Lightning Network 
WARNING: If you try to use the Lightning Network (LN) you are at HIGH RISK of losing funds and it is not recommended or safe to do at this time or for the foreseeable future.
Below is a list which shows that Lightning Network has been drowning in technical issues, bugs, flaws, critiques, and exploits. It's over-promised tech that doesn't deliver on decentralization and a long ways from being functional and safe for users.
2017
June 26, 2017: Mathematical Proof That the Lightning Network Cannot Be a Decentralized Bitcoin Scaling Solution https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800
December 15, 2017: How The Banks Bought Bitcoin (The truth about the lightning network) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g
2018
January 20, 2018: Lightning Network May Not Solve Bitcoin’s Scaling ‘Trilemma’ https://www.coindesk.com/lightning-network-may-not-solve-bitcoins-scaling-trilemma
February 18, 2018: Rick Falkvinge reacts to the Lightning Network https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFZOrtlQXWc
February 21, 2018: Bitcoin Lightning Fraud? Laolu Is Building a ‘Watchtower’ to Fight It https://www.coindesk.com/laolu-building-watchtower-fight-bitcoin-lightning-fraud
March 21, 2018: Lightning Network DDoS Sends 20% of Nodes Down https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/03/21/lightning-network-ddos-sends-20-nodes
May 29, 2018: Why The Lightning Network Does not Scale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGrUOLsC9cw
April 11, 2018: How Bitcoin Lightning Channels Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOZaLbUUZUs
June 21, 2018: The 3 biggest LN flaws plus further critiques https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-biggest-flaw-of-the-Bitcoin-Lightning-network/answer/Marius-Kramer
June 25, 2018: Study finds that the probability of routing $200 on LN between any two nodes is 1% https://diar.co/volume-2-issue-25/
October 10, 2018: Watchtowers (third party services) are introduced as a way to monitor your funds when you can't be online 24/7 so they aren't stolen https://medium.com/@akumaigorodski/watchtower-support-is-coming-to-bitcoin-lightning-wallet-8f969ac206b2
2019
January 17, 2019: 18 Months Away? Latest Lightning Network Study Calls System a 'Small Central Clique' https://news.bitcoin.com/18-months-away-latest-lightning-network-study-calls-system-a-small-central-clique/
February 20, 2019: The current state of Bitcoin companies & dealing with Lightning Network ⚡Highlights: Hard to implement, takes a ton of man hours, with no return on investment. LN adds zero utility. The only reason some companies support it is for marketing reasons.
February 20, 2019: Current requirements to run BTC/LN: 2 hard drives + zfs mirrors, need to run a BTC full node, LN full node + satellite, Watchtower and use a VPN service. And BTC fees are expensive, slow, unreliable.
February 22, 2019: Listen to this great talk on the problems and complexities of using HTLC's on the Lightning Network ⚡️, and possible alternatives.
February 23, 2019: 5 Things I Learned Getting Rekt on Lightning Network
February 25, 2019: Lightning Network bank-wallet is "kind of centralized but it has to be this way if you want mass-adoption"
February 28, 2019: Decentralized path routing is still an unsolved problem for Lightning Network (currently "source routing" works at this scale)
February 28, 2019: "Out of the 1,500 orders submitted on the first day using Lightning Network, only around 10 percent were successful" https://breakermag.com/i-ordered-lightning-pizza-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale/
March 1, 2019: Lightning Network has become a complete train wreck. Oh by the way, it's no longer 18 months but YEARS until it's ready for mass-consumption.
March 4, 2019: Lightning users must be online to make a payment, funds must be locked to use, is a honey pot, completion rate deminishes with high value payments, and more https://medium.com/starkware/when-lightning-starks-a90819be37ba
March 17, 2019: TIL that Lightning Network conceptual design and focus to layer 2 scaling for BTC was introduced in February 2013, over 6 years ago (LN whitepaper released February 2015, 4 years ago)
March 21, 2019: Understanding the cost of trapped liquidity in the Lightning Network https://medium.com/@peter_r/understanding-the-cost-of-trapped-liquidity-in-the-lightning-network-part-1-7179a24d5791
March 22, 2019: Lightning Fails to Strike (Again) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzaEd2RQuRw
March 28, 2019: Visualizing HTLCs and the Lightning Network’s Dirty Little Secret https://medium.com/@peter_r/visualizing-htlcs-and-the-lightning-networks-dirty-little-secret-cb9b5773a0
March 29, 2019: Analysis Shows Lightning Network Suffers From Trust Issues Exacerbated by Rising Fees https://news.bitcoin.com/analysis-shows-lightning-network-suffers-form-trust-issues-exacerbated-by-rising-fees/
April 24, 2019: Forget 18 months: it’s now 30-50 years until Lightning Network is ready
May 29, 2019: "PSA: The Lightning Network is being heavily data mined right now. Opening channels allows anyone to cluster your wallet and associate your keys with your IP address."
