Author: Corné Plooy 2018-02-12 13:30:07
Published on: 2018-02-12T13:30:07+00:00
The Lightning Network protocol can be used for making payments in exchange for non-cryptographic assets. In such cases, a signed invoice is provided by the merchant to the user stating that if payment is made with payment_hash Y, Z will be delivered. However, if only a part of the payment succeeds, it becomes difficult to settle the situation without going to court. A different signed invoice could be formulated to handle this use case. It would include several payment hashes with their corresponding amounts and the obligation of the signer to deliver Z if all corresponding payment keys are shown. However, distinguishing this case from a complete success would require proving the absence of successful transactions, which is hard. Therefore, the payer should sign a declaration stating that certain transactions were canceled and that the other ones should be refunded. This can be another invoice. The original invoice format remains unchanged, but the new format handles partial refund cooperatively with an invoice created by the payer. The courts can be the final point of settlement for invoices in this use case. With the construction described above, refunds can be done cooperatively or enforced through court settlement. The advantage of this method is that it does not require changes to the network protocol.
Updated on: 2023-05-24T20:59:08.120472+00:00