Sept. 22, 2021
CD39: running a lightning routing node and plebnet with @phjlljp, @rajwinder, and @aehw1
EPISODE: 39
BLOCK: 701600
PRICE: 2406 sats per dollar
TOPICS: running your own lightning routing node, plebnet, optimizing for routing fees, onchain fee market, reputation systems
@phjlljp: https://twitter.com/phjlljp
@rajwinder: https://twitter.com/rajwinder
@aehw1: https://twitter.com/aehw1
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00:00 - The idea of crypto and its potential as an investment class
03:10 - Running your own lightning routing node
23:10 - The benefits and challenges of running a sovereign lightning routing node
47:06 - The impact of the Lightning Network on on-chain transactions
48:11 - The delay caused by the Lightning Network
49:16 - The relationship between high fees and interest in Lightning Network
50:45 - The importance of running your own routing node on the Lightning Network
53:18 - The lower time preference for on-chain transactions with Lightning Network
55:24 - The potential adversarial attacks on the Lightning Network
57:50 - The importance of reputation and privacy in running a Lightning node
01:12:47 - The importance of experimenting with Bitcoin and Lightning technologies
01:13:45 - The significance of running your own node and participating in the Lightning Network
WEBVTT
NOTE
Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 3/17/2024 8:12:56 PM
Duration: 4990.276
Channels: 1
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The idea of crypto, and I know you've had different views to this. A lot of people think of that as
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a, a, a new investment class that has had enormous run thus far, but also as a way to mitigate, if you will, against the idea of what the value of cash becomes. Well, I think it's worth considering
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all the, the alternatives to cash and all the alternatives to some of the financial asset.
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And so
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Bitcoin has,
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has that is a possibility. Is that in merit? I have a a certain amount of money in Bitcoin. It's a small percentage of that which I have in gold, which is a relatively small percentage of what I have in my other asset classes
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and so on. And I think that that has the merit. It's it's an it's an amazing accomplishment to have brought it from where that programming occurred to where it is and take the test of time. On the other hand, it's if if it's successful,
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it's going to not be the governments don't wanna have it successful. You don't wanna have it all the way to the surface. Governments like El Salvador. I know that's not exactly, gonna be the leading government on this, but there are there are governments that may take this on. But no. No. No. No. No.
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The
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you have El Salvador taking on, and you have India and China getting rid of it, and you have the United States talking about how to regulate it, and it could still be controlled. So that's Right. What what And are you If you're El Salvador and you talk about your alternative monies, you know, it's a different thing. Do you believe that regulation ultimately will make something like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
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have a future, or do you think regulation will kill it?
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Well, I think regulation
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I think at the end of the day, if it's really successful,
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they'll kill it,
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and they'll try to kill it. And I think they will kill it because they have ways of killing it.
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But
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that doesn't mean it doesn't have,
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you know, a place, a a a value and so on. But it's one of those things that hasn't fueled you. Right now It doesn't have intrinsic value. If you look if you put
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cryptocurrencies
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or, let's say, Bitcoin in the historical perspective.
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Right? Right. There are so many things in a historical perspective that were given intrinsic
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that didn't have intrinsic value and were have perceived value and then became hot, and then they become cold.
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So it could be either way. You just have to know what it is. Right? Right. Yep. I mean, like,
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you know, it it could be tulips in,
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in Holland, you know, and that intrinsic value.
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So what is the value? And then there are technological
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changes. I don't I'm no expert on it. I'm just trying to say that you asked me my what my opinion is. Take it for what it's worth. I'm no expert on it. I think it I think diversification
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values, it it matters. I suspect the real question that investors should be asking themselves is how much stuff like that do they have? Do how much stuff do they have? Do they have gold?
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Okay. Should we be talking about how much you have in gold versus how much you have in bitcoin? And do you have a diversification
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Right. In those kinds of things that we might call intrinsic value money? Because we have a fiat monetary system. Okay? With a fiat monetary system, where is your hard money? That's the question. And I however you go after it, I think that's the question to be answered. Okay. There's 2.
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Happy Bitcoin Tuesday, freaks. It's your boy, Matt O'Dell, here for another Citadel dispatch,
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the interactive live show about Bitcoin distributed systems privacy and open source software.
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I'm very excited about this particular conversation.
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This is still dispatch episode 39.
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We will be discussing running your own lightning routing node, and we'll be discussing the Pubnet initiative surrounding,
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that idea of having many sovereign,
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lightning routing nodes run by
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Sovereign Bitcoiners, Sovereign individuals.
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Before we get started, I just wanna do a quick shout out as always to the ride or die in the live chat. Love you, freaks. Thank you for
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joining. You make the show truly special, and a big shout out to all you freaks that support the show and keep it ad free. The easiest way to do that is the podcasting 2 point o apps. You go to new podcast apps.com,
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pick a podcasting 2 point o app, load it up with stats, search Citadel dispatch, and as you listen to the podcast feed,
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you stream stats directly to my wallet. It's really fucking cool. You can also support the show via PayNim or lightning@cildispatch.com.
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My PayNim is easy to remember. It is Odell.
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With all that said, we have a very tight,
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time limit here, so I wanna get right to the meat. It's an important conversation,
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and,
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I'm very excited about it. So with all that said, I'd like to introduce our guest for today.
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We'll start with Walton. How's it going, Walton?
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Hey. What's up? Hey. What's up, guys?
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My name is What's up? What's up, Walter?
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So just I'm a British
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pleb in Plebna. I've been,
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running a lightning node for for a number of months now.
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I've been in the top 100 of global,
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node runners by ranking,
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And it's all thanks to the community of Plebna, which is this kind of strange social
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learning
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experiment almost
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with now over 4,000
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members with over 800 mode runners.
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It's it's fast growing,
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and it's a very exciting time.
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I love it. Thank you, Walton.
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We also have Pete joining us. How's it going, Pete? It's going fantastic.
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Can you hear me okay?
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Yeah. We can hear you okay. You sound great. Amazing. Yeah. I think many of you already know me.
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I'm over at, Bitcoin Magazine.
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But,
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yeah, PlubNet has been this amazing experience. A bunch of us got together and, you know, wanted to learn how to, run lightning routing nodes. And,
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then we decided to turn into this, like, larger community
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so that we could
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share in the knowledge and, teach everybody else.
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And, it's been fucking great. And then thank you thank you, Pete. And, last but not least,
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we got Raj Winder here.
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What's going on?
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Hey, Matt. Thanks for having me on the show. Very happy to be here with my buddies,
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Pia and Walton,
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to represent ClubNet and Lightning,
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you know, talk about Lightning and Bitcoin in general.
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I am, from the,
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Silicon Valley
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grind of making silicon chips, but also been interested in bitcoin
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and, was, caught up in the,
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activity,
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the primordial
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soup on Clubhouse and in Telegram Groups
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where
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emerged.
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And, I'm happy to see it take on a life of its own and become
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an amazing,
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community.
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Love it. Love it.
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So I mean, a lot of a lot of the freaks here, a lot of the audience understand,
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the importance of running your own lightning routing node,
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and why we need individuals
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to do so rather than just a bunch of large KYC
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companies.
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Do
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it it seems to me so ClubNet ClubNet is really interesting project.
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It kind of wasn't on my radar, and I I felt like I was a little bit late to it.
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Do you guys wanna talk a little bit about, like, what did did Plebnet originate on Clubhouse?
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It's a great question.
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Yeah. Raj Winder,
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actually coined the term, but the the origins of it are,
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somewhat murky. There was a group of
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probably 20 or so,
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Bitcoiners very interested in lightning, who didn't meet in part on Clubhouse,
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and we're exploring various things, in a chat group, mainly things like LNTX for sending Sats with each other in Telegram.
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Raj.
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Yeah. So I you know, you already mentioned one of the big factors that was behind bringing us together, which is the LN TX bot Telegram bot that that can
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send sets back and forth in custodial lightning and telegram messages.
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So we were playing with that. We were onboarding a lot of people to lightning because that was a much easier route,
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because so many people use Telegram compared with the number of people who use Lightning Wallet. So that was one big factor. And also on Clubhouse, we were just talking Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin was in a in a in a, you know, pretty big rally upwards at that time. So there was a lot of enthusiasm and interest on Clubhouse. And,
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on Clubhouse,
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we also found these 2 or 3 individuals I really wanna give credit to, which is
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JC Crown,
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CoreTech,
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and, another guy named CJ Lightning Sats. We don't know his real name, but that's the personality on Clubhouse
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and on Twitter that he has CJ,
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lightning sats. And also there was a dread. He would come in and go once in a while. So these guys were running nodes and we were very curious like, okay, what does it take to run a node? And thankfully,
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I wanna also give credit to, Umbrel and Raspi Blitz. So we just grab those kind of off the shelf lightning,
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implementations,
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grab some hardware,
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you know, Walton. We have Raspberry Pies. I have a ThinkPad, which is, like, 9 years old. And we got our nodes up and running. And we just started with tiny channels, but before long, we were like, no. We we gotta we gotta do real business. So,
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you know, here we are.
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I wanna give I wanna give, Raj a little bit more credit.
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You know, basically,
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Raj and d plus plus, who's also kind of early on in the in the crew,
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created
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a
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sort of a a lightning
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node focused
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Telegram group. And Raj has been in there consistently
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for the last, like, I don't know, man. What? Like, 4, 5, 6 months
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just, like, answering questions over and over and over again. His dedication is incredible. And then it actually wasn't until, like, I don't know, like, I and I have to look at the exact date, but, like, May or maybe April
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that that I kinda got started getting interested. And then,
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there are these I joined early May. Yeah. Yeah. And the beauty of plumbing is it it's kind of there's been these different communities that have kinda forked off. So there was, like, this amazing one that that Raj and n equals plus had started that was focused on the LNDX bot, and then, there were a couple that forked off that. And then Plebna was one where basically about 20 of us kinda got together and we're like, oh my gosh. Like, this
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is this is a really, really important thing to
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to support others in in adopting and also just to make it clear that, like, anyone can do this. And,
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we all kinda, you know, dove in and and, you know, created the Telegram group, and have been just been going from there. And I think what what are we up to now, Roger? That was kind of culture shifting off it as well. Like, I've I created,
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one club with Miguel called Plebnet Poker, and we play,
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poker on on a lightning network app,
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you know, regularly. It's been at least Which Lightning Network app, Keith?
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We use, lightning
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hyphenpoker.com.
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Shout out Evo. He's a awesome developer that,
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actually created us our our own little private table. So we use
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So,
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you know, so so the general idea here of Pubnet is
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is let's get a bunch
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of sovereign Bitcoiners, a bunch of individual Bitcoiners plebs around the world
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to run their own Lightning routing node from home.
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And then the way Lightning Network works is, basically, you need liquidity throughout the network, so you need channels between these nodes. And PlebNet is kind of a coordination of getting people to not only run their nodes, but then connect into the, like, the greater PlebNet
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liquidity pool. Is that is that a good,
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summary?
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Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think,
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you know, there there were a couple Telegram groups or many, let's say several,
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before kind of the Plugnet group started,
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But,
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they were fairly specific and
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they were, like, highly technical.
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And, you know, PLEBNET was all of us really learning together and figuring out the best way to approach this. And the really amazing thing is that, you know, I started, you know, early on kind of
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chatting
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with, with Severin, who has built lnrouter.app,
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which is an amazing set of tools.
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You know, lnnoteinsight,
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the creator of that, even, like, Alex Bosworth, and and it was a really surreal experience for all of us to kind of reach out to some of these these people and ask these questions and and sort of be told, like, wow. You know, no one's really asked that question before. And so, it really quickly became clear that we that there was this really important need for not only the highly technical conversations, but also for
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onboarding people and for
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teaching, you know, everyone in random plebs, like, how easy it was to set up a sovereign routing node. And so, you know, if you're using Lightning, there are multiple ways to interact with Lightning. Right? If you're if you're just interested in being able to send Bitcoin, you know, sound money, essentially, feelessly or, you know, very low fees and, you know, as close to instant as matters, you can go download, you know, Moon Wallet or Breezewallet or any other number of of Lightning or wallets that support Lightning and be able to do that. And you don't have to know any of the complicated stuff. And that's amazing, and it's built on top of the backs of these routing nodes that,
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that, you know, the larger
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Lightning Network has been running. And so we're all trying to contribute
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to, to we're all trying to contribute to the, basically, the infrastructure of the Lightning Network because care deeply about it and we care deeply about Bitcoin, and
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we wanna educate people as we go forward. So when
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Right. I just wanna add to what Pete said, which kind of goes back to your question, Matt, that the community aspect is actually really important because before Plebna came along, you didn't have a community where you kind of had some degree of trust with others to be able to, you know, make channels and so on.
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But we all knew one another from,
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Clubhouse and Twitter and Telegram Groups. And if someone started up a new node and, you know, wanted to build some channels,
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they didn't have to buy,
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liquidity from another provider. They could just come into the community and say, hey. I I got 10 1,000,000 sites. I wanna open a couple of channels or I wanna open 3 channels.
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Who's willing to open the channels with me? And in Pubnet, we had enough trust that we took the risk to the degree that we have a certain way of opening a balanced channel called the ghetto submarine swap, in which, you know, you open the channel and then you balance it and then you get reimbursed for half the money that you put in the channel. And that reimbursement is a trust issue. And in Plebnet, we have never had that trust violated, and people have been able to come in comfortably join. And, we also put up a couple of test notes
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where even if you don't wanna put much money on your,
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on a new lightning node, you can just open a tiny channel and we'll get you on the network and you can learn. So when you're talking about these ghetto submarine swaps, you mean, basically,
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the
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person with
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the outbound liquidity pays a lightning payment, and then the other person just sends back on chain in a trusted fashion. Right?
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Correct. So if Like, you know, basic rebalance.
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Yeah. Right. You and I open a 10,000,000 set channel. I put up the money. I send 5,000,000 to your side, and you send me 5,000,000 on chain.
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Right. So what
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yeah. I do that a lot for for freaks who ask out for liquidity. So when I first started trying to understand the Lightning Network, my I I quickly realized the need that we needed Tor only
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sovereign routing nodes.
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So what I did was,
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you know, I the way I like to learn is to just go ahead first in things. I just started up a node. I told all the freaks my public key, and I was like, if you open a channel with me, I will open a channel back. And it was it was really a horrible idea.
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For I found out afterwards that for routing, like, you only want one channel between peer really to be ideal, and I became, like, this massive central hub. Like, if I if my node went down
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just like the whole Freak's mini network went down with it.
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So then I discovered Rings of Fire,
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which is a really cool project
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where they set up via Telegram like these. You have 10 people all open a channel to 1 of the other people,
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and then
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a ring of fire rebalances
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it. You do a circular rebalance where everyone's channels get split in liquidity, because
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if you just the freaks most of the freaks should know this, but if you just open a channel to someone, you can only send money you can't receive yet. So you need to balance out that liquidity.
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What is do you guys have
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is what's is Rings of Fire related to ClubNet at all? Like, what's the connection there? No. Is there a connection? No. It predates ClubNet.
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It is a it's a very good community which has done a good job in its own way.
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But, ClubNet is by the way, Matt, don't feel too bad. We will all we were also opening bidirectional channels before we said, screw it. We know each other. I know p. I know p. I know p. My money. So I'm just gonna open the channel and do a capital submarine swap. So,
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so, yeah, rings of fire is a lot more complicated. And if one person decides to,
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you know, shut down their node or close the channel, it leads to some complications.
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Plavnad is a node to node.
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There is there is very few triangles or anything that people are making. You can make them, but it's just really individual to individual node. Well, they happen naturally.
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Yeah. For sure. When when I went when I went into the Telegram group,
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and, unfortunately, I was the 3,999th
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member, so I didn't get
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to to be the 4000th member. Climbing. But when I joined,
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I saw the Cheese Robot there, which is a Telegram bot that
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Rings of Fire guys use as well. Did you you borrowed that bot from them?
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No. No. So, actually, the the cheese robot has been built by,
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I never know how to pronounce his name, but,
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basically, it's a separate tool. I don't know if it was built specifically for Ring of Fire. It wouldn't surprise me if it was, but,
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anyone can actually add cheese robot and start, you know, creating these awesome visuals of everyone that they're connected to within a specific Telegram channel.
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But, you know, I I think
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ring ring of fire was a super import or and and still is, I would argue, is a super important way to create
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strong connections throughout the Lightning Network. Right? It's really, really important for bootstrapping the Lightning Network as is PLEBNA. But I think, you know, ring of fire is the idea is that, basically, you know, it's like, if we were gonna create, like, a ring,
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you know, it would be like, I would open a channel to Walton, Walton open a would open a channel to Raj, Raj would open a channel to you Odell, and then you would open a channel back to me. And
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then there's a specific script that you run that that then goes in and and
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rebalances
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to create, you know, sort of balanced liquidity across both channels. And for the audience, in case you're not aware, you know, with Lightning, again, if you're if you're just trying to use Lightning, you don't have to worry about the routing node stuff we're talking about. Right? This is about running a sovereign routing node. But if you are trying to run a routing node, then, you know, you you wanna make sure that you are keeping,
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on average,
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your channels somewhat balanced because you want people to be able to route bidirectionally
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through you. When we talk about routing, what we're really talking about is
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you don't need to have a direct channel connection
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to anyone in the Lightning Network. You actually can just sort of ping pong payments
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through this spiderweb of, you know, sovereign routing nodes in order to get your payment
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successfully
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sent. And so,
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yeah. So cheese cheese robot was actually kind of instrumental in us
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recognizing that, okay, we have become a network.
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So the developer's name is,
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Cloak decascock.
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I think it's a South African name.
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And, we were you know, we once we set up our nodes, there was one particular night we were just going crazy opening channels with one another. And then somebody, you know,
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had brought in Chisrobot before that,
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and we were just looking at the network evolving. That's when we realized that, okay, this is a real thing happening and, you know, that's, that's kind of one of the factors that
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aided us in realizing what we were becoming early on.
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I mean, the cheese rob cheese robot is really fucking cool.
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Like, that is so just for the people there's some people probably confused. The main aspect of cheese robot is that you link your public key to your Telegram handle.
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Public key of your notes. So it knows your lightning note and it knows your Telegram handle, and
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then it graphs things for you, basically, and tells you how everyone's connected.
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Yeah. And that's super important because,
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you know, it
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it it's great to run a lightning routing node to support, you know, Bitcoin, to support lightning, but really kind of the fun is in these communities that develop. And I think what's gonna happen in the near future is, you know, just like PlebNet was this grassroots group that we all just kinda got together and and, you know, we were all in Clubhouse and, you know, started talking about it more. And I started, you know, talking about it in in in Bitcoin Magazine, Clubhouse rooms and stuff. That's gonna happen all over the world. What's gonna happen is basically
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smaller
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communities
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are like Bitcoin Beach,
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are going to basically
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spin up, and there is going to be these
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these groups that then build out these incredibly strong networks between themselves, open channels, have robust channels, communicate amongst each other. Like, you know, the number of when my node goes down, like, my Internet, you know, got, you know, shit the bed, like, yesterday, and, like, 10 people messaged me and was like, yo. Your node is down. And they were like, oh, it's like is everything okay? Like, is your node fucked or whatever? And, like, those kinds of communities are so important. And that's really what PlebNet is. It's just this this smaller community
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that then connects to the larger Lightning Network and has all these really strong channels that are robust.
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And,
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that's I think that's it's it's an interesting model for lightning adoption
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all over the world among different communities. We've been talking with, like, Black Bitcoin Billionaires,
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and, you know, they're spinning you know, they've spun up a lightning,
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you know, kind of,
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community, and then they've they're connected to PlebNet. They're also connected, of course, the larger Lightning community, but it's it's pretty powerful stuff. There's some there's there's some
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I'm not sure how to quantify it, privacy benefit,
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to being able to pay through these kind of
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more trusted hops that are going through Tor only routing nodes,
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run by individuals before it gets to the greater network because
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some privacy attacks on lightning involve,
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basically surveilling the hops. So if you have a bunch of hops beforehand,
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but that was just the thought that I wanted to bring up real quick. But the
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the so what you're kind of talking about here is this interesting phenomenon that we've seen
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early on in the lightning network. This idea of of basically ideologically minded
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people running, routing nodes to kind of bootstrap the network.
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But ideally or I don't even know if ideally is the right word, but
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by design,
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the main incentive to run a routing node
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is
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for financial gain, for fees.
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Do you guys focus on that at all, or is it purely
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ideological right now?
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I'm happy to jump in, but I wanna give,
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Raj our welcome. Raj, what's your opinion on this?
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I think in you know, I think of this as, what
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websites were circa 93, 94,
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95.
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You know, it was hard to set up your website, but if you learn the technology, you actually had a really good advantage in
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in the ecommerce
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explosion that took place.
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And I think we are in the same place right now. You're not gonna be a profitable node, right, immediately because the size of the pie is not very big. We are all fighting for the same routing fees.
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But it's gonna grow massively. I have no doubt about that.
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And, those who get in early will have the experience and the motivation
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and the sort of the cultural knowledge and connections to succeed. So that's the way I look at people who are serious about joining the Lightning Network and those who have become serious now. Raj, do you not think that, like, long longer term, it'll it'll be hard for a,
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like, a sovereign routing node to
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compete with,
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you know, some of these more, you know, like, professional
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docs, clear net ones?
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That depends on what happens in other aspects of Bitcoin,
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universe. If privacy
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and, you know,
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remaining undoxed
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becomes super important, then I think these sovereign nodes will be really critical.
