Author: Antoine Riard 2020-05-09 07:22:52
Published on: 2020-05-09T07:22:52+00:00
Igor Cota has proposed the idea of running full nodes on mobile phones to serve as part-time or Sleeper Nodes. He suggests that phones could be used as a huge untapped resource for mobile nodes to earn their keep during nighttime operation. Depending on their storage capacity, phone nodes could store and serve just a randomly selected range of blocks during their nighttime operation. With trivial changes to P2P, they could advertise the blocks they are able to serve. These types of nodes would truly be part-timing since they only carry a subset of the blockchain and work while their operator is asleep. They could also be user-friendly with Assume UTXO which allows them to be bootstrapped quickly.Antoine Riard discusses the challenges in the design of a scalable, secure, private chain access backend for millions of Lightning Network (LN) clients. Light client protocols for LN exist but their privacy and security guarantees with regards to implementation on the client-side may still be an object of concern. One of the bottlenecks is likely the number of full-nodes being willing to dedicate resources to serve those clients. Assuming 10 million light clients each consuming ~100MB/month for filters/headers, that means you're asking 1PB/month of traffic to the backbone network. Unless your light client protocol is so ridiculous cheap to rely on niceness of a subset of node operators offering free resources, it won't scale.Monetary compensation may need to be introduced in exchange for servicing filters, as light clients not dedicating resources to maintain the network but free-riding on it. This compensation may suit within the watchtower paradigm, where another entity is delegated some part of protocol execution, alleviating client loneliness requirement. However, how to avoid such "chain access" market turning as an oligopoly is an open question.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T01:13:25.007689+00:00