Author: João Valente 2020-11-30 17:13:20
Published on: 2020-11-30T17:13:20+00:00
The author of an academic paper on routing in the Lightning Network received feedback from a reviewer suggesting that nodes could cheat and share biased or invalid information to attract more payments and collect more fees, or put honest routing nodes out of business. The author concluded that changing the way nodes choose the next best hop for a certain destination could diminish this incentive. Currently, the "best next hop" is defined as the hop with the lowest fee from the group of next hops for that destination where the maximum volume allowed is bigger than the payment's volume. The author proposed changing it to a random hop taken from the group of next hops for that destination where the maximum volume allowed is higher than the payment's volume. This would not allow attacking nodes to set themselves as first in line to be chosen as next hop. The paper also discusses how dishonest nodes could fake competing routes within the capacity range provided by honest nodes, stealing routing paths that would otherwise belong to them. The cheating nodes wouldn't be putting honest nodes out of business nor increasing the number of payments that go through them, but they could still steal routing paths.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T03:14:02.602075+00:00