Author: Rusty Russell 2015-09-17 21:30:17
Published on: 2015-09-17T21:30:17+00:00
In an email conversation between Rusty Russell and Pierre, the idea of a flatter design for Lightning Network was discussed. The two agreed on the advantages of having everyone running a node despite initial thoughts of having a limited number of specialized supernodes. It was suggested that users should only have a handful of channels set up with well-connected nodes to minimize blockchain transactions and locked-up bitcoins. However, Pierre raised concerns about the reliability and low latency of having many small nodes constantly appearing and disappearing. When asked about the need for application-level routing on top of the IP routing, Rusty explained that non-IP routing is still necessary because the lightning network is an overlay network of channels across multiple networks, and there's no logical grouping to make routing tables smaller than "every node". The conversation also touched on the potential issues of joining the Lightning Network, payment blocking, and communication blockages. Rusty believes that these issues can be mitigated by having every participant of the network connected to a few nodes and being clever with routing. He also mentioned that he has a method that might work for a few million nodes but won't scale infinitely.
Updated on: 2023-05-23T20:07:03.947277+00:00