Author: Pedro Moreno-Sanchez 2021-02-09 13:48:50
Published on: 2021-02-09T13:48:50+00:00
In a recent email exchange, Pedro asked Nadav's question about virtual channels. Nadav was concerned that the intermediary, Ingrid, would have to hold a certain amount of coins to enable this channel and could charge a large fee for both the setup and duration of the channel if it stayed open for a long time. Pedro clarified that the protocol ensures that Ingrid will get paid whatever fee she decides to charge for creating a virtual channel; however, there is no guarantee that enough payments would be routed through her node to gain the same fee in the same amount of time. Ingrid can close the virtual channel at any time and get the locked coins back plus the fee if she fears that her coins will hold too long.Pedro explained that if Ingrid charges a certain fee, Alice and Bob would open a virtual channel if they plan to do a number of payments between them such that the total fee they would pay would be higher than “x”. The paper has a more elaborated fee analysis at the end of the performance evaluation section.The use cases where virtual channels would be beneficial include situations such as Bob being a new provider of a web service that charges for each new/song downloaded, where Alice could open a virtual channel with Bob to try out the service. If Bob now offers wifi connection in exchange for micropayments, Alice could open a virtual channel with him. Furthermore, any two-party computation between Alice and Bob that can be expressed in Bitcoin scripting language in a scenario where Alice and Bob do not share a payment channel yet could benefit from virtual channels. Pedro is open to hearing any proposals for other use cases that people on the list might have.
Updated on: 2023-06-02T18:47:55.937498+00:00