[Cryptography] reliable broadcast channel

[jamesd at echeque.com]

> On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 4:29 PM <jamesd at echeque.com> wrote:
>> We want all bilateral transactions in the circle to complete, or no
>> bilateral transactions in the circle to complete.  Insider check kiting
>> is that the circle fails in such a way that some people's transactions
>> complete, and other people's transactions do not, and a large cloud of
>> fog is manufactured over whose transactions completed and whose did not.

On 2020-11-10 07:53, Karl wrote:
> I get confused a lot, but my understanding is that the Lightning
> network is _designed_ to make that not happen via constraints all the
> participants control, or somesuch.  I'm curious what you know that
> leads you to believe otherwise.


Any one gateway transaction is trustless, unlike correspondence banking.
 That is a huge difference.

But the trouble is that does not make a circle of gateway transactions
trustless.

It is a hard problem, and I am far from happy with the lightning
network's design as currently implemented.

It is a considerably harder problem if you want the lightning network to
remedy the ready observability of transactions on the blockchain.

The lightning network relies on trust excessively, and the participants
do not really know who they are trusting, thus is apt to suffer from the
problems that occurred with correspondence banking - the big problem
being that everyone winds up relying on big well known entities that are
unlikely to burn their reputation over small amounts of money - but also
likely to be vulnerable to coercive power.