After reading the previous article analyzing Fiber technology, I still had some doubts, so I asked Mr. Jan (https://x.com/busyforking) about these questions, and this article came out.

I condensed this exchange into three key words: [long-termism], [giving back], and [scenario conception].

Long-termism

1. Lightning Network is a reflection of long-termism in the payment field

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

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

Is it because lightning is bad?

Yes, although the current lightning payment is very cool (instant 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.

Therefore, long-termism means looking at this issue from a longer timeline, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, or even longer. We need people 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 services on the current Internet are centralized, and we are very used to this kind of architecture. This phenomenon also exists in large numbers in Crypto. Although we keep 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 the use of P2P.

If we imagine further, with the development of science and technology, the development of machines and artificial intelligence will be faster and faster. In the future, the machines that will fill the world will surpass humans many times. Then the payment needs in the future may not be payments between people, but payments between machines. Because these machines have the ability to perform off-chain calculations, they are likely to achieve specific interaction needs through P2P.

Perhaps at present "copy chain is the mainstream, P2P is declining", but the evolution of technology is spiral, the evolution of P2P has not yet ended, and it is worth our exploration.

3. Fiber is a reflection of CKB’s commitment to 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 point of concern is: there are so many POW public chains now, who is trying to build their own lightning network? Which ones are sticking to this P2P payment model? Therefore, Fiber is CKB's attempt to stick to long-termism.

Feedback

1. Technical feedback

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

However, the CKB network is different from the BTC network. For example, the Eltoo solution cannot be implemented in BTC’s lightning network at present because it requires Bitcoin to upgrade and enable a new signature mode SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT, while it can be directly implemented in CKB because it has been enabled.

The capabilities of BTC Lightning are limited by the verification capabilities of the BTC mainnet. You can first use Fiber to see what happens if there are no restrictions, and then feed back to BTC Lightning.

So, from this perspective, Fiber can play the role of a preliminary test of the Lightning Network.

2. Feedback on confidence

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

Therefore, 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 jointly promote the development of payment channels and status channels.

Scenario Concept

1. Brainstorm long-term and short-term ideas

Including me, most people are actually more concerned about what the specific scenarios are. If there are no specific scenarios, Lightning will become a "geek's toy", so this is also the key point I asked Jan about. 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...

Regarding the long term, Jan gave a vision: 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 other cars 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 is suitable for scenarios that require "continuous micropayments", and specific examples require continuous brainstorming.

2. An idea

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

Let users first become a Fiber lightning node, and then use some gameplay to make users accept and gradually 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 reference.

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