Author: Olaoluwa Osuntokun 2018-09-21 23:16:44
Published on: 2018-09-21T23:16:44+00:00
The Lightning Network developers are considering adding an 'r' field to the 'invoice' feature, which will automatically append a field for a channel that has sufficient incoming capacity for the amount. While this is currently not what 'r' was intended for, it could be a useful hint for payment routing and establishing an initial channel. However, Christian Decker warned that this could leak the current channel capacity to the user, and depending on how fine-grained the amount in the invoice is and how the user can control it, they could do a binary search over capacities and very reliably tell how much capacity you have and track it over time. Johan Torås Halseth suggested including all incoming channels with sufficient capacity up to a limit. Meanwhile, Laolu explained that nodes must randomly reject packets to protect the instantaneous available bandwidth in their channels. If a "prober" learns that the node has accepted a packet, then they know that the node has at least that amount as available bandwidth. Laolu also mentioned that the lack of the "unadd" feature in the protocol means that nodes must accept the HTLC before they can cancel it, but this is mitigated by the max_htlc value in the channel update.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T08:41:49.217209+00:00