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If it is not a big deal for most people and governments,
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sort of, acquiesce and, you know, learn to live with Bitcoin, maybe it won't be a big deal and the commercial entities will be,
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you know, more popular and,
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sovereign individuals will probably become more of a fringe then.
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But, you know, that's Bitcoin takeover and,
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I think,
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you know, the downsides,
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are not as dire as they are in the fiat world of with the total surveillance with the CBDCs, for example. So I think we just have to wait and see how it plays out. But, yes, I can imagine a scenario in which,
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sovereign nodes
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run by individuals are going to be really important if if if, we go to a tooth and nail fight.
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One thing I'll say is I I think that,
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I think that there will always be a place
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for sovereign
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lightning nodes. I think that,
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there is not a significant amount of profit to be made at this moment,
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though, like, my my note is currently profitable.
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I know there's there's a number of, you know, of not that. Profitable? I I'm profitable,
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if with regards to,
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that I've paid off and made profit.
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Yeah. Opening and closing costs,
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not necessarily
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broken
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even with,
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or gone past it with regards to hardware, but I don't know anyone that has. I don't think Yeah. I mean, I I I have, but what I will say is, like, you know, like, my time is valuable. I
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I have certainly lost money
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based on the amount of time that I put into this, but I actually consider that a a very valuable investment. You know?
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I would not currently
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have
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the position that I do at Bitcoin Magazine if not for the investment of time and energy and
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personal resources that I put into,
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you know, the Lightning Network and Bitcoin in general. So,
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but what I will say is, like, if you if you remove all of the
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the value of my time,
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then I am
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profitable by, like, dozens of dollars, you know, which is nothing, obviously.
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But
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and if you add it back in my time, then it's like, okay. Well, you're still at a loss. Or maybe But, again, like, we're looking at that wrong because because it's it's it's earning SATs in a way that is noncustodial.
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It's not comparable to kind of earning in dollars. Right? Like, these this is you're earning the most precious asset there there ever was.
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And and that's what you're not earning by. Much greater.
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I I I just I I think it's important, you know, like, we see, like, Alex Bosworth, like, he tweets out, you know, I just made,
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you know, 25 good bajillion
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dollars on running my lightning node, that
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that the average pleb right now should not be going into it expecting to make any kind of profit. You should go in and expect them to be able to buy.
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They can be making tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of sats a week. It is possible. Well, that that is true, and and it's possible. But I I think it is important to Matt's point to basically make it clear. Like, if you're running a routing node because you wanna be
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earning significant, you know, quote, unquote, interest,
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sorry, on your on your SaaS, that's not the right way to be approaching it right now. Correct. I I I personally believe
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that having a routing node with a long standing history
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and,
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you know, and balancing your channels and shit is going to be in the near future. And by near, I mean, you know, 3 to or 1 to 5 years, let's say,
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is going to turn out to be
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extremely
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valuable from a monetary perspective, from a a a,
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Bitcoin perspective, but it is absolutely not there yet. And the people that are contributing to this in PlebNet and in the Lightning Network at large, you know, there's basically,
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large entities
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that are,
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there is a business reason for them using PlebNet and that it's, like, you know, instant settlement,
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very low fees, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's people like all of us and in in Plebnet who are basically like, we are
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very passionate about this technology. We're willing to spend our time because we understand that
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the value of this knowledge and the value of
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this network,
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and by network, I mean, the Lightning Network, is so large that,
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you know, we're willing to break even or even lose, you know, tens of dollars in the short term. Because in the medium term and the long term, we expect the Lightning Network to be,
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you know, kind of the the foundation of
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a lot of things in the same way that TCPIP protocol is for the Internet.
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Right. So right now, you can earn about 2 to 3% yield per year on Bitcoin that you stake on your lightning node.
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But again, you know, to make a living in the western countries, let's say in Silicon Valley, I can't live off of a lightning node unless I'm putting up tons of Bitcoin, and the size of the pie grows quite a bit too. So, you know, we're looking at lightning payments being adopted by many, many more people, which is going to happen.
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It hasn't happened yet. But even now, if you are a serious node operator, you can get 2 to 3% yield, which is nothing to laugh at because it is an issue. Non custodial.
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Right? It's it's it's yield in a non custodial way.
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Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, if you have a really low cost of living and a lot of Bitcoin,
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available to,
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put up a, you know, bunch of fat channels,
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you can make good money. But, again, you know, the size of the pie is gonna increase. That's the part that I'm really focused on because that means the scaling is gonna happen and many more people are gonna make serious,
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money and supply the infrastructure of the, you know, Internet of money, which is what lightning is really.
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Walton or Raj,
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do you have any, like, tips for freaks who might be struggling to get any kind of real fee revenue to,
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up their Yeah. The numb the number one thing that they should do is they should go to Erin Malone's
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Twitter,
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and check her pinned,
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thread. It's it's an absolute blast. She then wrote an article, I think, was it the Bitcoin Magazine P on on this essentially, the same thing, but with Bitbucket.
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Yep. The same. Yeah. Yeah. Erin Erin Erin is the queen
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of
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of fee mastery,
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and she's very willing to to speak to people. You know? Once they're already set up on on Plebna,
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Just to remind people, if they want to find
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their way to the greatest
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Bitcoin community,
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all they need to do is go to kycjelly.com.
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That's
390
00:33:07.860 --> 00:33:08.360
kycjelly.com.
391
00:33:10.340 --> 00:33:11.480
Thank you, Adam speaking.
392
00:33:12.165 --> 00:33:13.225
So great, Adam.
393
00:33:13.685 --> 00:33:15.845
Thank you. So I retweeted Adam's,
394
00:33:16.325 --> 00:33:20.585
thread about how how she became profitable in, in a few weeks and,
395
00:33:20.970 --> 00:33:22.750
you know, have a sort of a main,
396
00:33:23.929 --> 00:33:25.309
secrets of the trade.
397
00:33:25.690 --> 00:33:32.945
But if you are a node operator and you're not getting any routing, first thing you wanna do is make sure you have a good, you
398
00:33:33.325 --> 00:33:38.865
know, substantial liquidity channels. I'm talking about 5 to 10000000 stats with some of the big nodes.
399
00:33:39.520 --> 00:33:42.419
Connect to some of the big nodes in Plebnet. If you go to,
400
00:33:44.320 --> 00:33:45.299
you know, the terminal.lightning.engineeringwebsite,
401
00:33:48.635 --> 00:33:54.095
which is maintained by Lightning Labs. You can see some of the top nodes. And there is another,
402
00:33:54.955 --> 00:33:56.255
tool that you can use
403
00:33:56.715 --> 00:33:57.215
for
404
00:33:57.630 --> 00:34:00.290
improving your centrality to the network.
405
00:34:00.830 --> 00:34:05.090
And, the guy who made the tool is, his name is Greg Flare,
406
00:34:06.095 --> 00:34:06.595
gridflare.
407
00:34:08.255 --> 00:34:11.555
So he has a website, actually. I'm gonna tweet it out shortly.
408
00:34:11.935 --> 00:34:16.740
So if you go to gridflare's website, you can put in your pubkey, and it'll do the calculation,
409
00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:19.540
based on the current network,
410
00:34:20.240 --> 00:34:26.645
status and tell you what are the top nodes that you should be connecting to. So out of those top recommendations,
411
00:34:27.105 --> 00:34:36.800
you pick the commercially important ones. And, I think with the 3 or 4 channels of 5 to 10,000,000 SaaS, you should start seeing a good amount of activity within a few days.
412
00:34:37.260 --> 00:34:42.320
I think one thing I wanna just jump in and say is I think one of the most the most amazing things to me about PlebNet
413
00:34:42.945 --> 00:34:46.325
is that, you know, this community kinda we created this community.
414
00:34:46.705 --> 00:34:47.205
And
415
00:34:48.465 --> 00:34:49.870
even for people who are,
416
00:34:50.350 --> 00:34:53.090
I like, you know, Gridflare's tools, which are incredible,
417
00:34:53.710 --> 00:34:54.210
are
418
00:34:56.110 --> 00:34:59.010
kind of have grown out of the
419
00:35:00.355 --> 00:35:06.934
the interaction of people on PlebNet, right, and trying to understand it. And, like, you know, l n or is it, lnrouter.app
420
00:35:08.060 --> 00:35:08.640
and lnnoteinsight?
421
00:35:09.020 --> 00:35:11.040
Like, those are all tools that have
422
00:35:11.580 --> 00:35:21.035
benefited massively from this community. And so I I think it's important to acknowledge that not only are we seeing this incredibly this thing this valuable benefit for people who are interested
423
00:35:21.734 --> 00:35:26.954
in taking control of their own financial freedom, being financially sovereign, running lightning routing nodes,
424
00:35:27.740 --> 00:35:30.880
But for for lightning developers as well,
425
00:35:31.340 --> 00:35:32.960
there is a huge benefit
426
00:35:33.420 --> 00:35:36.295
to, you know, joining these types of communities.
427
00:35:37.075 --> 00:35:43.174
You know Right. It's like the world's best alpha or yeah. Probably world's best alpha group,
428
00:35:43.609 --> 00:35:45.550
with regards to come out testing
429
00:35:46.010 --> 00:35:56.985
the newest stuff on lightning and helping helping it iterate. And it's and it's, you know, yeah, it's fantastic because it that actually generates more alpha for the for the people running their lightning nodes.
430
00:35:57.365 --> 00:36:04.210
And the Lightning Network too, though. You know, I mean, that's the amazing thing. I mean, the thing, you know, I I talk about this a lot, but, like, the most exciting thing to me about
431
00:36:04.750 --> 00:36:06.690
about Bitcoin, honestly, and
432
00:36:07.710 --> 00:36:08.210
Lightning
433
00:36:08.914 --> 00:36:13.174
is the incentives. Right? Like, you know, no one is better than their incentives.
434
00:36:13.714 --> 00:36:14.214
And,
435
00:36:15.154 --> 00:36:15.974
it's easy.
436
00:36:16.434 --> 00:36:18.650
And so the thing for me is that
437
00:36:19.430 --> 00:36:26.170
in Align Network, I mean, it's it's like playing this real time strategy game that is the most exciting real time strategy game
438
00:36:26.865 --> 00:36:36.930
that I've ever played. Right? You know, StarCraft, whatever whatever whatever other game you're interested in, like, this is more interesting because we're talking about the soundest money that has ever existed. We're talking
439
00:36:37.390 --> 00:36:38.609
about real sats
440
00:36:39.150 --> 00:36:46.944
every day. And so it it and we're all basically we're we're friends. We've got this community. We're willing to give up alpha,
441
00:36:47.724 --> 00:36:49.345
quote, unquote, in a way that,
442
00:36:50.365 --> 00:36:52.464
to benefit the larger Bitcoin network
443
00:36:52.765 --> 00:37:05.585
via lightning that I just haven't seen anywhere else. I mean, most most of the time when you try to ask for advice on some of this stuff, you know, previously before PlumbNet, it was it was very kind of like, well, I don't really wanna give you the deets because,
444
00:37:06.125 --> 00:37:08.305
you know, that would cut into my profits. But in Plaidnet,
445
00:37:08.605 --> 00:37:10.065
we all understand that
446
00:37:10.980 --> 00:37:11.720
what benefits
447
00:37:12.100 --> 00:37:13.240
us as individuals
448
00:37:14.020 --> 00:37:15.240
benefits the community
449
00:37:15.700 --> 00:37:16.920
and helps us grow.
450
00:37:18.725 --> 00:37:20.025
Right. And, Gridflare's
451
00:37:20.405 --> 00:37:22.745
website for optimizing your channel,
452
00:37:23.845 --> 00:37:25.785
decisions is, gridflare.xyz.
453
00:37:29.550 --> 00:37:30.450
So, I mean,
454
00:37:31.310 --> 00:37:36.210
that that's in reference to centrality. Right? This idea that you're well connected,
455
00:37:36.905 --> 00:37:38.585
to the greater lightning network.
456
00:37:39.705 --> 00:37:42.925
But there's another step there, I think, at least from
457
00:37:43.945 --> 00:37:45.725
my my basic understanding
458
00:37:46.185 --> 00:37:47.300
of of
459
00:37:47.760 --> 00:37:48.260
maximizing,
460
00:37:49.040 --> 00:37:49.940
routing fees,
461
00:37:50.320 --> 00:37:55.620
which is basically, like, trying to sit your situate yourself as, like, kind of, like, a gateway node,
462
00:37:56.015 --> 00:37:56.515
where
463
00:37:57.535 --> 00:38:00.035
either on one on one side or the other,
464
00:38:01.535 --> 00:38:06.619
the the only real way to get to the node the other nodes is through your channels.
465
00:38:07.400 --> 00:38:09.180
Because if you can hit, like,
466
00:38:10.200 --> 00:38:14.940
a a a merchant like, if you find a merchant or an exchange that's really hot that has
467
00:38:15.785 --> 00:38:17.885
lightning deposits or lightning payments,
468
00:38:19.465 --> 00:38:28.950
and you're one of the only ones providing them inbound and you're well connected to the rest of the network, then all of a sudden you can raise your fees and people are forced to pay them. Right?
469
00:38:29.890 --> 00:38:30.390
Yes.
470
00:38:30.850 --> 00:38:31.750
Go ahead, Raj.
471
00:38:32.125 --> 00:38:34.385
Yeah. That's true. I mean, you know, you can opportunistically
472
00:38:34.845 --> 00:38:36.285
identify these kind of,
473
00:38:37.165 --> 00:38:38.204
situations and,
474
00:38:38.925 --> 00:38:43.369
become, sort of a sit in the catbird seat and, collect some good fees.
475
00:38:43.670 --> 00:38:45.609
But, you know, it's a dynamic situation.
476
00:38:46.150 --> 00:38:49.085
More people will come in to compete with you, and,
477
00:38:49.725 --> 00:38:51.585
you just gotta stay on the,
478
00:38:52.125 --> 00:38:55.105
on the on your game and, keep finding those opportunities.
479
00:38:56.125 --> 00:39:13.714
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, initially, like, you know, Aaron and I and a couple others, we we created, like, a super node, right, where we basically set all of our fees between ourselves. We had this sort of, like, pentagram configuration to 0, and we were like, alright. This is gonna be great. And and, you know, it it was interesting at first, but the reality was,
480
00:39:14.890 --> 00:39:17.710
so that is to say we could rebalance between ourselves
481
00:39:18.410 --> 00:39:24.625
for 0 fees. Right? And, then, you know, people like Dredd and Marshall who had significant liquidity,
482
00:39:25.485 --> 00:39:26.705
they were able to
483
00:39:27.165 --> 00:39:30.065
basically create these huge Wambo channels
484
00:39:30.680 --> 00:39:31.820
to these
485
00:39:32.120 --> 00:39:35.740
major economic nodes in the network. But the reality was,
486
00:39:36.360 --> 00:39:41.995
surprisingly to me, that actually wasn't the most viable strategy. The most viable strategy was to educate.
487
00:39:42.535 --> 00:39:53.770
And, initially, there was a lot of payments that were routed through us. Right? But the beauty of the Lightning Network is that when you educate people, the the incentives are such that every single node as an individual or every single
488
00:39:54.245 --> 00:39:56.745
number of nodes that are that are controlled by an individual
489
00:39:57.125 --> 00:39:57.865
are incentivized
490
00:39:58.245 --> 00:39:59.385
to figure out
491
00:39:59.925 --> 00:40:00.425
the
492
00:40:00.805 --> 00:40:07.300
sort of dark corners of the Lightning Network that they can open channels to to provide the type of liquidity you're talking about, Matt.
493
00:40:07.600 --> 00:40:08.100
And,
494
00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:11.255
we ended up, like, spinning down this, like,
495
00:40:11.654 --> 00:40:16.634
you know, the, the super node that we had, which is, like, 4 or 5 of us, you know,
496
00:40:17.015 --> 00:40:20.315
because it just it was more viable to
497
00:40:21.750 --> 00:40:22.490
to actually,
498
00:40:23.270 --> 00:40:25.610
educate everyone else on the
499
00:40:25.990 --> 00:40:35.065
factors that are involved and then create that liquidity so that we were all kinda benefiting. And I think, you know, this is interesting. Like, I I think it's pretty clear to it's clear it's clear to me that basically
500
00:40:38.005 --> 00:40:38.505
that
501
00:40:40.870 --> 00:40:44.650
Lightning Pool, you know, for a long time, they have really struggled
502
00:40:45.030 --> 00:40:54.425
to get enough liquidity. So Lightning Pool is a lending market place where, basically, you can go in and you can, you can make offers. It's really fucking cool. You can make offers,
503
00:40:54.965 --> 00:40:56.185
it's by Lighting Labs
504
00:40:56.500 --> 00:40:58.440
to, you know, to basically,
505
00:40:59.140 --> 00:41:07.625
offer up liquidity for Lightning Channels on a time based basis, or you can, buy liquidity from them. And for a long time,
506
00:41:08.085 --> 00:41:13.625
like, like, pool was the largest black hole. They were a vampire node in Bitcoin. Like, if you opened a channel to them,
507
00:41:14.119 --> 00:41:17.540
it didn't matter what you set your fees to as long as it's You say pool or loop?
508
00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:18.579
I'm sorry.
509
00:41:19.680 --> 00:41:22.020
Loop. You are absolutely correct. Lightning loop.
510
00:41:23.295 --> 00:41:31.635
They would basically Myon suddenly got active again recently, and they closed on me while I wasn't paying attention because I haven't reconnected TM UX after Umbrel update.
511
00:41:32.309 --> 00:41:35.130
Well, the interesting thing, though, is that they basically were in a situation
512
00:41:35.589 --> 00:41:36.650
until very recently
513
00:41:36.950 --> 00:41:41.935
where they had to basically they had to be because so so lightning loop is a kind of,
514
00:41:42.734 --> 00:41:44.675
they are a they they send
515
00:41:45.135 --> 00:41:46.755
payments out to individuals
516
00:41:47.055 --> 00:41:47.555
constantly.
517
00:41:48.049 --> 00:41:55.029
And so they need to have a constant source of inbound Lightning liquidity in order to maintain
518
00:41:55.535 --> 00:41:56.355
their economic,
519
00:41:57.615 --> 00:41:58.115
advantage.
520
00:41:58.415 --> 00:42:09.420
So they created this service, lightning pool, which allows people to it creates a marketplace for lightning liquidity. And it's really cool. If you have extra liquidity, you can basically put it up in this marketplace and then earn additional,
521
00:42:11.480 --> 00:42:12.140
you know,
522
00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:21.770
fee or, you know, additional fees on top of what you'd get as a routing node. And they did that because they there was an economic incentive for them to do so. And for a long time,
523
00:42:22.170 --> 00:42:27.950
you know, we would all sort of joke around because we would connect the lightning loop, and then they would doesn't matter what your fee was. It could be 5,000,
524
00:42:28.970 --> 00:42:29.710
fee rate,
525
00:42:30.275 --> 00:42:40.740
or whatever you want, and they would basically drain you dry because they needed it so badly. And it's incredibly bullish to me for the Lightning Network that that is gone now. Right? There are enough people who are competing
526
00:42:41.280 --> 00:42:46.980
for who are trying to create a market for competitive fees connected to the loop service
527
00:42:47.425 --> 00:42:54.885
that, you know, the fees are much, much lower. And they tweeted out recently, like, oh my gosh. This is amazing. We finally reached a situation where
528
00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:04.580
we're actually in a competitive market. And I think a large part of that is because of PlebNet and because of the the shared knowledge there. Do you think part of it is because on chain fees are nothing
529
00:43:05.335 --> 00:43:07.195
right now? Well, absolutely.
530
00:43:07.575 --> 00:43:10.715
Absolutely. But I also think that if you if you look back when,
531
00:43:11.255 --> 00:43:13.099
on if you look back,
532
00:43:13.420 --> 00:43:17.839
when on chain fees were really high and when they dropped, that did correlate
533
00:43:18.220 --> 00:43:22.714
pretty strongly with the the the increase in liquidity of the Lightning Network.
534
00:43:25.415 --> 00:43:26.155
Yeah. Absolutely.
535
00:43:26.590 --> 00:43:39.545
I mean, low fees, low on chain fees are the most amazing environment for learning how to run a writing a route a sovereign writing note. Excuse me. A sovereign reading markets is the point. Like, they are competing markets, and so there will be some interdependencies.
536
00:43:40.565 --> 00:43:42.185
Especially when it comes to liquidity.
537
00:43:42.650 --> 00:43:51.710
Right? Because one of the main one of the main cause for providing liquidity is your open and close. I mean, one of the reasons why my note is so fucking far away from profitability
538
00:43:52.305 --> 00:43:55.445
is because I didn't have the liberty of learning in a low fee environment.
539
00:43:57.025 --> 00:44:05.900
Yeah. I mean, I did some really stupid things. I got my super high time preference and and open one channel with paying over a 100 sats per VB.
540
00:44:06.360 --> 00:44:07.885
It's disgusting. It's disgusting.
541
00:44:08.265 --> 00:44:09.625
Now I do all my
542
00:44:10.265 --> 00:44:19.360
1 or 2, like, maybe. Like, it's yeah. You you get really tough, but, yeah, now is the time to be opening channels, Dyers, while the fees are low. Because in the future,
543
00:44:19.740 --> 00:44:22.560
if on chain fees go really high, you actually,
544
00:44:23.275 --> 00:44:30.710
may not be able to transact on chain and therefore you will need to transact on Lightning. And if you don't have your own Lightning Channels, then you're gonna be
545
00:44:31.089 --> 00:44:36.070
having to resort to using some sort of custodial service, which will likely come with additional cost. So
546
00:44:36.530 --> 00:44:41.075
get get a Lightning node up and running because you're actually staking your your place,
547
00:44:41.775 --> 00:44:44.435
on, you know, the payments network of the future.
