Not directly. State channels are similar to lightning, but there's a key difference:
* in lightning each payment is routed through the network independently, requiring participation from the intermediary nodes
* in a state channel the intermediary nodes are used to establish a channel and then the payments are direct
The upshot is that in state channels, once the connection is established, the payments are truly peer-to-peer, and don't need any interaction with a third party.
We use this property in Web3Torrent, as the payments are sent directly peer-to-peer on top of the webtorrent messaging layer. This wouldn't be possible with lightning, though you could probably find another way to accomplish something similar.
I will try to assume good faith here, and just state facts.
Lightning channels are 2 end points, p2p.
Lightning routes are a sequence of lightning channels. Routes are also 2 end points, also p2p. No trusted is required for intermediaries.
Every internet packet, unless it is you to your lan router, passes through many intermediaries. I have no idea how ethereum state channels work, but I assume they route using tcp/ip, and statechannel team understands this as p2p.
I guess so. Seeder would need to send us a lightning invoice, and after we make a payment we'd repeat the request with a proof of payment and the seeder would send us the next chunk of data. AFAIK Bittorrent protocols are quite extensible, and adding such metadata should be possible. However, this (paid torrent seeding) only makes economic sense if all seeders demand payment, and then the cheapest ones will be winning, driving prices close to zero.
Nice idea anyways, great to see people experimenting in the space!
Not really because it’s tightly coupled with Ethereum smart contracts. It looks like it was built on top of WebTorrent App (webtorrent.io). Web3Torrent is currently live on the Göerli testnet.
[perun.network member here] It would be possible using Bitcoin Virtual Channels as introduced here: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/554
But the implementation of this is hard.
There's no reason why it couldn't be implemented. At some point I'm sure it will be, as these kinds of protocols are needed for decentralized data sharing in the future.
Not directly. State channels are similar to lightning, but there's a key difference:
* in lightning each payment is routed through the network independently, requiring participation from the intermediary nodes
* in a state channel the intermediary nodes are used to establish a channel and then the payments are direct
The upshot is that in state channels, once the connection is established, the payments are truly peer-to-peer, and don't need any interaction with a third party.
We use this property in Web3Torrent, as the payments are sent directly peer-to-peer on top of the webtorrent messaging layer. This wouldn't be possible with lightning, though you could probably find another way to accomplish something similar.