Author: Matt Corallo 2020-06-24 08:32:52
Published on: 2020-06-24T08:32:52+00:00
The email thread discusses the possibility of an attack on off-chain constructions that rely on absolute timeouts. While it seems theoretically possible, controlling which parts of the network get which transactions may be impractical without cooperation from a subset of miners. One suggested technical solution involves using independent pay-to-preimage transactions, but this also has incentives issues as miners who hide the preimage transaction in their mempool would need to be accomplices with the attacker. However, another participant believes that the attack could still be executed without miner cooperation by releasing two transactions with near-equal fees, one near miners and the other near non-miners, then relying on nodes at the boundary between the two to receive only one of the transactions due to strict RBF rules. The conversation acknowledges the difficulties in mitigating such attacks and suggests potential solutions involving eltoo and transaction relay metadata.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T21:56:26.703274+00:00