548
00:44:45.295 --> 00:44:54.020
Yep. Get it going while we are still in the bone zone. The bone zone is when a lot of half of, you know, partially empty blocks are
549
00:44:54.320 --> 00:44:57.700
getting mined, and the fees are super low. One set per reabyte,
550
00:44:58.484 --> 00:45:00.664
it's not gonna last for very long.
551
00:45:02.244 --> 00:45:06.220
Yeah. How how long is it gonna last, Raj? I famously got,
552
00:45:07.340 --> 00:45:10.780
pie on my face because I felt the fee foam up pretty hard, and,
553
00:45:11.420 --> 00:45:17.625
I did not expect to get one separate bytes clearing, you know, next block like we did this summer.
554
00:45:18.085 --> 00:45:19.525
Well, that's because of some,
555
00:45:20.085 --> 00:45:20.565
big,
556
00:45:20.885 --> 00:45:26.809
jump in segment adoption rate by some economic nodes, and that's why we have the low fees.
557
00:45:27.109 --> 00:45:36.135
But as Bitcoin adoption increases, that's gonna go away. There is there is no second chance again now. So Segwit caught us some breathing room.
558
00:45:37.235 --> 00:45:40.775
Maybe in a year, you won't you will not see this kind of situation again.
559
00:45:42.440 --> 00:45:44.060
So the bonds on the last
560
00:45:44.920 --> 00:45:56.335
on and off, for a year maybe, and I I'm expecting that in a year, it's it's history. One set for me. Right? So, Raj, you know, I've been it's a this is a topic that I'm really interested in. I mean, as you can see,
561
00:45:57.195 --> 00:45:59.775
every dispatch, I got the live look at
562
00:46:01.150 --> 00:46:01.810
at at mempool@menpool.space,
563
00:46:03.550 --> 00:46:04.530
up on the screen.
564
00:46:06.109 --> 00:46:12.255
Do you think I so one of the things I've been thinking about lately is that Lightning kind of acts like a release valve.
565
00:46:12.954 --> 00:46:18.780
So we might not see sustained high fees as soon as we would have if Lightning didn't exist.
566
00:46:19.340 --> 00:46:21.280
Because when fees go up substantially,
567
00:46:22.860 --> 00:46:28.560
users have a direct incentive to pay less fees to try and figure out how to use Lightning, and then they go
568
00:46:29.125 --> 00:46:40.530
a bunch of new users get onboarded to Lightning as a result, and then the fee pressure dies down on chain, and then rinse and repeat. So we get, like, these, like, blow off fee tops rather than, like, a sustained
569
00:46:40.830 --> 00:46:41.810
high fee environment.
570
00:46:42.750 --> 00:46:51.865
Yeah. But but, Matt, at some point, you're gonna hit a point where there is so many lightning channels themselves being opened and closed, which are on chain transactions,
571
00:46:52.350 --> 00:46:56.850
that that could become a significant part of the on chain traffic. Right? So,
572
00:46:57.310 --> 00:46:59.410
you know, as the lightning pie grows,
573
00:47:00.185 --> 00:47:12.569
it is gonna create much more congestion on the main chain. So the fees are going to go up eventually. And there will be, you know, a a point beyond which lightning network is so big that,
574
00:47:13.130 --> 00:47:15.150
you know, it is generating a continuous,
575
00:47:15.849 --> 00:47:17.710
demand for on chain transactions.
576
00:47:18.994 --> 00:47:22.935
And, you know, I'm I'm thinking of when so much more of the,
577
00:47:23.475 --> 00:47:24.295
real world's
578
00:47:24.595 --> 00:47:29.600
small payment commerce moves on to the lightning network, and there's gonna be a lot more nodes.
579
00:47:29.980 --> 00:47:33.680
And the nodes that do exist now will have a lot more channels.
580
00:47:34.060 --> 00:47:38.905
They will be opening and closing channels. You know, balancing channels is not always the best option.
581
00:47:39.285 --> 00:47:41.305
It's also, you know, be frustrating
582
00:47:41.605 --> 00:47:44.105
unless you have some real emission taking care of it.
583
00:47:44.484 --> 00:47:47.380
And closing channel and opening a new one is always a good
584
00:47:56.835 --> 00:48:01.975
I don't know. But eventually, when the Internet of money has become big enough on the second layer,
585
00:48:02.915 --> 00:48:03.655
on chain
586
00:48:04.040 --> 00:48:04.540
transactions
587
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:08.220
for sustaining that network are gonna be significant
588
00:48:08.840 --> 00:48:09.900
amount of traffic.
589
00:48:11.240 --> 00:48:13.340
I mean, I would I agree. I just think
590
00:48:13.935 --> 00:48:15.635
lightning delayed that
591
00:48:16.335 --> 00:48:17.635
pushed it back. Right?
592
00:48:18.895 --> 00:48:20.990
Yes. You're right. It did push it back.
593
00:48:21.470 --> 00:48:22.050
I think,
594
00:48:22.830 --> 00:48:27.730
I think in a way, it's actually good because while the block subsidy is still pretty high,
595
00:48:28.325 --> 00:48:31.384
we have more people getting used to doing Bitcoin transactions,
596
00:48:32.164 --> 00:48:32.805
you know,
597
00:48:33.684 --> 00:48:40.730
opening channels, closing channels at very low cost. I think it's it's it's a it's a, you know, the plus side of that situation.
598
00:48:45.455 --> 00:48:49.235
I think with, like, one of the interesting phenomenons I saw with this
599
00:48:49.935 --> 00:48:52.495
with this latest high fee event,
600
00:48:53.700 --> 00:48:55.480
I mean, we had high fees for
601
00:48:56.020 --> 00:48:58.200
4 months, 5 months. I mean, someone,
602
00:48:58.579 --> 00:48:59.960
we have Mooch in the comments
603
00:49:00.420 --> 00:49:03.705
asking if he's saying fees are designed to pump forever. You
604
00:49:05.045 --> 00:49:10.825
know, during that fee market, I said it many times. I still believe it. I just think it's a long term kind of trend,
605
00:49:13.870 --> 00:49:14.270
but,
606
00:49:15.070 --> 00:49:17.070
I kinda forgot where I was going there. But,
607
00:49:18.510 --> 00:49:19.090
I think
608
00:49:19.390 --> 00:49:26.085
Oh, that the phenomenon that we witnessed with that. So the high fees, what was this was the first time we had high fees and we had lightning.
609
00:49:26.704 --> 00:49:29.605
Because the last high fees we really had was during the 2017
610
00:49:30.160 --> 00:49:37.940
block size wars, and there was probably a lot of spam that was happening to make it happen. And there's some theories that I I I don't necessarily
611
00:49:38.895 --> 00:49:39.615
think are,
612
00:49:40.415 --> 00:49:44.035
unlikely. Like, the it could have been the case that, you know, Chinese miners
613
00:49:44.495 --> 00:49:48.275
were pulling hash strategically to try and keep the fee environment high.
614
00:49:49.320 --> 00:49:57.260
But what was interesting, this being the first high fee environment with lightning, is you saw a lot of people interested in basically lightning light wallets
615
00:49:57.745 --> 00:49:58.245
during,
616
00:50:01.265 --> 00:50:04.645
during the high fees because they didn't have to open an actual channel.
617
00:50:04.945 --> 00:50:05.685
But then
618
00:50:06.510 --> 00:50:19.415
after the fees went down, then then they started learning about running their own routing node because then they had to open channels. So they kind of went the routes of a lot of times, custodial wallets where they didn't even have to touch an open channel at all, and they waited.
619
00:50:23.940 --> 00:50:25.320
So, Raj, you gotta go?
620
00:50:26.980 --> 00:50:34.585
Yeah. I gotta go. Sorry, guys. I have a kind of a hard deadline at the hour. So thanks again for having me, Matt. I really appreciate it.
621
00:50:34.965 --> 00:50:41.625
No problem. Thank you for coming on. Hope to have you again on soon, and, I look forward to participating in Plebnet more.
622
00:50:42.005 --> 00:50:43.625
Thank you. Bye bye.
623
00:50:45.340 --> 00:50:46.800
So to all the other freaks,
624
00:50:47.260 --> 00:50:52.160
me, Pete, and Walton are gonna continue for another 25 minutes or so. If you have any questions,
625
00:50:52.515 --> 00:50:54.055
put them in the live chat,
626
00:50:54.915 --> 00:50:57.575
through Twitter, Twitch, or YouTube, and we will get to them.
627
00:50:59.235 --> 00:51:08.950
Pete, is that is that in did you notice that same phenomenon, right, where, like, people were, like, interested in lightning, but they weren't necessarily interested in running their routing nodes as much until fees dropped again?
628
00:51:09.875 --> 00:51:22.910
Yeah. I mean, I think I I definitely noticed that. I the thing that's so amazing to me about, like, PlebNet is that it actually created this community where people were interested in learning how to run their own sovereign lighting nodes even in a higher fee environment.
629
00:51:23.210 --> 00:51:29.705
And I think that the thing that I really took away from that experience is like, oh, man. Like, this is a game.
630
00:51:30.085 --> 00:51:33.065
Like or whether it can be a game. It can be a really fun
631
00:51:33.680 --> 00:51:37.140
strategic game. Right? Like, Aaron, Walton, Raj,
632
00:51:37.440 --> 00:51:52.470
KP, a bunch of us who were, like, doing this, like, you know, we would we were literally, like, we had these Telegram groups where we would just be messaging back and forth constantly. Like, oh, shit. Like, this node is is, we'll pay you high fees. This one will drain you. And and if, because my point is
633
00:51:52.849 --> 00:51:53.589
the community
634
00:51:54.290 --> 00:51:55.270
and the exciting
635
00:51:56.530 --> 00:52:02.005
kind of like real time strategy game aspect of Lightning is something that I didn't realize existed
636
00:52:02.704 --> 00:52:04.724
and has created a really compelling
637
00:52:05.905 --> 00:52:06.405
reason
638
00:52:06.785 --> 00:52:08.085
for people to
639
00:52:08.920 --> 00:52:17.260
start learning how to run these systems. Now it is absolutely the case that when the fees went low, it created an environment where people could
640
00:52:17.705 --> 00:52:19.005
learn this stuff,
641
00:52:21.145 --> 00:52:27.740
in a way that was extremely economically viable. But I actually think that these types of communities are the thing that really drives adoption.
642
00:52:28.520 --> 00:52:32.540
But I I I agree. I mean, that's one of the reasons I spend so much time
643
00:52:33.785 --> 00:52:35.325
in the education space
644
00:52:35.785 --> 00:52:37.325
and and helping people,
645
00:52:37.945 --> 00:52:40.205
and talking to other Bitcoiners. But
646
00:52:41.819 --> 00:52:43.359
the the thing about lightning
647
00:52:43.740 --> 00:52:45.599
operators is when you're
648
00:52:46.059 --> 00:52:50.960
we you have way lower time preference for your on chain transactions. Right? So, like For sure.
649
00:52:52.675 --> 00:53:00.615
You can wait for a 1 sat per byte or 2 sat per byte to confirm. So you do it it does provide a, like, a reserve
650
00:53:03.549 --> 00:53:09.809
reserve transaction demand on, like, kind of, like, the bottom of the mempool wait list. Totally. Call it that.
651
00:53:10.435 --> 00:53:11.175
But it's
652
00:53:11.714 --> 00:53:14.775
it'll take longer for that to be a reason for,
653
00:53:16.195 --> 00:53:17.975
like, fee pressure
654
00:53:18.435 --> 00:53:20.730
Yeah. On Yeah. Yeah. I definitely agree. I
655
00:53:21.030 --> 00:53:25.850
mean, I have personally, like, never been I got well, first of all, I was, like,
656
00:53:26.470 --> 00:53:29.610
running a lightning routing node, I have made more on
657
00:53:30.135 --> 00:53:35.435
more on chain transactions than I ever have in the entire history of my involvement in Bitcoin, which is since, like, 2016.
658
00:53:35.815 --> 00:53:38.150
Right? And I think that's really fucking cool.
659
00:53:38.630 --> 00:53:44.490
And I'm I'm glad to be able to participate in that. But you're absolutely right. Like, you know, like, Ben Prentiss and I, like, opened a channel
660
00:53:45.109 --> 00:53:45.609
and
661
00:53:46.005 --> 00:53:52.984
or he opened it. I I convinced him to open a channel to me. And, he was like, yeah, man. I I I sent it with, like, you know, 22,
662
00:53:53.285 --> 00:54:05.984
Southborough vbites. So, it's probably not gonna open until the weekend. And I was like, that's cool, man. Like, these channels are just, you know, we're throwing channels around and like that type of approach. And this is, like, a significant amount of, like, locking up a significant amount of liquidity.
663
00:54:06.765 --> 00:54:08.545
I personally wouldn't have had
664
00:54:09.490 --> 00:54:15.090
that low time preference if not for my confidence in the waiting at work. So I agree with you. Right.
665
00:54:15.730 --> 00:54:17.910
So one of the things you mentioned previously
666
00:54:18.210 --> 00:54:19.474
there was, like, like,
667
00:54:19.954 --> 00:54:21.335
kind of people on PlebNet
668
00:54:24.994 --> 00:54:27.175
taking advantage of maybe lazy
669
00:54:29.880 --> 00:54:34.460
lazy competing routing nodes or not maybe just not sophisticated
670
00:54:35.400 --> 00:54:36.140
node operators
671
00:54:36.440 --> 00:54:39.484
who allowed you to make more fees on them.
672
00:54:41.065 --> 00:54:46.365
Do you think and that's great because, I mean, that's exactly what we want. We we want, like, this adversarial
673
00:54:46.744 --> 00:54:48.125
incentive based network
674
00:54:48.700 --> 00:54:54.000
where people are just working for their own best interest, and as a result, everyone gets better liquidity.
675
00:54:54.619 --> 00:54:55.680
But do you think
676
00:54:56.540 --> 00:54:57.040
that
677
00:54:58.605 --> 00:55:13.380
have have you thought at all about, you know, the fact that, like, Lightning it kinda feels like Lightning hasn't really had its adversarial moment yet? Like, I mean, obviously, we have people like you guys on on ClubNet that are doing it, and there's probably some vultures out there that
678
00:55:13.744 --> 00:55:17.285
are are, you know, making a decent amount of money doing similar things.
679
00:55:17.665 --> 00:55:19.845
But I feel like it hasn't really
680
00:55:20.840 --> 00:55:23.740
stood the test of attacks yet. Would you agree on that?
681
00:55:24.120 --> 00:55:31.974
I would. I I think that the Lightning Network I mean, we talk about things like circuit breaker. Right? So there there's there are these potential vulnerabilities in the Lightning Network.
682
00:55:33.635 --> 00:55:38.020
You know? And and I think, you know, it's it's very interesting, the recent attacks that have happened with,
683
00:55:39.020 --> 00:55:39.520
you
684
00:55:40.020 --> 00:55:43.960
know, with with El Sal where rather, they seem to be related to El Salvador,
685
00:55:44.260 --> 00:55:46.680
but there were recent attacks on the major
686
00:55:47.595 --> 00:55:54.655
Lightning routing nodes that were kind of like DDoS attacks. And I it's not a coincidence. I I personally feel like those are almost certainly,
687
00:55:56.099 --> 00:55:58.039
you know, government sponsored attacks.
688
00:56:00.819 --> 00:56:10.765
And I I think we're I think we're we are moving into a much more adversarial world in the Lightning Network, and I think that is fantastic. Right? And the fact that, like, a bunch of us kind of
689
00:56:11.119 --> 00:56:27.224
early on had this cabal, which sounds really nefarious, but, basically, it was literally like people were opening channels in Plebnet, and then there was a lack of liquidity to these large channels. And then people that had this high liquidity were like, well, I have the Bitcoin to put up. I can be basically a battery node of liquidity,
690
00:56:27.765 --> 00:56:35.450
in this low fee environment. Right? I can open these large channels and then basically provide liquidity in the future when fees go up, and then they did go up briefly.
691
00:56:35.830 --> 00:56:36.330
And,
692
00:56:37.190 --> 00:56:39.610
it was a really wonderful thing for me
693
00:56:40.035 --> 00:56:41.175
to see that
694
00:56:41.795 --> 00:56:45.695
for all of us. Right? Like, we dissolve that that that that,
695
00:56:46.035 --> 00:56:53.220
that super node because the reality was for each of us, by supporting the larger lighting network, that is to say educating
696
00:56:53.520 --> 00:56:54.020
everyone
697
00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:55.380
about the
698
00:56:55.755 --> 00:56:57.375
the dynamics involved,
699
00:56:57.835 --> 00:56:59.135
that was the thing
700
00:56:59.435 --> 00:57:00.255
that created
701
00:57:00.795 --> 00:57:04.655
more liquidity and more and more routing fees for all of us.
702
00:57:05.110 --> 00:57:11.450
And that's an amazing thing. Like, it's it's an incredible thing when you're you are participating in a system and a community
703
00:57:12.705 --> 00:57:15.605
where the way to benefit yourself selfishly
704
00:57:16.465 --> 00:57:17.125
is to
705
00:57:17.745 --> 00:57:18.245
improve
706
00:57:18.945 --> 00:57:20.005
the alpha
707
00:57:20.619 --> 00:57:27.359
of everyone involved. Like, that's that's just Once again, the incentives are just beautiful. Right? It's it's
708
00:57:27.819 --> 00:57:33.545
the an individual should act selfishly, essentially. And that and that and that's a good thing because,
709
00:57:34.405 --> 00:57:35.865
it means that the
710
00:57:36.325 --> 00:57:39.710
the the market is more competitive, and it means that,
711
00:57:40.150 --> 00:57:42.810
you know, we we actually do have a free
712
00:57:44.070 --> 00:57:47.210
market that is the the fee market on the lightning
713
00:57:47.935 --> 00:57:48.435
Network.
714
00:57:50.415 --> 00:57:52.115
Yeah. So that kinda blew my mind.
715
00:57:52.895 --> 00:58:03.270
So And it and Go ahead, Bernard. One of the things you you you kinda keep you brought up explicitly in the beginning, but you keep alluding to, and it's, I mean, it's something that I've noticed as a long term,
716
00:58:04.275 --> 00:58:05.974
Lightning operator as well,
717
00:58:07.315 --> 00:58:10.055
is this idea of the value of, like, a reputation
718
00:58:10.355 --> 00:58:15.520
that you've been around for a while, that you have good liquidity, that you have good uptime. I know. It's weird.
719
00:58:15.820 --> 00:58:18.480
That your channels are are are fat,
720
00:58:18.940 --> 00:58:22.775
and they've been around for a long time. Girthy, please.
721
00:58:23.635 --> 00:58:24.135
But
722
00:58:24.595 --> 00:58:25.095
as
723
00:58:26.195 --> 00:58:27.335
as a result,
724
00:58:27.930 --> 00:58:32.190
there's some privacy considerations to keep in mind in terms of
725
00:58:33.690 --> 00:58:34.430
the UTXOs
726
00:58:34.730 --> 00:58:39.525
you link to that node and that node being I mean, at the very least, linked to you on Telegram.
727
00:58:40.065 --> 00:58:40.565
100%.
728
00:58:41.105 --> 00:58:44.645
Is this something you guys consider at all? Because, I mean, it's one of the
729
00:58:45.650 --> 00:58:51.589
major issues I have is, like, I have this, you know, super old, well connected lightning node,
730
00:58:51.970 --> 00:58:53.589
and then I have, you know,
731
00:58:53.890 --> 00:58:54.390
another
732
00:58:55.375 --> 00:58:59.235
undisclosed amount that aren't attached to me. But I feel like
733
00:58:59.615 --> 00:59:03.875
if I wanna do privacy best practices, I really should be recycling them, you know,
734
00:59:04.359 --> 00:59:06.859
starting fresh, getting rid of them, starting fresh
735
00:59:07.160 --> 00:59:07.900
on a
736
00:59:08.279 --> 00:59:13.579
timed basis, you know, after a certain amount of time. But it goes against this idea of
737
00:59:14.025 --> 00:59:15.005
long term reputation.
738
00:59:16.985 --> 00:59:17.885
Yeah. I mean,
739
00:59:18.185 --> 00:59:23.085
I I think it's really tough. Right? Like, the the reason that, you know, Walton mentioned the kind of the original
740
00:59:23.690 --> 00:59:26.170
URL for the Telegram group we have is,
741
00:59:27.450 --> 00:59:28.430
was kycjelly.com.
742
00:59:29.370 --> 00:59:33.385
Right? And that was because we we also The Twitter is also at kycjelly.
743
00:59:34.645 --> 00:59:40.505
There you go. And the reason that was the case is because we thought it was hilarious that, you know, we all spend so much time
744
00:59:40.885 --> 00:59:41.785
talking about
745
00:59:43.320 --> 00:59:43.820
maintaining
746
00:59:45.400 --> 00:59:51.099
financial, you know, serenity and maintaining good OPSEC and not doxing yourself.
747
00:59:51.405 --> 01:00:02.910
And, you know, on Clubhouse where a lot of us kind of, you know, got super involved in ClubNet, you know, like, I mean, for me personally, anytime anybody would mention a number, I'd be like, shut the fuck up. Like, do not mention
748
01:00:03.369 --> 01:00:11.305
any number of US dollars. Do not mention any number of Bitcoin. Do not talk about where you live or any of that shit. And then as soon as, you know,
749
01:00:11.685 --> 01:00:25.330
we started engaging the Lightning Network, we were like, yo. How many sats you got in this channel? Yo. You want a 5,000,000 sat channel, 10,000,000 sat channel? Here's my live here's my note address. Like and and so we thought it was funny that, basically, we had we had kind of
750
01:00:25.950 --> 01:00:32.655
reverted almost and been willing to dox ourselves in order to support the Lightning Network. And so I do think that is a very significant
751
01:00:33.275 --> 01:00:36.335
issue, and I think it will continue to be an issue as we go forward.
