Published on: 2018-01-11T23:06:26+00:00
In an email conversation between Christian Decker and Benjamin Mord, the topic of discussion revolves around the use of source routing in lightning transactions. Mord expresses his admiration for the technical creativity applied to the extensibility aspect of the BOLTs (Basis of Lightning Technology). Decker explains that the concept of source routing opens up possibilities for collaborations with intermediaries where flexible communication capabilities would be desirable. They discuss the idea of adding information in the onion packet, which would allow nodes to add annotations that can be read along the route.Decker points out that currently, the only constant piece of information kept along the entire route is the payment hash. However, they plan to remove this to further decorrelate hops in a payment route, making it harder for forwarding nodes to collate hops into a route. Despite this, there is still the possibility of adding information in the onion packet. For example, one could specify the desired exchange rate in the onion.In a mailing list discussion, Christian and ZmnSCPxj delve into the topic of removing the payment hash to enhance the decorrelation of hops in a payment route. The objective is to make it more challenging for forwarding nodes to collate hops into a route. They mention the potential of adding information in the onion packet, such as specifying exchange rates for currency conversion.Benjamin Mord raises the question about the existence of or potential for annotations that can be added to a Lightning transaction and read by all intermediate nodes along a given route. ZmnSCPxj suggests that it may be possible to embed this information in the hash preimage of the receiver. Alternatively, a new realm could be created to provide annotations to specific nodes on the route that support that realm, while other nodes would not need to be aware of it.In summary, the discussion centers around the possibility of adding annotations to Lightning Network transactions. While there is no standard way to do this currently, it is technically feasible by adding information to the onion routing packet. However, any annotation would be visible to all intermediate nodes along the route. The protocol does not support annotations readable only by certain specific known intermediate nodes, but it may be possible through custom implementations. Adding annotations could provide valuable information to users and merchants, but privacy implications need to be considered.
Updated on: 2023-07-31T19:36:33.169626+00:00