Any thoughts on this from the Core Lightning contributors? The way I see it with upcoming proposed changes to default policy (primarily though not exclusively for Lightning) and a soft fork activation attempt of APO/APOAS (primarily though not exclusively for Lightning) that a tighter coupling between the full node and the Lightning node could eventually make sense. In a world where transaction fees were much higher you'd think almost every full node would also want to be a Lightning node and so the separation of concerns would make less sense. Having two separate P2P networks and two separate P2P protocols also wouldn't make much sense in this scenario. You could obviously still opt out of Lightning P2P messages if you weren't interested in Lightning.

The alternative would be just to focus on Knots style consensus compatible forks of Core with limited additional functionality. But I think we've reached the point of no return on Core dominance and not having widely used "distros". As the ecosystem scales systems and processes should be constantly evolving and improving and to me if anything Core's seem to be going backwards.

Thanks
Michael

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Michael Folkson
Email: michaelfolkson at protonmail.com
Keybase: michaelfolkson
PGP: 43ED C999 9F85 1D40 EAF4 9835 92D6 0159 214C FEE3

------- Original Message -------
On Saturday, January 14th, 2023 at 20:26, Michael Folkson <michaelfolkson@protonmail.com> wrote:

I tweeted this [0] back in November 2022.

"With the btcd bugs and the analysis paralysis on a RBF policy option in Core increasingly thinking @BitcoinKnots and consensus compatible forks of Core are the future. Gonna chalk that one up to another thing @LukeDashjr was right about all along."

A new bare bones Knots style Bitcoin implementation (in C++/C) integrated with Core Lightning was a long term idea I had (and presumably many others have had) but the dysfunction on the Bitcoin Core project this week (if anything it has been getting worse over time, not better) has made me start to take the idea more seriously. It is clear to me that the current way the Bitcoin Core project is being managed is not how I would like an open source project to be managed. Very little discussion is public anymore and decisions seem to be increasingly made behind closed doors or in private IRC channels (to the extent that decisions are made at all). Core Lightning seems to have the opposite problem. It is managed effectively in the open (admittedly with fewer contributors) but doesn't have the eyeballs or the usage that Bitcoin Core does. Regardless, selfishly I at some point would like a bare bones Bitcoin and Lightning implementation integrated in one codebase. The Bitcoin Core codebase has collected a lot of cruft over time and the ultra conservatism that is needed when treating (potential) consensus code seems to permeate into parts of the codebase that no one is using, definitely isn't consensus code and should probably just be removed.

The libbitcoinkernel project was (is?) an attempt to extract the consensus engine out of Core but it seems like it won't achieve that as consensus is just too slippery a concept and Knots style consensus compatible codebase forks of Bitcoin Core seem to still the model. To what extent you can safely chop off this cruft and effectively maintain this less crufty fork of Bitcoin Core also isn't clear to me yet.

Then there is the question of whether it makes sense to mix C and C++ code that people have different views on. C++ is obviously a superset of C but assuming this merging of Bitcoin Core and Core Lightning is/was the optimal final destination it surely would have been better if Core Lightning was written in the same language (i.e. with classes) as Bitcoin Core.

I'm just floating the idea to (hopefully) hear from people who are much more familiar with the entirety of the Bitcoin Core and Core Lightning codebases. It would be an ambitious long term project but it would be nice to focus on some ambitious project(s) (even if just conceptually) for a while given (thankfully) there seems to be a lull in soft fork activation chaos.

Thanks
Michael

[0]: https://twitter.com/michaelfolkson/status/1589220155006910464?s=20&t=GbPm7w5BqS7rS3kiVFTNcw

--
Michael Folkson
Email: michaelfolkson at protonmail.com
Keybase: michaelfolkson
PGP: 43ED C999 9F85 1D40 EAF4 9835 92D6 0159 214C FEE3