• Press Releases
    • Submit a press release
    • Read All
  • Contact us
Advertise
Bitcoinist.com
Buy Neo Pepe
No Result
View All Result
🚀 BUY NEO PEPE PROTOCOL 🚀
  • Bitcoin
    • News
    • Price
    • Businesses
    • Acceptance
    • Technology
    • Investment
    • Regulation
    • Reviews
    • All Bitcoin News
  • Altcoins
    • News
    • Price
    • Ethereum
    • Ripple
    • Litecoin
    • EOS
    • NAGA
    • All Altcoin News
  • Tech
    • Blockchain
    • Security
    • FinTech
    • Price
      • Bitcoin Price
      • Ethereum Price
      • Binance Coin Price
      • Litecoin Price
  • Industry
    • Industry News
    • Press Releases
  • How to
    • Buy gift cards/mobile Top Ups with Cryptos
    • What Is Bitcoin?
    • Best Bitcoin Wallet
    • Bitcoin vs Ethereum
    • Why Use Blockchain Technology?
    • Bitcoin Cash ABC vs. Bitcoin Cash SV
    • How to Buy Cryptocurrency
    • How to do Crypto Gambling
      • Crypto Casinos
        • Ethereum Casinos
        • Solana Casinos
        • LiteCoin Casinos
        • DogeCoin Casinos
        • Live Crypto Casinos
        • New Casinos
        • Instant Withdrawal Casinos
        • Cash App Casinos
        • No KYC Casinos
        • VPN Casinos
        • Offshore Casinos
          • Crypto Casinos IT
          • Crypto Casinos ES
            • All Guides
          • Crypto Casinos JP
          • Crypto Casinos SG
          • Crypto Casinos MY
          • Crypto Casinos KR
          • No GAMSTOP Casinos in UK
          • No Cruks Casinos NL
      • Crypto Betting
        • No ID sportsbooks
    • Play Crypto Games
      • Crypto Poker
      • Crypto Slots
      • Crypto Blackjack
      • Crypto Crash Gambling
        • Aviator Sites
      • Plinko
    • Bitcoin Mining
    • Best Bitcoin Brokers
    • Best Bitcoin Forex Brokers
    • How To Earn Bitcoin
    • What is Facebook Libra?
    • Ripple and XRP: The Complete Guide
  • Events
  • Play Games
Breaking News: Trump Linked Firm Trims Stake in Major Crypto Venture, Big Sell-Off Ahead?
🚀 BUY NEO PEPE PROTOCOL 🚀
  • Bitcoin
    • News
    • Price
    • Businesses
    • Acceptance
    • Technology
    • Investment
    • Regulation
    • Reviews
    • All Bitcoin News
  • Altcoins
    • News
    • Price
    • Ethereum
    • Ripple
    • Litecoin
    • EOS
    • NAGA
    • All Altcoin News
  • Tech
    • Blockchain
    • Security
    • FinTech
    • Price
      • Bitcoin Price
      • Ethereum Price
      • Binance Coin Price
      • Litecoin Price
  • Industry
    • Industry News
    • Press Releases
  • How to
    • Buy gift cards/mobile Top Ups with Cryptos
    • What Is Bitcoin?
    • Best Bitcoin Wallet
    • Bitcoin vs Ethereum
    • Why Use Blockchain Technology?
    • Bitcoin Cash ABC vs. Bitcoin Cash SV
    • How to Buy Cryptocurrency
    • How to do Crypto Gambling
      • Crypto Casinos
        • Ethereum Casinos
        • Solana Casinos
        • LiteCoin Casinos
        • DogeCoin Casinos
        • Live Crypto Casinos
        • New Casinos
        • Instant Withdrawal Casinos
        • Cash App Casinos
        • No KYC Casinos
        • VPN Casinos
        • Offshore Casinos
          • Crypto Casinos IT
          • Crypto Casinos ES
            • All Guides
          • Crypto Casinos JP
          • Crypto Casinos SG
          • Crypto Casinos MY
          • Crypto Casinos KR
          • No GAMSTOP Casinos in UK
          • No Cruks Casinos NL
      • Crypto Betting
        • No ID sportsbooks
    • Play Crypto Games
      • Crypto Poker
      • Crypto Slots
      • Crypto Blackjack
      • Crypto Crash Gambling
        • Aviator Sites
      • Plinko
    • Bitcoin Mining
    • Best Bitcoin Brokers
    • Best Bitcoin Forex Brokers
    • How To Earn Bitcoin
    • What is Facebook Libra?
    • Ripple and XRP: The Complete Guide
  • Events
  • Play Games
Bitcoinist.com
No Result
View All Result
Breaking News: Trump Linked Firm Trims Stake in Major Crypto Venture, Big Sell-Off Ahead?
Lightning Network. a storm brewing

