#16. Plebnet, a Bitcoin Lightning Community.

Plebnet is an awesome community started by a group of selfless, generous plebs working together to onboard people to the bitcoin lightning network. Constantly evolving, it's goal is to  bring people together to understand and support the lightning network, learn from each other the basics of running a node or using a lightning wallet, and bridge the gap that remains between the tech/cyber world and the everyday user. 

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Apart from Bitcoin which is any shit coins you like, No, I'm kind of joking. I am no you're funny I do I do like one security surprise it is it is also referred to as yet okay and I do mining for that and it goes by you know different ticker symbol and us it is USD in India it is INR and I love it because it helps me buy right more Bitcoins before I begin I want to say something people have said quite a lot about Bitcoin and there are some of the quotes notable quotes that I just want to say someone said Bitcoin will do to banks what email did to postal industry and there is an other interesting quote from Eric skim it the former chairman of Google, CEO of Google, the ability to create something which is not duplicatable, in the digital world has enormous value. Lots of people will build businesses on top of that, very interesting. And then another one of my favorites quote is from Paul Graham, of Y Combinator fame and he has said, I'm very intrigued by Bitcoin. It has all the signs paradigm shift. Hackers love it. Yet, it is described as a toy, just like the microcomputers and I have two more. One from Hal Finney, who a lot of people believe and even I believe is has a lot to do with the well, it's not a matter of belief anymore. I mean, there are records to show that and his quote was, I see Bitcoin as the ultimately becoming a reserve currency for banks playing much the same role as gold did in the early days of banking, banks could issue digital cash with greater enormous anonymous at a lighter weight, more efficient, and more efficient transactions. And lastly, Satoshi said Satoshi Nakamoto. If you don't believe it, or don't get it, I don't have the time to try to convince you. Sorry. Well, fortunately, we have the time to at least educate you about it. And KP who will be joining me today, he has the time to explain he and Og Bitcoiners are doing with blob net, which seems to be like an interesting community of Bitcoiners eaching big beginners about Lightning Network. Let's now hear from JP Hey, Tyrone, thanks. Thanks for having me. This is, you know, pretty exciting. I'm looking forward to actually chatting with you about plant net and a little bit about lightning if I could. I'm KP I go by a chip on Twitter, you can find me over there. And, you know, take it away. Thank you. Thanks for coming. And so Gibby I want to start the session with a quick question that kind of gets a clearer picture to our audience in India like first of all, what is plugged net? And you know, I know it's related to something similar to Lightning Network but would like love to hear more about it. Yeah, sure. So I got into lightning you know, I work in financial services sector, okay. And with Bitcoin you know, anybody who is familiar with it, and somebody who is less going to listen to this probably is is when you when you see a sound monetary asset, like Bitcoin and then we'll go into detail a little bit later as well. And then when you when you take that sound money asset, and then you combine it with some sort of an open source, you know, network, which is Bitcoin, the network on Lightning Network, the possibilities for, you know, payments and financial services, and, you know, in general about things in life takes a very different meaning and possibilities are endless. So that's how I got into lightning. And the way actually I learned and it's a it's a newer technology, just two or three years old, and I got into it, beginning of this year. I was watching it like you know, late last early last year, and I regret not getting it into it like you know, last year but hey, I'm here. But the way I learned is in groups, so you know, we used to have a clubhouse room where we would talk about Bitcoin lightning, and then there is there was a telegram I'm a group actually, which was called clubhouse lightning group, it had a small lightning LNT ex parte, it's a, it's a bot, for your audience who are not familiar on Telegram, you can play around with the bot, you can keep each other, you can send Satoshis to each other, and it has a wallet. So you get to learn how to actually transact in the lightning in a very controlled environment, and also interacting with a lot of folks who are, you know, looking for similar experience and learning with you. And then guess what, like, you know, we suddenly started like looking into setting up nodes and, you know, setting up lightning channels, and somebody came up with the idea, I think it was Roger came up with the idea of naming this as a blood net. And then it took off from there, we saw, we were a group of like, I would say, dozen, plus, opening channels randomly with each other, you know, doing all sorts of things. And then, you know, it started growing from that particular group. So flood net is basically, you know, a bunch of folks who are very interested in Bitcoin lightning, they understand the power of Bitcoin lightning, that it can provide, as well as they understand Bitcoin and the value of the asset. And you can, you know, you can join the group, if you go to plevna.org, you will land into our main group. And just to extend a little bit, what has happened, Tarun crazily after that, currently, like I was looking at, you know, some of the numbers, we've got almost like a 4500 members out there. And