Published on: 2022-07-02T02:58:10+00:00
In a conversation between Michael and ZmnSCPxj, the latter mentions Alex Bosworth's presentation on categorizing different strategies for a routing/forwarding node. ZmnSCPxj disagrees with Michael's attempt at categorization, stating that it is more granular and unstructured based on individual responses. However, ZmnSCPxj points out that all of the broad categories suggested by Bosworth have a common theme of being public forwarding nodes. In his write-up, ZmnSCPxj highlights various strategies that any public forwarding node may have, including passive rebalance, wall, or low fee forwarding strategies, independently of whether it is just a forwarding node or has additional roles such as merchant/personal node or selling inbound liquidity elsewhere. ZmnSCPxj believes that the general forwarding strategy is separate from the strategies presented by Alex Bosworth.ZmnSCPxj, a member of the Lightning-dev mailing list, provides a short write-up on strategies that Lightning forwarding nodes might utilize. These strategies include passive rebalance, setting feerates according to balance, using low fees, and implementing a wall strategy. The author explores how these strategies interact with each other. For instance, if there were only a single wall node, it could stop rebalancing once the cost to rebalance exceeds 49% of its earnings. This allows the wall node to keep 51% of its earnings, earning more than passive rebalancers. However, when multiple wall nodes exist, they compete for available liquidity from passive rebalancers, which can make it difficult for them to succeed. While passive rebalancers would outcompete wall strategies if they were the only strategies on the network, the presence of many tiny nodes with low feerates in the current network allows walls to acquire liquidity at a low cost, leaving low-feerate nodes without liquidity in the desired direction.The author notes that low-feerate nodes are unreliable for payments due to their saturated channels caused by walls taking their liquidity. As a result, some payment strategies filter out these low-feerate nodes using heuristics. Both low-feerates and walls do not leak their channel balances, whereas passive rebalancers do. The author acknowledges that the above thoughts are speculative and suggests that actual experimentation on models or real network nodes would provide better insights. Michael Folkson also contributes to the discussion, mentioning Alex Bosworth's similar attempt at categorizing different strategies for a routing/forwarding node in a presentation at the Lightning Hack Day last year.Overall, the email author provides an analysis of various strategies that Lightning forwarding nodes can employ to optimize their operations. They delve into the dynamics between passive rebalancers, walls, and low-feerate nodes, highlighting the potential advantages and challenges associated with each strategy. However, they emphasize the need for practical experimentation to validate these theories and gain a deeper understanding of their impact on the network.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T00:34:41.154801+00:00