but it's not written on here, the last name. 0:19 What was it? Cook, Grant Cook. 0:22 He's from Litecoin Underground. 0:24 He's the host of a weekly Litecoin Twitter or X spaces and the first Litecoin podcast. 0:30 He is a longtime Litecoin holder and user with a goal of fostering a fun, positive community for Litecoin. 0:36 And Vlad Costea, they're going to introduce themselves. 0:40 And Paul Sztorc and Joel Valenzuela are going to all introduce themselves as Grant Cook interviews them all. 0:48 So please give them a warm Litecoin welcome. 0:52 Keep clapping all the way until they get seated or else it's really awkward on the video. 0:56 Keep clapping until they get seated. 0:59 Yes. 1:05 All right, that is the RAND. 1:07 If you guys aren't familiar with me, my name is Grant Cook. 1:10 I host Litecoin Underground. 1:12 Space is every Wednesday. 1:14 And RAND is one of our followers. 1:16 So I recognize a lot of people who have come in here. 1:18 I just want to thank the Foundation for having us. 1:20 We're doing an interesting topic today. 1:22 But I'm just going to have these guys go down the line, introduce themselves and kind of what they do. 1:25 So Vlad, if you want to start. 1:27 Yeah. So this panel, is this working? 1:29 I think it should be more here. 1:32 Bring it up. 1:33 OK, so this panel is called the good, the bad, the ugly about the Lightning Network. 1:37 Well, who are you? 1:38 I'm the one who's supposed to defend the Lightning Network. 1:40 So I guess I'm the good. 1:42 Who's the ugly one? 1:46 What do you do? 1:47 You have a podcast, right? 1:48 Yes, I host the Bitcoin Takeover podcast. 1:50 I have been doing this for five and a half years. 1:52 Paul is actually sponsoring me, but today I'm supposed to fight him. 1:55 Yeah, that's true. 1:56 I don't know. 1:57 It's like a conflict of interest there. 1:58 Yeah. 1:59 And Vlad just recently created a Litecoin version of his magazine. 2:04 If you can, go out there and check it out. 2:06 It's beautiful. 2:07 Only 50 of them were printed and 13 of them were signed by Charlie. 2:11 And you can get them for one Litecoin. 2:13 So you better FOMO. 2:14 Yeah, yeah. 2:16 Very cool. 2:17 Very well done. 2:18 And Joel Valenzuela, your claim to fame is living on crypto, right? 2:23 Yeah. 2:24 Among other things. 2:25 Yeah. 2:26 Hey, everyone. 2:27 So my name is Joel Valenzuela, and I've been in crypto around 12 years now. 2:31 But for the past eight years, I've been living unbanked off crypto. 2:35 Currently, I do biz dev and marketing for Dash. 2:38 And I also have my own podcast, as if we needed more in this space, 2:42 called Digital Cash Network. 2:44 And I'm proud to be an occasional guest of the Litecoin Underground as well, 2:48 which is kind of my claim to fame here. 2:51 Yeah. 2:52 And Paul? 2:53 Yes. 2:54 I am Paul Sztorc, founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs and creator of 2:58 Is this not working? 2:59 Is this going to be good? 3:00 Moving on? 3:01 Let's see. 3:02 You guys hear everybody? 3:03 Lift it a bit. 3:04 Lift it? 3:05 We'll just hold it? 3:06 We're good. 3:07 Does that have something to do with my hands? 3:08 Paul Sztorc, founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs, 3:12 and creator of Drivechain, which is BIP300-301. 3:15 And that's a pretty important project that I'm going to be talking about, 3:20 I think, at three later today, if we're still on schedule, 3:23 if the schedule didn't change. 3:25 And I also am a big – now I'm a big critic of the Lightning Network. 3:30 I wrote this article, Lightning Network Fundamental Limitations, 3:33 like two and a half years ago. 3:35 And ever since writing that article, 3:37 people have been copying the points and even the format and even the title. 3:42 They have panels that are like lightning limitations and stuff. 3:45 That's a very common thing. 3:47 And so they invited me to come speak on this panel topic. 3:52 Yeah, well, so the reason, I mean, and I think it's kind of worth saying, 3:55 right, this is the Litecoin Summit, and people would say, 3:58 well, the Litecoin Lightning Network isn't really doing anything 4:01 because it's not needed yet. 4:03 So why do you want to talk about Bitcoin lightning at a Litecoin summit? 