Author: alicexbt 2022-06-08 03:36:51
Published on: 2022-06-08T03:36:51+00:00
Tony Giorgio has been working on an LDK probing project for the past few months that searches for unannounced channels on the Lightning Network. He found near 445 unannounced channels totaling 1,076,077,750 satoshi's locked across three nodes he probed. The exact results are publicized here: https://github.com/BitcoinDevShop/hidden-lightning-network/blob/master/data/results/results.json. Probing is a free operation on the Lightning Network after a channel is opened, and currently, channel IDs are based on UTXOs, which allows guessing the Channel ID based on unspent p2wsh transactions. Therefore, error reasons such as `unknown_next_peer`, `invalid_onion_hmac`, `incorrect_cltv_expiry`, and `amount_below_minimum` have been the biggest helpers in exploiting channel privacy.Alias SCIDs may be the biggest benefit to fix the problem of channel privacy as they allow a node to request a channel by a random value instead of value derived from the on-chain transaction. Tony suggests migrating to alias scid's and encouraging every active unannounced channel holder to close, coinjoin, and reopen with an alias. Care should be given in the future when it comes to error reasons revealing information that is meant to be "private," and until this migration happens, it would be beneficial to stop being so specific about errors.Tony will continue with this probing project while the problem exists, work on narrowing down the other channel partner, and fixing efficiency bugs. He publicizes the results as he goes, giving fair warning to those who have any unannounced channels that they assumed were private and need them to be closed now on the off chance they get revealed. It is also beneficial to get a better estimate of the unknown size of the Lightning Network. For more about this project and viewing the dataset, go to http://hiddenlightningnetwork.com.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T08:52:49.999816+00:00