Author: Rusty Russell 2015-08-24 00:59:09
Published on: 2015-08-24T00:59:09+00:00
The discussion between Anthony Towns and Rusty Russell revolves around the concept of payment channels in Bitcoin. The conversation covers two failure cases: one where Carol can't reach Dave in a short amount of time, and the other where Dave times out during the HTLC process. In the first case, Carol closes the channel with Dave, and Bob passes the information back to Alice. In the second case, Carol dumps the commit TX to the blockchain and any casualty HTLCs in progress. She can include this commit TX + HTLC TXs in the blame packet back to Bob without naming Dave. Bob cannot tell if Dave really sent it to Carol or not, but Alice does not care; she knows that someone paid 2 txfees in apology for the delay. If Carol values Dave too much to drop the channel, she risks that Bob will drop the channel with her. Normal Bitcoin coin analysis might reveal who Dave is.
Updated on: 2023-05-23T19:36:32.329908+00:00