Author: René Pickhardt 2021-07-10 06:56:47
Published on: 2021-07-10T06:56:47+00:00
The email proposes a new Lightning Network (LN) invoice pattern that contains a Bitcoin address for on-chain transfer as backup. The motivation behind this proposal is to have an app wallet that works in a totally abstract and transparent way onchain and/or LN depending on the situation. This could be achieved by embedding a Bitcoin address in the invoice, which would provide an immediate on-chain backup alternative in case of payment failure. The proposed functionality already exists in today's invoices with a mechanism called fallback address. The main difference seems to be that the fallback adress is not a human readable part of the invoice string but encoded with the other data in the bech32 part of the invoice. The f field allows on-chain fallback, however, this may not make sense for tiny or time-sensitive payments. It's possible that new address forms will appear; thus, multiple f fields (in an implied preferred order) help with transition, and f fields with versions 19-31 will be ignored by readers.The email suggests checking bolt 11 on GitHub for more detail and provides relevant snippets from there. The author of the email had trouble with payment pathfinding and was unable to pay a friend using Phoenix wallet due to lack of liquidity on the specific route. The proposed solution would allow the wallet to ask "Couldn't send via LN, do you want to send it on-chain at XPTO fee rate? It can take a while" in case of payment failure. This would be useful especially when rates are low.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T05:06:01.594299+00:00