among the 4500, members, we've got almost 900 plus nodes, and, you know, those nodes, they have about 883, Bitcoins, average channel size of the nodes, is close to 100 million sets, it's like, you know, almost an average of one Bitcoin, channel size of all of those notes. Now, some are small, of course, some are small, some are large, but that's a fascinating thing in how we, you know, collectively, you know, got together and that is basically plugged that and it has extended actually what has happened, the original group, which we used to learn, we call like planet lightning 101 If you want to just learn about lightning, you can land over there, then of course, there is planet, main group, you know, where you will, if you if you show up, at any point of time, there will be at least 300 to 400 people who are actually interacting, answering question, asking question, and if you have any question around lightning, I guarantee you, there is someone over there, who is going to jump in, and be able to either answer it, or research and come back and answer it for you. And then we also have a third group, which is feminine node runner, so if you have a node, and if you're running a node, then you can join that group. And, you know, it's a little bit more contained, you can you have more focused on day to day issues of running nodes. And then we also created sort of like and the all of these things just happen on its own somebody comes up with an idea and boom, there is there is this thread of of activity starts happening. So there is this planet advanced, where it is specifically focused on development of tools, you know, technology related discussion, as well as hardware and things like that. And then, very recently, two more things which have come up, which may you may or may not be aware of Tarun in the group is plevna this panel, so guess what has Spanish speaking people interested in learning about lightning? They did not have a place to go. If somebody came up. I think Lucas, he works for like a ping lab. She came up with a request saying, Hey, can we set up something like, you know, where we can help people on board? For Spanish speaking people guess what Plusnet is Danielle originated? And then me out on this one, right? We were on spaces, talking with bit wage, about how businesses can learn about lightning, and learn about setting up nodes for running their businesses. And we like I think I just said this to Roger or Walton or one of one of the members over there, that hey, looks like we may need a planet for business. Guess what, within five minutes, there was this group setup and it has got almost 150 members who are discussing every day, how to adopt lightning in their own businesses and questions around that. Oh, that is fantastic. And that's music to my ears. I have some ideas around that around business adoption of Bitcoin, but we will keep it for some other day. But this is fantastic. KPN. You know, this brings me at that's a good segue to my next question, which is like, you know, so India has like, probably the highest number of engineering schools and colleges, I'm a product of the those schools and what do you have? What do you say to folks or advice for folks in engineering schools in academics? How is how can anybody run a lightning node, and then get started, I know, it's, you know, a bunch of Raspberry Pi's they can get and get started with that. So if you could elaborate a bit more on that, that would be fantastic. Because I feel there is like this massive population in India, which is, you know, highly focused, you know, academics and but they still, they would love this sort of thing they could run in their dorm rooms, you know, yeah, you, you funny, you say that, they don't, I went to IIT Kharagpur. And, you know, this is, I totally believe, and actually, I've talked to some of the IETF and we have a, we have a small, tiny, you know, signal group of five peons, you know, who can keep in touch with each other, and I believe is that the technology students in those Institute's they would actually grasp the power of Bitcoin and what it is and be able to understand deeper into it, and they will be able to get on it like very, very quickly and be able to understand and I think, you know, the question that you asked is fascinating, and I think if anybody is listening and who is a student or who knows a student, you know, they should really basically let them know that hey, you know, you can actually you know, set up an old laptop or pick up any hardware that you may have on a Raspberry Pi, if it is available to you, and you can set up a Bitcoin Core node right away, download, you know, lnd on top of that, and pick any of the versions, so, that you want to pick and start playing around with this or at the minimum, you know, download one of the wallets, you know, start playing around with the wallet and see the possibilities of how to transport this asset globally, you know, across the board, and also, you know, look at Bitcoin because I know what what is going on a little bit in India at this point of time, and which is not surprising Is it is it is speculation, you know, there are a lot of like these coins out there and people are actually jumping on into onto it, and just using this as an speculative asset, and what I would recommend is that, you know, look at Bitcoin as a store of value asset, you know, buy some, you know, first of all understand the value of it, and then get hold of some, it is a digital gold basically, which has got, you know, it is the the most scarce provably scarce commodity in the world, you can prove it that is scarce, and the, you know, limited and all of its property. So, my recommendation to students will be, you know, don't be left behind this is the internet of money superhighway