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A comment on What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018). Parent comment

Re:What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We S... by saalweachter on Sunday November 01, 2020 @08:49AM (#24959483)
Why do none of the large wallets support it yet?

It's been well over five years since the Lightning white paper. By this point in Bitcoin's own timeline, the MtGox scandal was in rear view mirror; in another year, the Lightning network will be as old as Bitcoin was when Lightning was proposed.

If Lightning is going to provide the mainstream digital currency Bitcoin promised but failed to deliver, why is it taking so much longer for Lightning to be adopted than Bitcoin?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We S... by aeternum on Monday November 02, 2020 @08:19PM (#24975367)
Lightning is pretty complicated, it isn't quite as clean and simple a protocol as Bitcoin. Bitcoin uses a broadcast protocol whereas lightning needs more complex routing and nodes need to lock-up funds via an on-chain bitcoin txn to make a connection.

The internet itself at the backbone/isp level is a decent analog as ISP peering can be complex and often involve cost. It took awhile to get BGP right and determine the right cost metric for selecting a route.

There don't seem to be any blocking issues though and many of the large wallets have announced that they will be supporting it eventually.

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