4:07 And, you know, my thinking about bringing this topic up was that 4:12 we get a little preview into the future, that if we get to see 4:15 how is lightning performing on Bitcoin today, 4:19 does that tell us something about how it will perform on Litecoin in the future? 4:23 What are the limitations? 4:25 What are some things we should be maybe aware of? 4:27 Should we have as much focus on it as Bitcoin has had? 4:32 Or should we stray from it, right? 4:34 I think this is kind of a weird thing. 4:35 I mean, Lightning Network, I think the whole reason that one of the good things, 4:42 it's good for Litecoin that the Lightning Network is such a failure 4:46 because if Lightning Network was so great, 4:48 then we wouldn't have this great BitPay stat that so many people are actually using. 4:53 They can't use BTC, so they just turn to something that works, which is Litecoin. 4:59 And if the Lightning Network worked, that would almost be terrible, I think, for, 5:03 I mean, I'd like to throw that idea out there, perhaps. 5:08 Well, let's do the good, the bad, and the ugly, 5:11 because I think it's a nice way to present this. 5:14 And Vlad, you know, you are what I would say the most entrenched, 5:19 at least you used to be more in the Bitcoin maximalist culture 5:22 where lightning was the primary scaling solution 5:26 and it was the greatest thing in the world. 5:28 It was going to make everybody have free self-custody forever. 5:32 That didn't come to fruition, I would say. 5:35 But what are some of the things you think that has been successful on the Lightning Network to date? 5:41 Well, if you join the Nostr echo chamber, 5:45 you're going to see that people send each other tips pretty much every day, 5:49 very small amounts. 5:50 It's custodial. 5:51 I think custodial Lightning has some use cases, and it's interesting. 5:55 It's against the reasons why I got into Bitcoin in the first place. 5:58 There seems to be a subset of users who are just fine with having a custodian 6:03 because they believe if it's a Bitcoiner who's custodying the funds as opposed to a business, 6:08 they're going to be more honest. 6:09 But honestly, there are some reasons to not believe in this. 6:13 Also, I remember back in early 2018 when Lightning finally made it to a main chain. 6:20 It was actually on Litecoin. 6:22 And I ran a node back in the day, and I did some testing. 6:25 It was with eCurrencyHudler. 6:27 I'm not sure if he's here, but he was one of, if not the greatest educator in the history of Litecoin. 6:33 And he helped me set that up, and then I burned my SSD because of that. 6:37 So I actually do have some proof of work behind trying Lightning so early on. 6:42 And all of that expertise that was generated, 6:48 all the feedback loop from having Lightning on Litecoin was taken to Bitcoin. 6:53 Because Charlie, if he's here, he's probably outside, but he is an investor in Lightning Labs. 6:58 So Lightning Labs, when they had their LND software, they tested that on Litecoin first. 7:04 So the first main net transaction for the Lightning network actually happened on Litecoin, 7:10 which to me is interesting. 7:12 And on the long term, I think if we're going to see the Lightning network growing, 7:17 and I think it will, even if we get Drivechains, 7:19 maybe those are going to be a good way to onboard people to Lightning. 7:23 Who knows? 7:24 Lightning is very chain agnostic, so you can have cross-chain situations where you swap. 7:29 They're called atomic swaps. 7:31 And on top of this L2, you can have these decentralized exchanges that take no fees, 7:36 and you can build markets with that. 7:38 So Litecoin can actually take the best implementation of Lightning from Bitcoin and perfect it. 7:45 Right, right. 7:46 Also, Joel, these are the good points. 7:49 You're the bad, I guess. 7:50 No offense, Paul. 7:51 You can see where this is going. 7:53 Joel, what do you think? 