The Lightning Network FAQ - page 66.

darosior

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Quote from: jackg on May 03, 2020, 01:10:21 PM

Yes, the idea with the lightning network originally was that there were essentially 2 layers of nodes... The first layer deals with how to find people and routing information and the second deals with participating in the network (sending and receiving nodes but not necessarily routing).

Yep I'm aware, but I still don't understand the relation with being "more anonymous"?.. The only part of added privacy I can think of is your direct peer not knowing the full amount you want to transfer

Quote from: jackg on May 03, 2020, 01:10:21 PM

Since acinq at least used to have the longest running nodes and were the main developers I was trying to work out if there's a way to disable funds going through any main servers (even though we can probably trust the developers of the ln, no device is completely secure and if you want to be fairly anonymous)...

Why would you not want the ACINQ node to be in your route ? If they aren't the first node they don't know you are part of it ..

In addition, regarding your sentence about trust in ln developers : you don't need to trust anyone in the network with your funds. Just the open source software you are running.

Wind_FURY

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Quote from: DaveF on May 03, 2020, 08:26:01 AM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on May 03, 2020, 05:12:50 AM

Hypothetical question. If I provide larger channel capacity in LN , but with moderately higher fees required, would you choose to pay my fee to complete payment "in a single shot"? Asking for a friend.

I am with darosior on this. Not going to pay higher fees for anything I can avoid.

With that being said, I am running two of my own lightning nodes so I may not be the best person to ask. Which, is my next point. Asking people in this thread may not be the best place to ask, because you are going to get the answer from a bunch of people who may or may not run their own node, but who do understand or are trying to understand the LN and will probably not want to pay more fees for very little benefit, and you would loose a bit of privacy (what jackg said).

Stay safe.

-Dave

For personal use, I believe you're right. For merchants to handle high-volume of transactions, I believe high-liquidity/higher-fee channels will be the right choice. They shouldn't let the customer wait.

jackg

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https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory

Quote from: darosior on May 03, 2020, 12:55:16 PM

Quote from: jackg on May 03, 2020, 07:58:48 AM

is there a way to disable it if you wanted to be more anonymous?

To disable what ? MPP ? To be more anonymous how ?

Yes, the idea with the lightning network originally was that there were essentially 2 layers of nodes... The first layer deals with how to find people and routing information and the second deals with participating in the network (sending and receiving nodes but not necessarily routing).

Since acinq at least used to have the longest running nodes and were the main developers I was trying to work out if there's a way to disable funds going through any main servers (even though we can probably trust the developers of the ln, no device is completely secure and if you want to be fairly anonymous)...

darosior

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Quote from: jackg on May 03, 2020, 07:58:48 AM

is there a way to disable it if you wanted to be more anonymous?

To disable what ? MPP ? To be more anonymous how ?

DaveF

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on May 03, 2020, 05:12:50 AM

Hypothetical question. If I provide larger channel capacity in LN , but with moderately higher fees required, would you choose to pay my fee to complete payment "in a single shot"? Asking for a friend.

I am with darosior on this. Not going to pay higher fees for anything I can avoid.

With that being said, I am running two of my own lightning nodes so I may not be the best person to ask. Which, is my next point. Asking people in this thread may not be the best place to ask, because you are going to get the answer from a bunch of people who may or may not run their own node, but who do understand or are trying to understand the LN and will probably not want to pay more fees for very little benefit, and you would loose a bit of privacy (what jackg said).

Stay safe.

-Dave

jackg

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https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory

There's the other question that you could be paying a higher fee to be deanonymised... One of the perks of the ln goes if everyone cna use a certain node to route through.

I know this was their plan and it takes a while for my phone to load all the routes even at the moment (to sync I mean) but is there a way to disable it if you wanted to be more anonymous?

darosior

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on May 03, 2020, 05:12:50 AM

Hypothetical question. If I provide larger channel capacity in LN , but with moderately higher fees required, would you choose to pay my fee to complete payment "in a single shot"? Asking for a friend.

I think MPP will still only be used as a fallback for some time, so yes (your route will be tried first). However at some point if the sum of the base fee of the MPP routes is cheaper... No.

