经济与社会科学2022papers.ssrn.com
闪电网络：将比特币变成货币
The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money
进阶 · 约 35 分钟读完前置知识：比特币基础、支付通道与链下结算、支付系统/货币政策基础
导读
这篇论文（来自克利夫兰联邦储备银行，据评论者指出）研究比特币的闪电网络能否让比特币真正成为可用的支付手段：通过把大量支付移到链下通道、只在链上结算净额，降低手续费和区块链拥堵。论文讨论了这种扩容方案对用户、节点运行成本、能源消耗和交易所间套利与流动性的潜在影响，也提到以太坊的 Raiden 等类似方案。
HN 关注点：HN 读者一方面关心闪电网络的实际落地效果与比特币"点对点电子现金"的原始愿景，另一方面争论加密行业投入巨额资金十多年却仍缺"杀手级应用"。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 2 补充 1 亲历 1
亲历亲历者：闪电网络在 Podcast 2.0 的小额流式打赏中已实际可用，且是对播客平台中心化的反制。
闪电网络一个很酷的用法是 Podcast 2.0 计划。我听播客时会实时流式打赏 satoshis（sats），按"价值对价值"付费（iOS 上用 Castamatic，安卓上还有 fountain.fm）。你还可以附带 sats 发消息，叫"boosts"。创作者可以透明地把收到的 sats 拆分到不同目标（比如 FOSS 项目 opensats，或节目嘉宾）。据我所知没有交易手续费，只有你的闪电节点与主链同步时才产生费用，而那时可以批量打包很多交易。我认为这是对播客领域当前中心化的健康反制——独立创作者正被吸进 Spotify 和 YouTube（有时还在那里被审查）。Podcast 2.0 不只是价值对价值，还有按章节配图、片段分享、为同一播客/单集指定不同格式（如 opus）等现代功能。这是个很酷的社区，要我说这是"区块链"产出的第一个真正有用的东西。
teekert查看英文原文
A cool use of the Lightning network is the podcast 2.0 initative. Currently, as I listen to podcasts, I stream back satoshis (sats), value for value (I use Castamatic on iOS, fountain.fm is also an option on Android). You can also send messages with sats attached, called “boosts”. Creators can transparantly split the sats they receive over various goals (i.e. FOSS projects [opensats], or guests on shows). There are no transaction fees afaik, that is just when your lightning node syncs with the main blockchain, and then you can bundle a lot of transactions. I find this a very healthy counter movement to the current centralization that is going on in Podcasting where indie creators are being sucked into Spotify and YouTube (and sometimes are being censored there). The podcast 2.0 movement is not all about value for value, there are also cool features like artwork per chapter, sharing of snippets, a way to specify different formats (like opus) for the same podcast/episode, and many more modern things. It’s a cool community and if you ask me, the first really useful thing to come out of “blockchain”. Edit: Yeah I want to add some references but my company uses Cisco Umbrella and some things are blocked. Moreover, I can see it also MITMs my own websites (like my NextCloud instance), because those are not my certs!... But I digress.
