eltoo: A Simplified update Mechanism for Lightning and Off-Chain Contracts



Summary:

Christian Decker proposed a drop-in replacement called 'eltoo' for the penalty based invalidation mechanism currently used in the Lightning specification. The locktime-based sequencing in eltoo interprets any number above 0.500 billion as a UNIX timestamp, leaving about 1 billion numbers that are interpreted as being in the past with the current timestamp of ~1.5 billion. In response to this, AJ suggested that if there were more than 1B updates to a channel, one could reset the locktime by rolling over to use new update keys. Unilateral closes will need an extra on-chain transaction to roll-over, but cooperative closes can save a transaction. Repeat the process after another 1B updates making unilateral closes more painful while keeping cooperative closes cheap.


Updated on: 2023-05-20T08:34:40.532427+00:00