Author: Andy Schroder 2018-03-21 05:50:43
Published on: 2018-03-21T05:50:43+00:00
The discussion revolves around the security of payee's location in Lightning Network transactions. Corné Plooy questions the effectiveness of payee-determined routes in protecting the payee's location if they have already been located through IP or non-.onion hostname. Andy Schroder explains that using a TOR hidden service for a 100% LN node is not enough, as over time, knowledge about the node ID may leak out and reveal unwanted information. Running a node as a TOR hidden service alone cannot prevent this. However, hiding the node ID from payers becomes more difficult. In some cases, physical mediums like NFC or radio communication, such as Bluetooth, can be used for payer/payee communication to limit what the payee can use the connection for. To ensure privacy, it is better to have lots of privacy, even when running only a single node. The alternative approach to partially payee-determined routes would be to run different nodes for different identities, but this requires expensive on-chain actions. TOR is necessary because an IP address can often be linked to you, and partially payee-determined routes are necessary because your node ID can often be linked to you. Lessons learned from BIP70 can be applied to Lightning Network workflows.
Updated on: 2023-05-24T21:43:33.844878+00:00