Author: Jim Posen 2018-05-09 17:41:56
Published on: 2018-05-09T17:41:56+00:00
The discussion is centered around the issue of information leakage and reputation loss in the Lightning Network. One proposal suggests adding noise to the "rate of losing reputation" field to obscure the number of upstream hops, but it presents a risk of insufficient punishment for bad nodes or heightened risk of payment failure. The proposal is symmetric to the CLTV value, as both too low and too high values pose risks. The reputation system has advantages over deobfuscating the route, even though it adds complexity. The models tried in Milan created an incentive to fail payments, while a nominal spam fee paid to routing nodes that fail payments won't be profitable. The reputation system can help solve the question of whether potential fees are worth the risk of forwarding payments to downstreams with low reputation. If their reputation is high, then a node will forward the payment, but if it's low and the HTLC value is too high, they will fail it. A node's reputation score for each peer helps keep all links in the network high quality and quickly disconnect off delaying nodes if the incentives are right. Reputation loss occurs only if the reply (`update_htlc_fail` or `update_htlc_success`) is delayed.
Updated on: 2023-05-25T00:45:26.283447+00:00