Author: Matt Corallo 2020-08-24 19:22:33
Published on: 2020-08-24T19:22:33+00:00
The ability to skip a channel funding transaction confirmation, thereby making the channel fully operational before its on-chain confirmation (a zero-conf channel), is discussed by Roei Erez. While this protocol doesn't capture unidirectional 0-conf, there are cases where it makes sense to support this behavior. One example is when both parties decide to trust each other or buying a pre-loaded channel from a service like Bitrefill. The motivation behind this is gained from the "Immediate on-boarding" use case. Different implementations support zero-conf channels in different ways, but some changes to the funding flow can make it possible. Erez suggests four changes to the funding flow to support this: accepting the channel message, sending the minimum_depth=0 if fundee wants to skip confirmation, no change in funding signed message, and funding locked message. If the fundee has sent the minimum_depth=0, then both parties send funding_locked while the channel_id is derived using a convention agreed upon by both. When the channel is confirmed, gossip messages such as channel_update are re-broadcasted and refer to the confirmed channel_id. A PR in LND that implements these changes is created by Erez.
Updated on: 2023-05-23T14:25:57.399242+00:00