Author: Christian Decker 2016-09-10 21:36:12
Published on: 2016-09-10T21:36:12+00:00
The issue of payments being fragmented into multiple Lightning Network (LN) channels is discussed in an email exchange between Ryan Grant and Christian Decker. The former suggests that such payments are trickier than transactions spending multiple unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), as if Alice pays Bob using multiple channels to fund one payment, Bob's accounting procedures might need time-based heuristics to join separate LN transactions. In order to address this fragmentation problem, reassembly protocol support should be available, with every wallet assisting in the accounting, according to Grant. In response, Decker notes that for the implementation using the r-hash to condition the release of funds, there is nothing special about splitting a payment. As long as the recipient knows the total amount it should be receiving, it can delay the release of the secret until all funds are guaranteed. Collating the partial payments is done with the r-hash. He suggests that the private key release would also work the same way. A timeout could be added to ensure safe retrying if a partial payment gets stuck. Decker also mentions that theoretically, Lightning would support arbitrary splitting and merging along the paths of the payment. However, it is unclear whether this is still possible when adding onion routing to the mix.
Updated on: 2023-05-24T00:24:13.921000+00:00