752
01:00:36.800 --> 01:00:39.140
And, you know, there are services like amboss.space
753
01:00:40.080 --> 01:00:40.580
and,
754
01:00:41.280 --> 01:00:48.645
other you know, and and 1ML was another kind of example of this, though they have been, in my opinion, super 100% superseded by ambus.space
755
01:00:50.704 --> 01:00:51.525
that basically
756
01:00:51.825 --> 01:00:53.125
allow one to
757
01:00:53.980 --> 01:00:56.160
track on the long term history
758
01:00:56.460 --> 01:01:12.400
of a node and and view the channel and view the channel closures and things like that. And Fiat JAF has some tools that have been really instrumental for me in in tracking on this thing as well. But I I I think it is they are at odds. They are in conflict, and I think that
759
01:01:13.020 --> 01:01:14.079
it does create
760
01:01:14.460 --> 01:01:19.885
a real challenge. And the only thing I'll say is that is that I am willing to dox myself a little bit,
761
01:01:20.685 --> 01:01:21.745
or a lot of bit
762
01:01:22.125 --> 01:01:31.140
for in order to support the Lightning Network and my own ability to create to to get inbound liquidity and to give up, you know, outbound liquidity.
763
01:01:31.440 --> 01:01:38.765
But there are a lot of people who have, you know, understandably been like, you know what? I wanna support Plugnet, but I'm not willing to basically dox my node,
764
01:01:39.545 --> 01:01:41.724
by connecting it to Cheese Robot. So,
765
01:01:42.185 --> 01:01:46.050
I'm happy to open channels with people, but I am not interested in in
766
01:01:48.830 --> 01:01:54.050
linking up my node explicitly with my Telegram handle. My node is a random string of characters
767
01:01:54.464 --> 01:01:56.565
and people connect to it because
768
01:01:56.944 --> 01:01:59.444
they can look at the history of that node independent
769
01:01:59.744 --> 01:02:01.045
of my personal reputation
770
01:02:01.585 --> 01:02:02.885
and see that I maintain
771
01:02:03.520 --> 01:02:10.500
good channels with low fees or with reasonable fees going forward. So I think we're gonna move into a world where it is more anonymous,
772
01:02:11.120 --> 01:02:12.500
and people can basically
773
01:02:13.825 --> 01:02:16.005
decide on whether they wanna connect to a node
774
01:02:16.305 --> 01:02:16.945
based on,
775
01:02:17.345 --> 01:02:17.845
just,
776
01:02:19.025 --> 01:02:28.940
you know, the history of their actions. I I think you could there's one way that you can have reputation without, and that's some of these, you know, ranking sites like terminal dot lightning dot engineering.
777
01:02:29.325 --> 01:02:31.905
Like, you can just go on there and, you know, pick
778
01:02:32.205 --> 01:02:38.120
a top node and see what, you know, see what matters to be counted as a top node, which is things like having a high proportion
779
01:02:38.660 --> 01:02:41.160
of, peers that route through you,
780
01:02:41.700 --> 01:02:42.200
centrality,
781
01:02:43.540 --> 01:02:45.375
your stability slash uptime
782
01:02:45.755 --> 01:02:47.214
is also very, very important.
783
01:02:48.075 --> 01:02:49.855
You know, and if you connect to one of these,
784
01:02:50.555 --> 01:02:51.295
top nodes
785
01:02:52.080 --> 01:02:55.860
or rather if you become one of these top nodes, you will you will receive,
786
01:02:57.360 --> 01:02:57.860
unrequested
787
01:02:58.320 --> 01:02:58.820
girth.
788
01:03:03.255 --> 01:03:05.915
So so, Walton, were you aware of,
789
01:03:07.300 --> 01:03:11.880
what happened with so so right now, I've pulled out pulled up on amboss.space,
790
01:03:14.405 --> 01:03:15.545
this sitl dispatch.com
791
01:03:15.925 --> 01:03:17.705
node. I don't know who runs it,
792
01:03:18.724 --> 01:03:21.705
but it is a it is a node that exists on the network,
793
01:03:22.500 --> 01:03:24.839
And this is all the information you can see,
794
01:03:26.980 --> 01:03:27.480
about
795
01:03:27.780 --> 01:03:28.839
about a node
796
01:03:30.305 --> 01:03:41.270
from just having their pubkey. You can see their their public capacity. What a lot of people don't realize is that total capacity doesn't mean how much is on that node. It it counts inbound as well, which is technically not your Bitcoin.
797
01:03:42.130 --> 01:03:47.030
Right. So that number is inflated, but I I would say that a lot of people that look at it will,
798
01:03:47.965 --> 01:03:52.465
assume that it's the top end number. And then it also shows a number of channels,
799
01:03:53.485 --> 01:03:56.225
your age of channels, your youngest channel,
800
01:03:57.900 --> 01:03:59.840
a bunch of different stats. Now
801
01:04:00.380 --> 01:04:00.880
terminal.lightning.engineering
802
01:04:04.335 --> 01:04:04.994
is a
803
01:04:05.295 --> 01:04:09.875
slightly different interface, and what their strategy is is to,
804
01:04:10.974 --> 01:04:12.515
kind of rank nodes.
805
01:04:13.590 --> 01:04:17.530
But the ranking system is not open source, and it's very,
806
01:04:18.230 --> 01:04:21.050
kind of opaque on how they decide to rate nodes.
807
01:04:21.865 --> 01:04:24.365
Agreed. I don't I don't know if you noticed,
808
01:04:26.025 --> 01:04:32.480
but maybe, like, 4 months ago or 5 months ago, they added this feature on on terminal dot lightning dot engineering,
809
01:04:33.340 --> 01:04:35.280
and it's told me that,
810
01:04:35.820 --> 01:04:40.755
this node didn't have any good peers. And I was like, they're calling all the freaks bad peers.
811
01:04:41.375 --> 01:04:43.395
And I tweeted it out, and then,
812
01:04:44.494 --> 01:04:49.530
like, 3 days later, all of a sudden, it said I had good peers and I had a high BOS score.
813
01:04:49.830 --> 01:04:50.150
And then they
814
01:04:50.870 --> 01:05:00.155
and then at some point over the last month, though, they took it away from me, and now I have no good peers. Well, I don't know whose node this is. This node has no good peers
815
01:05:00.535 --> 01:05:03.515
and is not centrally located at all even though it's got 223
816
01:05:04.640 --> 01:05:05.460
fucking channels.
817
01:05:06.000 --> 01:05:08.980
It does jump like crazy. I was ranked something like 150,
818
01:05:09.359 --> 01:05:12.740
and then my node went down for, like, 10 hours.
819
01:05:14.055 --> 01:05:14.795
And then
820
01:05:15.255 --> 01:05:20.075
it jumped into, you know, 3,000 or whatever. And then the next day, it went back,
821
01:05:20.375 --> 01:05:31.795
like, 99 or something. Like, how did it how did the ranking improve having me being down? Didn't make any sense, but maybe it's other I I don't know how it works. We'd no one knows how it works other than Yeah. Yours.
822
01:05:32.095 --> 01:05:33.315
Reveal your secrets.
823
01:05:34.495 --> 01:05:36.675
Yeah. I mean, it's totally arbitrary. Right? I think
824
01:05:37.455 --> 01:05:45.040
I think that, to your point, Matt, like, these types of rankings, right, like, Alex Bosworth, you know, who runs, like, y'alls.org
825
01:05:45.740 --> 01:05:46.940
and, you know, works at,
826
01:05:47.660 --> 01:05:53.285
at Lightning Labs, He basically created the BOS score as a way for him to personally decide
827
01:05:53.665 --> 01:06:05.789
which nodes he was interested in connecting to. And he was early enough that everybody was like, well, we don't know what the fuck we're doing. Like, how's Bosworth is a fucking genius. Like, he probably knows better than we do. And so, like, that became kind of the de facto measurement.
828
01:06:06.305 --> 01:06:15.845
And then Lightning Labs was like, alright. We gotta, like, you know, spin up something new that provides a little bit more insight, and they did so. But to your point, like, it is totally arbitrary. Right? And,
829
01:06:16.980 --> 01:06:19.800
they're they're pretty better reputation systems.
830
01:06:20.260 --> 01:06:22.920
We don't have them yet. Exactly. 100%.
831
01:06:23.914 --> 01:06:27.535
One of my fears is, like, a lot of these reputation systems, and I assume,
832
01:06:28.154 --> 01:06:28.894
the boss,
833
01:06:29.595 --> 01:06:37.780
score does as well, which, by the way, stands for a balance of satoshis. It doesn't stand for the first three letters of his name last name. Yeah. But did he not name it that for
834
01:06:38.579 --> 01:06:42.955
we will never know, will we? How dare you? We'll never know. It's it's up in the air.
835
01:06:46.295 --> 01:06:51.859
Is one of the main that they say something. Well, we say you did it like a boss instead of like a boss.
836
01:06:52.240 --> 01:06:56.900
I love it. One of the one of the main aspects that it seems to be measuring
837
01:06:57.375 --> 01:06:59.795
is, like, this uptime and connectivity
838
01:07:00.335 --> 01:07:00.835
kind
839
01:07:01.455 --> 01:07:02.035
of scoring,
840
01:07:02.495 --> 01:07:05.155
which is always gonna benefit the clear net nodes
841
01:07:06.110 --> 01:07:12.290
over people running through Tor. Because Tor is, you know, the best we have, but it's an unreliable
842
01:07:12.830 --> 01:07:14.530
piece of shit a lot of times.
843
01:07:14.974 --> 01:07:16.035
Yep. Exactly.
844
01:07:17.375 --> 01:07:25.690
And has its own issue with denial of service attacks and stuff. So I don't want us to I think we both need better reputation systems, but we also
845
01:07:26.150 --> 01:07:27.610
need to be very actively
846
01:07:29.110 --> 01:07:29.610
aware
847
01:07:30.135 --> 01:07:33.435
that those reputation systems or at least some reputation systems
848
01:07:33.895 --> 01:07:38.075
should kind of ignore that or at least just focus on Tor only nodes,
849
01:07:38.535 --> 01:07:41.260
to be relevant to, like, a sovereign router.
850
01:07:41.720 --> 01:07:47.500
For sure. And I think I think these types of systems, like, are are being built out. Right? Like, the,
851
01:07:48.415 --> 01:07:51.715
you know, e like, l n, and I mentioned it a bunch, but, like,
852
01:07:53.295 --> 01:07:59.400
you know, l n node insight, like, lets you do simulated channels. Right? So you can basically be like, what would my how would my centrality
853
01:07:59.780 --> 01:08:13.475
by various metrics change if I was to open a channel or remove a channel from this specific node? And centrality is only one tiny part of, like, running a not any tiny part. It is one aspect of running a successful Lightning node. Right? But,
854
01:08:14.050 --> 01:08:20.390
but it's not the end all, be all. And right now, centrality, I would argue, in the network is artificially inflated. People
855
01:08:20.745 --> 01:08:34.730
are constantly seeking some I don't think it's a huge thing, though. You mean as in you think it's you think it's less important than some people think or you mean it's more important? Yeah. I agree it's less important. I'm not very I don't my node is not very essential. I route quite a lot.
856
01:08:35.270 --> 01:08:48.300
Yeah. It's it's not it's not super important. Yeah. So I think I mean, my point is, like, all of the systems, including, like, Lightning Labs and It doesn't get overranked. It doesn't go overranked. You don't need to have a high centrality to get a high ranking on thermal.light.engineering.
857
01:08:49.880 --> 01:09:01.514
Fuck their rankings. Yeah. Exactly. The point is, like, fuck their rankings. Like, we we all kinda joke about having, like, a PlebNet rank, but the point is I wanna see more tools and, you know, they're being developed. And, you know, like, like
858
01:09:01.895 --> 01:09:02.875
Walton mentioned,
859
01:09:03.895 --> 01:09:04.875
you know, the,
860
01:09:07.440 --> 01:09:07.600
the
861
01:09:09.040 --> 01:09:18.555
there are these sort of independent GitHub repos that allow you to rank your own node and figure out how to improve your own nodes and, you know, not even centrality, though it's one metric,
862
01:09:19.095 --> 01:09:24.690
based on other factors. And I think what's gonna happen is we're gonna see more and more and more of those independent
863
01:09:25.070 --> 01:09:25.570
analyses,
864
01:09:26.270 --> 01:09:27.329
analysis tools,
865
01:09:27.949 --> 01:09:30.290
develop, and people will come up with their own metrics
866
01:09:30.755 --> 01:09:34.835
for what is a good node to connect to. And there are these tools already exist in sometimes. Right? There's,
867
01:09:35.715 --> 01:09:38.135
there's a fuck. What is it called?
868
01:09:38.770 --> 01:09:43.190
It's like l n it's not l n balance. I can look it up if anybody's interested.
869
01:09:43.570 --> 01:09:49.725
DM me on Twitter or something. But, basically, like, it has all these other algorithms. Like, okay. So it'll do, like, historic
870
01:09:50.105 --> 01:09:56.230
payments that are routed through you to basically insert your to allow you to insert your node as a,
871
01:09:56.690 --> 01:09:57.590
kind of middleman
872
01:09:58.130 --> 01:09:59.670
between existing nodes
873
01:10:01.565 --> 01:10:13.310
and those kinds of things and, you know, how many nodes have, like, 3 hops away from you, and then you can optimize that. So I think these types of metrics are gonna be super important, and there will be more and more independent tools that allow
874
01:10:14.250 --> 01:10:16.429
plebs who are interested in running routing nodes
875
01:10:16.810 --> 01:10:17.310
to
876
01:10:17.715 --> 01:10:26.135
more effectively position themselves in the network. But in the meantime, they should go to the ClubNet Telegram. They should go to the Rings of Fire Telegram do. Increasing
877
01:10:27.619 --> 01:10:28.119
kycjelly.com
878
01:10:28.900 --> 01:10:29.219
and,
879
01:10:30.340 --> 01:10:31.960
and and increase their liquidity,
880
01:10:33.699 --> 01:10:35.195
or at least learn
881
01:10:35.575 --> 01:10:38.955
or maybe start fresh with a new note after they learn 100%.
882
01:10:40.055 --> 01:10:43.435
As someone who is very passionate about privacy,
883
01:10:44.130 --> 01:10:44.630
and
884
01:10:45.090 --> 01:10:47.750
and very much believes in its importance,
885
01:10:48.290 --> 01:10:51.190
would you go as far as saying
886
01:10:51.645 --> 01:10:52.864
it's either Tor
887
01:10:53.244 --> 01:10:54.864
or have fun staying poor?
888
01:10:55.645 --> 01:10:57.565
Yeah. I mean, I think everyone should be
889
01:10:58.700 --> 01:11:04.000
well, individuals should only use Tor only routing nodes and I mean, Tor only nodes, period.
890
01:11:04.540 --> 01:11:06.300
And if you are
891
01:11:08.994 --> 01:11:17.550
I think I I would go as far as saying that any anything that any on chain transaction that goes into your node should be a coin join output, and any
892
01:11:17.850 --> 01:11:21.150
UTXO that leaves your node should then go through coin join,
893
01:11:21.929 --> 01:11:22.750
because I
894
01:11:23.290 --> 01:11:30.505
especially if if this routing node gets linked to you, which is gonna get linked to you at some point, especially if you're trying to run it long term,
895
01:11:32.460 --> 01:11:38.239
that on chain footprint is there, and and you leak a lot of information. You you basically have to assume
896
01:11:38.699 --> 01:11:44.785
that every UTXO that you fund a lightning node with is connected to each other. It's like you combine them.
897
01:11:46.445 --> 01:11:47.265
Yeah. 100%.
898
01:11:48.685 --> 01:11:52.270
Which is, like, a really dangerous situation to be in, so I struggle with
899
01:11:55.070 --> 01:11:55.890
that. And,
900
01:11:56.750 --> 01:12:02.055
you know, as someone who's been reckless with the amount of of UTXOs that have gone into my nodes,
901
01:12:02.435 --> 01:12:07.415
I'm probably more vulnerable to it than a lot of people, so it it hits close to home.
902
01:12:07.720 --> 01:12:13.980
And I'm hoping that we have better tools in that regard. Like, it'd be really cool if we had a tool that was just,
903
01:12:14.715 --> 01:12:17.855
you know, coin join and lightning built in, and you could.
904
01:12:18.474 --> 01:12:22.494
But right now, you kinda have to go through steps. So so take your time, learn,
905
01:12:23.190 --> 01:12:23.670
and,
906
01:12:24.070 --> 01:12:26.730
just be humble enough to realize that you can always improve,
907
01:12:27.270 --> 01:12:28.970
I think, is is the big things.
908
01:12:29.670 --> 01:12:33.725
But the you should always be trying to improve. I think that applies to security as well.
909
01:12:34.265 --> 01:12:34.765
100%.
910
01:12:35.865 --> 01:12:41.885
So I know both of you guys have a little bit of a time crunch here, so I think now is a good time to wrap it up. I really enjoyed this conversation.
911
01:12:42.757 --> 01:12:46.670
Let should we end with some final thoughts? We'll start with, we'll start with Pete.
912
01:12:47.530 --> 01:12:48.430
Yeah, man. Absolutely.
913
01:12:49.585 --> 01:12:52.324
Thanks for having us. This was awesome. I think that
914
01:12:54.625 --> 01:12:57.105
the biggest thing for me, my final thoughts are,
915
01:12:58.020 --> 01:12:59.320
everyone should be willing
916
01:13:00.020 --> 01:13:02.039
to experiment with these technologies.
917
01:13:02.340 --> 01:13:03.960
You know? I think that,
918
01:13:04.340 --> 01:13:06.934
you know, do not fall into the trap
919
01:13:07.795 --> 01:13:11.894
of trusting the narratives that are being presented to you, not only, of course, by,
920
01:13:12.434 --> 01:13:13.414
you know, existing
921
01:13:14.350 --> 01:13:20.770
media systems, which are total bullshit, but also just, like, from people as individuals. Like, do your own research,
922
01:13:21.235 --> 01:13:22.535
experiment with these technologies,
923
01:13:23.875 --> 01:13:24.375
and
924
01:13:25.315 --> 01:13:29.495
find your own way. I think that's that's really, really important. You know?
925
01:13:30.050 --> 01:13:30.550
Don't,
926
01:13:31.969 --> 01:13:34.630
don't take anything for granted. Confirm it yourself.
927
01:13:35.409 --> 01:13:36.630
Play with the Lightning Network.
928
01:13:37.225 --> 01:13:39.565
Explore these technologies. Become sovereign.
929
01:13:42.505 --> 01:13:43.565
Thank you, p.
930
01:13:43.945 --> 01:13:45.165
Walton, fun thoughts.
931
01:13:45.960 --> 01:13:46.860
If you believe
932
01:13:47.240 --> 01:13:48.060
in sovereignty,
933
01:13:48.760 --> 01:13:51.740
which I'm assuming you do given that you're a Bitcoiner,
934
01:13:53.640 --> 01:13:54.460
there's nothing
935
01:13:56.325 --> 01:13:57.045
that you,
936
01:13:58.085 --> 01:13:59.225
must do more
937
01:13:59.605 --> 01:14:01.465
than run your own node.
938
01:14:03.900 --> 01:14:11.360
It enables multiple things. Right? You you're gonna have Bitcoin Core, which will enable you to verify your own transactions,
939
01:14:12.060 --> 01:14:12.560
something,
940
01:14:13.885 --> 01:14:14.705
that, you know,
941
01:14:15.645 --> 01:14:17.025
we should all be doing.
942
01:14:17.965 --> 01:14:29.179
And just, you know, just having a node running Bitcoin Core doesn't actually help you. Yes. It's it's it's it's, you know, it's helping the network and it enables other nodes to download
943
01:14:30.835 --> 01:14:32.215
blocks from it, but
944
01:14:34.835 --> 01:14:43.020
you're not actually benefiting yourself. But if you check your own transactions, you are. Now the second one, and this is perhaps more important, is it gives you that foothold
945
01:14:43.560 --> 01:14:47.260
on the Lightning Network. Now the Lightning Network is what's
946
01:14:47.875 --> 01:14:49.175
really going to enable
947
01:14:49.875 --> 01:14:50.935
medium of exchange
948
01:14:51.715 --> 01:14:53.575
of Bitcoin in the future.
949
01:14:54.275 --> 01:14:55.415
It's instantaneous.
950
01:14:56.670 --> 01:14:58.130
It's a very low cost.
951
01:14:59.470 --> 01:15:00.770
And as Pete said,
952
01:15:01.150 --> 01:15:02.610
now is the time
953
01:15:02.910 --> 01:15:04.515
to be getting your
954
01:15:05.215 --> 01:15:10.595
lightning mode up and running, opening channels while on chain fees are low and staking
955
01:15:11.810 --> 01:15:17.030
your spot on the payments network of the future. And if you want to run a node, all you need to do,
956
01:15:17.570 --> 01:15:24.955
if you wanna learn more, no matter what background you're from, no matter what your prior knowledge or understanding, all you need to do is go to kycjelly.com.
957
01:15:25.895 --> 01:15:27.035
That's kycjelly
958
01:15:28.600 --> 01:15:29.100
dotcom.
