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Mastering the Lightning Network: A Second Layer Blockchain Protocol for Instant Bitcoin Payments
Launched in early 2018, the Lightning Network (LN) is rapidly growing in users and capacity. This second-layer payment protocol works on top of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to provide near-instantaneous transactions between two parties. With this practical guide, authors Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and Rene Pickhardt explain how this advancement will enable the next level of scale for Bitcoin, increasing speed and privacy while reducing fees.
Ideal for developers, systems architects, investors, and entrepreneurs looking to gain a better understanding of LN, this book demonstrates why experts consider LN a critical solution to Bitcoin's scalability problem. You'll learn how LN has the potential to support far more transactions than today's financial networks, ushering in an era of global micro-transactions at sub-second resolution.
In several parts, this book examines:
The challenges of scaling blockchain technology and why the Lightning Network was invented
LN basics including wallets, nodes, and lightning payments
Lightning payment channels and how they work
Routing payments by constructing paths of payment channels from sender to recipient, including onion routing, and atomic multi-path payments
Lightning developments such as eltoo, Schnorr signatures, HODL invoices, JIT routing, channel splicing, and channel factories
Building applications on Lightning (Lapps)
Ideal for developers, systems architects, investors, and entrepreneurs looking to gain a better understanding of LN, this book demonstrates why experts consider LN a critical solution to Bitcoin's scalability problem. You'll learn how LN has the potential to support far more transactions than today's financial networks, ushering in an era of global micro-transactions at sub-second resolution.
In several parts, this book examines:
The challenges of scaling blockchain technology and why the Lightning Network was invented
LN basics including wallets, nodes, and lightning payments
Lightning payment channels and how they work
Routing payments by constructing paths of payment channels from sender to recipient, including onion routing, and atomic multi-path payments
Lightning developments such as eltoo, Schnorr signatures, HODL invoices, JIT routing, channel splicing, and channel factories
Building applications on Lightning (Lapps)
464 pages, Paperback
Published January 4, 2022
About the author
Andreas M. Antonopoulos
15 books625 followersAndreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin. He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin”, published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin and “The Internet of Money”, a book about why bitcoin matters.
As an engaging public speaker, teacher and writer, Andreas makes complex subjects accessible and easy to understand. As an advisor, he helps startups recognize, evaluate, and navigate security and business risks. Andreas was also one of the first to use the phrase “The Internet of Money”, as early as 2013, to describe bitcoin as part of his speaking business.
As a bitcoin entrepreneur, Andreas has founded a number of bitcoin businesses and launched several community open-source projects. He is a widely published author of articles and blog posts on bitcoin, is a permanent host on the popular Let’s Talk Bitcoin Podcast, and a frequent speaker at technology and security conferences worldwide.
Andreas offers strategic consulting to a small number of crypto-currency companies that are aligned with his interests. He also offers expert witness testimony as an expert in the security, technical details and use of crypto-currencies, worldwide.
As an engaging public speaker, teacher and writer, Andreas makes complex subjects accessible and easy to understand. As an advisor, he helps startups recognize, evaluate, and navigate security and business risks. Andreas was also one of the first to use the phrase “The Internet of Money”, as early as 2013, to describe bitcoin as part of his speaking business.
As a bitcoin entrepreneur, Andreas has founded a number of bitcoin businesses and launched several community open-source projects. He is a widely published author of articles and blog posts on bitcoin, is a permanent host on the popular Let’s Talk Bitcoin Podcast, and a frequent speaker at technology and security conferences worldwide.
Andreas offers strategic consulting to a small number of crypto-currency companies that are aligned with his interests. He also offers expert witness testimony as an expert in the security, technical details and use of crypto-currencies, worldwide.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 19, 2021
key takeaways: 1) to understand how lightning works you need to understand bitcoin first 2) lightning is orders of magnitude more complex 3) for a transaction to happen both nodes that are transacting need to be online 4) overall it looks very promising as it eliminates the transaction and block limits bitcoin has 5) it can also theoretically improve privacy.
