Author: Joost Jager 2023-02-14 11:00:26
Published on: 2023-02-14T11:00:26+00:00
In this email exchange, Christian and Joost discuss the idea of enshrining differences in availability in the Lightning Network protocol. Christian argues that creating two classes of nodes is not desirable. However, Joost clarifies that HA signaling is not on the node level but on the channel level, allowing each node to decide per channel whether they want to potentially attract additional traffic at the cost of severe penalties if the channel can't be used. Christian also argues that communicating up-front that he intends to be reliable does nothing, and penalizing after the fact isn't worth much due to the repeat interactions issue. Joost responds by saying that it is currently quite common for pathfinders to try another channel of the same node for the payment at hand or re-attempt the same channel for a future payment to the same destination. He acknowledges the repeat interactions issue but is not sure about its extent in practice. Regarding using third-party information to track reliability, Joost agrees that it seems difficult. Instead, he suggests that the idea of HA signaling is to make local reliability tracking more efficient so that senders are less likely to rely on external aggregators for their view on the network.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T11:45:46.108242+00:00