Author: Anthony Towns 2018-02-21 09:19:47
Published on: 2018-02-21T09:19:47+00:00
A proposal has been made on the Lightning-dev mailing list regarding providing a stronger proof-of-payment through the use of Zero-Knowledge Contingent Payments (ZKCP). Schnorr scriptless scripts can also be used for this purpose if HTLC payment hashes are ECC points rather than SHA256 hashes. The proposed method involves Alice agreeing to pay Bob $5 for a coffee, with Bob calculating a lightning payment hash preimage r and payment hash R=r*G. Bob also prepares a receipt message and calculates a partial Schnorr signature of this receipt, which he sends to Alice. Alice verifies the partial signature and pays over lightning conditional on receiving the preimage r of R. This allows her to have a valid signature of the receipt, signed by Bob. The benefit of this method is that it can be used to prove that payment was made to a specific party at a later date, including to a third party such as a court or tax authorities.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T08:08:20.934341+00:00