Author: Pedro Moreno Sanchez 2017-11-30 16:59:35
Published on: 2017-11-30T16:59:35+00:00
In a discussion between Pedro Moreno-Sanchez and Olaoluwa Osuntokun, they explore the SpeedyMurmurs routing algorithm for decentralized payment networks. Osuntokun suggests that this protocol is better suited to Ripple, as there is no need for a decentralized routing algorithm on Ripple since all the information is continuously updated in the ledger. However, Moreno-Sanchez disagrees, stating that SpeedyMurmurs can be used in different payment networks, including Lightning Network (LN), which faces similar challenges such as bootstrapping and liquidity.To achieve proper sender/receiver privacy in the Lightning Network, the proposed solution involves extending the Sphinx usage to leverage HORNET. This will reduce the size of the visible network and extend the "scale ceiling". The routing technique assumes that the routing layer and the onion layer are together by default, but it is not the only alternative. The header in Sphinx can be extended to include a per-hop payload to solve this issue, allowing the sender to precisely dictate the structure of the route, authenticate the information given to it, and verify that their policies have properly been respected.The core component of the protocol (landmarks) becomes the weakest component when extended to the Lightning Network since all nodes need to be aware of an identical set of landmarks. However, in SpeedyMurmurs, any node could be a landmark, and changes in the network topology are locally handled by the neighbors of the newly connected/disconnected node. The article discusses the downsides of landmark routing, including the requirement for well-capitalized landmarks, fragility in the network, and unbalanced channels. However, the author argues that these issues are no longer relevant in SpeedyMurmurs since paths no longer require a landmark as an intermediate user.The notion of value privacy within the scheme seems weak, and it may be hard to achieve stronger notions of value privacy given the need to route payments through the path from sender to receiver. Finally, the author suggests that there might be several routing approaches at the routing layer in the future, and we might have more than just HTLC-based payments in the Lightning Network.
Updated on: 2023-05-24T03:10:38.275689+00:00