Author: Anthony Towns 2015-10-16 23:01:42
Published on: 2015-10-16T23:01:42+00:00
The Lightning Network is a payment protocol that seeks to address the scalability limitations of Bitcoin. However, there are concerns about its security, especially with fake networks. To avoid this problem, users can perform a test to ensure connectivity. The test involves paying a small amount (1 satoshi) to a few merchants, setting the R value as the SHA256 of the decrypted onion message. If the payment goes through and reaches the intended recipients, the network is considered genuine. This process can be repeated daily for a year at minimal cost. However, it requires setting up a channel and locking some money into it until it activates, plus an OP_CSV delay if the test fails. To avoid sybil-esque attacks, this approach would allow people to trustlessly avoid fake lightning networks without extra infrastructure. It is possible to pay friends on the network instead of merchants to verify connectivity, and forwarding a transaction costs about 2.4e-8 dollars or 0.0091 satoshi. Conveniently, lightning balances are denominated in millisatoshi, so users need only increase their balance by 9 or 10 to confirm successful forwarding.
Updated on: 2023-05-18T15:35:29.395158+00:00