Wind_FURY

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Quote from: Rath_ on May 01, 2020, 06:52:32 PM

Yesterday, LND released lnd v0.10-beta. Aside from many small improvements, there are two notable features. Sending up to 0.167 BTC via multiple paths (multipart payments) is now possible. Eclair also has a full MPP support while c-lightning supports only receiving so as long as most nodes are up-to-date, the payments should go through without any problems. The other feature worth mentioning is support for Partially-Signed Bitcoin Transaction (PSBT). It is now possible to fund multiple channels using a single transaction directly from one's wallet if it supports PSBT.

Hypothetical question. If I provide larger channel capacity in LN , but with moderately higher fees required, would you choose to pay my fee to complete payment "in a single shot"? Asking for a friend.

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/releases/tag/v0.10.0-beta

Quote

The splitting algorithm that is employed is a variation of "divide and conquer". First, lnd will try to complete the payment in a single shot. If that is not possible - because channel capacities aren't sufficient or other constraints like the fee limit are hit - an attempt is made for half the payment amount. After that htlc has been launched, a second path is searched for to pay the remaining amount (the other half). If further failures happen, amounts are repeatedly split until a minimum amount limit is reached or the payment succeeds.

We opted for this relatively simple strategy to begin with. It is expected to address various basic liquidity problems that arose in the past, but it is unlikely to always execute payments in a way that is optimal. The field of multi-path planning is still mostly uncharted and contains lots of challenges. Therefore we hope to collect valuable feedback with this release and use that to drive further development.

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Yesterday, LND released lnd v0.10-beta. Aside from many small improvements, there are two notable features. Sending up to 0.167 BTC via multiple paths (multipart payments) is now possible. Eclair also has a full MPP support while c-lightning supports only receiving so as long as most nodes are up-to-date, the payments should go through without any problems. The other feature worth mentioning is support for Partially-Signed Bitcoin Transaction (PSBT). It is now possible to fund multiple channels using a single transaction directly from one's wallet if it supports PSBT.

darosior

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Quote from: LoyceV on April 29, 2020, 12:12:59 PM

Quote from: darosior on April 29, 2020, 07:36:55 AM

Thus, it might seem a bad idea to allow unenforceable amounts

We have the same in euros: most shops reject 1 and 2 cent coins, and yet most prices end on 9 cents.

This is not comparable at all, I think. Shops reject 1 and 2 cents coins because they can't automagically get a 10$ ticket out of a thousand of them. On LN they can.
And this was not about payments but about forwarding fees. Even if you can see an utility for payments too (pay-per-call on an API for example).

Quote from: LoyceV on April 29, 2020, 12:12:59 PM

Entire cents, currently worty far more than 100 satoshi, are lost due to rounding. And nobody cares Cheesy

Why would anyone care about possibly losing a fraction of a satoshi due to rounding?

Again, not comparable : my point that these tiny amounts may become valuable in a fraction of seconds. That is again true for a forwarding node or a payee for an autonomous service.

Quote from: Wind_FURY on April 30, 2020, 12:36:44 AM

OR for example, the possbility of a more than 6 digit per Bitcoin world. Instead of breaking Bitcoin's social contract by adding more decimal places onchain, do it in L2. Cool

Absolutely, I think the need for those tiny amounts is already present today, and it might be even more with a price increase !

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Quote from: darosior on April 29, 2020, 07:36:55 AM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on April 29, 2020, 06:41:58 AM

OK, is it as simple as changing the most basic unit of account from sats to millisats? How does that "transformation" happen in Lightning. Or is it simply because any rule can be made up in L2 networks?

Yes, and making it unenforceable onchain (as dust outputs once again!). Some are critic regarding that choice.

However, accounting for such small amounts are really handy : for example for the fees. Fees are denominated in msat and most are below the thousand msat, without such an accounting system how could fees that low (or that precise !) be enforced ? Paying one whole sat but once each X forwarded payments ? That's not viable.

OR for example, the possbility of a more than 6 digit per Bitcoin world. Instead of breaking Bitcoin's social contract by adding more decimal places onchain, do it in L2. Cool

LoyceV

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Quote from: darosior on April 29, 2020, 07:36:55 AM

Thus, it might seem a bad idea to allow unenforceable amounts

We have the same in euros: most shops reject 1 and 2 cent coins, and yet most prices end on 9 cents. Entire cents, currently worty far more than 100 satoshi, are lost due to rounding. And nobody cares Cheesy

Why would anyone care about possibly losing a fraction of a satoshi due to rounding?

darosior

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on April 29, 2020, 06:41:58 AM

OK, is it as simple as changing the most basic unit of account from sats to millisats? How does that "transformation" happen in Lightning. Or is it simply because any rule can be made up in L2 networks?