959
01:15:30.760 --> 01:15:31.660
Thank you, Walton.
960
01:15:32.040 --> 01:15:40.304
And I would just add on top of there that, you know, don't count on fees staying low for much longer. I mean, who knows? I've gotten it wrong a bunch, but,
961
01:15:40.925 --> 01:15:44.125
I have a feeling we're gonna be complaining about high on chain fees,
962
01:15:44.445 --> 01:15:45.184
soon enough.
963
01:15:45.870 --> 01:15:54.370
I know this is a little bit out of order. I just had you guys do your final thoughts, but if we finish up this show and someone still has this question, we need to answer it.
964
01:15:54.815 --> 01:16:01.715
We have Disco Toshi in the comments saying, what is the proper procedure for connecting your lightning note to others within the Pubnet Telegram
965
01:16:02.175 --> 01:16:03.235
once you join?
966
01:16:07.030 --> 01:16:11.645
Try and reach out to people. There's there's usually, you know, a few people saying, oh, I wanna open a channel.
967
01:16:12.045 --> 01:16:24.000
But if you if you've already got a couple of channels open and you are a serious node runner, DM me on our and I'll I'll invite you to this another group we have of Node Runners that has a slightly more focused conversation.
968
01:16:24.460 --> 01:16:27.600
The the main PlebNet group now with over 4,000 people,
969
01:16:27.980 --> 01:16:30.160
is is a kind of a community group first,
970
01:16:31.145 --> 01:16:43.320
or rather it's evolved into, yeah, the kind of community group. But there are other Plebnet communities that are more focused if you're struggling to to match up with some people looking looking for a a girthing partner.
971
01:16:43.860 --> 01:16:48.905
Walton, do you know off the top of your head what percentage of the Lightning Network Plavnett never represents?
972
01:16:50.325 --> 01:16:52.085
Let me just consult my stats.
973
01:16:52.405 --> 01:16:53.625
My, my statistician
974
01:16:54.005 --> 01:16:55.785
prepared some for me earlier, actually.
975
01:16:56.800 --> 01:16:58.900
Yes. They said, so we have
976
01:16:59.360 --> 01:16:59.860
4,030
977
01:17:00.480 --> 01:17:01.619
plebs, 806
978
01:17:02.159 --> 01:17:03.380
nodes, and
979
01:17:03.695 --> 01:17:04.355
the combined
980
01:17:04.655 --> 01:17:08.435
inbound and outbound liquidity of PlebNet is 734
981
01:17:09.535 --> 01:17:12.035
Bitcoin, which is, I believe, approximately
982
01:17:12.670 --> 01:17:15.409
a third of the the the total
983
01:17:15.710 --> 01:17:16.210
public
984
01:17:16.909 --> 01:17:18.050
lightning network.
985
01:17:19.150 --> 01:17:19.969
That's amazing.
986
01:17:20.435 --> 01:17:26.534
Do you guys does the Pubnet guys have, like you guys have private channels between each other too or just public?
987
01:17:26.915 --> 01:17:28.295
Almost exclusively public.
988
01:17:29.390 --> 01:17:42.425
I I don't personally have any private channels. If we told you, they wouldn't be private. You know that. Oh, he's got you there, man. He's got you there. Just for the freaks, you can't route you can't publicly route through private channels. That's what because they're private. They're not broadcast.
989
01:17:42.965 --> 01:17:46.870
Yeah. So, like, exchanges, things like that will have private channels in order to, you know,
990
01:17:47.490 --> 01:17:48.050
protect their
991
01:17:49.330 --> 01:17:56.415
Liquidity. But malicious actors can probe you to try and figure out what your private channel capacity is. Anyway, guys,
992
01:17:57.114 --> 01:18:15.385
this has been a great conversation. I'm sorry we had to cut it off short, but I hope to have both of you on, sometime soon in the future. Thank you for joining us. Thank you to the freaks who joined us in the live chat through Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. As always, this will be posted to Bitcoin TV after we finish and to both podcast feeds.
993
01:18:16.085 --> 01:18:19.305
Thank you to all the freaks, who continue to support the show.
994
01:18:20.100 --> 01:18:23.640
It's it's truly beautiful, and I do appreciate all your support.
995
01:18:24.420 --> 01:18:25.800
Thanks, Pete. Thanks, Walton.
996
01:18:26.260 --> 01:18:28.095
Absolutely, man. Anytime. Thank you.
997
01:18:28.495 --> 01:18:28.995
Cheers.
998
01:22:43.155 --> 01:22:46.615
Love you, freaks. Thank you for joining for another Bitcoin Tuesday.
999
01:22:48.220 --> 01:22:52.080
Our rabbit hole recap this week, instead of being Thursday, will be tomorrow,
1000
01:22:52.540 --> 01:22:54.080
so stay tuned for that.
1001
01:22:54.765 --> 01:22:55.265
And,
1002
01:22:55.805 --> 01:23:05.330
there will be no dispatch next Bitcoin Tuesday, but there will be one after that. We'll be back to our normal schedule. I love you all. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for listening.
1003
01:23:06.030 --> 01:23:07.570
Stay humble and stack sets.
NOTE
Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 3/17/2024 8:12:56 PM
Duration: 4990.276
Channels: 1
1
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:04.500
2
00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:16.170
a, a, a new investment class that has had enormous run thus far, but also as a way to mitigate, if you will, against the idea of what the value of cash becomes. Well, I think it's worth considering
3
00:00:16.470 --> 00:00:22.490
4
00:00:23.234 --> 00:00:23.974
And so
5
00:00:24.435 --> 00:00:25.555
Bitcoin has,
6
00:00:26.195 --> 00:00:39.370
has that is a possibility. Is that in merit? I have a a certain amount of money in Bitcoin. It's a small percentage of that which I have in gold, which is a relatively small percentage of what I have in my other asset classes
7
00:00:39.735 --> 00:00:52.960
and so on. And I think that that has the merit. It's it's an it's an amazing accomplishment to have brought it from where that programming occurred to where it is and take the test of time. On the other hand, it's if if it's successful,
8
00:00:53.500 --> 00:01:07.180
it's going to not be the governments don't wanna have it successful. You don't wanna have it all the way to the surface. Governments like El Salvador. I know that's not exactly, gonna be the leading government on this, but there are there are governments that may take this on. But no. No. No. No. No.
9
00:01:07.740 --> 00:01:08.240
The
10
00:01:08.540 --> 00:01:28.660
you have El Salvador taking on, and you have India and China getting rid of it, and you have the United States talking about how to regulate it, and it could still be controlled. So that's Right. What what And are you If you're El Salvador and you talk about your alternative monies, you know, it's a different thing. Do you believe that regulation ultimately will make something like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
11
00:01:29.295 --> 00:01:31.955
have a future, or do you think regulation will kill it?
12
00:01:32.255 --> 00:01:33.295
Well, I think regulation
13
00:01:34.015 --> 00:01:37.715
I think at the end of the day, if it's really successful,
14
00:01:38.420 --> 00:01:39.320
they'll kill it,
15
00:01:39.700 --> 00:01:43.719
and they'll try to kill it. And I think they will kill it because they have ways of killing it.
16
00:01:44.259 --> 00:01:44.759
But
17
00:01:45.140 --> 00:01:47.240
that doesn't mean it doesn't have,
18
00:01:47.619 --> 00:01:56.265
you know, a place, a a a value and so on. But it's one of those things that hasn't fueled you. Right now It doesn't have intrinsic value. If you look if you put
19
00:01:56.810 --> 00:01:57.310
cryptocurrencies
20
00:01:57.690 --> 00:02:00.670
or, let's say, Bitcoin in the historical perspective.
21
00:02:01.210 --> 00:02:06.425
Right? Right. There are so many things in a historical perspective that were given intrinsic
22
00:02:06.805 --> 00:02:13.385
that didn't have intrinsic value and were have perceived value and then became hot, and then they become cold.
23
00:02:14.019 --> 00:02:18.200
So it could be either way. You just have to know what it is. Right? Right. Yep. I mean, like,
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you know, it it could be tulips in,
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in Holland, you know, and that intrinsic value.
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So what is the value? And then there are technological
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changes. I don't I'm no expert on it. I'm just trying to say that you asked me my what my opinion is. Take it for what it's worth. I'm no expert on it. I think it I think diversification
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values, it it matters. I suspect the real question that investors should be asking themselves is how much stuff like that do they have? Do how much stuff do they have? Do they have gold?
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Okay. Should we be talking about how much you have in gold versus how much you have in bitcoin? And do you have a diversification
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Right. In those kinds of things that we might call intrinsic value money? Because we have a fiat monetary system. Okay? With a fiat monetary system, where is your hard money? That's the question. And I however you go after it, I think that's the question to be answered. Okay. There's 2.
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the interactive live show about Bitcoin distributed systems privacy and open source software.
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I'm very excited about this particular conversation.
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This is still dispatch episode 39.
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We will be discussing running your own lightning routing node, and we'll be discussing the Pubnet initiative surrounding,
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that idea of having many sovereign,
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lightning routing nodes run by
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Sovereign Bitcoiners, Sovereign individuals.
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Before we get started, I just wanna do a quick shout out as always to the ride or die in the live chat. Love you, freaks. Thank you for
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joining. You make the show truly special, and a big shout out to all you freaks that support the show and keep it ad free. The easiest way to do that is the podcasting 2 point o apps. You go to new podcast apps.com,
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pick a podcasting 2 point o app, load it up with stats, search Citadel dispatch, and as you listen to the podcast feed,
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you stream stats directly to my wallet. It's really fucking cool. You can also support the show via PayNim or lightning@cildispatch.com.
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My PayNim is easy to remember. It is Odell.
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With all that said, we have a very tight,
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time limit here, so I wanna get right to the meat. It's an important conversation,
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and,
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I'm very excited about it. So with all that said, I'd like to introduce our guest for today.
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We'll start with Walton. How's it going, Walton?
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pleb in Plebna. I've been,
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running a lightning node for for a number of months now.
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I've been in the top 100 of global,
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node runners by ranking,
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And it's all thanks to the community of Plebna, which is this kind of strange social
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learning
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experiment almost
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with now over 4,000
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members with over 800 mode runners.
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It's it's fast growing,
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and it's a very exciting time.
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We also have Pete joining us. How's it going, Pete? It's going fantastic.
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Yeah. We can hear you okay. You sound great. Amazing. Yeah. I think many of you already know me.
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I'm over at, Bitcoin Magazine.
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But,
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yeah, PlubNet has been this amazing experience. A bunch of us got together and, you know, wanted to learn how to, run lightning routing nodes. And,
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then we decided to turn into this, like, larger community
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so that we could
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share in the knowledge and, teach everybody else.
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we got Raj Winder here.
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What's going on?
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Pia and Walton,
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to represent ClubNet and Lightning,
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you know, talk about Lightning and Bitcoin in general.
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I am, from the,
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Silicon Valley
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grind of making silicon chips, but also been interested in bitcoin
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and, was, caught up in the,
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activity,
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the primordial
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soup on Clubhouse and in Telegram Groups
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where
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emerged.
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And, I'm happy to see it take on a life of its own and become
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an amazing,
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community.
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So I mean, a lot of a lot of the freaks here, a lot of the audience understand,
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the importance of running your own lightning routing node,
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and why we need individuals
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to do so rather than just a bunch of large KYC
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companies.
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Do
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it it seems to me so ClubNet ClubNet is really interesting project.
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It kind of wasn't on my radar, and I I felt like I was a little bit late to it.
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Do you guys wanna talk a little bit about, like, what did did Plebnet originate on Clubhouse?
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Yeah. Raj Winder,
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actually coined the term, but the the origins of it are,
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somewhat murky. There was a group of
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probably 20 or so,
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Bitcoiners very interested in lightning, who didn't meet in part on Clubhouse,
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and we're exploring various things, in a chat group, mainly things like LNTX for sending Sats with each other in Telegram.
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Raj.
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send sets back and forth in custodial lightning and telegram messages.
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So we were playing with that. We were onboarding a lot of people to lightning because that was a much easier route,
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because so many people use Telegram compared with the number of people who use Lightning Wallet. So that was one big factor. And also on Clubhouse, we were just talking Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin was in a in a in a, you know, pretty big rally upwards at that time. So there was a lot of enthusiasm and interest on Clubhouse. And,
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on Clubhouse,
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we also found these 2 or 3 individuals I really wanna give credit to, which is
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JC Crown,
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CoreTech,
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and, another guy named CJ Lightning Sats. We don't know his real name, but that's the personality on Clubhouse
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and on Twitter that he has CJ,
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lightning sats. And also there was a dread. He would come in and go once in a while. So these guys were running nodes and we were very curious like, okay, what does it take to run a node? And thankfully,
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I wanna also give credit to, Umbrel and Raspi Blitz. So we just grab those kind of off the shelf lightning,
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implementations,
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grab some hardware,
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you know, Walton. We have Raspberry Pies. I have a ThinkPad, which is, like, 9 years old. And we got our nodes up and running. And we just started with tiny channels, but before long, we were like, no. We we gotta we gotta do real business. So,
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you know, here we are.
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You know, basically,
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Raj and d plus plus, who's also kind of early on in the in the crew,
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created
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a
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sort of a a lightning
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node focused
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Telegram group. And Raj has been in there consistently
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for the last, like, I don't know, man. What? Like, 4, 5, 6 months
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just, like, answering questions over and over and over again. His dedication is incredible. And then it actually wasn't until, like, I don't know, like, I and I have to look at the exact date, but, like, May or maybe April
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that that I kinda got started getting interested. And then,
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there are these I joined early May. Yeah. Yeah. And the beauty of plumbing is it it's kind of there's been these different communities that have kinda forked off. So there was, like, this amazing one that that Raj and n equals plus had started that was focused on the LNDX bot, and then, there were a couple that forked off that. And then Plebna was one where basically about 20 of us kinda got together and we're like, oh my gosh. Like, this
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is this is a really, really important thing to
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to support others in in adopting and also just to make it clear that, like, anyone can do this. And,
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we all kinda, you know, dove in and and, you know, created the Telegram group, and have been just been going from there. And I think what what are we up to now, Roger? That was kind of culture shifting off it as well. Like, I've I created,
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poker on on a lightning network app,
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you know, regularly. It's been at least Which Lightning Network app, Keith?
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We use, lightning
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hyphenpoker.com.
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Shout out Evo. He's a awesome developer that,
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actually created us our our own little private table. So we use
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you know, so so the general idea here of Pubnet is
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is let's get a bunch
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of sovereign Bitcoiners, a bunch of individual Bitcoiners plebs around the world
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to run their own Lightning routing node from home.
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And then the way Lightning Network works is, basically, you need liquidity throughout the network, so you need channels between these nodes. And PlebNet is kind of a coordination of getting people to not only run their nodes, but then connect into the, like, the greater PlebNet
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liquidity pool. Is that is that a good,
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summary?
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you know, there there were a couple Telegram groups or many, let's say several,
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before kind of the Plugnet group started,
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But,
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they were fairly specific and
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they were, like, highly technical.
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And, you know, PLEBNET was all of us really learning together and figuring out the best way to approach this. And the really amazing thing is that, you know, I started, you know, early on kind of
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chatting
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with, with Severin, who has built lnrouter.app,
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which is an amazing set of tools.
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You know, lnnoteinsight,
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the creator of that, even, like, Alex Bosworth, and and it was a really surreal experience for all of us to kind of reach out to some of these these people and ask these questions and and sort of be told, like, wow. You know, no one's really asked that question before. And so, it really quickly became clear that we that there was this really important need for not only the highly technical conversations, but also for
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onboarding people and for
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teaching, you know, everyone in random plebs, like, how easy it was to set up a sovereign routing node. And so, you know, if you're using Lightning, there are multiple ways to interact with Lightning. Right? If you're if you're just interested in being able to send Bitcoin, you know, sound money, essentially, feelessly or, you know, very low fees and, you know, as close to instant as matters, you can go download, you know, Moon Wallet or Breezewallet or any other number of of Lightning or wallets that support Lightning and be able to do that. And you don't have to know any of the complicated stuff. And that's amazing, and it's built on top of the backs of these routing nodes that,
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that, you know, the larger
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Lightning Network has been running. And so we're all trying to contribute
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to, to we're all trying to contribute to the, basically, the infrastructure of the Lightning Network because care deeply about it and we care deeply about Bitcoin, and
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we wanna educate people as we go forward. So when
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But we all knew one another from,
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Clubhouse and Twitter and Telegram Groups. And if someone started up a new node and, you know, wanted to build some channels,
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they didn't have to buy,
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liquidity from another provider. They could just come into the community and say, hey. I I got 10 1,000,000 sites. I wanna open a couple of channels or I wanna open 3 channels.
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Who's willing to open the channels with me? And in Pubnet, we had enough trust that we took the risk to the degree that we have a certain way of opening a balanced channel called the ghetto submarine swap, in which, you know, you open the channel and then you balance it and then you get reimbursed for half the money that you put in the channel. And that reimbursement is a trust issue. And in Plebnet, we have never had that trust violated, and people have been able to come in comfortably join. And, we also put up a couple of test notes
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where even if you don't wanna put much money on your,
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on a new lightning node, you can just open a tiny channel and we'll get you on the network and you can learn. So when you're talking about these ghetto submarine swaps, you mean, basically,
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person with
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the outbound liquidity pays a lightning payment, and then the other person just sends back on chain in a trusted fashion. Right?
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yeah. I do that a lot for for freaks who ask out for liquidity. So when I first started trying to understand the Lightning Network, my I I quickly realized the need that we needed Tor only
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sovereign routing nodes.
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So what I did was,
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you know, I the way I like to learn is to just go ahead first in things. I just started up a node. I told all the freaks my public key, and I was like, if you open a channel with me, I will open a channel back. And it was it was really a horrible idea.
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For I found out afterwards that for routing, like, you only want one channel between peer really to be ideal, and I became, like, this massive central hub. Like, if I if my node went down
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just like the whole Freak's mini network went down with it.
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So then I discovered Rings of Fire,
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which is a really cool project
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where they set up via Telegram like these. You have 10 people all open a channel to 1 of the other people,
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and then
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a ring of fire rebalances
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it. You do a circular rebalance where everyone's channels get split in liquidity, because
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if you just the freaks most of the freaks should know this, but if you just open a channel to someone, you can only send money you can't receive yet. So you need to balance out that liquidity.
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What is do you guys have
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is what's is Rings of Fire related to ClubNet at all? Like, what's the connection there? No. Is there a connection? No. It predates ClubNet.
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But, ClubNet is by the way, Matt, don't feel too bad. We will all we were also opening bidirectional channels before we said, screw it. We know each other. I know p. I know p. I know p. My money. So I'm just gonna open the channel and do a capital submarine swap. So,
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so, yeah, rings of fire is a lot more complicated. And if one person decides to,
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you know, shut down their node or close the channel, it leads to some complications.
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Plavnad is a node to node.
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There is there is very few triangles or anything that people are making. You can make them, but it's just really individual to individual node. Well, they happen naturally.
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and, unfortunately, I was the 3,999th
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member, so I didn't get
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to to be the 4000th member. Climbing. But when I joined,
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I saw the Cheese Robot there, which is a Telegram bot that
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Rings of Fire guys use as well. Did you you borrowed that bot from them?
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I never know how to pronounce his name, but,
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basically, it's a separate tool. I don't know if it was built specifically for Ring of Fire. It wouldn't surprise me if it was, but,
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anyone can actually add cheese robot and start, you know, creating these awesome visuals of everyone that they're connected to within a specific Telegram channel.
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But, you know, I I think
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ring ring of fire was a super import or and and still is, I would argue, is a super important way to create
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strong connections throughout the Lightning Network. Right? It's really, really important for bootstrapping the Lightning Network as is PLEBNA. But I think, you know, ring of fire is the idea is that, basically, you know, it's like, if we were gonna create, like, a ring,
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you know, it would be like, I would open a channel to Walton, Walton open a would open a channel to Raj, Raj would open a channel to you Odell, and then you would open a channel back to me. And
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then there's a specific script that you run that that then goes in and and
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rebalances
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to create, you know, sort of balanced liquidity across both channels. And for the audience, in case you're not aware, you know, with Lightning, again, if you're if you're just trying to use Lightning, you don't have to worry about the routing node stuff we're talking about. Right? This is about running a sovereign routing node. But if you are trying to run a routing node, then, you know, you you wanna make sure that you are keeping,
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on average,
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your channels somewhat balanced because you want people to be able to route bidirectionally
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through you. When we talk about routing, what we're really talking about is
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you don't need to have a direct channel connection
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to anyone in the Lightning Network. You actually can just sort of ping pong payments
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through this spiderweb of, you know, sovereign routing nodes in order to get your payment
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successfully
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sent. And so,
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recognizing that, okay, we have become a network.
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So the developer's name is,
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Cloak decascock.
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I think it's a South African name.
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And, we were you know, we once we set up our nodes, there was one particular night we were just going crazy opening channels with one another. And then somebody, you know,
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had brought in Chisrobot before that,
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and we were just looking at the network evolving. That's when we realized that, okay, this is a real thing happening and, you know, that's, that's kind of one of the factors that
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aided us in realizing what we were becoming early on.
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Like, that is so just for the people there's some people probably confused. The main aspect of cheese robot is that you link your public key to your Telegram handle.
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Public key of your notes. So it knows your lightning note and it knows your Telegram handle, and
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then it graphs things for you, basically, and tells you how everyone's connected.
