Author: Rusty Russell 2016-03-16 02:40:26
Published on: 2016-03-16T02:40:26+00:00
Samuel Kremser has proposed an improvement for the Lightning Network called Decentralized Service Provider (DSP). According to Samuel, DSP could allow end-users to access the Lightning Network without validating the Blockchain or worrying about closing times of channels. The idea is that users would benefit from more significant channels with more Bitcoins because all users of one DSP would share their channel(s). DSPs would consist of multiple entities that manage tasks in a collaborative way, including managing Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, managing the Lightning Network Channel(s), and managing communication with end-users and the Lightning Network. Deposit addresses for the DSP are multi-sig addresses, so that a majority of the DSP's entities is needed to sign withdrawals. Due to this multi-sig construction, a single entity of a DSP couldn't steal the end-user’s Bitcoins. Also, DSP's entities communicate with signed messages with their end users and with each other, so everything is provable. Whenever some entity of a DSP acts maliciously, the other entities of that DSP can decide to exclude this entity from this DSP by transferring control of the managed Bitcoins and channels to some new multi-sig address(es)/channel(s) that doesn't require the malicious entity's signature. Another advantage of DSPs would be that fewer channels are required, thus DSPs could save even more space on the Blockchain than Lightning alone.
Updated on: 2023-05-23T23:08:09.027918+00:00