Author: ZmnSCPxj 2020-10-07 17:33:38
Published on: 2020-10-07T17:33:38+00:00
ZmnSCPxj has proposed an alternative to upfront payments in the Lightning Network called "incremental routing". The route of pending HTLCs doubles as an encrypted bidirectional tunnel where a user can send additional messages to that node. One of the messages can be 'please send out an HTLC to this peer of yours', bumping up the value of the HTLC and the CLTV delta. If there's a problem on the next hop, the sending node can give an alternative next hop until it reaches the destination. Incremental routing has benefits like easier time management of locked-up money but requires more communication rounds and symmetric cryptographic operations. Intermediate nodes can guess the distance from the source by measuring timing of a previous response to the next message from the payer.
Updated on: 2023-06-03T02:23:28.344420+00:00