Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Fees and the block-finding process

From: Bryan Bishop <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 13:51:00 -0500

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 1:46 PM, Michael Naber via bitcoin-dev
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> Note that lightning / hub and spoke do not meet requirements for users
> wishing to participate in global consensus, because they are not global
> consensus networks, since all participating nodes are not aware of all
> transactions.

You don't need consensus on the lightning network because you are
using bitcoin consensus anyway. Commitment transactions are deep
enough in the blockchain history that removing that transaction from
the history is impractical. The remaining guarantees are ensured by
the properties of the scripts in the transaction. You don't need to
see all the transactions, but you do need to look at the transactions
you are given and draw conclusions based on the details to see whether
their commitments are valid or the setup wasn't broken.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507