is being built right in front of you. And when I was there, okay, internet was coming along, actually. And, you know, we would do all sorts of stuff on our, you know, on department computers, we never had our own computers, it was way too early at that time. But we will spend nights and nights playing around with those computers, trying to figure out you know, how telnet works, how a mail server will work and you know, how does the internet server work? And guess what, you know, the internet took off and that's what is happening right now. So why by suggestion is pretty easy, you know, you can you can actually do all of those things and get involved in you know, first understanding what Bitcoin is, you know, buy some take, you know, custody of your own keys, you can get to understand the, the cryptographic aspect of it and, you know, set up some lightning nodes and connect some wallets onto the lightning node and experience how seamless and easy it is to be able to transport this value from India to us on a US dollar India, which there's people listening in India and students and especially my cousins and nephews and nieces. You know, they should get it on on it right now. And It's it's easier to setup than traditional, like people who are already in the technical field, it will be much, much very easy interest, it's super, super, super easy. There are implementations like you know, Umbral has done like my node has the same raspy Blitz, you pick any one of those, you go to like, say, Get unroll.com. And, you know, if you have a Raspberry Pi, you can order some parts, you can set it up, or if you want to do it on your old laptop, or old machine that you may have, just download it. And you know, you don't have to have the lightning setup right away, download the Bitcoin Core, you know, I understand the asset, understand how it works, understand how the time chain works, understand how the keys work, and look up the, you know, the things in the mempool. On how it works, all I would say is all I would urge is, don't get distracted by all of these speculative, you know, coins, which are out there, which is gonna make you rich in like, you know, 24 hours, don't get fooled by that, try to understand the deep nature of what this asset does, and what it can do to humanity. Again, when you you know, when you fly Bitcoin, kind of a monetary system, from one part to the other part of the world on a Lightning Network, magical happen, you know, look at what is happening in El Salvador internet money superhighway, your time is right now, don't waste it on, you know, experimenting with some coin, which some celebrity is telling you to buy, because you know, they hold it, and the price goes up so they can dump it on, you don't get into that game, that game is too, you know, too easy, too old, you know, get into something which is serious, which is going to do some real good for humanity. So nicely said, KP, you know, I see the celebrities promoting coins in the US. And that's going to happen in India as well, you see with the sorts of celebrities coming on board, and it's the same cycle repeating itself. So that's very much a good statement that he made about being clear and have that clarity of, you know, understand Bitcoin understand why this exists? And what are the fundamentals? And that's what I say to people in clubhouse and sometimes understand it fully, and then you'll understand all of it. So just get into Bitcoin, get into setup lightning nodes, and you're good to go. Right, the question I had that just popped up in my head is, so lightning node. Currently, you know, there are a lot of companies offering nodes and stuff. There any initiative, and maybe this could start something is in India, where you have these, I think close to 3500 engineering colleges, if not more, some sort of initiative, maybe in future by Blub, net to educate those audiences. And you know, how we say, Okay, you want to try it, here's some stat, start, start get going, like, hit the ground running something like that would be wonderful. And I would be actually volunteer to to help out with that, you know, I'm still Yeah, connected to India in some way, you know, my parents are there. So I think I think that's a fascinating idea. Don't, you know, we can we can expand upon it, and I can see that that it can happen. Without doing much within the context of the the groups which are out there, I am sure, there will be at least a dozen volunteers, who would be willing to like you have planted a spaniel. You could have planted India and you could have, you know, your whatever, right, like, you know, basic plan that you're not make it for whatever, right. But you can do it in in the same context what we have today, so the planet, the lightning one on one is basically, you know, for anyone, so if you have folks who you know, or these colleges and universities, they could actually have, you know, folks join that particular group, learn about lightning from folks who are running notes, and I can tell you, that these people, they give their time voluntarily, you have seen this on the platinum group, right? Like, you know, they are, they know the stuff, they have actually learned it. And if you had to actually pay for the pay for their time to answer those questions for you, which are really tough questions. Sometimes. You know, it's priceless. And that's kind of a, you know, a group of people is available to you, and you can take advantage of that. And honestly, you know, if they show up on lightning one on one, I am sure we can accumulate we can jointly create like some sort of a pool to get people started actually that lightning 101 But we were playing with each other. That's what we did. We just basically, you know, kept paying it forward. So to say, right, like so, you know, Darren gave me a tip for like 10,000 sets of 5000 sets. You know, a few days later, I just passed it on to Roger, you know somebody else and, and that's how people start learning. But to your point, yeah, I'm sure to get some of the student community to get started who are interested in this? I think that's a great idea. We should follow up with that. Yeah. And it will be a very organic, grassroot level progression, similar to you know, what's happening in other countries. And since India has a huge talent of tech talent, I mean, this will be interesting how it plays out. And also, I would like to say like, even Twitter, like companies like Twitter, Jack Dorsey, I mean, they just implemented lightning implementation for strike and you know, so, things are coming into place and so, it as you said earlier, you know, students and people in this field people in tech in general should get it get at least learn about it. And so, so, that's another great segue to my next question. So, if bitcoin is the you know, the hard settlement layer then what is lightning like if we compare it to the traditional banking you know, where settlements a final settlement happens right among bankers, so that that could be compared to like the Bitcoin Blockchain, but lightning is this layer two solution, which I feel like more like routing and so, you can scale it as much as you want where people you know, if you could throw some light on that, that'll be great. Yeah. So, so, lightning you can think about as you know, the second layer layer two solution built on on on top of Bitcoin the asset, you know, the layer one and for simplicity, you know, think about it as MasterCard or Visa or or a payment network, where the, you know, the the asset is underlying asset is Bitcoin and you know, that is what it is based on the difference major difference with with other networks, which are out there, the the payment network, so, to say the MasterCard and the visa of the world is they're all closed networks, they are private networks, here on lightning, it is an open network, it is it is a global network, it is not controlled by anybody, it is actually you know, built on top of a monetary policy, which is the soundest hardest monetary policy out there that there is nothing like this out there anywhere. And then the other most important thing is the settlement which happens on Lightning Network is instant and it is final. So, when I sent the send you say you know, 1000 Satoshis right now, that settlement is done, it is state is final, and, you know, it is not that like you know, it'll be done in two days or three days and somebody can you know, reverse it or dispute it and things like that, that is the nature of peer to peer payment on Bitcoin Lightning Network is that you know, the settlements are final. So, you know, it that's sort of you know, the the Lightning Network in general. Now, let me just expand upon this right like and when I when I said early on, early on, that you know, hey, when Bitcoin flies on the Lightning Network, you know, magic happens, what do I mean by that, you know, you're sort of like, you know, when you can transport say a digital gold like Bitcoin, you know, loosely speaking for the sake of explanation, you get a system which is going to offer you an instant you know, global no borders, frictionless near zero fee transaction, you know, like in this kind of payment network, the world has not seen before on a monetary asset, which is this pristine and and this this kind of hard money system. So, think about sending money from us to India, how would you do it instantly and free bitcoin Lightning Network, there is no other other way possible. If you are trying to do remittance from us to India, you know, how hard it is you know, the kind of fees that you have to you have to incur you know, with Western Union or through your bank or you know, what, whatever means that you choose, but in this case, it is Bitcoin Lightning Network, and it is instant and it is almost practically free. Now, there is literally no other option that actually meets the feature with Lightning Network offers today, right? And what what makes you know even more Interesting is that it is going to be the most disruptive payment technology out there. And that's what one of the thing which actually, you know, attracts me into this a lot is that you know, the existing net payment networks are sort of going to get outdated if they continue to be a closed private out, you know, network for payments. And, you know, it is it is it is the way to think about this is sort of like internet money superhighway, that's exactly what it is being done. You know, you can send an email sitting in, in Indian know, in your geography to anybody, like say, your buddy in Jamaica instantly for free, you can do that today, or you could do that we are internet with this, you know what, why you cannot cannot do that with money. Okay, in the past, because with with the Bitcoin Lightning Network, now, you can do the same thing. And you couldn't do that in the past, because you had these closed, private outdated payment networks, you had to get on with this bank, you had to get on the cards, you had to incur all of those fees. And what Twitter has done, for example, with lightning integrated tipping, you know, it is just the beginning. If you think about it loosely, it has created a global digital wallet, which is going to allow sending money on the internet, on on to anybody across the globe, who has got a wallet on the on the other other end, right. And the best thing is the base layer of these transactions settlement is the most pristine form of money as we talked about, right? And we have never had a form of money quite like Bitcoin. And with its property, you know, this, this makes it the combination of this layer two solution on lightning. And you know, the the Bitcoin the asset is is phenomenal, and it is going to actually, you know, change dramatically, it is already changing, and it is going to change in the future as well. Remember, like Malcolm Gladwell defines, like tipping point, as that magic moment when you know, something like that magic moment, when ideas, trends, social behavior, they cross a threshold, and then it spreads like wildfire. Honestly thrown like I believe Bitcoin Lightning Network is either already there, or it is soon going to get there, when it is going to actually spread like wildfire, with no return and all for, you know, good purposes. Oh, that's awesome. Mr. KB. And, you know, if you look at Twitter, crypto Twitter, you can already see like, you know, I have several of examples where you see how plumb net, enlightening nodes are getting adopted. And it's amazing. It's just like the birth of a new parallel sort of internet. If you think about internet of money, internet of money. Exactly. And, and, you know, this is a good time to clear sort of misconception that, mostly I've seen people in India have is, oh, so this is this is sort of illegal, or we can't do this, or the government hasn't approved it? Well, this is the sovereignity part of it, whereas anybody can run a node in their home, right? Like, you know, people have this notion, like, also, we're going to get consistent, you know, people like government would come or something will happen bad happened to them. It's it's very, very hard to I mean, they can do some, some measures, but at the end of the day, it's people's sort of moment, sovereign moment where everybody can run a node from from the, their dorm room or from their house, you know, through their ISP, or maybe in future, it's just like a separate network. But, you know, that's the beauty and, you know, that's the misconception, I often see people within India have is like, Oh, so this is illegal, I guess. And I'm like, No, not really. Right, right. And there are there are you know, there are frameworks like say here in your US Bitcoin is a is a commodity, it's available on exchange and you know, treated as commodity and as if you would go and get and get an asset and add it to your portfolio for storing value for a long period of time, like, you know, gold, this is the digital gold part of it, you know, India also is looking into and I'm not you know, very closely following what what is the latest on it, but, you know, they are also looking into creating some sort of, you know, clarity in in the government approach towards, you know, Bitcoin is how do they categorize this and most likely, they may categorize this as an asset basically like a commodity. And guess what, you know, you are not doing anything illegal if you are Within the framework of what has been defined, and, you know, for a student, you know, getting like a little bit of Satoshis to play around with the technology by downloading a bitcoin core, which is an open source software, it is your computer, it is a software you're downloading, and you are actually trying to understand and learn the technology, the Bitcoin and the Lightning Network on top of that, you know, that's a tremendous opportunity. And, you know, you you again, I go back to the point I was trying to make is that, you know, forget about that whole speculative aspect of, you know, what you hear from some of these crazy promotions from celebrities, you know, that is that is a huge distraction, if you are if I was, you know, in college now and I am doing the same thing now is to basically get hold of, you know, this asset and this technology and understand it, and how it can make a difference in in lives in the future in you know, places around the world. That is what you need to start focusing on. And if you start focusing on just like another way of making money within 24 or 48 hours is you know, you're in a different role just don't bother if you are looking for something like that, you know, you're you're in my humble opinion, you're totally misplaced don't bother, but if you really are interested in technology boy I would be jumping on this which I am for exactly the same reason on how this can make a difference in the world plus how it will make a difference in payment technology in financial services and in holding asset which stores value for a long period of time. Wait, you know so I have this question is any apart from Bitcoin which is any shit coins you like? No, I'm kind of joking. I am no you're funny. I do I do like one security surprise. It is. It is also referred to as yet okay. And I do mining for that and it goes by you know, different ticker symbol and us it is USD in India. It is INR and I love it because it helps me buy buy more Bitcoins. So yeah, you know, I do and you know, yeah, so that's, that's my you know, that's my way of managing and you know, just, you know, kidding aside on that one, the you know, just look look at just wrap up maybe on that part is that look, you know, if you purchased an item thrown in 2011 Okay, just 10 year horizon, if you looked at it, you purchase an item for$100. The same thing now is going to cost you 121. Okay, so you have a depreciation of that fee add happening over a period of 10 years. And if you haven't put something if you are just holding on to that are putting you're not understanding the hard money aspect of Bitcoin and storing your hard earned money into a store of value which is going to be there for decades and decades. You are going to miss on something, you know, get on it, understand it. You don't have to believe it. Just understand your own research. That's what we saying Bitcoin and lightning and you will you will get to understand what this whole thing is all about.