Author: René Pickhardt 2018-11-23 18:07:17
Published on: 2018-11-23T18:07:17+00:00
In a recent email exchange between Cezary and Rene, the issue of unilateral force close in Lightning Network was discussed. In order to RBF (Replace-By-Fee) a commitment transaction, one would need the signature of their former channel partner. This is unlikely to happen since initiating a force close means that a mutual close could have been done right away which is cheaper and involves fewer transactions to claim all funds back. On the other hand, in order to CPFP (Child Pays For Parent), one needs to be able to spend their output which can't work due to the timelock on it. It was agreed during the last lightning developer summit that for BOLT1.1, there will be a third output in the commitment transactions which anyone can spend and which is just above the dust level. This output will have no timelock so that anyone can CPFP it. In the general case, miners of the block could collect the output as a fee. Further details about this proposal can be found on the Lightning Specification 1.1 Proposal States section of the lightning-rfc git repo.Cezary had also asked about penalty transactions and whether a node can use RBF to increase fees if they suddenly increase. It was not clear from the conversation what exact penalties were being referred to. Additionally, there was no mention of any common approach to major 3 implementations or the amount of time a node has to commit a penalty transaction.
Updated on: 2023-06-02T15:00:01.287624+00:00