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you know, it
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it it's great to run a lightning routing node to support, you know, Bitcoin, to support lightning, but really kind of the fun is in these communities that develop. And I think what's gonna happen in the near future is, you know, just like PlebNet was this grassroots group that we all just kinda got together and and, you know, we were all in Clubhouse and, you know, started talking about it more. And I started, you know, talking about it in in in Bitcoin Magazine, Clubhouse rooms and stuff. That's gonna happen all over the world. What's gonna happen is basically
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smaller
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communities
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are like Bitcoin Beach,
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are going to basically
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spin up, and there is going to be these
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these groups that then build out these incredibly strong networks between themselves, open channels, have robust channels, communicate amongst each other. Like, you know, the number of when my node goes down, like, my Internet, you know, got, you know, shit the bed, like, yesterday, and, like, 10 people messaged me and was like, yo. Your node is down. And they were like, oh, it's like is everything okay? Like, is your node fucked or whatever? And, like, those kinds of communities are so important. And that's really what PlebNet is. It's just this this smaller community
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that then connects to the larger Lightning Network and has all these really strong channels that are robust.
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And,
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that's I think that's it's it's an interesting model for lightning adoption
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all over the world among different communities. We've been talking with, like, Black Bitcoin Billionaires,
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and, you know, they're spinning you know, they've spun up a lightning,
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you know, kind of,
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community, and then they've they're connected to PlebNet. They're also connected, of course, the larger Lightning community, but it's it's pretty powerful stuff. There's some there's there's some
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to being able to pay through these kind of
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more trusted hops that are going through Tor only routing nodes,
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run by individuals before it gets to the greater network because
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some privacy attacks on lightning involve,
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basically surveilling the hops. So if you have a bunch of hops beforehand,
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but that was just the thought that I wanted to bring up real quick. But the
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the so what you're kind of talking about here is this interesting phenomenon that we've seen
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early on in the lightning network. This idea of of basically ideologically minded
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people running, routing nodes to kind of bootstrap the network.
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But ideally or I don't even know if ideally is the right word, but
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by design,
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the main incentive to run a routing node
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is
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for financial gain, for fees.
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Do you guys focus on that at all, or is it purely
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ideological right now?
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websites were circa 93, 94,
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95.
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You know, it was hard to set up your website, but if you learn the technology, you actually had a really good advantage in
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in the ecommerce
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explosion that took place.
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And I think we are in the same place right now. You're not gonna be a profitable node, right, immediately because the size of the pie is not very big. We are all fighting for the same routing fees.
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But it's gonna grow massively. I have no doubt about that.
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And, those who get in early will have the experience and the motivation
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and the sort of the cultural knowledge and connections to succeed. So that's the way I look at people who are serious about joining the Lightning Network and those who have become serious now. Raj, do you not think that, like, long longer term, it'll it'll be hard for a,
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compete with,
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you know, some of these more, you know, like, professional
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docs, clear net ones?
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universe. If privacy
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and, you know,
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remaining undoxed
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becomes super important, then I think these sovereign nodes will be really critical.
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If it is not a big deal for most people and governments,
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sort of, acquiesce and, you know, learn to live with Bitcoin, maybe it won't be a big deal and the commercial entities will be,
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you know, more popular and,
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sovereign individuals will probably become more of a fringe then.
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But, you know, that's Bitcoin takeover and,
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I think,
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you know, the downsides,
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are not as dire as they are in the fiat world of with the total surveillance with the CBDCs, for example. So I think we just have to wait and see how it plays out. But, yes, I can imagine a scenario in which,
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sovereign nodes
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run by individuals are going to be really important if if if, we go to a tooth and nail fight.
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I think that there will always be a place
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for sovereign
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lightning nodes. I think that,
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there is not a significant amount of profit to be made at this moment,
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though, like, my my note is currently profitable.
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I know there's there's a number of, you know, of not that. Profitable? I I'm profitable,
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320
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that I've paid off and made profit.
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Yeah. Opening and closing costs,
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not necessarily
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broken
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even with,
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326
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I have certainly lost money
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based on the amount of time that I put into this, but I actually consider that a a very valuable investment. You know?
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I would not currently
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have
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the position that I do at Bitcoin Magazine if not for the investment of time and energy and
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personal resources that I put into,
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you know, the Lightning Network and Bitcoin in general. So,
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but what I will say is, like, if you if you remove all of the
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the value of my time,
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then I am
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profitable by, like, dozens of dollars, you know, which is nothing, obviously.
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But
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and if you add it back in my time, then it's like, okay. Well, you're still at a loss. Or maybe But, again, like, we're looking at that wrong because because it's it's it's earning SATs in a way that is noncustodial.
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And and that's what you're not earning by. Much greater.
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you know, 25 good bajillion
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dollars on running my lightning node, that
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that the average pleb right now should not be going into it expecting to make any kind of profit. You should go in and expect them to be able to buy.
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earning significant, you know, quote, unquote, interest,
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sorry, on your on your SaaS, that's not the right way to be approaching it right now. Correct. I I I personally believe
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that having a routing node with a long standing history
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and,
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you know, and balancing your channels and shit is going to be in the near future. And by near, I mean, you know, 3 to or 1 to 5 years, let's say,
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is going to turn out to be
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extremely
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valuable from a monetary perspective, from a a a,
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Bitcoin perspective, but it is absolutely not there yet. And the people that are contributing to this in PlebNet and in the Lightning Network at large, you know, there's basically,
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large entities
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that are,
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there is a business reason for them using PlebNet and that it's, like, you know, instant settlement,
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very low fees, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's people like all of us and in in Plebnet who are basically like, we are
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very passionate about this technology. We're willing to spend our time because we understand that
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the value of this knowledge and the value of
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this network,
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and by network, I mean, the Lightning Network, is so large that,
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you know, we're willing to break even or even lose, you know, tens of dollars in the short term. Because in the medium term and the long term, we expect the Lightning Network to be,
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you know, kind of the the foundation of
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a lot of things in the same way that TCPIP protocol is for the Internet.
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367
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But again, you know, to make a living in the western countries, let's say in Silicon Valley, I can't live off of a lightning node unless I'm putting up tons of Bitcoin, and the size of the pie grows quite a bit too. So, you know, we're looking at lightning payments being adopted by many, many more people, which is going to happen.
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It hasn't happened yet. But even now, if you are a serious node operator, you can get 2 to 3% yield, which is nothing to laugh at because it is an issue. Non custodial.
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available to,
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put up a, you know, bunch of fat channels,
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you can make good money. But, again, you know, the size of the pie is gonna increase. That's the part that I'm really focused on because that means the scaling is gonna happen and many more people are gonna make serious,
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money and supply the infrastructure of the, you know, Internet of money, which is what lightning is really.
375
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376
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do you have any, like, tips for freaks who might be struggling to get any kind of real fee revenue to,
377
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378
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Twitter,
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and check her pinned,
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thread. It's it's an absolute blast. She then wrote an article, I think, was it the Bitcoin Magazine P on on this essentially, the same thing, but with Bitbucket.
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Yep. The same. Yeah. Yeah. Erin Erin Erin is the queen
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of
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of fee mastery,
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and she's very willing to to speak to people. You know? Once they're already set up on on Plebna,
385
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Just to remind people, if they want to find
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their way to the greatest
387
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Bitcoin community,
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all they need to do is go to kycjelly.com.
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That's
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kycjelly.com.
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Thank you, Adam speaking.
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393
00:33:13.685 --> 00:33:15.845
394
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thread about how how she became profitable in, in a few weeks and,
395
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you know, have a sort of a main,
396
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secrets of the trade.
397
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But if you are a node operator and you're not getting any routing, first thing you wanna do is make sure you have a good, you
398
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know, substantial liquidity channels. I'm talking about 5 to 10000000 stats with some of the big nodes.
399
00:33:39.520 --> 00:33:42.419
Connect to some of the big nodes in Plebnet. If you go to,
400
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you know, the terminal.lightning.engineeringwebsite,
401
00:33:48.635 --> 00:33:54.095
which is maintained by Lightning Labs. You can see some of the top nodes. And there is another,
402
00:33:54.955 --> 00:33:56.255
tool that you can use
403
00:33:56.715 --> 00:33:57.215
for
404
00:33:57.630 --> 00:34:00.290
improving your centrality to the network.
405
00:34:00.830 --> 00:34:05.090
And, the guy who made the tool is, his name is Greg Flare,
406
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gridflare.
407
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So he has a website, actually. I'm gonna tweet it out shortly.
408
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So if you go to gridflare's website, you can put in your pubkey, and it'll do the calculation,
409
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based on the current network,
410
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status and tell you what are the top nodes that you should be connecting to. So out of those top recommendations,
411
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you pick the commercially important ones. And, I think with the 3 or 4 channels of 5 to 10,000,000 SaaS, you should start seeing a good amount of activity within a few days.
412
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413
00:34:42.945 --> 00:34:46.325
is that, you know, this community kinda we created this community.
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And
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even for people who are,
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I like, you know, Gridflare's tools, which are incredible,
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are
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kind of have grown out of the
419
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the interaction of people on PlebNet, right, and trying to understand it. And, like, you know, l n or is it, lnrouter.app
420
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and lnnoteinsight?
421
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Like, those are all tools that have
422
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benefited massively from this community. And so I I think it's important to acknowledge that not only are we seeing this incredibly this thing this valuable benefit for people who are interested
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in taking control of their own financial freedom, being financially sovereign, running lightning routing nodes,
424
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But for for lightning developers as well,
425
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there is a huge benefit
426
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to, you know, joining these types of communities.
427
00:35:37.075 --> 00:35:43.174
428
00:35:43.609 --> 00:35:45.550
with regards to come out testing
429
00:35:46.010 --> 00:35:56.985
the newest stuff on lightning and helping helping it iterate. And it's and it's, you know, yeah, it's fantastic because it that actually generates more alpha for the for the people running their lightning nodes.
430
00:35:57.365 --> 00:36:04.210
431
00:36:04.750 --> 00:36:06.690
about Bitcoin, honestly, and
432
00:36:07.710 --> 00:36:08.210
Lightning
433
00:36:08.914 --> 00:36:13.174
is the incentives. Right? Like, you know, no one is better than their incentives.
434
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And,
435
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it's easy.
436
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And so the thing for me is that
437
00:36:19.430 --> 00:36:26.170
in Align Network, I mean, it's it's like playing this real time strategy game that is the most exciting real time strategy game
438
00:36:26.865 --> 00:36:36.930
that I've ever played. Right? You know, StarCraft, whatever whatever whatever other game you're interested in, like, this is more interesting because we're talking about the soundest money that has ever existed. We're talking
439
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about real sats
440
00:36:39.150 --> 00:36:46.944
every day. And so it it and we're all basically we're we're friends. We've got this community. We're willing to give up alpha,
441
00:36:47.724 --> 00:36:49.345
quote, unquote, in a way that,
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to benefit the larger Bitcoin network
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00:36:52.765 --> 00:37:05.585
via lightning that I just haven't seen anywhere else. I mean, most most of the time when you try to ask for advice on some of this stuff, you know, previously before PlumbNet, it was it was very kind of like, well, I don't really wanna give you the deets because,
444
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you know, that would cut into my profits. But in Plaidnet,
445
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we all understand that
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what benefits
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00:37:12.100 --> 00:37:13.240
us as individuals
448
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benefits the community
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and helps us grow.
450
00:37:18.725 --> 00:37:20.025
451
00:37:20.405 --> 00:37:22.745
website for optimizing your channel,
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00:37:23.845 --> 00:37:25.785
decisions is, gridflare.xyz.
453
00:37:29.550 --> 00:37:30.450
454
00:37:31.310 --> 00:37:36.210
that that's in reference to centrality. Right? This idea that you're well connected,
455
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to the greater lightning network.
456
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But there's another step there, I think, at least from
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my my basic understanding
458
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of of
459
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maximizing,
460
00:37:49.040 --> 00:37:49.940
routing fees,
461
00:37:50.320 --> 00:37:55.620
which is basically, like, trying to sit your situate yourself as, like, kind of, like, a gateway node,
462
00:37:56.015 --> 00:37:56.515
where
463
00:37:57.535 --> 00:38:00.035
either on one on one side or the other,
464
00:38:01.535 --> 00:38:06.619
the the only real way to get to the node the other nodes is through your channels.
465
00:38:07.400 --> 00:38:09.180
Because if you can hit, like,
466
00:38:10.200 --> 00:38:14.940
a a a merchant like, if you find a merchant or an exchange that's really hot that has
467
00:38:15.785 --> 00:38:17.885
lightning deposits or lightning payments,
468
00:38:19.465 --> 00:38:28.950
and you're one of the only ones providing them inbound and you're well connected to the rest of the network, then all of a sudden you can raise your fees and people are forced to pay them. Right?
469
00:38:29.890 --> 00:38:30.390
470
00:38:30.850 --> 00:38:31.750
Go ahead, Raj.
471
00:38:32.125 --> 00:38:34.385
Yeah. That's true. I mean, you know, you can opportunistically
472
00:38:34.845 --> 00:38:36.285
identify these kind of,
473
00:38:37.165 --> 00:38:38.204
situations and,
474
00:38:38.925 --> 00:38:43.369
become, sort of a sit in the catbird seat and, collect some good fees.
475
00:38:43.670 --> 00:38:45.609
But, you know, it's a dynamic situation.
476
00:38:46.150 --> 00:38:49.085
More people will come in to compete with you, and,
477
00:38:49.725 --> 00:38:51.585
you just gotta stay on the,
478
00:38:52.125 --> 00:38:55.105
on the on your game and, keep finding those opportunities.
479
00:38:56.125 --> 00:39:13.714
480
00:39:14.890 --> 00:39:17.710
so that is to say we could rebalance between ourselves
481
00:39:18.410 --> 00:39:24.625
for 0 fees. Right? And, then, you know, people like Dredd and Marshall who had significant liquidity,
482
00:39:25.485 --> 00:39:26.705
they were able to
483
00:39:27.165 --> 00:39:30.065
basically create these huge Wambo channels
484
00:39:30.680 --> 00:39:31.820
to these
485
00:39:32.120 --> 00:39:35.740
major economic nodes in the network. But the reality was,
486
00:39:36.360 --> 00:39:41.995
surprisingly to me, that actually wasn't the most viable strategy. The most viable strategy was to educate.
487
00:39:42.535 --> 00:39:53.770
And, initially, there was a lot of payments that were routed through us. Right? But the beauty of the Lightning Network is that when you educate people, the the incentives are such that every single node as an individual or every single
488
00:39:54.245 --> 00:39:56.745
number of nodes that are that are controlled by an individual
489
00:39:57.125 --> 00:39:57.865
are incentivized
490
00:39:58.245 --> 00:39:59.385
to figure out
491
00:39:59.925 --> 00:40:00.425
the
492
00:40:00.805 --> 00:40:07.300
sort of dark corners of the Lightning Network that they can open channels to to provide the type of liquidity you're talking about, Matt.
493
00:40:07.600 --> 00:40:08.100
And,
494
00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:11.255
we ended up, like, spinning down this, like,
495
00:40:11.654 --> 00:40:16.634
you know, the, the super node that we had, which is, like, 4 or 5 of us, you know,
496
00:40:17.015 --> 00:40:20.315
because it just it was more viable to
497
00:40:21.750 --> 00:40:22.490
to actually,
498
00:40:23.270 --> 00:40:25.610
educate everyone else on the
499
00:40:25.990 --> 00:40:35.065
factors that are involved and then create that liquidity so that we were all kinda benefiting. And I think, you know, this is interesting. Like, I I think it's pretty clear to it's clear it's clear to me that basically
500
00:40:38.005 --> 00:40:38.505
that
501
00:40:40.870 --> 00:40:44.650
Lightning Pool, you know, for a long time, they have really struggled
502
00:40:45.030 --> 00:40:54.425
to get enough liquidity. So Lightning Pool is a lending market place where, basically, you can go in and you can, you can make offers. It's really fucking cool. You can make offers,
503
00:40:54.965 --> 00:40:56.185
it's by Lighting Labs
504
00:40:56.500 --> 00:40:58.440
to, you know, to basically,
505
00:40:59.140 --> 00:41:07.625
offer up liquidity for Lightning Channels on a time based basis, or you can, buy liquidity from them. And for a long time,
506
00:41:08.085 --> 00:41:13.625
like, like, pool was the largest black hole. They were a vampire node in Bitcoin. Like, if you opened a channel to them,
507
00:41:14.119 --> 00:41:17.540
it didn't matter what you set your fees to as long as it's You say pool or loop?
508
00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:18.579
I'm sorry.
509
00:41:19.680 --> 00:41:22.020
Loop. You are absolutely correct. Lightning loop.
510
00:41:23.295 --> 00:41:31.635
511
00:41:32.309 --> 00:41:35.130
512
00:41:35.589 --> 00:41:36.650
until very recently
513
00:41:36.950 --> 00:41:41.935
where they had to basically they had to be because so so lightning loop is a kind of,
514
00:41:42.734 --> 00:41:44.675
they are a they they send
515
00:41:45.135 --> 00:41:46.755
payments out to individuals
516
00:41:47.055 --> 00:41:47.555
constantly.
517
00:41:48.049 --> 00:41:55.029
And so they need to have a constant source of inbound Lightning liquidity in order to maintain
518
00:41:55.535 --> 00:41:56.355
their economic,
519
00:41:57.615 --> 00:41:58.115
advantage.
520
00:41:58.415 --> 00:42:09.420
So they created this service, lightning pool, which allows people to it creates a marketplace for lightning liquidity. And it's really cool. If you have extra liquidity, you can basically put it up in this marketplace and then earn additional,
521
00:42:11.480 --> 00:42:12.140
you know,
522
00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:21.770
fee or, you know, additional fees on top of what you'd get as a routing node. And they did that because they there was an economic incentive for them to do so. And for a long time,
523
00:42:22.170 --> 00:42:27.950
you know, we would all sort of joke around because we would connect the lightning loop, and then they would doesn't matter what your fee was. It could be 5,000,
524
00:42:28.970 --> 00:42:29.710
fee rate,
525
00:42:30.275 --> 00:42:40.740
or whatever you want, and they would basically drain you dry because they needed it so badly. And it's incredibly bullish to me for the Lightning Network that that is gone now. Right? There are enough people who are competing
526
00:42:41.280 --> 00:42:46.980
for who are trying to create a market for competitive fees connected to the loop service
527
00:42:47.425 --> 00:42:54.885
that, you know, the fees are much, much lower. And they tweeted out recently, like, oh my gosh. This is amazing. We finally reached a situation where
528
00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:04.580
we're actually in a competitive market. And I think a large part of that is because of PlebNet and because of the the shared knowledge there. Do you think part of it is because on chain fees are nothing
529
00:43:05.335 --> 00:43:07.195
530
00:43:07.575 --> 00:43:10.715
Absolutely. But I also think that if you if you look back when,
531
00:43:11.255 --> 00:43:13.099
on if you look back,
532
00:43:13.420 --> 00:43:17.839
when on chain fees were really high and when they dropped, that did correlate
533
00:43:18.220 --> 00:43:22.714
pretty strongly with the the the increase in liquidity of the Lightning Network.
534
00:43:25.415 --> 00:43:26.155
535
00:43:26.590 --> 00:43:39.545
I mean, low fees, low on chain fees are the most amazing environment for learning how to run a writing a route a sovereign writing note. Excuse me. A sovereign reading markets is the point. Like, they are competing markets, and so there will be some interdependencies.
536
00:43:40.565 --> 00:43:42.185
537
00:43:42.650 --> 00:43:51.710
Right? Because one of the main one of the main cause for providing liquidity is your open and close. I mean, one of the reasons why my note is so fucking far away from profitability
538
00:43:52.305 --> 00:43:55.445
is because I didn't have the liberty of learning in a low fee environment.
539
00:43:57.025 --> 00:44:05.900
540
00:44:06.360 --> 00:44:07.885
It's disgusting. It's disgusting.
541
00:44:08.265 --> 00:44:09.625
Now I do all my
542
00:44:10.265 --> 00:44:19.360
1 or 2, like, maybe. Like, it's yeah. You you get really tough, but, yeah, now is the time to be opening channels, Dyers, while the fees are low. Because in the future,
543
00:44:19.740 --> 00:44:22.560
if on chain fees go really high, you actually,
544
00:44:23.275 --> 00:44:30.710
may not be able to transact on chain and therefore you will need to transact on Lightning. And if you don't have your own Lightning Channels, then you're gonna be
545
00:44:31.089 --> 00:44:36.070
having to resort to using some sort of custodial service, which will likely come with additional cost. So
546
00:44:36.530 --> 00:44:41.075
get get a Lightning node up and running because you're actually staking your your place,
547
00:44:41.775 --> 00:44:44.435
on, you know, the payments network of the future.
548
00:44:45.295 --> 00:44:54.020
549
00:44:54.320 --> 00:44:57.700
getting mined, and the fees are super low. One set per reabyte,
550
00:44:58.484 --> 00:45:00.664
it's not gonna last for very long.
551
00:45:02.244 --> 00:45:06.220
552
00:45:07.340 --> 00:45:10.780
pie on my face because I felt the fee foam up pretty hard, and,
553
00:45:11.420 --> 00:45:17.625
I did not expect to get one separate bytes clearing, you know, next block like we did this summer.
554
00:45:18.085 --> 00:45:19.525
555
00:45:20.085 --> 00:45:20.565
big,
556
00:45:20.885 --> 00:45:26.809
jump in segment adoption rate by some economic nodes, and that's why we have the low fees.
557
00:45:27.109 --> 00:45:36.135
But as Bitcoin adoption increases, that's gonna go away. There is there is no second chance again now. So Segwit caught us some breathing room.
