Author: Anthony Towns 2018-11-16 15:31:59
Published on: 2018-11-16T15:31:59+00:00
In a discussion on the Lightning Network mailing list, Olaoluwa Osuntokun brought up the question of whether spontaneous ephemeral key switches would be possible while forwarding a payment. Andrew Poelstra replied that if this were possible, it could allow nodes to create unbounded path lengths and sidestep the 20 hop limit altogether by controlling multiple nodes in a route. He explained that one node could go 18 hops to another node, which would then trigger creation of an entirely new onion to go another 18 hops and so on, repeating as necessary to create an arbitrarily long route. However, this would be undesirable for many reasons, including the ability to further amplify null-routing attacks. Poelstra also noted that additional funds would be locked up each time you route through yourself, even if the routing is circular.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T09:02:37.423272+00:00