Not sure that running a lightning node with the expectation of a profit is realistic. Also, running a node is not a set it and forget it type of situation (like it is for non-mining bitcoin nodes).
Not sure that running a lightning node with the expectation of a profit is realistic. Also, running a node is not a set it and forget it type of situation (like it is for non-mining bitcoin nodes).
February 3, 2022
Very clearly presented, and at a useful level of detail -- enough to understand the general workings of the Lightning Network and a number of discrete mechanisms that it uses to facilitate various functionality, without drowning the reader in specifics (though guiding them towards appropriate resources for delving deeper if they should so choose). I had been eagerly waiting for a resource on LN in the vein of "Mastering Bitcoin" / "Mastering Ethereum" (both from one of this book's co-authors), and this absolutely delivered.
April 17, 2022
This is a special book because it describes the technology of the second layer system for bitcoin.
The writing is for developers and has a reasonable degree of detail. It reviews the basic design and purpose of the network, the payment structure, path-finding, onion routing, settlement, channel funding and maintenance. I was particularly impressed by the balanced review of privacy and security.
This system has a bit of complexity and a strong technical is important for developing a deeper understanding of the Lightning Network itself as well as an intuition for other second layer networks.
The writing is for developers and has a reasonable degree of detail. It reviews the basic design and purpose of the network, the payment structure, path-finding, onion routing, settlement, channel funding and maintenance. I was particularly impressed by the balanced review of privacy and security.
This system has a bit of complexity and a strong technical is important for developing a deeper understanding of the Lightning Network itself as well as an intuition for other second layer networks.
March 1, 2024
The book "Mastering the Lightning Network" is based on the same principle as Antonopolous's previous books on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
First, the book gives a broad overview of how the Lightnin Network (LN) works, and of its relation to Bitcoin. This part is written on a journalistic level. It is followed by a survey of existing software for running one's own LN node, and instructions on how to set it up by oneself.
The remainder of the book discusses the different protocol families used in LN. If yout think Bitcoin is complicated, then LN will strike fear into your heart! No less than 12 protocols in different layers are involved in running LN. These are introduced and explained in a top-down manner, in which we begin with a more abstract high-level perspective and learn more and more details as we progress, until all protocols of LN have been discussed comprehensively. Even if LN is not easy to understand, I claim that the book does a very good job at explaining it. It further becomes clear that LN is not fully matured yet, and many of its goals are still not achieved. For example, even though LN improves some of the privacy issues that Bitcoin has, it adds other potential vulnerabilites that might be exploitable. So it is not certain if LN will prevail - nevertheless, you will benefit from reading this book, as the techniques described here are also relevant for other types of blockchain bridges (to transfer data between different blockchains).
First, the book gives a broad overview of how the Lightnin Network (LN) works, and of its relation to Bitcoin. This part is written on a journalistic level. It is followed by a survey of existing software for running one's own LN node, and instructions on how to set it up by oneself.
The remainder of the book discusses the different protocol families used in LN. If yout think Bitcoin is complicated, then LN will strike fear into your heart! No less than 12 protocols in different layers are involved in running LN. These are introduced and explained in a top-down manner, in which we begin with a more abstract high-level perspective and learn more and more details as we progress, until all protocols of LN have been discussed comprehensively. Even if LN is not easy to understand, I claim that the book does a very good job at explaining it. It further becomes clear that LN is not fully matured yet, and many of its goals are still not achieved. For example, even though LN improves some of the privacy issues that Bitcoin has, it adds other potential vulnerabilites that might be exploitable. So it is not certain if LN will prevail - nevertheless, you will benefit from reading this book, as the techniques described here are also relevant for other types of blockchain bridges (to transfer data between different blockchains).
January 30, 2024
Helpful and informative (Warning, highly technical. It dives very deep in all parts/internals of Lightning Network)
June 12, 2022
TL;DR all, good introduction to LN or how overall L2 layer system works.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews