Author: Hector Chu 2015-08-09 22:03:50
Published on: 2015-08-09T22:03:50+00:00
The conversation on the bitcoin-dev mailing list revolves around the costs of operating a payment hub. The hub can charge a fee to recoup its operational costs, which include time value of the funds locked up in payment channels, enhanced risk of loss of control of private keys, and normal running costs such as networking and electricity. The tx fees that a payment hub would have to pay to settle its Bitcoin transactions would be passed on as a cost to the clients of the payment hub. Also, there is a cost to locking up funds in a payment channel, which includes lost interest or opportunity cost on those funds, and this cost would need to be paid for by the clients as well. In terms of network growth complexity, the total cost of the network depends on the number of connections each hub has to other hubs. If a payment channel has many hops in it, then the end-to-end users would have to bear all the costs of the hubs in the channel. The conversation also touches upon the issue of whether hubs should assess a fee for depositing funds and what the fee structure could look like.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T19:02:42.784699+00:00