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Thunderbolt analogy to Lightning Network payment. More beginner question.
| Then a bright flash of light followed by a loud bang occurs as the current dissipated in the path of ionized air channels creates a hot plasma. | ||
| The Lightning Network is named after this natural phenomenon, where the voltage differences are channel balances and the current is a stream of bitcoin of which ownership is transmitted through those channels. | ||
| When lightning strikes the ground, the potential differences are settled at the cost of dissipating energy and making a loud bang. | ||
| In the Lightning Network this happens when payment channels close, the final state of the channel is transmitted to the Bitcoin network with a fee for the miners to include it in the next block. |
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I learned physics in my native language, therefore I'm having a really difficult time to follow the analogy, due to not being familiar with the terminology. I admit it's a badass analogy, but making readers stop reading from the very first paragraph may not be the best way to go.
The counter argument count be is that, at this point everyone is paying full attention and whoever chews through this first paragraph will find the following parts easier.
Anyhow, not against it, but I think it worth a discussion.
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I will make a nice visual diagram to go with it, so that the concept is clear even without having learned the physics jargon.
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Agree with Adam, you risk to lose 90% of readers at the first paragraph :) I have a PhD in physics but still I'm not sure what the point was.
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I like the analogy, but agree with some of the comments here that its too complex and risks losing readers straight away. It may be better to start with language such as "lightning is a way to improve upon the bitcoin protocol with additional functionality that increases transaction throughput and reduces settlement time. "
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Why not starting the "why" with the explanation of the problems the LN tries to solve? For example mentioning problems with scalability, confirmation time, fees cost, etc ? |
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How about to start with this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2500.msg34211#msg34211 ? :) |
First version of diagram to help explain the Lightning Network
Learned how to do this: https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-syntax-quick-reference/#images Placed figure with a Chain of Lightning channels.
while I admire Hal for the pioneering work that he did he was obviously wrong on that one. How I understand his post he expected that banks would basically create what we would today call side chains in order to scale bitcoin. I think this is not a good motivation for lightning. |
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Too early to be writing the introduction. Typically I write the introduction paragraph LAST, as it needs to reflect the things we learn in each chapter. The first chapter introduction is probably the last thing we write/edit in the book |
Thunderbolt analogy to Lightning Network payment.
More beginner question.