Author: Conrad Burchert 2017-08-17 12:48:15
Published on: 2017-08-17T12:48:15+00:00
The discussion on Lightning in the setting of blockchain hardforks was brought up in an email thread between Christian Decker and Martin Schwarz. The issue of open channels during a fork was addressed, stating that if no replay protection was implemented on the fork then the last commitment can be used to close the channel, but if replay protection was implemented then commitments become invalid on the fork and people can lose money. The suggestion was made to change the definition of chain_id to the hash of the first block of the new branch and require replay and wipe-out protection to solve this problem. However, it was questioned whether these requirements could be relaxed and if slow block times would pose an issue. It was also suggested that timestamping of commitments could be integrated into the channel design as a possible solution to replay protection. It was acknowledged that hardforking while having open channels will always be problematic and anyone unaware of the hardfork or updating their client too late risks losing their money.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T14:59:01.318776+00:00