A Bitcoin Maximalist’s Harsh Criticism Of The Lightning Network

Eduardo Próspero
by Eduardo Próspero
3 years ago
·
Posted in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Technology
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

The Lightning Network is the reason Bitcoin will be legal tender in El Salvador. The main chain couldn’t serve a whole country without a fast and reliable payment channel built on top of it. It’s as simple as that. However, is the Lightning Network invulnerable to attacks? Is its architecture as bulletproof as Bitcoin’s main network? Not according to technical expert Shinobi, who qualifies it as “a toy” and urges us to stop acting like it’s “the shape of the future.” Ouch.

Writing thing about Lightning. Lightning people will probably get mad.

— Spook (@brian_trollz) August 3, 2021

At Bitcoinist, we tried to explain how the Lightning Network works. We gave you reasons why it will continue to grow. We compared its energy consumption to the rest of the world. And now, it’s time to criticize it. Because we’re a fair and balanced publication and we’re committed to exploring every angle of the story.

Make no mistake, Bitcoin works as a monetary network because all the incentives are in exactly the right place. It’s miraculous. And, according to Shinobi, we can’t say the same thing about The Lightning Network.

The Lightning Network Has An Incentives Problem

Shinobi’s essay starts with a bang:

The entire design goal for the Lightning Network is to allow the atomic routing of payments between parties that do not have direct payment channels between themselves, and this is literally impossible to accomplish without the economic incentive that routing fees provide except to count entirely on altruistic charitable motivations.

The way Shinobi sees it, The Lightning Network counts on altruism instead of greed. And there’s no way a network like that can flourish. Of course, he says it in a more colorful language:

Lightning as it stands right now is nothing but a children’s toy. Period. It is not some polished system, it is not a magical UX or UI, it is not even robust or solid in the face of adversarial attacks. It’s a fucking toy put together by a group of friends and maintained solely because it is composed predominantly of just that. Friends. Businesses who know each other. A tight social group that has not hit the point of growing past a socially scalable size.

Take your kids’ gloves off and tell us how you really feel, Shinobi. Geez. 

Another characteristic of Bitcoin, the monetary network, is its invulnerability. It contains the biggest honeypot that the world has ever seen, and so far no one has been able to hack or exploit it. According to Shinobi, the same can’t be said about the Lightning Network. The “adversarial screws haven’t even been installed yet.” And he’s worried about the kinds of attacks it’s vulnerable to. And about the “very real economic incentives that will inevitably create entities in the perfect position to exploit these classes of attacks.”

BTC price chart for 08/20/2021 on Bistamp  | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com

Vulnerabilities And Possible Attacks

  • “The first class: passive privacy leaks.” According to Shinobi, if you control several nodes you could potentially learn a lot from the payments that go through them. “Firstly there is the decrementing timelocks. This allows me to guess both how many hops away the first node I run involved in the payment is from the origin point as well as how many hops away from the destination the last node I run that is involved is.”
  • “The second class: actively probing channels by making payments” An adversarial actor could figure out how much Bitcoin a channel holds by constantly probing them. “Taking regular snapshots like this would allow you to start playing summing games in global channel balance shifts and guessing at payment flows with a much better accuracy because of knowledge of channel balance distribution over time with your snapshots.”
  • Shinobi is also worried about “yield chasing” platforms like BlockFi and Ledn. Those would make any trade “to out perform the market.” “In this possible future scenario, this entity would be in the position to perform a systemic private attack on a certain % of the entire Lightning Network. It would also have an economic incentive to do so. That information is economically valuable, as evidenced by the existence of chainanalytics companies.”

Conclusions And Solutions

For the technically minded, we strongly recommend reading the original essay. Shinobi goes deep and explains the vulnerabilities in great detail. We did our best to simplify the concerns. The text ends with a call to action:

If Lightning is not going to be a profit incentive driven network organized by market forces…well…it’s time for people who feel that way to start being open about it, and start discussing how they are going to structure and incentivize a web of trust to make it something else.

