also found out about this one: https://lnserver.com/

yeah but that requires several extra base layer transactions:

- tx to put base layer funds on the node

- tx to open a channel

- 2 additional txs to do a swap out (Boltz uses a 2 transaction swap protocol)

4 transactions is not a huge deal right now when fees are low but there's no reason to be that inefficient with chain space

With LNBig and its competitors, there's only 1 base layer tx: the one that opens the channel

Is there a list of services that sell/lease channels? I want to rent an LN channel for my latest project and used to use these services:

- Bitrefill [but they stopped doing it]

- Deezy [but they stopped too]

- Voltage [they require an account now]

- LNBig [only option left?]

> 9% of node runners prefer a single-contributor

I wonder whose fault that is?

"Do the Knots nodes matter?"

Some are saying it doesn't matter that 9% of bitcoin nodes are running Knots now because they probably don't have any economic weight. E.g. did Coinbase announce they are switching? Or some big mining pool? No.

But they do matter. Here's why.

There's not a good way to know how much economic weight the Knots users actually have. It's easy to assume something like "Well, major infrastructure providers haven't said they are switching to Knots, so all of these people must just be raspberry pi users LARPing as if they matter."

But (1) it's possible for someone major to switch without announcing it (2) it's possible that a lot of these Knots users run small businesses, and if so, that can quickly add up to a significant amount of economic weight.

I don't think there's a good way to know but there's another factor to consider: the Knots people are running a couple thousand nodes, and even if they only represent 10% of the people upset with Core, that means tens of thousands of people are now part of a vocal minority.

If this minority proves to be persistent, people who *do* have economic weight will be economically incentivized to serve that community and advertise to them, and part of their messaging could be "Look, we're running Knots too! Support us by buying our shirts & hats & VPSs & whatnot!"

So even if the majority of these people *are* LARPers, and even if their hobby nodes are meaningless by themselves, it can result in people who do have economic weight joining that community for self-interested reasons -- and then suddenly there *is* economic weight in that community.

there's also not a good way to know how much economic weight the Knots users actually have

it's easy to assume something like "Well, major infrastructure providers haven't said they are switching to Knots, so all of these people must just be raspberry pi users LARPing as if they matter"

but (1) it's possible for someone major to switch without announcing it (2) it's possible that a lot of these Knots users run small businesses, and if so, that can quickly add up to a significant amount of economic weight

I don't think there's a good way to know but there's another factor to consider: the Knots people are running a couple thousand nodes, and even if they only represent 10% of the people upset with Core, that means tens of thousands of people are now part of a vocal minority.

If this minority proves to be persistent, people who *do* have economic weight will be economically incentivized to serve that community and advertise to them, and part of their messaging could be "Look, we're running Knots too! Support us by buying our shirts & hats & VPSs and whatnot!"

So even if the majority of these people *are* LARPers, and even if their hobby nodes are meaningless by themselves, it can result in people who do have economic weight joining that community for self-interested reasons -- and then suddenly there *is* economic weight in that community.

Not that I'm aware of

If there are ways, they are probably bugs. I imagine that if an LN protocol dev found out there was a way for a third party to identify what backend an LN node was using, they would try to fix that, because it leaks information that is none of the third party's business

That said, you can have some confidence that the LN node must use a backend that supports segwit, and there may be other info you can glean

Thank you for providing this additional context

Are some bitcoin nodes known to be run by a particular entity? E.g. do we know which nodes Kraken runs, if any? LN nodes are commonly "claimed" by their owners, but not bitcoin. But ip addresses are leaky, etc. It would be useful for estimating economic weight of various nodes.

not by itself

but it has *some* relation

e.g. if node count for Knots was 0% that would also imply the economic weight of Knots users was 0%

If the node count was 100% that would also imply the economic weight of Knots users was 100%

Between those, the signal's meaning is murky, but even an imperfect signal is a signal

source: https://bitnodes.io/nodes/?q=knots

Knots broke 9% but its growth on the network seems to be slowing

[Chorus]

Oh, I love trash

Anything nonstandard, jumbo, or spammy

Gimme some tokens, some jpegs, NFTs

Yes, I love trash

[Verse 1]

If you really want to see something trashy look at this

I have here a pic of a taproot wizard

But I'll pay a truckload to get it preferred

And someone will mine it although it's absurd

I love it because it's trash

[Chorus]

Oh, I love trash

Anything nonstandard, jumbo, or spammy

Gimme some tokens, some jpegs, NFTs

Yes, I love trash

[Verse 2]

Here's some more rotten stuff

I'm planning a scam where I make a token

Folks buy it from me and I dump it on them

Inscribe it on bitcoin, just op_return send

I love it because it's trash

[Chorus]

Yes, I love trash

Anything nonstandard, jumbo, or spammy

Gimme some tokens, some jpegs, NFTs

Yes, I love trash

[Verse 3]

Now look at this worthless junk

A poem that stinks

And an old horoscope

I stuff them in an inscription envelope

The blockchain's so useful, let's blow up its scope

We're filling it up with trash

[Chorus]

Oh, I love trash

Anything nonstandard, jumbo, or spammy

Gimme some tokens, some jpegs, NFTs

Yes, I love, I love, I love trash

theme song of libre-relay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxgWHzMvXOY

> I really hope cashu is the answer

The answer to what?

I think cashu is great for small amounts that you're okay with losing

It can maybe also serve a useful purpose as some sort of modern mixer, still thinking about that though

TIL the word privacy does not appear in any of the 59 pages of the lightning network whitepaper: https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf

By contrast, the bitcoin whitepaper has a half-page dedicated to privacy (the whole thing is only 9 pages)

Perhaps privacy wasn't a focus of LN's inventors

> Are you asking miners to decide what is and isn't a valid bitcoin use case, outside of consensus?

Yes, in this sense:

I think consensus rules and mempool filtering rules both restrict what bitcoin can be used for. The former creates absolute restrictions while the latter just imposes additional costs on those who bypass the filters. Both are useful, but both types of rules only make sense with some sort of consensus on what the blockchain is actually for. It's clearly not a place for invalid transactions; they are absolutely prohibited.

Spam is only "lightly" restricted (i.e. by mempool filters). It consists of data whose meaning is not yet defined at the protocol level, and it seems useful to retain the validity of such data because some of it might "get" a defined meaning within the protocol later. But using it now, without a meaning understood by bitcoin nodes, is an abuse of the system, in my opinion. And I welcome miners to vmbe part of the conversation about that, both to set stricter policies, and, if necessary, to turn some of them into consensus rules.

They mined 1.4% of blocks in the last 3 days. I'll wait and see if their hashrate continues to grow.

This one: nostr:nevent1qqsrwpd3q9xgpnwn8v6mk4hw6dj9n95u9rg43c720x7kmwexkylyumspr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgszrqlfgavys8g0zf8mmy79dn92ghn723wwawx49py0nqjn7jtmjagrqsqqqqqpkvsys0