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An open source and crowdfunded book about Bitcoins Lightning Network to scale blockchain technologies.

License: Other

TeX 70.26% Jupyter Notebook 29.74%

the-lightning-network-book's Introduction

About

I am trying to create an educational open source book about the Lightning Network. The scope is to spread education about the Lightning Network for developers and for people interested in Bitcoin, blockchain technologies and cryptographic currencies. This book should also serve as a reference.

Find the first draft with a table of contents at https://github.com/renepickhardt/The-Lightning-Network-Book/blob/master/lightning-network-book-draft.pdf

If you want to learn more about my educational efforts please have a look at my educational YouTube channel about the Lightning Network over at: https://www.youtube.com/user/RenePickhardt

Support this work

Since this is an open source effort I rely on support of the community. In order to be able to work full time on this book I need a budget of 21.21212121 BTC (with current exchange rates). As writing a technical book was my childhood dream and since I am interested in education in general I am willing to self-fund part of my costs. Still I will be grateful and in particular more focused if you support this work.

You can donate via Tallycoin at: https://tallyco.in/s/lnbook/

Or become a patreon at: https://patreon.com/renepickhardt

Contributions

There is a guide for contributors at: https://github.com/the-lightning-network-book/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

I will accept pull requests that help with orthography and grammar.
I will be particularly happy if you review my work and give feedback via the comment function of GitHub or via pull requests. I am also trying to live stream while writing on https://twitch.tv/renepickhardt. I encourage you to show up and give feedback while I am writing.

Before you write substantial parts and make a pull request contact me or expect that I won't merge your pull request. Creating educational content is not so much about collecting a bunch of knowledge but more about presenting it in a concise way. Therefore I have to be careful about collaboration. This does not mean that I am not open for collaboration.

All contributors (people who make a pull request) must transfer a non-exclusive, non-revocable, sub-licensable, worldwide, royalty-free license to me since potential publishers will require this from me. I will include a list of contributors at the end of the book. There will also be a list of donors (if they want to be included).

Translations

Since the book is still in the process of being written I do not encourage people to start translating the book to other languages yet. However it would be great if at a later stage you want to translate the book. If you are willing to do that please contact me.

Disclaimer

Though this could have been an ICO, it is not. There is no token presale. As for the crowdfunding I only accept real currencies which are Bitcoin and fiat (since it is still being used). I will not accept altcoins (unless they have a compatible Lightning Network implementation) or BCH.

the-lightning-network-book's People

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the-lightning-network-book's Issues

Idea: Orient your bitcoin exposition on the actual history

I really like your idea of going from problem to solution all the time. I am wondering if it might make sense to introduce at least some actual historical predecessors to bitcoin together with the problems they solve or don't solve. E.g.

digital cash by Chaum in the early nineties - works, anonymous, but centralized - Chaum is an egotistical maniac, so the company disappears.
rpow
b-money
bit-gold
etc. See, e.g. Aaron van Wirdum's "The Genesis Files" series on bitcoin magazine for pointers.

translations

Have you considered to allow collaborative work on translations of the book? I think it can be an ongoing parallel process, would love to contribute to Hebrew and Russian translations

microtype (LaTeX)

Please use microtype (\usepackage{microtype}). The weird jutting-out in the margins is killing my eyes! ;)

Inconsistency in casing in headings

I wasn't sure what format you wanted to go with so I didn't change it. Some of the section headings are in title case (e.g. The Headings are Like This), and others are not (e.g. The headings are like this).

Introduction about bitcoin is too long, it's already described in detail in other books

It should concentrate in lightning network, this is the reason why others read this book with title "The lightning network book".

who's the target audience for this book?

Question in issue title. I looked at the draft, and it doesn't seem very focused. It covers basic things within Bitcoin, and then attempts to jump straight from that to more advanced topics, many of which are still in flux and under-researched.

Asymmetric cryptographic system properties and examples

I have put three main properties of asymmetric cryptographic systems in the second section of the book.

Asymmetry: The public key can be derived from the private one
Encryption: the public key can be used for encrypted messages which can be decrypted with the private key
Signatures: private keys can produce signatures which can be verified with the public key

I have just realized that in ECDSA the second property hardly plays a role. There is only a DH key exchange to produce a symmetric key which can be used for de- and encryption.

I think explaining diffie hellman does not make sense in the beginning sections and for lightning I only need it if I go down all the way with the sphinx mix format.

Glossary definition for blockchain is misleading

The part about someone with 51% of the hashrate being able to change the data is not clear/true. They can change current blocks to censor or double-spend transactions, but they can't go back through the blockchain and change old data using 51%.

Input from /u/almkglor and offer to help writing sections

LN stuff he has written on-reddit:

Channel factories: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/aci0zt/can_we_expect_to_see_solutions_where_new_users/edagfge/

Intuitive comparison of offchain to out-of-court settlements: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/a5ap0c/how_much_can_off_chain_solutions_help_scaling/edcr4ar/

Payment channels are Satoshi's Vision: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/a9dhtu/why_transaction_malleability_is_a_problem/eckkmhf/

Neutrino: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/a0r7o7/what_is_neutrino_and_what_advantages_and/eak7y70/

Limited blocksize is the solution to mass breach attacks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7dcbfa/can_anyone_expound_on_vitaliks_reply_i_assume_hes/dpwpt1g/

Not LN but fun: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/744efu/why_does_every_rbtc_title_talk_about_trolls/dnvryfw/

It might be more clear to use 'satoshis' instead of 'Bitcoin' for value units

I've noticed a few different uses of Bitcoin throughout the book so far as unit of value (e.g. "how many Bitcoins" and "how much Bitcoin"). At one point I changed it to BTC to clear it up, but that introduces an inconsistency as well.

I propose that you use 'satoshis' as the unit of value instead of 'Bitcoin' because a) that is the real unit that the protocol uses, and b) it is clear with no ambiguity.

Adding a list of essential resources to the appendix

Hello Rene,

I would like to contribute. I added some content to the https://lightningwiki.net wiki. I also already added your effort to create this book there in order to give it a shout-out.

As first step to help with this book I might offer to write an initial draft of a "Resource List" chapter for the appendix.

Would that be helpful? If you give the OK, I could start with that.

Awaiting your response ...