Seeing as CLINK is getting a bit of attention recently, partly because of Evan from Zeus and others have been banging the drum for a while like Darth
It got me thinking whether their was a correlation between what Justin has designed, a truer more correct way to use the lightning network, versus the massive expansion of Spark integration which as we all know is much less sovereign
My first thought was the battle between Tesla and Edison, the war over AC vs DC, actually thinking about it, DC is more like Bitcoin as a base layer and AC as lightning, but the original thought needs a another example to better demonstrate the correlation
And I thought of VHS vs Betamax, I remember as a kid my folks had a VHS cassette player very early on and I impressed my friends with my gloats about it, but I knew there was the urban myth about Betamax being the superior technology but for some reason it never caught on, after a little research it all came down to one UX feature, Betamax could only record for one hour, albeit far superior picture quality etc, but JVC who backed VHS made the recording time 2 hrs, so most movies, sports games etc could be captured, and the market chose VHS even though Betamax was a superior technology, that does worry me slightly because I would put CLINK in the Betamax camp as a superior tech
OK let's look at some other examples...OK let's look at some other examples...
BluRay vs DVD, remember LaserDisc lol?
I didn't realise TCP-IP actually had competition with OSI? I'm sure Optimism knows about that one, tcp-ip came out of arpanet where while osi was being discussed in boardrooms everyone was using tcpip everyday and it just got used
The Qwerty keyboard had competition from Dvorak but never caught on
Gasoline vehicles vs Electric vehicles, I'm not talking about today, I'm talking about the the early 1900s, actually electric vehicles were outselling gas but the one thing Henry Ford had was range, internal combustion engines although smelly and dirty could out drive electric, and that's the same bottleneck we face today but the net zero bullshit, environmental aspect has far more an impact today I would suggest
Then we have examples that exist side by side, Apple mac vs Windows (also IBM tried to muscle in on the home PC market), Apple iPhone vs Android and I'm sure you can think of many more examples
So where does this leave CLINK in the battle between Spark and Ark if you like? does it come down to network effects? and if so, Spark is seeping rapidly across the ecosystem and looks to reach the critical mass first, so how can CLINK win over?
Lightning.Pub itself might be the better comparison to the fake L2s... CLINK is a down-scoped version if its RPC that's more distributable.
Differences as I see it:
Lightning.Pub is unapologetic about reality. It's an Uncle Jim / Business logic solution, and assumes running something resembling a personal server. Very boring actually on that front.
Where it gets exciting is the meat and potatoes of side-stepping both the the trad web-server and p2p side-effects, thanks to Nostr.
Spark and Ark are a hostile form of at-scale custodian, engaging in crypto-theater and affinity scamming to sell swap services.
Ultimately, both use the same language of the open network, bolt11. Pub and fake L2's get bolt11 across the first mile, CLINK gets it past the last mile.
If we also accept that trust is inevitable for most people, Pub would rather people lean on someone they already trust. You share a house/car/bank account/refridgeratior with other people most likely already, so you'll share a node too. This keeps trustody decentralized. Ark/Spark on the other hand are centralizing that trust, to sell you swaps.
CLINK does undermine Spark in Ark narratives in a few ways, when you consider what they are pretending to solve.
They focus on a mobile-first experience, presumably because using a server is hard... CLINK (and Pub generally) makes using a server easy.
They also claim to solve liveness (they don't). CLINK, because it attaches to a server, embraces the reality of liveness requirements as good and holy.
They lean into the narrative that managing channels and liquidity is too hard, and you're too dumb, so they do it for you. CLINK makes it easy to use the infrastructure of ANYONE YOU CHOSE do that for you.
They claim this crypto-theater is necessary for scale, despite not actually solving the real scaling limitation. Shared nodes, which CLINK facilitates, accepts that scaling is unsolvable so decentralizes the inevitable workaround that is trust.
Speaking of shockwallet I sent some funds on chain to test it out and they don’t show up in my wallet
2 confs yet? That's the Pub default
Neutrino won't see it as pending in the mempool
I did it yesterday 254 confirms
Hmm, is the output in lncli listunspent in LND?
There was a bug awhile back where chain tx that came in while pub was down didn't get credited, newer versions scan at start, if you're behind on Pub updates try that
ahh okay what’s the command for updating
Just run the install script again, it'll pull latest with everything in place
Okay
I see it when I run the journal command but the wallet is falling to send event
Wallet not talking to pub you mean?
Yeah I sent 2000 sats to onchain as a test. when I run the journalclt command I can see my correct balance of 4172 sats but my shock wallet is only showing 1967
Excellent response as always Justin, I do hope clink gains more adoption but I do fear the laziness of consumers falling for the custodian trap, I mean how often do we hear darth berating almost everyone for not using Bitcoin as intended
Plenty will take the bait, but at least they'll be CLINKing us via bolt11
Wrong comparison.
Spark is NOT Bitcoin, CLINK is pure nostr + bitcoin (LN).
Spark is a sidechain. CLINK is a protocol for nostr and LN, more like a simplest LN address without DNS.
Did I say Spark was Bitcoin? No I didn't, read again
you said spark vs clink.
They are not competing or doing the same thing, are 2 different things.
Your lack of understanding (of these technologies) is disturbing