Which is fair.

In the comments, Rene Pickhardt, co-author of the book “Mastering the Lightning Network” with Andreas Antonopoulos, exercised his right to reply:

I think it is rather unlikely that a single entity regularly will be on many hops of a path. Also with probabilistic pathfinding and optimal payment flows we believe a fee market for providing liquidity has the chance to emerge.

Which is also fair.

Featured Image by Keli Black from Pixabay - Charts by TradingView
Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.
ShareTweetShareShare

Sign Up for Our Newsletter!

For updates and exclusive offers enter your email.

I consent to my submitted data being collected and stored.
Eduardo Próspero

Eduardo Próspero

Follow

Eduardo Prospero is an author, a content writer, and a professional rapper. A Bitcoin maximalist in disguise. Working on a Bitcoin book. Beware of my Telegram impersonator!

Full Profile

Related Posts

Bitcoin

Strategy’s Michael Saylor Shrugs Off Lawsuit, Signals Next Bitcoin Acquisition

10 hours ago
Bitcoin

Texas Signs Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Into Law – Details

1 day ago
Bitcoin

Bitcoin Bears Take The Wheel — Why $94,000 May Be The Next Critical Zone

1 day ago
Bitcoin

Bitcoin Treasury Companies: A Double-Edged Sword For The Market – Here’s Why

1 day ago
Bitcoin

Bitcoin On-Chain Metrics Crash To Bear Market Levels Despite Price Sitting Close To ATH

1 day ago
Bitcoin

Bitcoin Price Pattern Hints At $100,000 Target – Here’s Why

1 day ago
Please login to join discussion

Premium Sponsors

Press Releases

  • Green Cloud Mining earns $3,777 a day: Helps you easily...

    56 minutes ago
  • Musk calls again! Earn high returns on Dogecoin with...

    2 hours ago
  • Musk’s attention has set off a new wave of...

    2 hours ago
  • REEF CHAIN ANNOUNCES LANDMARK PRINCIPAL PARTNERSHIP WITH...

    6 hours ago
  • Using BTC, USDC to earn 1700 euros per day through BCC...

    6 hours ago

Bitcoin news portal providing breaking news, guides, price analysis about decentralized digital money & blockchain technology.

Buy Neo Pepe

Bitcoin

  • News
  • Price
  • Businesses
  • Acceptance
  • Technology
  • Investment
  • Regulation
  • Reviews

Altcoins

  • News
  • Price
  • Ethereum
  • Ripple
  • Litecoin
  • EOS

Categories

  • Blockchain
  • Security
  • FinTech
  • Technology
  • Trending
  • Breaking News
  • Press Releases
  • How to

About Us

  • Advertise
  • Contact us
  • Editorial Policy
  • Privacy Policy
© 2025 Bitcoinist.com. All Rights Reserved.
  • Bitcoin
    • News
    • Price
    • Businesses
    • Acceptance
    • Technology
    • Investment
    • Regulation
    • Reviews
    • All Bitcoin News
  • Altcoins
    • News
    • Price
    • Ethereum
    • Ripple
    • Litecoin
    • EOS
    • NAGA
    • All Altcoin News
  • Tech
    • Blockchain
    • Security
    • FinTech
    • Price
      • Bitcoin Price
      • Ethereum Price
      • Binance Coin Price
      • Litecoin Price
  • Industry
    • Industry News
    • Press Releases
  • How to
    • Buy gift cards/mobile Top Ups with Cryptos
    • What Is Bitcoin?
    • Best Bitcoin Wallet
    • Bitcoin vs Ethereum
    • Why Use Blockchain Technology?
    • Bitcoin Cash ABC vs. Bitcoin Cash SV
    • How to Buy Cryptocurrency
    • How to do Crypto Gambling
      • Crypto Casinos
      • Crypto Betting
    • Play Crypto Games
      • Crypto Poker
      • Crypto Slots
      • Crypto Blackjack
      • Crypto Crash Gambling
      • Plinko
    • Bitcoin Mining
    • Best Bitcoin Brokers
    • Best Bitcoin Forex Brokers
    • How To Earn Bitcoin
    • What is Facebook Libra?
    • Ripple and XRP: The Complete Guide
  • Events
  • Play Games
Advertise

© 2025 Bitcoinist. All Rights Reserved.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy Center or Cookie Policy.