Losing 4 BTC :(
All people who like to tinker with lightning need to read this front to back
Discussion
To be fair, this is people tinkering with custodial accounting abstractions on top of lightning, isn't it?
Today it was, who knows what tomorrow will bring
If you owned gold and bought a poor quality safe, when you get robbed, of all the things you choose to blame, where does gold sit on that priority list?
Are you trying to imply lightning is as solid as gold? I've been a lightning developer for almost 4 years now and I've seen dozens of people lose coins with it in all different ways. These are hot wallets, don't forget it.
I think we agree on more than we disagree. Have you seen any scenarios of lightning loss that wasn't a result giving a software layer built on top of lightning permission to perform some form of automated fund management?
Yes.
I have seen people get rugged by their hosting company.
I have seen data get corrupted and static backups fail.
I have seen force closes cost thousands of dollars.
In addition to all the devs building on top that has bugs in their own software.
I'm sure I'll see more too.
Thanks. Do you have general guidelines on node operation? It seems like some combination of trust, bad code in the application ecosystem, and human error are the major problems. Force closures, however, seem to be something that stem from issues with interoperability and robustness in major node implementations.
In general I would say keep small amounts on there. I wouldn't walk around the street with 150k in my pocket, and I would treat ln the same.
Dont host in the cloud, always update as soon as patches are released, only connect with peers that are reputable
And don't be too emotionally attached to lightning, it's not clear that it's a winning idea. It has many problems and mostly only works well with custodians or very technical users.
It is *highly* technical and I have found it leaves a lot of problems up to the operator to resolve. Even if there is a safety feature, just getting it running can be administratively tricky. I *wanted* remote pgsql backups on cln, but the initial sync was always failing like 1 minute in. Turns out systemd was like "process hasnt responded in a minute, better just stomp it and restart".
Yet another reason why nodeless will be missed, I would hate to struggle setting up BTCPay server only to make mistakes and lose sats
Let's say that you find a bug in some layer 3 custodial accounting abstraction built on top of lightning. WYD? Do you find a whale user, drain their account, and go have fun with $150,000?
Someone will.
Oh no. Sad to hear software bugs like this can really let Lightning user down.
This is why I'm disillusioned by the Uncle Jim model nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx feverously advocates.
No way I'm ever going to ever be altruistic enough to put funds at risk just to onboard friends and family to custodial solutions that go against bitcoin's ethos.
This is fucking wild
Read the article and all the comments. Wow!
There goes my idea of running a lightning node. It's way out of my league as far as technology goes.
I can't imagine needing 4 btc of liquidity, especially in El Salvador.
I would think that running multiple nodes might be a safer option? I don't know?
I’m glad I shut my LN node down a few weeks back, now. I only had a measly 1.2m sats on their, but still. 4 BTC on there is certainly more than I would consider risking.
This is really unlucky. KYC isn’t there for “your protection”. It’s their to make sure we pay our taxes and nothing more.
This sucks. It really sucks.
But, it's also a risk you run when using beta software for actual finance.
I'm not trying to victim blame here, but understand the risk that you are assuming when you run beta software and let it manage that much liquidity.
Even with all his knowledge of the Bitcoin ecosystem. He still had his wealth stolen from him. What agency has the knowledge or legal obligation to help him find his funds. People say study #bitcoin which is great and they should. But what they also need to realize is you will never know enough. You will never become a master of knowing bitcoin. As ML and AI become more efficient and accurate zero day exploits are going to come more frequent.
I hate being the devil´s advocate but I have the feeling that #bitcoin nostriches like to think that everything is hunky-dory with Bitcoin. I rather see lot´s of problems, not yet, but coming clear on the horizon. And too few seem to pay attention to that:
- LN was the bitcoin scaling solution. Custodial LN will be subject to fraud as all custodial solutions. Non-custodial is too burdensome to onboard the average person.
- Without LN the base layer wil be at standstill next year. Block space is now FULL. Backlog in the mempool is about 200.000 transactions - 340 blocks. It has been completely full and never cleared since the beginning of 2023.
- All the available blockspace for 2024 is about 150million transactions which everybody will compete for and will make blockspace by itself an absolute scare commodity.
- Mining fees are going to skyrocket making the base layer good only for very large transactions.
- So WTF we are talking about bitcoinizing the entire world. If today nostr:npub15dqlghlewk84wz3pkqqvzl2w2w36f97g89ljds8x6c094nlu02vqjllm5m decides to give away some sats to onboard the world population (8 billion) it will take 40 years to the base layer to clear the transactions doing nothing else.
- Then we have bitcoin fungibility which is going down the toilet and is clearly the weak spot regulators will attack.
To me it does not look good at all and putting the head into the sand does not help.
Bob Burnett of Barefoot Mining talks about that with nostr:npub14mcddvsjsflnhgw7vxykz0ndfqj0rq04v7cjq5nnc95ftld0pv3shcfrlx
It only works, in the current form, through custodians.
DUDE NOOOOOOO!
😱🤯🫨
Oh. This was due to the LNBank bug that I shared the other day. Wild. Poor guy. I would never keep that much bitcoin in a hot wallet though.
Please don't keep your entire stack in a hot wallet. Keep in Lighting what you're comfortable losing. Would it suck? Would is be devastating? If it's teetering on the latter side, you may want to reconsider your setup.
life savings on lightning
using software and plugins that you don't understand
no other source of income
???
that sucks but this is a recipe for catastrophe
I do think the biggest weakness of Bitcoin is the lack of protection from loss. What freedom must we give up for protection? Must we give it up? Is there no “innovation” for insurance?