Author: Rusty Russell 2020-02-24 02:59:36
Published on: 2020-02-24T02:59:36+00:00
In a recent discussion, Rusty Russell proposed to charge an up-front fee for accepting any HTLC and hang-up after grace period unless you either prove a channel close or gain another grace period by decrypting onion. This proposal is simpler and covers this case quite nicely. Meanwhile, Anthony Towns suggested that if there is a grace period, he can gum up the network with lots of slow-but-not-slow-enough HTLCs. He reduced the "gum up the network for blocks" to "gum up the network for seconds," which seems like a pretty big win. It was also suggested that B could send C a "1 microsecond grace period, rate of 3e11 msat/minute, HTLC for 100 sat, timeout of 2016 blocks" and if C couldn't reject it immediately would owe B 50c per millisecond it took to cancel. However, grace period (and penalty rate) are either fixed in the protocol or negotiated up-front, not per-HTLC. Additionally, it was pointed out that if C goes silent before B receives a new commitment, B can cancel the HTLC with A with no risk. But if C goes silent after B receives the new commitment, B can drop the new commitment to the blockchain and pay A's fees out of it. Although this adds a trip, it doesn't add latency since C can still count on the HTLC being locked in at step 3.
Updated on: 2023-06-02T21:11:47.585599+00:00