质疑质疑派：加密行业投入数百亿美元十余年，仍未出现普通用户真正需要的应用，比特币连原始支付愿景都还在靠论文论证。
区块链生态什么时候才能给普通用户带来那种"哇我现在就需要这个"的体验？谷歌从一个研究项目到公司化、在互联网上可用大约只用了两年，按 2022 年币值算总投入约 200 万美元——要知道当时创新面临严重阻碍（他们得自己造服务器、放在车库里），而且 1998 年的开发工具、框架库和可用开发者与今天完全没法比。而仅 a16z 的加密基金这四年就募集了约 160 亿美元；至少五年来，各种区块链公司 500 万美元种子轮（甚至更多）的公告已是常态，后续 A 轮及以后动辄数亿、估值数十亿。我密切跟踪这个领域五年多，还没见到任何一个应用或方案有那种"我立刻就需要"的感觉。除了在交易所炒币，我在科技圈之外不认识任何一个使用区块链相关东西的人。比特币已经 13 年了，生态投入了惊人的资金和人力，可我们还在读研究论文讨论如何让比特币的原始设想（点对点数字现金）在任何实际规模上可用。我知道闪电网络已经上线一段时间，但……
kkielhofner查看英文原文
When will the blockchain ecosystem provide something with that "WOW I need this in my life right now" factor to the average user? Google went from a research project to incorporated and usable on the internet in roughly two years with a total investment of about $2mm in 2022 money. Let's just say the pace of innovation had some serious roadblocks at the time (they literally had to build their own servers and host them in a garage). Not to mention the status of dev tools, frameworks/libraries, developer availability, etc in 1998 vs today. We are four years in to A16z alone raising roughly $16 BILLION dollars with their crypto funds. For at least half a decade it's been routine to see announcements of various blockchain companies with $5mm seed rounds (and beyond). Follow-up Series A and beyond in the hundreds of millions with multi-billion dollar valuations. I've been following the space extremely closely for over five years and I have yet to see an application or solution with that "WOW I need this in my life right now" factor. I still don't know a single person outside of the tech scene that uses anything blockchain related other than trading on an exchange. Bitcoin is 13 years old with an ecosystem that has had an incredible amount of investment and man hours thrown at it yet we're still getting research papers on how to make the original premise of bitcoin (Peer to peer digital cash) actually usable at any practical scale. I know LN has been live for some time yet looking at the best available numbers I can find it's only being used by an absolutely insignificant number of the world's five billion internet users (this goes for all other chains and L2+ that can be analyzed). I don't get it.
质疑讽刺性总结：闪电网络的本质是把支付移出区块链，这本身就说明比特币主链不适合支付。
"只要我们把支付从区块链上拿走，就能让区块链真正用于支付。"——听起来确实如此。
TradingPlaces查看英文原文
“We can make the blockchain actually work for payments if we take payments off the blockchain.” Sounds about right.
补充摘录论文引言的核心论点：闪电网络在效率、节点成本、能耗和市场流动性上的潜在收益，并指出作者来自美联储地区银行。
摘自引言：闪电网络的发展可能对福利产生影响。第一，随着比特币成为更高效的支付系统，用户会受益，交易结算更快更便宜。第二，由于需要记录在区块链上的交易变少，运行比特币节点所需的内存和能源减少，这降低了维护区块链的成本，让更多节点可以参与，使系统更能抵御双花攻击。第三，手续费降低会削弱矿工使用大量算力的动机，从而减少能源消耗、对环境有利。第四，区块链拥堵减少可能降低跨交易所套利的门槛，从而改善市场流动性。虽然本文聚焦比特币，但同样的技术可以让其他加密货币被广泛、安全、去中心化地使用，例如 Raiden Network 是以太坊上的类似净额结算方案；其他扩容方案还包括分片和交易所层面的批处理。如果扩容问题能被成功解决，基于无许可区块链的货币就有可能被广泛接受。看到这些出自克利夫兰联邦储备银行，非常酷。
plankers查看英文原文
from the introduction: >The development of the Lightning Network may have consequences for welfare. First, as Bitcoin becomes a more efficient payments system, users are better off. Their transactions settle more quickly and more cheaply (Zimmerman (2020)). Second, since fewer transactions need to be recorded on the blockchain, less memory and energy are needed to run a Bitcoin node. This saving lowers the cost of maintaining the blockchain, allowing more nodes to participate and making the system more secure against a double-spending attack (Budish (2018)). Third, by reducing fees, the LN reduces the incentive for Bitcoin miners to use large amounts of computing power, meaning less energy use and positive consequences for the environment.5 Fourth, less blockchain congestion may mean lower barriers to arbitrage across cryptocurrency exchanges, thereby improving market liquidity (see Hautsch, Scheuch, and Voigt (2018)). >While this paper focuses on Bitcoin, the same technology can allow other cryptocurrencies to be widely used, secure, and decentralized. For example, the Raiden Network is a similar netting solution for Ethereum. Other solutions to the scalability problem have been proposed, including sharding, and batching at exchange level.6 If the scalability problem can be successfully addressed, it may be possible for a currency based on a permissionless blockchain to obtain wide acceptance. very cool to see this coming from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
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- 2022Hacker News 讨论帖175 分 · 435 评
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