7:55 I could be the ugly if people want. 7:57 Because the utopia that was sold was, yeah, these millions of transactions, fee lists, 8:01 everyone keeps control of their coins, you get enhanced privacy, 8:05 like all the things you love about Bitcoin, but even better. 8:08 That's what was kind of sold for seven years. 8:10 What has prevented that from coming to fruition? 8:14 Yeah, to answer that really quickly, I would say it's structural. 8:18 It's never going to happen like that and never could happen like that because of the structure. 8:22 But I'm not going to come here as a Lightning critic. 8:25 I'm more of like a realist who thinks it has applications in its place. 8:30 So also for context, I've heard about Lightning since a long time ago, 8:36 and then when it actually kind of started to roll out in the 2021 type era in kind of a usable way, 8:43 I decided, you know, I've heard all the arguments, 8:46 it's going to work, it's going to do everything, 8:48 and then you got the Bitcoin cash mostly side of things saying, 8:51 oh, it's a big scam, centralize this and that, 8:53 and I'm like, well, I don't actually know, so I'm going to use it. 8:58 So I ran on my own Lightning node, right, 9:01 and experimented with that and ran that for a few months, 9:04 asked for help all over the community, 9:07 bought liquidity channels from BitRefill and things like that 9:10 and just kind of took a deep dive into it as an actual user 9:15 and also used a lot of the more popular, what they call non-custodial Lightning wallets, 9:20 like Phoenix, for example, is always my go-to breeze as well. 9:24 And I think that the Lightning network largely works under two models, 9:33 which it seems like it's been packaged and sold for neither of these two. 9:39 The one model is that I think was closer to what was originally envisioned, 9:44 might have been, is the more peer-to-peer model 9:46 where everyone will run their own node of some kind, 9:49 everyone will open and close channels all the time, 9:53 that kind of model that would require a lot of on-chain scaling to work. 9:59 And that model, in my opinion, would only work if, first of all, 10:03 you had just significantly more on-chain capacity. 10:06 It would reduce the amount of on-chain transactions by a certain amount, 10:10 but not dramatically. 10:12 Instead of for every five, six, seven Lightning payments, 10:17 you'd have to make an on-chain transaction. 10:19 So it'd cut those down, but you'd still be using a ton of on-chain transactions 10:24 to open a channel. 10:25 Let's say I want to send to Vlad, 10:27 or we're transacting back and forth, we have a channel, 10:29 but then I need to rebalance it every once in a while, 10:32 I'd open a new transaction, or then with Grant or whatever. 10:36 That model can work, but again, 10:38 it doesn't work with the on-chain scaling limitations of Bitcoin. 10:42 The difficult part, too, with the payment channel concept is that 10:46 how often do you really have two-way payments going on with somebody you know? 10:51 It's either I'm paying my rent, 10:53 it's all going in one direction every single month. 10:56 It's not like my landlord is sending me rebates for some reason. 11:00 So having these kind of cooperative payment channels 11:03 doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. 11:06 Yeah, it can in some things. 11:08 Obviously, like the bar tab type situation. 11:10 Let's just say I've been paying Vlad back and forth for whatever, 11:15 and then I decide, oh, I'm going to open a tab at the bar, 11:18 and every time I get a new drink, I pay for it instantly with Lightning. 11:23 And then I don't actually settle on-chain until the end of the night, 11:26 and then Vlad's like, oh, I'm going to buy one, too, 11:28 but then he just piggybacks off of our channel to do it. 11:31 Small cases like that can, again, reduce the amount of on-chain transactions, 11:35 but not substitute for them. 11:37 That's the big thing, is it's sort of been pitched as a substitute. 11:40 If you can substitute them, that's when the other model comes in, 11:44 which is what they call the hub-and-spoke type model, 11:47 which we've started to see happen a lot. 11:49 A lot of Lightning adoption has happened through institutions, 11:53 like, for example, Coinbase, Kraken, all these big things. 11:57 One of the more popular wallets, the Async, the Phoenix wallet, 12:01 connects to this one mega-node that routes everyone's transactions through. 12:06 And unfortunately, I can't really use Lightning anymore 12:09 because after I shut down my node, I was only using the Phoenix wallet, 12:13 and then they don't service U.S. customers anymore 12:17 because of money transmission issues. 12:20 And so now it kind of got shut out of that. 12:23 But the point is, those big kind of hub-and-spoke models 12:26 where everyone has a Lightning service provider, 12:30 like a bank account, kind of, but with semi-self-custody, right, 12:34 where you have funds in a channel that you can sort of force close 12:38 and you can at least steal it. 12:40 Today you do, but we don't know if that lasts. 12:42 Yeah, so that's the other model that, again, I think can work. 12:46 I think it requires a bunch of trust tradeoffs. 12:48 I don't like that world. 12:50 But that's another model that Lightning could be optimized to use for 12:53 because then the only on-chain transactions are just people, 12:58 like Coinbase and Kraken, rebalancing their channel 13:01 if they have some issues with, like, liquidity on one side. 13:04 I don't think it will work for either of those, 13:06 and I think that it's like the puzzle really, though. 13:09 By the way, before we launch into this, 13:11 I'm not saying it's the most ideal situation for this. 13:15 The puzzle is, given how broken it really is, 13:18 why does everyone still talk about it? 13:21 And I just think that the actual answer to that is just 13:24 that people have invested so much of their ego 13:27 or even VC money, et cetera, 13:30 so much of the brand of so many different companies. 13:33 A lot of people have, like, some people have, 13:35 not to name names or whatever, but certain companies, 13:37 they have, like, a whole Bitcoin section 13:39 and they have, like, a whole Litecoin thing on the top of their web page. 13:42 So people, it really is like a bizarre kind of psychosis 13:47 where even people have started to use the word lightning 13:50 to describe things that are completely 13:53 and totally unlike what, you know, 13:56 the inventors had in mind. 13:58 There's something that doesn't use HTLCs, 14:00 a custodial lightning. 14:01 Custodial lightning being the perfect example 14:03 of something that is, 14:05 that doesn't even use Bitcoin at all, 14:07 is just an account on a website. 14:10 It's just a number. 14:11 It's like Bitcoin in name only. 14:12 There's no, yeah, there's no HTLCs, 14:14 there's no Bitcoin, 14:15 there's no promise of getting your money back at all, 14:18 but people will call that custodial lightning 14:21 with a straight face. 14:22 And so then it just broadens the category 14:25 of what is considered the lightning network further 14:28 and then you have all these weird other problems, 14:29 like Wallet or Satoshi or whatever getting pulled 14:31 because it's not actually crypto, 14:33 it's not actually Bitcoin at all. 14:35 They just pull the, they just, people complain 14:37 and they say this person is running an unlicensed bank 14:40 or whatever, which they are, 14:42 and then they pull. 14:43 So you're going to be, 14:44 obviously I'm going to let Paul be the ugly solution. 14:45 Yeah. 14:46 My question to you, 14:47 so there's trade-offs, there's compromises, 14:49 I think if we're looking at the original intent 14:51 of Bitcoin and Litecoin to be this self-custody money, 14:55 you're obviously sacrificing a lot of those things 14:57 to even interact with lightning at all, 15:00 at any scale. 15:01 Is it salvageable? 