558
00:45:37.235 --> 00:45:40.775
Maybe in a year, you won't you will not see this kind of situation again.
559
00:45:42.440 --> 00:45:44.060
So the bonds on the last
560
00:45:44.920 --> 00:45:56.335
561
00:45:57.195 --> 00:45:59.775
every dispatch, I got the live look at
562
00:46:01.150 --> 00:46:01.810
at at mempool@menpool.space,
563
00:46:03.550 --> 00:46:04.530
up on the screen.
564
00:46:06.109 --> 00:46:12.255
Do you think I so one of the things I've been thinking about lately is that Lightning kind of acts like a release valve.
565
00:46:12.954 --> 00:46:18.780
So we might not see sustained high fees as soon as we would have if Lightning didn't exist.
566
00:46:19.340 --> 00:46:21.280
Because when fees go up substantially,
567
00:46:22.860 --> 00:46:28.560
users have a direct incentive to pay less fees to try and figure out how to use Lightning, and then they go
568
00:46:29.125 --> 00:46:40.530
a bunch of new users get onboarded to Lightning as a result, and then the fee pressure dies down on chain, and then rinse and repeat. So we get, like, these, like, blow off fee tops rather than, like, a sustained
569
00:46:40.830 --> 00:46:41.810
high fee environment.
570
00:46:42.750 --> 00:46:51.865
571
00:46:52.350 --> 00:46:56.850
that that could become a significant part of the on chain traffic. Right? So,
572
00:46:57.310 --> 00:46:59.410
you know, as the lightning pie grows,
573
00:47:00.185 --> 00:47:12.569
it is gonna create much more congestion on the main chain. So the fees are going to go up eventually. And there will be, you know, a a point beyond which lightning network is so big that,
574
00:47:13.130 --> 00:47:15.150
you know, it is generating a continuous,
575
00:47:15.849 --> 00:47:17.710
demand for on chain transactions.
576
00:47:18.994 --> 00:47:22.935
And, you know, I'm I'm thinking of when so much more of the,
577
00:47:23.475 --> 00:47:24.295
real world's
578
00:47:24.595 --> 00:47:29.600
small payment commerce moves on to the lightning network, and there's gonna be a lot more nodes.
579
00:47:29.980 --> 00:47:33.680
And the nodes that do exist now will have a lot more channels.
580
00:47:34.060 --> 00:47:38.905
They will be opening and closing channels. You know, balancing channels is not always the best option.
581
00:47:39.285 --> 00:47:41.305
It's also, you know, be frustrating
582
00:47:41.605 --> 00:47:44.105
unless you have some real emission taking care of it.
583
00:47:44.484 --> 00:47:47.380
And closing channel and opening a new one is always a good
584
00:47:56.835 --> 00:48:01.975
I don't know. But eventually, when the Internet of money has become big enough on the second layer,
585
00:48:02.915 --> 00:48:03.655
on chain
586
00:48:04.040 --> 00:48:04.540
transactions
587
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:08.220
for sustaining that network are gonna be significant
588
00:48:08.840 --> 00:48:09.900
amount of traffic.
589
00:48:11.240 --> 00:48:13.340
590
00:48:13.935 --> 00:48:15.635
lightning delayed that
591
00:48:16.335 --> 00:48:17.635
pushed it back. Right?
592
00:48:18.895 --> 00:48:20.990
593
00:48:21.470 --> 00:48:22.050
I think,
594
00:48:22.830 --> 00:48:27.730
I think in a way, it's actually good because while the block subsidy is still pretty high,
595
00:48:28.325 --> 00:48:31.384
we have more people getting used to doing Bitcoin transactions,
596
00:48:32.164 --> 00:48:32.805
you know,
597
00:48:33.684 --> 00:48:40.730
opening channels, closing channels at very low cost. I think it's it's it's a it's a, you know, the plus side of that situation.
598
00:48:45.455 --> 00:48:49.235
599
00:48:49.935 --> 00:48:52.495
with this latest high fee event,
600
00:48:53.700 --> 00:48:55.480
I mean, we had high fees for
601
00:48:56.020 --> 00:48:58.200
4 months, 5 months. I mean, someone,
602
00:48:58.579 --> 00:48:59.960
we have Mooch in the comments
603
00:49:00.420 --> 00:49:03.705
asking if he's saying fees are designed to pump forever. You
604
00:49:05.045 --> 00:49:10.825
know, during that fee market, I said it many times. I still believe it. I just think it's a long term kind of trend,
605
00:49:13.870 --> 00:49:14.270
but,
606
00:49:15.070 --> 00:49:17.070
I kinda forgot where I was going there. But,
607
00:49:18.510 --> 00:49:19.090
I think
608
00:49:19.390 --> 00:49:26.085
Oh, that the phenomenon that we witnessed with that. So the high fees, what was this was the first time we had high fees and we had lightning.
609
00:49:26.704 --> 00:49:29.605
Because the last high fees we really had was during the 2017
610
00:49:30.160 --> 00:49:37.940
block size wars, and there was probably a lot of spam that was happening to make it happen. And there's some theories that I I I don't necessarily
611
00:49:38.895 --> 00:49:39.615
think are,
612
00:49:40.415 --> 00:49:44.035
unlikely. Like, the it could have been the case that, you know, Chinese miners
613
00:49:44.495 --> 00:49:48.275
were pulling hash strategically to try and keep the fee environment high.
614
00:49:49.320 --> 00:49:57.260
But what was interesting, this being the first high fee environment with lightning, is you saw a lot of people interested in basically lightning light wallets
615
00:49:57.745 --> 00:49:58.245
during,
616
00:50:01.265 --> 00:50:04.645
during the high fees because they didn't have to open an actual channel.
617
00:50:04.945 --> 00:50:05.685
But then
618
00:50:06.510 --> 00:50:19.415
after the fees went down, then then they started learning about running their own routing node because then they had to open channels. So they kind of went the routes of a lot of times, custodial wallets where they didn't even have to touch an open channel at all, and they waited.
619
00:50:23.940 --> 00:50:25.320
So, Raj, you gotta go?
620
00:50:26.980 --> 00:50:34.585
621
00:50:34.965 --> 00:50:41.625
622
00:50:42.005 --> 00:50:43.625
623
00:50:45.340 --> 00:50:46.800
624
00:50:47.260 --> 00:50:52.160
me, Pete, and Walton are gonna continue for another 25 minutes or so. If you have any questions,
625
00:50:52.515 --> 00:50:54.055
put them in the live chat,
626
00:50:54.915 --> 00:50:57.575
through Twitter, Twitch, or YouTube, and we will get to them.
627
00:50:59.235 --> 00:51:08.950
Pete, is that is that in did you notice that same phenomenon, right, where, like, people were, like, interested in lightning, but they weren't necessarily interested in running their routing nodes as much until fees dropped again?
628
00:51:09.875 --> 00:51:22.910
629
00:51:23.210 --> 00:51:29.705
And I think that the thing that I really took away from that experience is like, oh, man. Like, this is a game.
630
00:51:30.085 --> 00:51:33.065
Like or whether it can be a game. It can be a really fun
631
00:51:33.680 --> 00:51:37.140
strategic game. Right? Like, Aaron, Walton, Raj,
632
00:51:37.440 --> 00:51:52.470
KP, a bunch of us who were, like, doing this, like, you know, we would we were literally, like, we had these Telegram groups where we would just be messaging back and forth constantly. Like, oh, shit. Like, this node is is, we'll pay you high fees. This one will drain you. And and if, because my point is
633
00:51:52.849 --> 00:51:53.589
the community
634
00:51:54.290 --> 00:51:55.270
and the exciting
635
00:51:56.530 --> 00:52:02.005
kind of like real time strategy game aspect of Lightning is something that I didn't realize existed
636
00:52:02.704 --> 00:52:04.724
and has created a really compelling
637
00:52:05.905 --> 00:52:06.405
reason
638
00:52:06.785 --> 00:52:08.085
for people to
639
00:52:08.920 --> 00:52:17.260
start learning how to run these systems. Now it is absolutely the case that when the fees went low, it created an environment where people could
640
00:52:17.705 --> 00:52:19.005
learn this stuff,
641
00:52:21.145 --> 00:52:27.740
in a way that was extremely economically viable. But I actually think that these types of communities are the thing that really drives adoption.
642
00:52:28.520 --> 00:52:32.540
643
00:52:33.785 --> 00:52:35.325
in the education space
644
00:52:35.785 --> 00:52:37.325
and and helping people,
645
00:52:37.945 --> 00:52:40.205
and talking to other Bitcoiners. But
646
00:52:41.819 --> 00:52:43.359
the the thing about lightning
647
00:52:43.740 --> 00:52:45.599
operators is when you're
648
00:52:46.059 --> 00:52:50.960
we you have way lower time preference for your on chain transactions. Right? So, like For sure.
649
00:52:52.675 --> 00:53:00.615
You can wait for a 1 sat per byte or 2 sat per byte to confirm. So you do it it does provide a, like, a reserve
650
00:53:03.549 --> 00:53:09.809
reserve transaction demand on, like, kind of, like, the bottom of the mempool wait list. Totally. Call it that.
651
00:53:10.435 --> 00:53:11.175
But it's
652
00:53:11.714 --> 00:53:14.775
it'll take longer for that to be a reason for,
653
00:53:16.195 --> 00:53:17.975
like, fee pressure
654
00:53:18.435 --> 00:53:20.730
655
00:53:21.030 --> 00:53:25.850
mean, I have personally, like, never been I got well, first of all, I was, like,
656
00:53:26.470 --> 00:53:29.610
running a lightning routing node, I have made more on
657
00:53:30.135 --> 00:53:35.435
more on chain transactions than I ever have in the entire history of my involvement in Bitcoin, which is since, like, 2016.
658
00:53:35.815 --> 00:53:38.150
Right? And I think that's really fucking cool.
659
00:53:38.630 --> 00:53:44.490
And I'm I'm glad to be able to participate in that. But you're absolutely right. Like, you know, like, Ben Prentiss and I, like, opened a channel
660
00:53:45.109 --> 00:53:45.609
and
661
00:53:46.005 --> 00:53:52.984
or he opened it. I I convinced him to open a channel to me. And, he was like, yeah, man. I I I sent it with, like, you know, 22,
662
00:53:53.285 --> 00:54:05.984
Southborough vbites. So, it's probably not gonna open until the weekend. And I was like, that's cool, man. Like, these channels are just, you know, we're throwing channels around and like that type of approach. And this is, like, a significant amount of, like, locking up a significant amount of liquidity.
663
00:54:06.765 --> 00:54:08.545
I personally wouldn't have had
664
00:54:09.490 --> 00:54:15.090
that low time preference if not for my confidence in the waiting at work. So I agree with you. Right.
665
00:54:15.730 --> 00:54:17.910
666
00:54:18.210 --> 00:54:19.474
there was, like, like,
667
00:54:19.954 --> 00:54:21.335
kind of people on PlebNet
668
00:54:24.994 --> 00:54:27.175
taking advantage of maybe lazy
669
00:54:29.880 --> 00:54:34.460
lazy competing routing nodes or not maybe just not sophisticated
670
00:54:35.400 --> 00:54:36.140
node operators
671
00:54:36.440 --> 00:54:39.484
who allowed you to make more fees on them.
672
00:54:41.065 --> 00:54:46.365
Do you think and that's great because, I mean, that's exactly what we want. We we want, like, this adversarial
673
00:54:46.744 --> 00:54:48.125
incentive based network
674
00:54:48.700 --> 00:54:54.000
where people are just working for their own best interest, and as a result, everyone gets better liquidity.
675
00:54:54.619 --> 00:54:55.680
But do you think
676
00:54:56.540 --> 00:54:57.040
that
677
00:54:58.605 --> 00:55:13.380
have have you thought at all about, you know, the fact that, like, Lightning it kinda feels like Lightning hasn't really had its adversarial moment yet? Like, I mean, obviously, we have people like you guys on on ClubNet that are doing it, and there's probably some vultures out there that
678
00:55:13.744 --> 00:55:17.285
are are, you know, making a decent amount of money doing similar things.
679
00:55:17.665 --> 00:55:19.845
But I feel like it hasn't really
680
00:55:20.840 --> 00:55:23.740
stood the test of attacks yet. Would you agree on that?
681
00:55:24.120 --> 00:55:31.974
682
00:55:33.635 --> 00:55:38.020
You know? And and I think, you know, it's it's very interesting, the recent attacks that have happened with,
683
00:55:39.020 --> 00:55:39.520
you
684
00:55:40.020 --> 00:55:43.960
know, with with El Sal where rather, they seem to be related to El Salvador,
685
00:55:44.260 --> 00:55:46.680
but there were recent attacks on the major
686
00:55:47.595 --> 00:55:54.655
Lightning routing nodes that were kind of like DDoS attacks. And I it's not a coincidence. I I personally feel like those are almost certainly,
687
00:55:56.099 --> 00:55:58.039
you know, government sponsored attacks.
688
00:56:00.819 --> 00:56:10.765
And I I think we're I think we're we are moving into a much more adversarial world in the Lightning Network, and I think that is fantastic. Right? And the fact that, like, a bunch of us kind of
689
00:56:11.119 --> 00:56:27.224
early on had this cabal, which sounds really nefarious, but, basically, it was literally like people were opening channels in Plebnet, and then there was a lack of liquidity to these large channels. And then people that had this high liquidity were like, well, I have the Bitcoin to put up. I can be basically a battery node of liquidity,
690
00:56:27.765 --> 00:56:35.450
in this low fee environment. Right? I can open these large channels and then basically provide liquidity in the future when fees go up, and then they did go up briefly.
691
00:56:35.830 --> 00:56:36.330
And,
692
00:56:37.190 --> 00:56:39.610
it was a really wonderful thing for me
693
00:56:40.035 --> 00:56:41.175
to see that
694
00:56:41.795 --> 00:56:45.695
for all of us. Right? Like, we dissolve that that that that,
695
00:56:46.035 --> 00:56:53.220
that super node because the reality was for each of us, by supporting the larger lighting network, that is to say educating
696
00:56:53.520 --> 00:56:54.020
everyone
697
00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:55.380
about the
698
00:56:55.755 --> 00:56:57.375
the dynamics involved,
699
00:56:57.835 --> 00:56:59.135
that was the thing
700
00:56:59.435 --> 00:57:00.255
that created
701
00:57:00.795 --> 00:57:04.655
more liquidity and more and more routing fees for all of us.
702
00:57:05.110 --> 00:57:11.450
And that's an amazing thing. Like, it's it's an incredible thing when you're you are participating in a system and a community
703
00:57:12.705 --> 00:57:15.605
where the way to benefit yourself selfishly
704
00:57:16.465 --> 00:57:17.125
is to
705
00:57:17.745 --> 00:57:18.245
improve
706
00:57:18.945 --> 00:57:20.005
the alpha
707
00:57:20.619 --> 00:57:27.359
708
00:57:27.819 --> 00:57:33.545
the an individual should act selfishly, essentially. And that and that and that's a good thing because,
709
00:57:34.405 --> 00:57:35.865
it means that the
710
00:57:36.325 --> 00:57:39.710
the the market is more competitive, and it means that,
711
00:57:40.150 --> 00:57:42.810
you know, we we actually do have a free
712
00:57:44.070 --> 00:57:47.210
market that is the the fee market on the lightning
713
00:57:47.935 --> 00:57:48.435
Network.
714
00:57:50.415 --> 00:57:52.115
715
00:57:52.895 --> 00:58:03.270
716
00:58:04.275 --> 00:58:05.974
Lightning operator as well,
717
00:58:07.315 --> 00:58:10.055
is this idea of the value of, like, a reputation
718
00:58:10.355 --> 00:58:15.520
that you've been around for a while, that you have good liquidity, that you have good uptime. I know. It's weird.
719
00:58:15.820 --> 00:58:18.480
That your channels are are are fat,
720
00:58:18.940 --> 00:58:22.775
and they've been around for a long time. Girthy, please.
721
00:58:23.635 --> 00:58:24.135
But
722
00:58:24.595 --> 00:58:25.095
as
723
00:58:26.195 --> 00:58:27.335
as a result,
724
00:58:27.930 --> 00:58:32.190
there's some privacy considerations to keep in mind in terms of
725
00:58:33.690 --> 00:58:34.430
the UTXOs
726
00:58:34.730 --> 00:58:39.525
you link to that node and that node being I mean, at the very least, linked to you on Telegram.
727
00:58:40.065 --> 00:58:40.565
100%.
728
00:58:41.105 --> 00:58:44.645
Is this something you guys consider at all? Because, I mean, it's one of the
729
00:58:45.650 --> 00:58:51.589
major issues I have is, like, I have this, you know, super old, well connected lightning node,
730
00:58:51.970 --> 00:58:53.589
and then I have, you know,
731
00:58:53.890 --> 00:58:54.390
another
732
00:58:55.375 --> 00:58:59.235
undisclosed amount that aren't attached to me. But I feel like
733
00:58:59.615 --> 00:59:03.875
if I wanna do privacy best practices, I really should be recycling them, you know,
734
00:59:04.359 --> 00:59:06.859
starting fresh, getting rid of them, starting fresh
735
00:59:07.160 --> 00:59:07.900
on a
736
00:59:08.279 --> 00:59:13.579
timed basis, you know, after a certain amount of time. But it goes against this idea of
737
00:59:14.025 --> 00:59:15.005
long term reputation.
738
00:59:16.985 --> 00:59:17.885
739
00:59:18.185 --> 00:59:23.085
I I think it's really tough. Right? Like, the the reason that, you know, Walton mentioned the kind of the original
740
00:59:23.690 --> 00:59:26.170
URL for the Telegram group we have is,
741
00:59:27.450 --> 00:59:28.430
was kycjelly.com.
742
00:59:29.370 --> 00:59:33.385
Right? And that was because we we also The Twitter is also at kycjelly.
743
00:59:34.645 --> 00:59:40.505
There you go. And the reason that was the case is because we thought it was hilarious that, you know, we all spend so much time
744
00:59:40.885 --> 00:59:41.785
talking about
745
00:59:43.320 --> 00:59:43.820
maintaining
746
00:59:45.400 --> 00:59:51.099
financial, you know, serenity and maintaining good OPSEC and not doxing yourself.
747
00:59:51.405 --> 01:00:02.910
And, you know, on Clubhouse where a lot of us kind of, you know, got super involved in ClubNet, you know, like, I mean, for me personally, anytime anybody would mention a number, I'd be like, shut the fuck up. Like, do not mention
748
01:00:03.369 --> 01:00:11.305
any number of US dollars. Do not mention any number of Bitcoin. Do not talk about where you live or any of that shit. And then as soon as, you know,
749
01:00:11.685 --> 01:00:25.330
we started engaging the Lightning Network, we were like, yo. How many sats you got in this channel? Yo. You want a 5,000,000 sat channel, 10,000,000 sat channel? Here's my live here's my note address. Like and and so we thought it was funny that, basically, we had we had kind of
750
01:00:25.950 --> 01:00:32.655
reverted almost and been willing to dox ourselves in order to support the Lightning Network. And so I do think that is a very significant
751
01:00:33.275 --> 01:00:36.335
issue, and I think it will continue to be an issue as we go forward.
752
01:00:36.800 --> 01:00:39.140
And, you know, there are services like amboss.space
753
01:00:40.080 --> 01:00:40.580
and,
754
01:00:41.280 --> 01:00:48.645
other you know, and and 1ML was another kind of example of this, though they have been, in my opinion, super 100% superseded by ambus.space
755
01:00:50.704 --> 01:00:51.525
that basically
756
01:00:51.825 --> 01:00:53.125
allow one to
757
01:00:53.980 --> 01:00:56.160
track on the long term history
758
01:00:56.460 --> 01:01:12.400
of a node and and view the channel and view the channel closures and things like that. And Fiat JAF has some tools that have been really instrumental for me in in tracking on this thing as well. But I I I think it is they are at odds. They are in conflict, and I think that
759
01:01:13.020 --> 01:01:14.079
it does create
760
01:01:14.460 --> 01:01:19.885
a real challenge. And the only thing I'll say is that is that I am willing to dox myself a little bit,
761
01:01:20.685 --> 01:01:21.745
or a lot of bit
762
01:01:22.125 --> 01:01:31.140
for in order to support the Lightning Network and my own ability to create to to get inbound liquidity and to give up, you know, outbound liquidity.
763
01:01:31.440 --> 01:01:38.765
But there are a lot of people who have, you know, understandably been like, you know what? I wanna support Plugnet, but I'm not willing to basically dox my node,
764
01:01:39.545 --> 01:01:41.724
by connecting it to Cheese Robot. So,
765
01:01:42.185 --> 01:01:46.050
I'm happy to open channels with people, but I am not interested in in
766
01:01:48.830 --> 01:01:54.050
linking up my node explicitly with my Telegram handle. My node is a random string of characters
767
01:01:54.464 --> 01:01:56.565
and people connect to it because
768
01:01:56.944 --> 01:01:59.444
they can look at the history of that node independent
769
01:01:59.744 --> 01:02:01.045
of my personal reputation
770
01:02:01.585 --> 01:02:02.885
and see that I maintain
771
01:02:03.520 --> 01:02:10.500
good channels with low fees or with reasonable fees going forward. So I think we're gonna move into a world where it is more anonymous,
772
01:02:11.120 --> 01:02:12.500
and people can basically
773
01:02:13.825 --> 01:02:16.005
decide on whether they wanna connect to a node
774
01:02:16.305 --> 01:02:16.945
based on,
775
01:02:17.345 --> 01:02:17.845
just,
776
01:02:19.025 --> 01:02:28.940
777
01:02:29.325 --> 01:02:31.905
Like, you can just go on there and, you know, pick
778
01:02:32.205 --> 01:02:38.120
a top node and see what, you know, see what matters to be counted as a top node, which is things like having a high proportion
779
01:02:38.660 --> 01:02:41.160
of, peers that route through you,
780
01:02:41.700 --> 01:02:42.200
centrality,
781
01:02:43.540 --> 01:02:45.375
your stability slash uptime
782
01:02:45.755 --> 01:02:47.214
is also very, very important.
