Author: Olaoluwa Osuntokun 2022-05-02 22:42:44
Published on: 2022-05-02T22:42:44+00:00
In a conversation about supporting tokens on Lightning, Laolu outlined his belief that it should be a separate concern from Taro and that Lightning Labs (LL) should create a separate BOLT proposal to ensure that LN standards have a genericized protocol that all LN implementations would be interested in supporting. The current Taro BIPs describe everything needed to create, validate, and interact with assets on chain, but the system needs to exist on-chain before off-chain constructs can be built on top of it. Laolu suggested creating a bLIP that fully specifies the optional series of TLV extensions needed to open channels using Taro assets and send them off-chain. This isn't something that needs to be a BOLT as it isn't intended to be 100% universal, is not critical to the operation of the core LN network, and will only initially be deployed at the edges (sender+receiver). There are a number of important upgrades/extensions being proposed on the BOLT side, and it doesn't make sense to attempt to soak up scarce review bandwidth into something like Taro that will live purely at the edges of the network. Laolu believes the other LN developers will not care much about building a generalized multi-chain/multi-asset system given all the existing work required to ensure the bitcoin backbone works properly and can scale up sufficiently. He cautioned against making the same mistakes that Interledger did, which set out to build a generalized off-chain system that abstracts over the assets/chains entirely, but years later, virtually nothing uses it. Laolu doesn't foresee Taro being something that only LL or lnd implements as all the specs so far are open, and anyone will be able to implement and adopt the protocol. He accepts PRs to his fork of the BIP repo, where he's made several modifications based on feedback from the wider community, and merged a few PRs as well. Anyone interested in contributing can find him on IRC at ##taro on Libera.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T08:36:58.422508+00:00