Forking off the lightning BOLTs specification effort

[ariard]

Forwarded an email to the mailing list about this, but it's currently moderated or censored, according to one's viewpoint.

I'll fork on my own the lightning bolt specification effort, as after all everything is released under creative commons, and the bar for
lightning softwares to be compatible about lightning channels is far under the one for consensus validation of the base-layer. Already started to maintain a compatible consensus engine to have the hands free about experimentation,without having to convince first bitcoin core folks on the worthiness of the consensus changes for fixing lightning.

I'll focus this specification effort on fixing long-standing lightning security issues at the mempool-level and how on to improve
its capital inefficiency. For more, see: https://github.com/ariard/fixing-lightning. I owe to organize a LN summit to the community of contributors (cf my old words) and I always pay my debts (2024 wasn't a good fit to organize a in-person summit in Western Europe due to major every 4 years macro-event during the summer).

Proposing to do on in 2025 in London, UK as it's easy logistically-wise where you're coming in the world, it's natively speaking
english and previous summits have been respectively in US (2022), US (2023), Japan (2024). Either the last 2 weeks of June or the first 2 weeks of September, what's best ? I'll see to book a physical location then come make to forward the invitation,
have list from previous years and who is technically active among the minor and major implementations is public. I'll invite everyone, as I don't have real issues with anyone in the lightning community. At the exception of @TheBlueMatt and @moneyball (my individual perception of their levels of wokeness, cowardice, hypocrisy and lack of ethics make me currently impossible to collaborate and work with them - my perception only, if they take it as a personal attack it's just their sensibility).

I'll see to put in place moderators-free censorship-resistant communication channels over nostr or the bitcoin blockchain to
enable discussions and collaboration about this lightning protocol specification effort. And I have already few forks of rust-lightning lingering.

About security issues handling affecting the Lightning Network, for the future ones I might find, I'll only give a 2 weeks delay until full disclosure rather than the usual 6 to 9 months or more, due to bad faith incident with 2 lightning softwares vendors, respectively in end of 2020 and end of 2022 and discrepancies in infosec ethics with some people.

[ariard]

For authenticity purpose - This thread is timestamped in the bitcoin blockchain itself secured by a lot of EH / second, which is itself a harder to forge as a technical medium than a cloud-powered Github repository, that can be tampered by untrustworthy admins.

[ariard]

Just to be clear and as I noted to the TheBlueMatt elsewhere. The disagreement about the new moderation rules it’s not about him or mine romantic relationships in the industry. It’s far more about ethics and principles.

About principles, I’ve always been in bitcoin for the self-sovereign aspect, i.e pursuing the quest of maximizing my financial, technical, moral and philosophical autonomies among other dimensions. Not to capture a seat as a domain expert in a niche technical field, and being guaranteed a paycheck at the end of the month. Of course the first track is far more painful, though if you’re ever ready to trade comfort for freedom in life, I’ll pray for your soul.

Moving on on my own to keep hacking on the lightning protocol in a more freely fashion and building the lightning node of my dream, that I’ve 10 times think about, and 10 times delayed to do so: https://github.com/ariard/orage-dev If I did mistakes in the past, it’s not to have done it earlier, and otherwise builders build.

That’s all I have to say about the moderation rules and culture about the BOLTs effort. This issue can be closed when fits.