Fiber: Long-termism, giving back, scenario conception

Author: DaPangDun

After the last article on the analysis of Fiber technology, I still have some doubts, so I asked teacher Jan about these questions, and then this article came out.

I condensed this exchange into three keywords: [Long-termism], [Repay], and [Scenario Conception].

Long-termism

1. The Lightning Network is the embodiment of long-termism in the payment field

We often talk about the Lightning Network, but how many people actually use the Lightning Network in Crypto? In fact, very few! And how many people have tried to run a Lightning node? Very few!

In the current Crypto, you have too many ways to pay, and various public chains can complete such tasks. I believe that 90% of people use TRON more than the Lightning Network, or even 95%.

Is it because Lightning is not good?

Yes, although the current lightning payment is very good (immediate payment, no delay, extremely low fees), it is indeed not good enough. It has many problems, such as "liquidity management problems", "difficult node maintenance problems", "only BTC payment problems", etc., so it is understandable that many people do not use the lightning network.

However, if we look at it from a long-term perspective, the ultimate limit of all public chains now is likely to be close to the payment level of Alipay, while lightning is theoretically far beyond this level, several orders of magnitude higher.

So long-termism is to look at this problem from a longer timeline, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, or even further. We need someone to continuously research, develop, and optimize technical solutions that may be suitable for the longer-term future.

2. Adherence to P2P is a manifestation of long-termism

Many current Internet services are centrally structured, and we are very accustomed to this kind of architecture. In Crypto, this phenomenon also exists in large numbers. Although we have been talking about "decentralization", in fact, in many aspects it is just talk.

For example, let's think about payment. Payment itself is a "value exchange" between individuals. Why do we need to complete it through an intermediary? You can certainly find many reasons: good experience, short delay, high success rate, etc., but this is not a reasonable reason to completely reject the P2P model, because you will always encounter "specific scenarios", such as private transactions, off-chain transactions, customized transactions, etc., and these scenarios require P2P.

If we imagine it again, with the development of technology, the development of machines and artificial intelligence will be faster and faster, and the machines that will fill the world in the future will surpass humans many times. Then the future payment demand may not be payment between people, but payment between machines. Because these machines have the ability to calculate off-chain, it is very likely to achieve specific interaction needs through P2P.

At present, perhaps "copy chain is a mainstream, P2P is in decline", but the evolution of technology is spiral, and the evolution of P2P has not yet ended, which is worth our exploration.

3. Fiber is the embodiment of CKB's long-termism

To be precise, most of Fiber's design is derived from BTC's lightning network. The storage optimization introduced by the Daric framework is a small innovation. Its different technical features mainly come from the CKB network itself. I have introduced the specific details in the previous article. This design has Jan's own considerations: security, maturity, compatibility, etc.

My focus is: there are so many POW public chains now, who will try to build their own lightning network? And which ones are sticking to this P2P payment model? Therefore, Fiber is CKB's attempt to stick to long-termism.

Feedback

1. Feedback in technology

BTC already has a lightning network, so what's the point of creating a lightning network on CKB? I believe this is a question many people want to ask, because Fiber's basic framework is not much different from the current lightning network.

However, the CKB network is different from the BTC network. For example, the reason why the Eltoo solution cannot be implemented in the BTC lightning network is that Bitcoin needs to upgrade to enable a new signature mode SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, but it can be directly implemented in CKB because it has been enabled.

The ability of BTC lightning is limited by the verification ability of the BTC main network. You can first use Fiber to see what will happen if there is no restriction, and then feedback to BTC lightning.

So, from this perspective, Fiber can play a role in testing the lightning network first.

2. Feedback on confidence

I mentioned before that the lightning network is currently in a "frustration period". You can see this phenomenon from the current number of nodes, the network BTC inventory, etc. It seems that the lightning network has a feeling of being "slowly abandoned".

So, if CKB can build a lot of Fiber network nodes, because Fiber is interoperable with BTC lightning network nodes, it can provide confidence feedback to BTC lightning to a certain extent, and promote the development of payment channels and state channels together.

Scenario Conception

1. Brainstorming of long-term and short-term concepts

Including me, most people are actually more concerned about what the specific scenario is. If not, then lightning will become a "geek's plaything", so this is also the key content I asked Jan for advice. Jan believes that the scenarios of lightning need to be thought about and constructed by everyone. Of course, he also gave some short-term and long-term scenario examples:

For the short term, for example: solving the problem of blood-sucking nodes, streaming payment...

For the long term, Jan gave a concept: for example, every car in the future will have artificial intelligence and offline computing capabilities, so when on the road, a car can communicate with another car and pay to overtake through P2P payment...This is a very interesting idea. Of course, it may not be perfect, and it may not only be solved by the lightning network in the future, but it can indeed give us some inspiration for building lightning network usage scenarios.

In my personal opinion, the lightning network fits the scenario that requires "continuous micropayment", and specific examples require continuous brainstorming.

2. A concept idea

I actually have a concept idea: the combination of Fiber and Depin.

Let users become a Fiber lightning node first, and then use some gameplay to let users accept and slowly get used to using lightning payments. This gameplay needs to be combined with a special economic model and even stickiness design.

This solution can open up the imagination of nodes at once. At the same time, because it is interoperable with BTC lightning, any Depin device can help BTC lightning in terms of the number of nodes; and it is possible to connect several assets in the CKB and RGB++ ecosystems to form a cohesive force. Of course, this is just a preliminary thinking, there are many imperfections, and it is only for the purpose of starting a discussion.

In general, Fiber is just a beginning in my understanding. There is still a long way to go in the future. I hope it can go further and further.