783
01:02:48.075 --> 01:02:49.855
You know, and if you connect to one of these,
784
01:02:50.555 --> 01:02:51.295
top nodes
785
01:02:52.080 --> 01:02:55.860
or rather if you become one of these top nodes, you will you will receive,
786
01:02:57.360 --> 01:02:57.860
unrequested
787
01:02:58.320 --> 01:02:58.820
girth.
788
01:03:03.255 --> 01:03:05.915
789
01:03:07.300 --> 01:03:11.880
what happened with so so right now, I've pulled out pulled up on amboss.space,
790
01:03:14.405 --> 01:03:15.545
this sitl dispatch.com
791
01:03:15.925 --> 01:03:17.705
node. I don't know who runs it,
792
01:03:18.724 --> 01:03:21.705
but it is a it is a node that exists on the network,
793
01:03:22.500 --> 01:03:24.839
And this is all the information you can see,
794
01:03:26.980 --> 01:03:27.480
about
795
01:03:27.780 --> 01:03:28.839
about a node
796
01:03:30.305 --> 01:03:41.270
from just having their pubkey. You can see their their public capacity. What a lot of people don't realize is that total capacity doesn't mean how much is on that node. It it counts inbound as well, which is technically not your Bitcoin.
797
01:03:42.130 --> 01:03:47.030
Right. So that number is inflated, but I I would say that a lot of people that look at it will,
798
01:03:47.965 --> 01:03:52.465
assume that it's the top end number. And then it also shows a number of channels,
799
01:03:53.485 --> 01:03:56.225
your age of channels, your youngest channel,
800
01:03:57.900 --> 01:03:59.840
a bunch of different stats. Now
801
01:04:00.380 --> 01:04:00.880
terminal.lightning.engineering
802
01:04:04.335 --> 01:04:04.994
is a
803
01:04:05.295 --> 01:04:09.875
slightly different interface, and what their strategy is is to,
804
01:04:10.974 --> 01:04:12.515
kind of rank nodes.
805
01:04:13.590 --> 01:04:17.530
But the ranking system is not open source, and it's very,
806
01:04:18.230 --> 01:04:21.050
kind of opaque on how they decide to rate nodes.
807
01:04:21.865 --> 01:04:24.365
Agreed. I don't I don't know if you noticed,
808
01:04:26.025 --> 01:04:32.480
but maybe, like, 4 months ago or 5 months ago, they added this feature on on terminal dot lightning dot engineering,
809
01:04:33.340 --> 01:04:35.280
and it's told me that,
810
01:04:35.820 --> 01:04:40.755
this node didn't have any good peers. And I was like, they're calling all the freaks bad peers.
811
01:04:41.375 --> 01:04:43.395
And I tweeted it out, and then,
812
01:04:44.494 --> 01:04:49.530
like, 3 days later, all of a sudden, it said I had good peers and I had a high BOS score.
813
01:04:49.830 --> 01:04:50.150
And then they
814
01:04:50.870 --> 01:05:00.155
and then at some point over the last month, though, they took it away from me, and now I have no good peers. Well, I don't know whose node this is. This node has no good peers
815
01:05:00.535 --> 01:05:03.515
and is not centrally located at all even though it's got 223
816
01:05:04.640 --> 01:05:05.460
fucking channels.
817
01:05:06.000 --> 01:05:08.980
818
01:05:09.359 --> 01:05:12.740
and then my node went down for, like, 10 hours.
819
01:05:14.055 --> 01:05:14.795
And then
820
01:05:15.255 --> 01:05:20.075
it jumped into, you know, 3,000 or whatever. And then the next day, it went back,
821
01:05:20.375 --> 01:05:31.795
like, 99 or something. Like, how did it how did the ranking improve having me being down? Didn't make any sense, but maybe it's other I I don't know how it works. We'd no one knows how it works other than Yeah. Yours.
822
01:05:32.095 --> 01:05:33.315
Reveal your secrets.
823
01:05:34.495 --> 01:05:36.675
824
01:05:37.455 --> 01:05:45.040
I think that, to your point, Matt, like, these types of rankings, right, like, Alex Bosworth, you know, who runs, like, y'alls.org
825
01:05:45.740 --> 01:05:46.940
and, you know, works at,
826
01:05:47.660 --> 01:05:53.285
at Lightning Labs, He basically created the BOS score as a way for him to personally decide
827
01:05:53.665 --> 01:06:05.789
which nodes he was interested in connecting to. And he was early enough that everybody was like, well, we don't know what the fuck we're doing. Like, how's Bosworth is a fucking genius. Like, he probably knows better than we do. And so, like, that became kind of the de facto measurement.
828
01:06:06.305 --> 01:06:15.845
And then Lightning Labs was like, alright. We gotta, like, you know, spin up something new that provides a little bit more insight, and they did so. But to your point, like, it is totally arbitrary. Right? And,
829
01:06:16.980 --> 01:06:19.800
830
01:06:20.260 --> 01:06:22.920
We don't have them yet. Exactly. 100%.
831
01:06:23.914 --> 01:06:27.535
One of my fears is, like, a lot of these reputation systems, and I assume,
832
01:06:28.154 --> 01:06:28.894
the boss,
833
01:06:29.595 --> 01:06:37.780
score does as well, which, by the way, stands for a balance of satoshis. It doesn't stand for the first three letters of his name last name. Yeah. But did he not name it that for
834
01:06:38.579 --> 01:06:42.955
we will never know, will we? How dare you? We'll never know. It's it's up in the air.
835
01:06:46.295 --> 01:06:51.859
836
01:06:52.240 --> 01:06:56.900
837
01:06:57.375 --> 01:06:59.795
is, like, this uptime and connectivity
838
01:07:00.335 --> 01:07:00.835
kind
839
01:07:01.455 --> 01:07:02.035
of scoring,
840
01:07:02.495 --> 01:07:05.155
which is always gonna benefit the clear net nodes
841
01:07:06.110 --> 01:07:12.290
over people running through Tor. Because Tor is, you know, the best we have, but it's an unreliable
842
01:07:12.830 --> 01:07:14.530
piece of shit a lot of times.
843
01:07:14.974 --> 01:07:16.035
844
01:07:17.375 --> 01:07:25.690
845
01:07:26.150 --> 01:07:27.610
need to be very actively
846
01:07:29.110 --> 01:07:29.610
aware
847
01:07:30.135 --> 01:07:33.435
that those reputation systems or at least some reputation systems
848
01:07:33.895 --> 01:07:38.075
should kind of ignore that or at least just focus on Tor only nodes,
849
01:07:38.535 --> 01:07:41.260
to be relevant to, like, a sovereign router.
850
01:07:41.720 --> 01:07:47.500
851
01:07:48.415 --> 01:07:51.715
you know, e like, l n, and I mentioned it a bunch, but, like,
852
01:07:53.295 --> 01:07:59.400
you know, l n node insight, like, lets you do simulated channels. Right? So you can basically be like, what would my how would my centrality
853
01:07:59.780 --> 01:08:13.475
by various metrics change if I was to open a channel or remove a channel from this specific node? And centrality is only one tiny part of, like, running a not any tiny part. It is one aspect of running a successful Lightning node. Right? But,
854
01:08:14.050 --> 01:08:20.390
but it's not the end all, be all. And right now, centrality, I would argue, in the network is artificially inflated. People
855
01:08:20.745 --> 01:08:34.730
856
01:08:35.270 --> 01:08:48.300
Yeah. It's it's not it's not super important. Yeah. So I think I mean, my point is, like, all of the systems, including, like, Lightning Labs and It doesn't get overranked. It doesn't go overranked. You don't need to have a high centrality to get a high ranking on thermal.light.engineering.
857
01:08:49.880 --> 01:09:01.514
858
01:09:01.895 --> 01:09:02.875
Walton mentioned,
859
01:09:03.895 --> 01:09:04.875
you know, the,
860
01:09:07.440 --> 01:09:07.600
the
861
01:09:09.040 --> 01:09:18.555
there are these sort of independent GitHub repos that allow you to rank your own node and figure out how to improve your own nodes and, you know, not even centrality, though it's one metric,
862
01:09:19.095 --> 01:09:24.690
based on other factors. And I think what's gonna happen is we're gonna see more and more and more of those independent
863
01:09:25.070 --> 01:09:25.570
analyses,
864
01:09:26.270 --> 01:09:27.329
analysis tools,
865
01:09:27.949 --> 01:09:30.290
develop, and people will come up with their own metrics
866
01:09:30.755 --> 01:09:34.835
for what is a good node to connect to. And there are these tools already exist in sometimes. Right? There's,
867
01:09:35.715 --> 01:09:38.135
there's a fuck. What is it called?
868
01:09:38.770 --> 01:09:43.190
It's like l n it's not l n balance. I can look it up if anybody's interested.
869
01:09:43.570 --> 01:09:49.725
DM me on Twitter or something. But, basically, like, it has all these other algorithms. Like, okay. So it'll do, like, historic
870
01:09:50.105 --> 01:09:56.230
payments that are routed through you to basically insert your to allow you to insert your node as a,
871
01:09:56.690 --> 01:09:57.590
kind of middleman
872
01:09:58.130 --> 01:09:59.670
between existing nodes
873
01:10:01.565 --> 01:10:13.310
and those kinds of things and, you know, how many nodes have, like, 3 hops away from you, and then you can optimize that. So I think these types of metrics are gonna be super important, and there will be more and more independent tools that allow
874
01:10:14.250 --> 01:10:16.429
plebs who are interested in running routing nodes
875
01:10:16.810 --> 01:10:17.310
to
876
01:10:17.715 --> 01:10:26.135
877
01:10:27.619 --> 01:10:28.119
kycjelly.com
878
01:10:28.900 --> 01:10:29.219
and,
879
01:10:30.340 --> 01:10:31.960
and and increase their liquidity,
880
01:10:33.699 --> 01:10:35.195
881
01:10:35.575 --> 01:10:38.955
882
01:10:40.055 --> 01:10:43.435
883
01:10:44.130 --> 01:10:44.630
and
884
01:10:45.090 --> 01:10:47.750
and very much believes in its importance,
885
01:10:48.290 --> 01:10:51.190
would you go as far as saying
886
01:10:51.645 --> 01:10:52.864
it's either Tor
887
01:10:53.244 --> 01:10:54.864
or have fun staying poor?
888
01:10:55.645 --> 01:10:57.565
889
01:10:58.700 --> 01:11:04.000
well, individuals should only use Tor only routing nodes and I mean, Tor only nodes, period.
890
01:11:04.540 --> 01:11:06.300
And if you are
891
01:11:08.994 --> 01:11:17.550
I think I I would go as far as saying that any anything that any on chain transaction that goes into your node should be a coin join output, and any
892
01:11:17.850 --> 01:11:21.150
UTXO that leaves your node should then go through coin join,
893
01:11:21.929 --> 01:11:22.750
because I
894
01:11:23.290 --> 01:11:30.505
especially if if this routing node gets linked to you, which is gonna get linked to you at some point, especially if you're trying to run it long term,
895
01:11:32.460 --> 01:11:38.239
that on chain footprint is there, and and you leak a lot of information. You you basically have to assume
896
01:11:38.699 --> 01:11:44.785
that every UTXO that you fund a lightning node with is connected to each other. It's like you combine them.
897
01:11:46.445 --> 01:11:47.265
Yeah. 100%.
898
01:11:48.685 --> 01:11:52.270
Which is, like, a really dangerous situation to be in, so I struggle with
899
01:11:55.070 --> 01:11:55.890
that. And,
900
01:11:56.750 --> 01:12:02.055
you know, as someone who's been reckless with the amount of of UTXOs that have gone into my nodes,
901
01:12:02.435 --> 01:12:07.415
I'm probably more vulnerable to it than a lot of people, so it it hits close to home.
902
01:12:07.720 --> 01:12:13.980
And I'm hoping that we have better tools in that regard. Like, it'd be really cool if we had a tool that was just,
903
01:12:14.715 --> 01:12:17.855
you know, coin join and lightning built in, and you could.
904
01:12:18.474 --> 01:12:22.494
But right now, you kinda have to go through steps. So so take your time, learn,
905
01:12:23.190 --> 01:12:23.670
and,
906
01:12:24.070 --> 01:12:26.730
just be humble enough to realize that you can always improve,
907
01:12:27.270 --> 01:12:28.970
I think, is is the big things.
908
01:12:29.670 --> 01:12:33.725
909
01:12:34.265 --> 01:12:34.765
910
01:12:35.865 --> 01:12:41.885
So I know both of you guys have a little bit of a time crunch here, so I think now is a good time to wrap it up. I really enjoyed this conversation.
911
01:12:42.757 --> 01:12:46.670
Let should we end with some final thoughts? We'll start with, we'll start with Pete.
912
01:12:47.530 --> 01:12:48.430
913
01:12:49.585 --> 01:12:52.324
Thanks for having us. This was awesome. I think that
914
01:12:54.625 --> 01:12:57.105
the biggest thing for me, my final thoughts are,
915
01:12:58.020 --> 01:12:59.320
everyone should be willing
916
01:13:00.020 --> 01:13:02.039
to experiment with these technologies.
917
01:13:02.340 --> 01:13:03.960
You know? I think that,
918
01:13:04.340 --> 01:13:06.934
you know, do not fall into the trap
919
01:13:07.795 --> 01:13:11.894
of trusting the narratives that are being presented to you, not only, of course, by,
920
01:13:12.434 --> 01:13:13.414
you know, existing
921
01:13:14.350 --> 01:13:20.770
media systems, which are total bullshit, but also just, like, from people as individuals. Like, do your own research,
922
01:13:21.235 --> 01:13:22.535
experiment with these technologies,
923
01:13:23.875 --> 01:13:24.375
and
924
01:13:25.315 --> 01:13:29.495
find your own way. I think that's that's really, really important. You know?
925
01:13:30.050 --> 01:13:30.550
Don't,
926
01:13:31.969 --> 01:13:34.630
don't take anything for granted. Confirm it yourself.
927
01:13:35.409 --> 01:13:36.630
Play with the Lightning Network.
928
01:13:37.225 --> 01:13:39.565
Explore these technologies. Become sovereign.
929
01:13:42.505 --> 01:13:43.565
930
01:13:43.945 --> 01:13:45.165
Walton, fun thoughts.
931
01:13:45.960 --> 01:13:46.860
932
01:13:47.240 --> 01:13:48.060
in sovereignty,
933
01:13:48.760 --> 01:13:51.740
which I'm assuming you do given that you're a Bitcoiner,
934
01:13:53.640 --> 01:13:54.460
there's nothing
935
01:13:56.325 --> 01:13:57.045
that you,
936
01:13:58.085 --> 01:13:59.225
must do more
937
01:13:59.605 --> 01:14:01.465
than run your own node.
938
01:14:03.900 --> 01:14:11.360
It enables multiple things. Right? You you're gonna have Bitcoin Core, which will enable you to verify your own transactions,
939
01:14:12.060 --> 01:14:12.560
something,
940
01:14:13.885 --> 01:14:14.705
that, you know,
941
01:14:15.645 --> 01:14:17.025
we should all be doing.
942
01:14:17.965 --> 01:14:29.179
And just, you know, just having a node running Bitcoin Core doesn't actually help you. Yes. It's it's it's it's, you know, it's helping the network and it enables other nodes to download
943
01:14:30.835 --> 01:14:32.215
blocks from it, but
944
01:14:34.835 --> 01:14:43.020
you're not actually benefiting yourself. But if you check your own transactions, you are. Now the second one, and this is perhaps more important, is it gives you that foothold
945
01:14:43.560 --> 01:14:47.260
on the Lightning Network. Now the Lightning Network is what's
946
01:14:47.875 --> 01:14:49.175
really going to enable
947
01:14:49.875 --> 01:14:50.935
medium of exchange
948
01:14:51.715 --> 01:14:53.575
of Bitcoin in the future.
949
01:14:54.275 --> 01:14:55.415
It's instantaneous.
950
01:14:56.670 --> 01:14:58.130
It's a very low cost.
951
01:14:59.470 --> 01:15:00.770
And as Pete said,
952
01:15:01.150 --> 01:15:02.610
now is the time
953
01:15:02.910 --> 01:15:04.515
to be getting your
954
01:15:05.215 --> 01:15:10.595
lightning mode up and running, opening channels while on chain fees are low and staking
955
01:15:11.810 --> 01:15:17.030
your spot on the payments network of the future. And if you want to run a node, all you need to do,
956
01:15:17.570 --> 01:15:24.955
if you wanna learn more, no matter what background you're from, no matter what your prior knowledge or understanding, all you need to do is go to kycjelly.com.
957
01:15:25.895 --> 01:15:27.035
That's kycjelly
958
01:15:28.600 --> 01:15:29.100
dotcom.
959
01:15:30.760 --> 01:15:31.660
960
01:15:32.040 --> 01:15:40.304
And I would just add on top of there that, you know, don't count on fees staying low for much longer. I mean, who knows? I've gotten it wrong a bunch, but,
961
01:15:40.925 --> 01:15:44.125
I have a feeling we're gonna be complaining about high on chain fees,
962
01:15:44.445 --> 01:15:45.184
soon enough.
963
01:15:45.870 --> 01:15:54.370
I know this is a little bit out of order. I just had you guys do your final thoughts, but if we finish up this show and someone still has this question, we need to answer it.
964
01:15:54.815 --> 01:16:01.715
We have Disco Toshi in the comments saying, what is the proper procedure for connecting your lightning note to others within the Pubnet Telegram
965
01:16:02.175 --> 01:16:03.235
once you join?
966
01:16:07.030 --> 01:16:11.645
967
01:16:12.045 --> 01:16:24.000
But if you if you've already got a couple of channels open and you are a serious node runner, DM me on our and I'll I'll invite you to this another group we have of Node Runners that has a slightly more focused conversation.
968
01:16:24.460 --> 01:16:27.600
The the main PlebNet group now with over 4,000 people,
969
01:16:27.980 --> 01:16:30.160
is is a kind of a community group first,
970
01:16:31.145 --> 01:16:43.320
or rather it's evolved into, yeah, the kind of community group. But there are other Plebnet communities that are more focused if you're struggling to to match up with some people looking looking for a a girthing partner.
971
01:16:43.860 --> 01:16:48.905
972
01:16:50.325 --> 01:16:52.085
973
01:16:52.405 --> 01:16:53.625
My, my statistician
974
01:16:54.005 --> 01:16:55.785
prepared some for me earlier, actually.
975
01:16:56.800 --> 01:16:58.900
Yes. They said, so we have
976
01:16:59.360 --> 01:16:59.860
4,030
977
01:17:00.480 --> 01:17:01.619
plebs, 806
978
01:17:02.159 --> 01:17:03.380
nodes, and
979
01:17:03.695 --> 01:17:04.355
the combined
980
01:17:04.655 --> 01:17:08.435
inbound and outbound liquidity of PlebNet is 734
981
01:17:09.535 --> 01:17:12.035
Bitcoin, which is, I believe, approximately
982
01:17:12.670 --> 01:17:15.409
a third of the the the total
983
01:17:15.710 --> 01:17:16.210
public
984
01:17:16.909 --> 01:17:18.050
lightning network.
985
01:17:19.150 --> 01:17:19.969
986
01:17:20.435 --> 01:17:26.534
987
01:17:26.915 --> 01:17:28.295
988
01:17:29.390 --> 01:17:42.425
989
01:17:42.965 --> 01:17:46.870
990
01:17:47.490 --> 01:17:48.050
protect their
991
01:17:49.330 --> 01:17:56.415
992
01:17:57.114 --> 01:18:15.385
this has been a great conversation. I'm sorry we had to cut it off short, but I hope to have both of you on, sometime soon in the future. Thank you for joining us. Thank you to the freaks who joined us in the live chat through Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. As always, this will be posted to Bitcoin TV after we finish and to both podcast feeds.
993
01:18:16.085 --> 01:18:19.305
Thank you to all the freaks, who continue to support the show.
994
01:18:20.100 --> 01:18:23.640
It's it's truly beautiful, and I do appreciate all your support.
995
01:18:24.420 --> 01:18:25.800
Thanks, Pete. Thanks, Walton.
996
01:18:26.260 --> 01:18:28.095
Absolutely, man. Anytime. Thank you.
997
01:18:28.495 --> 01:18:28.995
Cheers.
998
01:22:43.155 --> 01:22:46.615
Love you, freaks. Thank you for joining for another Bitcoin Tuesday.
999
01:22:48.220 --> 01:22:52.080
Our rabbit hole recap this week, instead of being Thursday, will be tomorrow,
1000
01:22:52.540 --> 01:22:54.080
so stay tuned for that.
1001
01:22:54.765 --> 01:22:55.265
And,
1002
01:22:55.805 --> 01:23:05.330
there will be no dispatch next Bitcoin Tuesday, but there will be one after that. We'll be back to our normal schedule. I love you all. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for listening.
1003
01:23:06.030 --> 01:23:07.570
Stay humble and stack sets.