15:03 Is there anything that Litecoin, 15:06 using this as a reference and saying, 15:07 well, maybe it's doable if, 15:09 the opportunity for Litecoin is, 15:11 do not fall into the Bitcoin cult and start, 15:15 because the Bitcoin cult is very, 15:18 very harmful to Bitcoin in many ways. 15:21 So the opportunity would be to say, 15:23 this is Litecoin, 15:24 we are not going to drink the Kool-Aid. 15:27 Right. 15:28 I'm going to say, 15:29 I'm going to mix up lightning and Litecoin, 15:31 probably a couple of times if I just say this 15:34 without thinking about it very carefully, 15:35 but you want to not drink the lightning Kool-Aid 15:39 and say, we will not make that mistake. 15:41 I think it has been a huge distraction for BTC 15:43 and it has also, as they say, 15:45 taken the air, 15:46 sucked the air out of the room 15:47 where people are focusing on that. 15:50 The culture rewards moving in that direction. 15:53 Everyone is, 15:54 you can only climb the totem pole 15:56 by working on lightning 16:00 or you say that you have a lightning project 16:02 and you get funding. 16:04 This has altered the whole trajectory 16:06 of everyone's focus 16:07 and I think it ultimately will just not pay off. 16:09 I actually think almost all the L2s 16:11 that people are working on 16:12 will eventually have a problem 16:14 where the fees that they collect 16:16 are not passed. 16:17 Everyone has basically the same model, 16:18 which is that the fees, 16:20 you collect fees from usage 16:22 and then that rewards the people 16:24 to not rug pull the system. 16:27 Even Bitcoin kind of works that way 16:29 because the transaction fees 16:31 are collected each block 16:32 and then rugging the system 16:33 would be rewriting the blocks 16:35 and rewriting the blocks 16:36 takes a bit of work 16:37 and the cost of writing the blocks 16:39 is exactly what the transaction fees is 16:41 in the future 16:42 when there is no block subsidy. 16:44 So everyone has that model in mind 16:47 but some of the L2s, 16:49 most of them, 16:50 including the lightning network, 16:51 they do not pass the fees 16:52 down to the L1 miners 16:54 and the reason why that is significant 16:56 is because the L1 miners 16:57 can destroy any L2 they want at any point 16:59 so if they have a choice 17:01 between the L1 miners 17:02 collecting all these transaction fee revenues 17:05 from merge mining 17:06 or something like that 17:07 or sitting by and earning nothing 17:11 and watching someone else, 17:12 the lightning LSP, 17:13 lightning service provider 17:15 or the arc super node or whatever, 17:17 watching those people 17:18 earn hundreds of billions of dollars a year 17:21 in transaction fees 17:22 as there is some kind of like hyper 17:24 like coinization or hyper or whatever, 17:26 the L2 takes over, 17:27 the arc super node takes over the world 17:29 and does everyone's payment 17:31 they will just say, 17:32 well, we will just block that, 17:34 we will block people 17:35 from sending into or out of that 17:36 or using that 17:37 or doing the, 17:38 even the BitVM challenge thing, 17:42 the miners could censor that, 17:44 anything based on ZK proofs, 17:46 the miner could censor the ZK proof. 17:48 So... 17:49 And that is the important thing 17:50 that I kind of wanted to drive at 17:52 is that lightning is here to stay, right? 17:54 Unless for some reason 17:55 SegWit goes away, 17:56 if Coinbase wants to launch 17:57 litecoin lightning, 17:59 a lot of these businesses 18:00 may add litecoin lightning capabilities 18:05 but more than anything, 18:06 where do we, 18:07 is this a place 18:08 where our energy should be directed? 18:10 And again, I'm not a developer 18:12 and so I think about 18:13 if I am somebody 18:14 who wants to develop on litecoin, 18:16 what should be the things 18:17 that are being focused on 18:19 that could bring some scalability 18:21 and I know Paul's got an answer 18:22 to a whole presentation 18:23 about it later today 18:24 but that maybe, 18:26 those are the things to think about, 18:28 don't spend your energy 18:30 on something that 18:31 maybe we're seeing 18:32 is not able to work 18:34 in the way that we initially 18:35 were told it was going to work. 18:37 Well, just give it 18 months. 18:39 Yeah, it's everything in 18 months. 