Highlights of Lightning Network 4.6–4.12
The transaction speed of Bitcoin network is always taunted, that is, 7 transactions per second is much slower than the speed of traditional financial trading system. Furthermore, it will cost about 1 hour to wait for the final confirmation of 6 blocks. To solve this trouble, Lightning network comes into birth to undertake large amount of transactions off Bitcoin blockchain.
Latest Dynamics:
1. The alpha version of LN Markets, a derivative trading platform based on Bitcoin Lightning Network, has been launched on Bitcoin mainnet reported by ChainNews on April 8th. The trading platform can only be accessed through Lightning network. The margin position will be realized by Lightning network. The derivatives realized so far are CFD (Contract for Difference) with BTC price on BteMEX platform as the benchmark. The platform is still in alpha testing; therefore, the maximum margin is set within 0.01 BTC. As per official news, one month after alpha version was launched, over 2,000 transactions with the total amount of $400,000 had been executed.
2. According to OKEX Intelligence Agency, the number of bitcoin Lightning network hit a record of nine-month high and the channel capacity of Lightning network (the number of BTC in the Lightning network ) hit a high of 936 in the past 9 months, increasing by 3% in the past 30 days, which is consistent with the upside trend of BTC price in the past few weeks. The figure reached an all-time high on May 2019, with 1,050 BTC locked in.
3. Jinse Finance published an article headlined with Why Are Lightning Network Derivatives So Important, illuminating that Lightning network can help to expand BTC capacity through handling much more payments in faster, lower and more reliable ways. However, developers are still working hard on applying payment network to much more scenarios except buying coffee and transactions of small amount. Someday, Lightning network will connect real world assets to BTC.
4. Cointelegraph reported on April,11th, overseas institutions still make further study and research on lightning network, while Academy said they won’t sponsor to do this. The report also indicated that although lightning network is the focus of digital assets, support from technical research need to be further strengthened.
Lightning Network VS Segregated Witness
Segregated witness is regularly regarded as the prelude of lightning network. The existing bitcoin transaction always encounter the malleability attack, generally speaking, any node can tamper with the digital signature part of transaction information after the transaction data is sent so that there is a possibility to cause failure transaction due to the failure miner verification, even if they can’t steal Bitcoin.
Although the new transaction data can be sent again to complete the transaction, theoretically there is the possibility of interfering with the transaction, which will also reduce the effectiveness of lightning network.
However, after the isolation witness is completed, the witness information will be stored in another script, which theoretically eliminating malleability attack and avoiding the occurrence of transaction validity problems.
If transaction settlement, which takes a long time to form like lightning network, cannot be effectively implemented, the efficiency of lightning network will be seriously affected.
However, segregated witness only plays an auxiliary role, and lightning networks can still work without segregated witness, which means segregated witness is not a necessary for lightning networks.
