Author: Anthony Towns 2015-08-10 21:19:01
Published on: 2015-08-10T21:19:01+00:00
In a Bitcoin-dev post, Gavin Andresen requested someone write up a higher-level description of the user experience for using lightning network to pay for goods. The use case involved a customer with eleven on-chain bitcoin wanting to pay for a cup of tea. However, it was pointed out that the customer would need to set up a channel with someone, and to do that, they would require a sufficiently confirmed anchor transaction. The user would have to go home, open a lightning channel, look forward to getting tea tomorrow, choose a hub to connect to (0.1), choose an amount to fund the channel (0.2), make sure they are certain about this decision (0.3), wait briefly while counterparty signs (0.4), and wait for ten confirmations (0.5). It is unclear how routing works, which makes it hard to say who to connect to, and how much to put into the channel. Additionally, there will be some legal T&Cs to consider in practice. Establishing random numbers and keys could be done in advance, and waiting for a few confirmations may take over an hour even in the best case.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T21:25:16.900572+00:00