2 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: ⚡ Lightning Network Megathread ⚡
Does Lightning require Segregated Witness? Yes, but not in theory. You could make a poorer lightning network without it, which has higher risks when establishing channels (you might have to wait a month if things go wrong!), has limited channel lifetime, longer minimum payment expiry times on each hop, is less efficient and has less robust outsourcing. The entire spec as written today assumes segregated witness, as it solves all these problems.
How are we going to deploy lightning network if we struggle to get 10% of transactions to use segwit?
Comment by codedaway at 12/01/2018 at 20:53 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
People/Companies that want to take part in the Lightning Network will have to switch to Segwit pushing that 10% upwards.
Quite a lot of users of Bitcoin already use Segwit, it's the companies that are lagging behind which make up a large percentage of transactions.
There will be an economic incentive to use the Lightning Network over the main chain due to fee savings which won't be ignored by companies wasting tons of money on fees.
Comment by GreatSock at 12/01/2018 at 20:19 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Segwit just needs to be activated on the network(which it is). It doesn't matter how much people use it.
Comment by belcher_ at 13/01/2018 at 02:03 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
LN is not affected by how many people use segwit for regular transaction. It would be possible that nobody uses segwit except LN users, and LN would still work.