August 30, 2019: Lightning Network security alert: Security issues have been found in various lightning projects which could cause loss of funds! https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2019-August/002130.html
September 10, 2019: Lightning Network dev: "We've confirmed instances of the CVE being exploited in the wild. If you’re not on the following versions of either of these implementations then you need to upgrade now to avoid risk of funds loss" https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2019-September/002148.html
September 27, 2019: Lightning Network Security Vulnerability Full Disclosure: CVE-2019-12998 / CVE-2019-12999 / CVE-2019-13000 https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2019-September/002174.html
September 28, 2019: Andreas Brekken: "I've been asked quite a bit why I took down the largest Lightning Network node, LN.shitcoin.com. Constant anxiety was the deciding factor. When a channel is created, the receiver of the channel was not required to verify the amount of the funding transaction"
October 21, 2019: Researchers Uncover Bitcoin ‘Attack’ That Could Slow or Stop Lightning Payments https://www.coindesk.com/researchers-uncover-bitcoin-attack-that-could-slow-or-stop-lightning-payments
October 23, 2019: 4 BTC stolen using Lightning Network
2020
January 1, 2020: The Final Word on the Lightning Network https://read.cash/@jonald_fyookball/the-final-word-on-the-lightning-network-de7e259c
January 7, 2020: New paper on Lightning Network simulates lower & higher txn rates and summarize the rates of failed txns in Fig 22….at 7,000 transactions per day one-third of them fail
January 13, 2020: LN users are leaking their blockchain data by using centralized Lightning Network node operators and wallets. 90K LN non-cooperative channel closures were identified https://blog.bitmex.com/lightning-network-part-6-over-60000-non-cooperative-channel-closures/
February 13, 2020: 8 Criticisms of Lightning Network https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/f36wck/lightning/fhh2mav/
February 18, 2020: Lightning Network is Vulnerable to Congestion Attacks https://medium.com/blockchains-huji/congestion-attacks-in-payment-channel-networks-b7ac37208389
February 20, 2020: Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Is Growing ‘Increasingly Centralized,’ Researchers Find https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-lightning-network-is-growing-increasingly-centralized-researchers-find
August 27, 2020: Flood & Loot: A Systemic Attack On The Lightning Network https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.08513.pdf
September 2020: LN channels cannot hold more than 483 htlcs at a time, regardless of the channel capacity. Sending 483 micro-payments to yourself and holding on to the htlcs is enough to incapacitate a channel for up to two weeks https://archive.is/ldWRd
October 8, 2020: Lightning Vulnerability Discovered; LND Node Operators Urged to Upgrade ASAP https://www.coindesk.com/lightning-vulnerability-ind-node-operators-upgrade-asap
October 21, 2020: Two Lightning Network CVE's were made public:
October 29, 2020: PSA: High onchain BTC fees have impact for you Lightning Channels: Pre negotiated fees might not be sufficient for your commitment tx to be included in case of force close https://archive.is/ECr4p
2021
February 18, 2021: The Lightning Network (LN) is semi-custodial banking https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/lml76q/the_lightning_network_ln_is_semicustodial_banking/gnwa42b/
February 28, 2021: Congestion Attacks in Payment Channel Networks
March 15, 2021: A recap of events over the last 6 years of Lightning Network https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1366411780633862147.html
March 26, 2021: Real-life example of a LN user trying to use Lightning but encounters various problems and errors:
March 28, 2021: Real-life example of a LN user trying to use various Lightning mobile wallets and none of them worked (multiple errors for each) https://archive.is/klS2X
April 13, 2021: Video discussion with LN engineer about pros and cons of LN. Tidbits include that LN transactions always require onchain transactions to be finalized/settled (problematic due to high fees), initial payment channels still an issue for new users, using LN service providers is a trust issue, not decentralized, using zero-conf to create channels is highly risky, must be online to use LN, constant backups needed so you don't lose funds, LN needs more forks to work (such as Taproot and El-Too) https://odysee.com/@DigitalCashNetwork:c/Lightning-Network:c
April 21, 2021: Popular Lightning wallet Phoenix had to shut down on-the-fly channel creations and other features due to high BTC transaction fees, which is another example of how poorly LN operates with a high fee base layer. https://archive.ph/RRzvU#high-mempool-size-impacts
September 20, 2021: Custodial Lightning Network Service Attack Discovered — Hacker Strikes 6 LN Custodians
September 26, 2021: Why the Bitcoin Lightning Network is Satoshi Nakamoto’s Worst Nightmare https://cryptowhale.medium.com/why-the-bitcoin-lightning-network-is-satoshi-nakamotos-worst-nightmare-8402be4a4e73
Contributing
If you want to contribute to this list, please see CONTRIBUTING.md.
from Hacker News https://ift.tt/2ThKQeX
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