Lighting Labs Co-Founder and Bitcoin Developers Slam Study on Lightning Network

On June 28, news emerged that a study, conducted by Diar, suggested that the Lightning Network, which is being heralded as a potential way for Bitcoin to scale, is not as effective at routing payments than was first believed.

The study's overall claim was that "The reliability of successfully routing a payment on the Lightning Network is still quite low," especially when it came to larger amounts.

The issue essentially comes down to the fact that Lightning is still very much - and very publicly - in beta testing, where developers put in place a temporary upper limit on channel funding amounts.

The Lightning Network has been in development as a way to speed up blockchains which are suffering from scalability issues.

On March 15, another big milestone was reached for Lighting and Bitcoin, as Lightning Labs released the first Bitcoin mainnet-ready LN implementation.

Those who are in the know with the LN, such as co-founder of Lightning Labs Elizabeth Stark, have called the study "Bullshit." Speaking to Cointelegraph, Stark admits that they are mostly ignoring this as "Another example of FUD" and that they "Have work to do, and things to build."

"See, Lightning has a temporary upper limit on channel funding amounts in an effort to discourage uses of Lightning that could lose a significant amount of money. In turn, users have heeded the warnings of the devs, and not put much money on their channels. The result is both predictable and desirable."

Another one of the main Bitcoin developers, Jonas Schnelli, is also plainly aware of the limitations of the beta test that have been put forward by the Lightning developers.

"In my opinion, lightning is very reliable. Channel amounts will slowly increase as confidence rises. That article above is misleading since it hides that fact the developers have asked for small amounts to be used."

It seems that the study by Dair is actually pointing out the obvious, but it has already been pointed out by the developers and those who know what is happening with the building of the Lightning Network.