The state of prominent German hackers' understanding of bitcoin and #LightningNetwork: doing talks on the topic, while failing to look into and understand even the most basic things about the stuff they're lecturing others on:
I didn't even watch the talk, but I don't have to. A reader corrected fefe on a fundamental aspect of Lightning, and addressing this in an update yielded an even more fundamental misunderstanding of it. You literally have to ignore the entire word "Network" in #LightningNetwork, in order to tell people publicly that it's just payment channels between two people/nodes, and not an entire onion routing network for payments across the whole network.
What grinds my gears is that the same person also considers himself an expert on misinformation. Go figure.
I'm old enough to remember all kinds of FUD and criticism of FOSS in the early 00s.
A lot of that has gone away over the years and FOSS has become completely mainstream with Microsoft embracing Linux etc.
Perhaps it didn't pan out the way FOSS idealists hoped, but FOSS is to a large extent mainstream now and there's much, MUCH, less FUD about it.
I expect the same for Bitcoin, it likely won't pan out the way the maxi idealists hope, that's just life, but it will become mainstream.
@icedquinn @jcbrand Not sure what "revised" means there. Or "off-chain marketplace" for that matter.
@icedquinn @jcbrand So? Payment channels existed long before anyway. But just out of interest, what was the first multi-hop network based on payment channels that you're thinking of?
@icedquinn @jcbrand Judging by their comments, and also what they wrote in the past, I'm fairly certain that they haven't read any papers at all in this whole area of computer science.
Either way, if they specifically talk about Lightning Network in their lecture, then I think they should've learned the very basics of it first. We're not talking about missing a detail or two, but about being completely clueless about the entire raison d'être and basic functionality of it.
@icedquinn @jcbrand ... but of course, it was only used to proactively address the inevitable comments about bitcoin not needing everyone to pay for things via on-chain transactions, by just handwaving second layers away.
@raucao
Maybe he's an expert at producing misinformation? 😀
Criticism is good, and attacks against Bitcoin make it stronger (if it's anti-fragile, which I believe it is).
Eventually people one one side or the other will have to swallow their pride and admit they were wrong. Or maybe not, some people might be stubbornly wrong about something until they die.
But for people born later, they'll not even know about all the debates, the new system will be obvious and seem inevitable.