Author: Gleb Naumenko 2020-11-30 08:24:56
Published on: 2020-11-30T08:24:56+00:00
In a discussion between David A. Harding and Gleb Naumenko regarding a proposal about using Stake Certificates to prevent Sybil attacks in the Lightning Network, David raised concerns about allowing any UTXO for Stake Certificates, citing the possibility of a malicious user opening channels with themselves to get around this restriction. He also questioned how a Stake Certificate would prove that a UTXO was generated for LN rather than belonging to a user with a 2-of-2 multisig wallet or any key-path-spendable taproot wallet. Additionally, he expressed doubts about the cost of renting access to Stake Certificates being high enough to effectively prevent attacks.Gleb responded by acknowledging the difficulty in preventing Sybil attacks but still remaining optimistic. He suggested that there are three separate observations that make him positive about it: (1) locking funds by an attacker is still required, (2) routing nodes could start with a low credit for random valid Stake Certificates and increase it if they showed good activity or paid fees previously, and (3) more credit could be given if the channel counterparty is a known good actor. Gleb proposed that (2) and (3) could be part of the routing node's Stake Certificate acceptance policy and that payment receivers could also contribute to the Stake Certificate.Regarding David's concern about proving that a UTXO was generated for LN, Gleb stated that solving the problem of channels-with-themselves would also address this issue. He also hypothesized that restricting the amount that can be sent over Lightning would depend on honest economic activity in the network. However, the exact economics of Stake Certificates still need to be worked out, and Gleb only suggested that there is a lot of flexibility with restrictions since users are very permissive to begin with.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T03:05:13.618409+00:00