Ep. 06
“Lightning is Bitcoin”, says René Pickhardt a mathematician, data scientist and contributor to the Lightning Network. We talk about the evolution, goals and possible roadblocks of the Lightning Network and how it will bring massive utility to the Bitcoin Blockchain.
René Pickhardt is also the author of the German Wikipedia article about the Lightning Network. René is creating an educational book about Lightning. This book targets developers who want to make use of the Lightning Network. However he will make this book useful for anybody who is interested in the Lightning Network and Bitcoin in general. You can support his fundraiser here.
“Bitcoin cannot scale without having Lightning on top of it.” – René Pickhardt
“Lightning is a very regulated way of using Bitcoin. Thats why I say Lightning is Bitcoin.” – René Pickhardt
14:40 the main technical concepts of the Lightning Network
“The Bitcoin Blockchain becomes the judge. Its a shift in role. In the beginning the blockchain was this huge ledger where all the transactions where stored. Everybody could look at everybodies transaction. Now in the Lightning Network a payment is very private.” – René Pickhardt
“One interesting thing about Lightning is that now you are able to earn bitcoin by having bitcoin. Running a Lightning node is relatively cheap. In order to be a good node, you have to put some liquidity inside of it. So you can basically earn interest on your bitcoin.” – René Pickhardt
29:12 On scaling Lightning and privacy
“The Lightning Network has this huge potential to really add utility to Bitcoin.” – René Pickhardt
38:00 Renés’ discovery of an attack vector in Lightning and how the Lightning developers work together
42:31 the timeframe of Lightning: when will it be up and running?
“You can use the Lightning Network now, but you have to be #reckless. At this point in time a lot of things can go wrong. We need at least another one or two years until its really usable.” – René Pickhardt
“I am very optimistic, this is an amazing technology, it is very smart, I think it has very strong properties and I think all the problems we currently have, are fixable problems. They are not problems in the sense of, oh this is an open question and somebody has to come up with a smart solution. Its more like a social problem on how are we going to decide on certain things. ” – René Pickhardt
Der Beitrag The Lightning Network Explained with René Pickhardt erschien zuerst auf The Anita Posch Show.