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Comment by littlecranky67

9 months ago

No mention of Lightning or Bitcoin in the entire whitepaper. Just Base - a L2 rollup on Etherum developed by Coinbase which is behind the x402 standard. Hope this goes nowhere, clearly Coinbase has too much interest in pushing its own stack. Free and open payments should be bitcoin based to be truely decentralized, on Layers-2 such as Lightning or Liquid.

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littlecranky67

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roasbeef  9 months ago

> Free and open payments should be bitcoin based to be truely decentralized

Agreed. Which is why 5 years ago, I developed L402 (formerly known as LSAT) to fill this very gap:

  * https://github.com/lightninglabs/L402 (https://lightning-labs-2.gitbook.io/lsat)

  * https://lightning.engineering/posts/2020-03-30-lsat/

The x402 protocol as defined uses purely out of band payment verification. This trait makes the "one line of code" to add integration not entirely accurate, as there's still a substantial amount of code needed at both the client and server to verify payment receipt.

L402 is more opinionated as utilizes the Lightning Network (LN) directly within the protocol. The server presents the client with a SHA 256 payment hash embedded within an LN invoice. The server requires the client to present the pre-image for said payment hash. The only way the client can obtain said pre-image is by paying the invoice on the Lightning Network (all payments are conditional payments where a pre-image needs to be revealed to complete a payment).

L402 also adds a layer of macaroons, enabling the protocol handle both payment and fine-grained authentication.

The advantages of LN over something like Coinbase's Base chain include:

  * Privacy: Coinbase and the entire world sees all your transactions. 

  * Decentralization & Reliability: Base is a singleton instance, if it goes down, you can't make any transactions. LN is decentralized, just like the internet, you can always route around failures. 
 
  * Settlement Speed: Base blocks happen every 2 seconds, until that period your transaction isn't finalized. However that's only committing to Base, and not the underlying ETH chain, which has 12 second block time. Latency on LN is primarily a function of e2e network delay, so it can be as little as 100 ms.

wanderingbit  9 months ago

You seem like a knowledgeable crypto user. Can you help integrate lightning payments with x402? Then we'll be rid of this Base/corporate-tech nonsense.

  • roasbeef  9 months ago

    This already exists (L402 -- formerly known as LSAT), and pre-dates x402 by several years:

      * https://lightning.engineering/posts/2020-03-30-lsat/

  * https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/l402

wbnns  9 months ago

It's really difficult to build agentic applications on top of Bitcoin. It's generally possible throughout the EVM however, which is many networks, not just Base. Base won't be the only EVM-compatible network that x402 utilizes.

  • littlecranky67  9 months ago

    That is why I said Layer-2, like Lightning. That is not difficult at all, there are already successfull, workable solutions that allow for automated micro-payments (alby, or Nostr's zaps).

    • wbnns  9 months ago

      Debatable but IMO Lightning is still nascent even to this day. There is no real large ecosystem of interactive web applications available in-browser that you can build 402 offerings on top of. The EVM is light years ahead.

      I'm by no means against Lightning, it's just got a long road of ecosystem, development and better UX ahead of it before we see general mainstream adoption. At the moment, bitcoin's killer feature is holding bitcoin. Most people don't know what Sats are. There are few bitcoin-payable apps. Few stable assets that remove volatility for every day payments like you would need with 402. Stuff like that.

      2 replies →

  • smashem  9 months ago

    > It's really difficult to build agentic applications on top of Bitcoin.

    That's because brain power is being corralled around entities that seek to maintain their control as toll keepers of financial transactions. They have to modernize and they must do it through centralized blockchains to maintain their control.

scyclow  9 months ago

Being able to handle Bitcoin transactions is fine, but it's disingenuous to act like it's the only way to be truly decentralized.

  • littlecranky67  9 months ago

    Hinges on you definition on truly decentralized. ETH is not truly decentralized (and never will be since their shift to proof-of-stake) as there is no way of not-knowing that the majority stake is not in a single force (or a conspiring group) - which in theory could already be the case. Absence of the counterproof and presence of a case where it would be centralized can never make it truly decentralized.

    • scyclow  9 months ago

      That's not really a valid criticism. You can say that same thing about any protocol. Who's to say that the majority of btc hashing power isn't single force or conspiring group?

    • DanielVZ  9 months ago

      oh with truly decentralized you mean like “verifiably” decentralized in the same sense as a scientific truth right?

      I was a bit confused at first but I now get the criticism.