Author: Billy Tetrud 2022-05-01 22:53:13
Published on: 2022-05-01T22:53:13+00:00
The post discusses the issue of interactivity with payment pools and channel factories when a high number of participants are involved. As the number of users increases, so does the requirement for liveliness/interactivity, resulting in the need for delegated channel hosting solutions. The post suggests various solutions to lower the interactivity requirement, including absolute timelocked kick-out abilities and the usage of node towers. However, these solutions have their limitations and constraints.The article proposes non-interactive off-chain pool partitions as a trust-minimized solution that enables non-interactive, off-chain updates of the pool/factory with no or minimal consumption of blockspace. In case a pool update fails due to lack of online unanimity, a partition request can be exchanged among the online subset of users ("the actives"), introducing a new layer of transactions gathering the promised/off-chain outputs of the actives. The actives spend their Withdraw transactions `user_balance` outputs back to a new intermediate Update transaction, which is free to re-distribute the pool balances among the active users. To guarantee the unilateral withdraw ability of a partitioned-up balance, the private components of the partitioned Withdraw transactions should be revealed among the set of active users.The article also examines the issue of pool partitioning and potential solutions. The problem arises due to the lack of ordering in the off-chain spend of Withdraw transactions, which can result in equivocation and double-spending. The post explores current solutions to the double-spend problem in Bitcoin base-layer and Lightning Network and proposes a reactive security model similar to LN-Penalty. However, this model can lead to an economic disequilibrium. A better solution is a prophylactic technique, which could rely on a trusted coordinator or a trust-minimized approach using distributed bulletin boards or on-chain authoritative boards.Lastly, the reliability of the publication of partition statements is discussed, and a new consensus data structure is introduced as a potential solution. The high interactivity issue is also addressed, and the post suggests solutions to lower the interactivity requirement. However, these solutions have their limitations and constraints, making non-interactive off-chain pool partitions a trust-minimized solution enabling non-interactive, off-chain updates of the pool/factory with no or minimal consumption of blockspace.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T19:58:22.780814+00:00