Christian Decker - An Introduction to The Lightning Network

Mr Obnoxious - Un pódcast de Peter McCormack

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Interview location: Boston
Interview date: Sunday 10th April, 2019
Company: Blockstream
Role: Core Tech Engineer

The Lightning Network is designed to solve the scaling issues with Bitcoin. As a second layer technology, it enables fast and near instant payments using payment channels, something which has been discussed since when Satoshi was still involved in the project.

Christian attempted to solve the scaling problem with his whitepaper, A Fast and Scalable Payment Network withBitcoin Duplex Micropayment Channels, but before its release, Justin Poon and Thaddeus Dryja released a competitor whitepaper, The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments.

Ultimately The Lightning Network is mostly based on Justin and Thaddeus’ work, but Christian has been a key contributor and is working on Blockstream’s implementation C-Lightning.

In this interview, we discuss the competing whitepapers, how the various teams collaborate on Lightning, how payment channels work and upcoming dev projects.

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Transcription:

00:03:47: Introductions
00:04:28: Christian’s background to his duplex micropayment channel research
00:07:38: Deciding to proceed with the Lightning research over duplex micropayment channels
00:09:53: Discussing payment channels and the history behind them
00:18:08: Bringing payment channels back into the forefront of technical conversations
00:20:43: The influence that block size plays on these discussions
00:23:18: Beginnings of Lightning research
00:29:19: Incompatibilities between software and the advantages of running multiple implementations
00:31:55: The current state of the Lightning network
00:35:25: Discussing some of Christian’s concerns, external criticisms and limitations of Lightning
00:42:20: What are some of the exciting, important things coming up for Lightning?
00:47:25: How to get started with trialling the Lightning network
00:48:32: Final comments and how to stay in touch

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Helpful Links:

Connect with Christian:
- On Twitter @Snyke
- On LinkedIn
- On Github
- His Website
- At Blockstream

Mentioned in the interview:
- Whitespaper:
Christan Decker - Duplex Micro Channels
Justin Poon & Thaddeus Dryja - The Bitcoin Lightning Network
- Implementations:
C-Lightning (Blockstream)
LND (Lightning Labs)
Eclair (ACINQ)
Satoshi reference to payment channels
Christian PHD on scalability
Byzantine agreement
- Tech:
Splicing
Onion routing
Spontaneous payments

Other relevant WBD podcasts:
- WBD074: Matt Corallo on How Bitcoin Works
- WBD068: Peter Todd on the Essence of Bitcoin
- WBD018: Bitcoin Scaling and Lightning Network with Jameson Lopp
- WBD017: Why Small Blocks are Important for Bitcoin with Samson Mow

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