Though many believe it to be the solution to Bitcoin’s scaling problem, the Lightning Network’s handling of large transactions has come under criticism over the past few days.
The second layer off-chain scaling solution has been in development for the past two years and has missed several completion deadlines.
The platform has been subjected to particularly harsh comments from critics who may or may not understand the real technical limitations of the technology.
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Lightning Pizza (Or Lack Thereof)
On March 20, 2019, Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhees attempted to place an order of 18 pizzas on Lightning Pizza, a merchant accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments for pizza purchases. However, the order failed to go through.
Soooo @ShapeShift_io just tried to order 18 pizzas for lunch via Bitcoin Lightning network with @LN_Pizza and max apparently is two pizzas ='( Perhaps we should measure layer two scaling in pepperoni's per second (PPS)?
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) March 20, 2019
A visibly upset Voorhees tweeted the entire series of events and vented his frustration at the Lightning Network. He took a veiled dig at the transactions per second limit of the payment network by suggesting that it should be counted in pepperonis per second instead.
SponsoredVoorhees received a prompt reply from the folks over at Lightning Pizza, who clarified that two pizzas were the minimum size needed to complete the order and it was not maximum order size — as it had been wrongly suggested by Voorhees in his tweet.
Upon further inspection, 34 pizzas were ordered which exceeded our internal maximum.
Order again or let us know where you’d like them delivered and we’ll take care of it! ⚡️🙌🍕
— Lightning Pizza ⚡️🍕 (@LN_Pizza) March 20, 2019
Lightning Pizza reported that Voorhees had ordered 34 pizzas, which exceeded the maximum size limit set by the company.
Voorhees denied this and claimed that only around 20 pizzas were ordered.
Sponsoredhmmmm we didn't order 34 pizzas…. we tried to order 20 pizzas and it didn't work. We've since ordered 18 through regular dominos 😉
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) March 20, 2019
Lightning Network: A Work in Progress
Uninformed social media users targeted negative comments and criticism at the Lightning Network for being unable to complete a relatively small transaction. However, these comments likely failed to account for both sides of the story.
Further analysis showed that the order size triggered an internal order limit set by Lightning Pizza and the Lightning Network itself had no hand in the order being unsuccessful. This was an internal issue that was triggered when a larger-than-expected order was placed by Voorhees. Lightning Pizza claims that its maximum capacity has now been clearly defined.
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Over the past several months, there have been several comments criticizing the Lightning Network’s problems.
SponsoredCritics note that Lightning Network nodes have to be online for completing payments. There have also been reports that the network can process only 5000 to 8000 transactions per block. Channel factories and side chains could be used to improve this efficiency in the future.
That said, the Lightning Network has seen a tremendous increase in the number of nodes and users in the same timeframe. The payment protocol is believed to be a key to the future adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as an instantaneous payment method.
Have you ever used Lightning Network or plan to in the near future? Let us know in the comments.