18:41 Everything's two weeks, right? 18:42 Yeah, see that's the joke 18:44 is that lightning, 18:45 they always said 18:46 it's 18 months away or whatever. 18:47 They said that over and over again. 18:48 They said it was proof of stake. 18:49 Also, Ethereum said that. 18:50 But, 18:51 Ethereum actually, 18:52 to their credit, 18:53 they finally got the, 18:54 they did proof of stake 18:55 and you know, 18:56 people say, 18:57 you know, 18:58 lightning exists now, 18:59 lightning works 19:00 but lightning has, 19:01 it has only ever had 19:02 whatever, 19:03 4,000 something bitcoin 19:04 on the whole thing 19:05 which is, 19:06 I'm not sure exactly, 19:07 I should probably run the numbers 19:08 to make absolutely certain 19:09 but like, 19:10 look at all the money raised 19:11 by lightning companies, 19:12 it's probably less than that. 19:13 So, 19:14 this is just like, 19:15 4,000, 19:16 if there's 19.5 million coins, 19:17 this is like 19:18 a hundredth of a percent. 19:19 I've got stats somewhere, 19:20 something like 5,000 bitcoin 19:21 around the world. 19:22 So, 19:23 I don't know. 19:24 I don't know. 19:25 I'm not sure. 19:26 Something like 5,000 bitcoin 19:27 are on the lightning network 19:28 but you can't know 19:29 how many transactions. 19:30 I think the most evident thing 19:31 to me 19:32 is somebody like BitPay 19:33 offers lightning 19:34 and nobody uses it. 19:35 Exactly. 19:36 BitRefill offers lightning 19:37 and nobody uses it 19:38 which is interesting. 19:39 I use it. 19:40 Well, 19:41 but it's interesting to me 19:42 why that isn't, right? 19:43 Like, 19:44 is it the convenience factor? 19:45 Is it just because 19:46 it's just more hassle 19:47 than it's worth? 19:48 Yeah. 19:49 Because you would think 19:50 that people would 19:51 want free transactions 19:52 but they don't, 19:53 they don't seem to want. 19:54 Yeah. 19:55 So, 19:56 I bought a ticket 19:57 with lightning 19:58 and the fee 19:59 that I paid to Phoenix 20:00 was 2.5 dollars 20:01 and the on-chain fee 20:02 right now 20:03 for bitcoin 20:04 is 50 cents, 20:05 so. 20:06 That doesn't make any sense. 20:07 That doesn't make any sense. 20:08 So, 20:09 you should use 20:10 bitcoin. 20:11 Yeah, 20:12 and I don't want to say 20:13 that it can't work 20:14 or that it 20:15 will never be good 20:16 for one or two other things 20:17 and in fact, 20:18 I came up with something 20:19 that I called 20:20 a version of fraud proofs 20:21 that requires, 20:22 it basically requires 20:23 like the lightning network 20:24 in order to work. 20:25 I don't know if anyone 20:26 will ever care about that 20:27 but, 20:28 so, 20:29 I'm not saying 20:30 that lightning network 20:31 is like a completely 20:32 like evil thing 20:34 or whatever 20:35 but what I am saying 20:36 is there's this giant 20:37 like illusion field 20:38 over it 20:39 where there's, 20:40 everyone is hyping it 20:41 because they think 20:42 lightning equals bitcoin 20:43 equals number go up 20:45 and they, 20:46 and so, 20:47 very few of these people, 20:48 even software engineers 20:49 working at lightning companies, 20:52 many of these people 20:53 have come up to me, 20:54 the lightning critic guy, 20:55 the ugly or whatever, 20:56 they come up to me 20:57 as a person 20:58 and they say, 20:59 not until I read your article 21:00 that I realized 21:01 that I didn't know 21:02 how the lightning network worked 21:03 or they say stuff like that 21:04 and I have another post, 21:05 the LN Black Pill 21:06 where I have collected quotes 21:07 from people, 21:08 the people who are working 21:09 on the lightning network 21:10 including the inventor, 21:11 Dash Draja, 21:12 Rene Picard, 21:13 the author of 21:14 Mastering Lightning, 21:15 the book. 21:16 Well, 21:17 I think, 21:18 you know, 21:19 we got to wrap up 21:20 here quickly 21:21 but I think, 21:22 you know, 21:23 what's nice about being the host 21:24 is I get to go last 21:25 and no one can rebut 21:26 my opinions here 21:27 so, 21:28 no, 21:29 I think it, 21:30 you know, 21:31 just whenever you find 21:32 in crypto in general, 21:33 if someone tries to act 21:34 like they're going to get 21:35 everything that they, 21:36 that the main chain offers 21:37 and you're going to just get 21:38 the exact same experience 21:39 through some other method, 21:40 I think it's just, 21:41 you should, 21:42 your ears should perk up 21:43 like that doesn't make any sense. 21:44 How did Satoshi take 21:45 years to come up 21:46 with this solution 21:47 and someone's going to 21:48 just abstract it away 21:49 in a nice corporate package 21:51 you know, 21:52 that doesn't make 21:53 a whole lot of sense. 21:54 So, 21:55 self-custody, 21:56 use lightning at your, 21:57 with caution 21:59 and, 22:00 yeah, 22:01 I don't know if you guys 22:02 want to add any last things, 22:03 I think we're out of time 22:04 but, 22:05 you have one last thing 22:06 you want to add? 22:07 Yeah, 22:08 I would add that, 22:09 you know, 22:10 global payments system, 22:11 as a global payment system, 22:12 I would not recommend 22:13 the lightning network really. 22:14 What it does do 22:15 is because 22:16 it's super localized 22:17 and it's like 22:18 the transaction 22:19 between you 22:20 and whoever you're 22:21 doing it with, 22:22 the rest of the network 22:23 doesn't know about, 22:24 it doesn't really hit 22:25 these scaling limitations 22:26 that global networks do 22:27 or the same constraints. 22:28 So, 22:29 if you have anything 22:30 where you have 22:31 an insane amount 22:32 of volume 22:33 that only a few people 22:34 need to know about 22:35 and be involved in, 22:36 it could work for that 22:37 and so, 22:38 everyone involved 22:39 with the lightning network, 22:40 I would say just 22:41 abandon the whole 22:42 like, 22:43 I'm going to buy my coffee 22:44 everywhere in the world 22:45 with part, 22:46 I would recommend 22:47 focus on like maybe 22:48 an internal social network. 22:49 Again, 22:50 like that's why 22:51 something like Nostr 22:52 is where 22:53 you see a lot of this. 22:54 Focus on stuff 22:55 where you need 22:56 a ton of transactions 22:57 that the whole world 22:58 does not need to know about. 22:59 Do we have time 23:00 for questions? 23:01 Can I do questions? 23:02 Does anybody have one 23:03 or are we good? 23:04 Also, 23:05 I wrote an article 23:06 in my magazine 23:07 which you'll find outside 23:08 about lightning 23:09 and litecoin, 23:10 so you can read that 23:11 if you want. 23:12 It's a good intro. 23:13 It explains lightning 23:14 as islands 23:15 that need to build bridges 23:16 between each other. 23:17 If you want to send 23:18 cars to another island, 23:19 you need to build a bridge. 23:20 But the other island 23:21 cannot use the same bridge 23:22 to send cars to you. 23:23 So, 23:24 that's how lightning works. 23:25 That's good, 23:26 that's good. 23:27 Okay, 23:28 so no questions? 23:29 Oh, 23:30 it says zero up here, 23:31 so I thought we were done. 23:32 Okay. 23:33 All right, 23:34 there's no questions then? 23:35 We're good? 23:36 I think we're good. 23:37 You can come up here, 23:38 Marty. 23:39 Yeah, 23:40 go ahead. 23:42 It's more an observation. 23:43 I feel like the discussions 23:44 around lightning 23:45 perhaps it's better 23:46 to frame them around 23:47 are we developing 23:48 and providing 23:49 lightning network 23:50 for business 23:51 to business solutions? 23:52 Are we developing 23:53 and providing 23:54 lightning network 23:55 for business 23:56 to consumer choices 23:57 for consumer to consumer? 23:58 And it may be better 23:59 for people developing 24:00 on lightning 24:01 to have a clearly defined 24:02 mission statement 24:03 in terms of 24:04 which of those areas, 24:05 because it's clear 24:06 to me listening to this 24:07 that perhaps 24:08 it's not a great solution. 24:09 It could be a 24:10 not necessarily 24:11 a great business 24:12 to consumer solution 24:13 but a thing 24:14 that the world 24:15 needs. 24:16 Yeah. 24:17 Yeah, 24:18 the gentleman's question was like 24:19 can it be like 24:20 business to business 24:21 instead of like 24:22 involving the end user? 24:23 And this is part of 24:24 a big trend 24:25 of people 24:26 correctly realizing 24:27 that the lightning network 24:28 is not this cure-all 24:29 that everyone thought it would be 24:30 and so now everyone's 24:31 walking everything back 24:32 and trying to find some box 24:33 where they can fit this. 24:34 That's what I'm saying 24:35 that the gentleman 24:36 was saying. 24:37 But I think definitely 24:38 it's not the 24:39 consumer experience 24:40 you know for payments 24:41 like it cannot 24:42 the payment cannot fail. 24:44 Like if you use 24:45 if you had Visa 24:46 and MasterCard 24:47 and one of them failed 24:48 like one out of every hundred times 24:49 and the other one 24:50 worked every time 24:51 that would be 24:52 the kiss of death 24:53 for whichever one 24:54 failed because it's just 24:55 too humiliating to be 24:56 in the restaurant 24:57 or waiting in line 24:58 and it doesn't fail 24:59 and you're like 25:00 okay try it again 25:01 and the lightning network 25:02 is not gonna hit 25:03 that kind of reliability 25:04 anytime soon 25:05 and Vlad's metaphor 25:06 of islands 25:07 where you have to build the bridge 25:08 and you can't ship 25:09 anything back and forth 25:10 is very good 25:11 because the onboarding problem 25:12 is very severe. 25:13 In order to use 25:14 the lightning network 25:15 you need to first 25:16 use an L1 transaction 25:17 between the two parties. 25:18 So every single person 25:19 who wants to join 25:20 the lightning network 25:21 has to do something 25:22 on L1. 25:23 So you're building 25:24 an awful lot of bridges 25:25 for something 25:26 where the better solution 25:27 would be to just sail around 25:28 on the water 25:29 and not use lumber 25:30 or whatever 25:31 to build these bridges. 25:32 Or use a plane. 25:33 Or use a plane. 25:34 Yeah. 25:35 Yeah. 25:36 Right. 25:37 All right. 25:38 Well I appreciate it. 25:39 Marty's coming up. 25:40 Thank you guys. 25:41 All right. 25:42 Good job guys. 25:43 Good job. 25:44 I'd like to officially say 25:45 that I thought I was catching on 25:46 until you guys got up here 25:47 and now I've lost everything. 25:48 I don't understand 25:49 any of it anymore. 25:50 Short it. 25:51 Short it? 25:52 Is that what you said? 25:53 Yeah. 25:54 Good job. 25:55 Good job. 25:56 Also just a quick word 25:57 to the tech guys 25:58 who do understand all this. 25:59 You don't have to hold 26:00 the little microphone. 26:01 You can just attach it 26:02 to your shirt there 26:03 and it'll be fine. 26:04 You don't have to hold 26:05 the little microphone 26:06 to attach it to your shirt there 26:07 and then the audio people 26:08 who are professionals 26:09 had set you up with that. 26:10 That's how audio physics works. 26:11 It works for like four inches. 26:12 It's not on the lightning network 26:13 apparently. 26:14 I don't even know 26:15 what just happened. 26:16 I don't know what happened there. 26:17 I don't even understand. 26:18 The Litecoin and Bitcoin 26:19 is on another network 26:20 that was hyped for a while online. 26:21 Is that what was happening? 26:22 And one person hates it 26:23 and the other person 26:24 hates it. 26:25 I don't understand 26:26 what's going on. 26:27 I don't understand 26:28 what's going on. 26:29 I don't understand 26:30 what's going on. 26:31 I don't understand 26:32 what's going on. 26:33 I don't understand 26:34 what's going on. 26:35 And one person hates it 26:36 and other people 26:37 were not really 26:38 defending it. 26:39 I felt like that 26:40 was very uncomfortable. 26:41 No one else thought 26:42 that was uncomfortable? 26:43 No, I feel like 26:44 that was the purpose though. 26:45 I feel like he wrote the blog 26:46 to be uncomfortable 26:47 about the lightning network. 26:48 At least that was the message 26:49 I was getting. 26:50 And so bravo. 26:51 That was perfect. 26:52 And I forgot that 26:53 I'm not stalling anymore. 26:54 I came up here stalling 26:55 but we had found 26:56 our next target. 26:57 And so bravo. 26:58 That was perfect. 26:59 And I forgot that 27:00 I'm not stalling anymore. 27:01 I came up here stalling