Yes, and making it unenforceable onchain (as dust outputs once again!). Some are critic regarding that choice.

However, accounting for such small amounts are really handy : for example for the fees. Fees are denominated in msat and most are below the thousand msat, without such an accounting system how could fees that low (or that precise !) be enforced ? Paying one whole sat but once each X forwarded payments ? That's not viable.

Secondly, we need to bear in mind that channels may be (some are already) used at a high frequency : 10 forwarded payments paying 100msat each can be enforced directly at the creation of the next commitment transactions (at least in the fees), and they don't originate from the same payer.

Thus, it might seem a bad idea to allow unenforceable amounts while giving the system a quick look but things are more complex and there are also benefits

DaveF

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on April 29, 2020, 06:41:58 AM

OK, is it as simple as changing the most basic unit of account from sats to millisats? How does that "transformation" happen in Lightning. Or is it simply because any rule can be made up in L2 networks?

Any rule that the L2 agrees upon.

Automotive version:

Think of it as having a car that is street legal that you can also drive on the track.
While driving it to the racetrack (L2 network) you have to obey all the local traffic rules (main chain), once you are the track there are a different set of rules. Still the same car (BTC) however, once you leave the track for the drive home, the local traffic rules apply again.

Probably nor 100% technically accurate but *I* feel it is a good example. Others will disagree.

-Dave

Wind_FURY

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Quote from: darosior on April 29, 2020, 05:01:28 AM

Quote from: Wind_FURY on April 29, 2020, 04:05:53 AM

I remember franky1 going on a disinformation rampage about "Bitcoins in Lightning are IOUs because milli-sats", but I never researched how Lightning actually make milli-sats possible. Can anyone ELI5?

Yes, I'm ashamed.

They are accounted until it reaches 1sat (and rounded down to sat for transactions), at which point they are added to the fees. Once the amount of sats is enough to create an output (above the dust limit [1]), an HTLC output is created instead of adding the amount to the fees.

[1] The dust limit here isn't the "real" one (which can vary), it's a fixed limit agreed at channel creation by the peers.

OK, is it as simple as changing the most basic unit of account from sats to millisats? How does that "transformation" happen in Lightning. Or is it simply because any rule can be made up in L2 networks?

darosior

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Quote from: Wind_FURY on April 29, 2020, 04:05:53 AM

I remember franky1 going on a disinformation rampage about "Bitcoins in Lightning are IOUs because milli-sats", but I never researched how Lightning actually make milli-sats possible. Can anyone ELI5?

Yes, I'm ashamed.

They are accounted until it reaches 1sat (and rounded down to sat for transactions), at which point they are added to the fees. Once the amount of sats is enough to create an output (above the dust limit [1]), an HTLC output is created instead of adding the amount to the fees.

[1] The dust limit here isn't the "real" one (which can vary), it's a fixed limit agreed at channel creation by the peers.

Wind_FURY

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I remember franky1 going on a disinformation rampage about "Bitcoins in Lightning are IOUs because milli-sats", but I never researched how Lightning actually make milli-sats possible. Can anyone ELI5?

Yes, I'm ashamed.

LoyceV

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Quote from: PrimeNumber7 on April 27, 2020, 11:47:40 AM

If Alice spends her balance down to a small number of sats, she could delay the closing of the channel even though she is basically owed nothing.

If that's the reason not to use the entire channel balance, you can just keep a higher channel reserve. I've had my Eclair channels in such a state: emptying them as far as possible when fees were low meant there was nothing to gain (for me) anymore by closing the channel. That gave me inbound capacity without having "invested" much.

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Quote from: LoyceV on April 27, 2020, 03:49:12 AM

Quote from: PrimeNumber7 on April 26, 2020, 11:25:10 PM

I am not sure if this is currently implemented, but the parties to a LN channel could agree that neither side will agree to a transaction that causes one side's balance to fall below a threshold. The parties could agree that this threshold changes periodically.

It's probably possible to implement, but why would you do that? If you don't want to use your full channel balance, you could just deposit less.

If you really don't want to use the entire channel capacity, I don't think you need the other party for it: if you're the one who opened the channel, you can just decide on your own not to use the full capacity. If you're the receiving party, it's not in your interest to refuse payments even though the channel has enough capacity.
If it's about balancing the channel, there are other ways to do this.

If Alice and Bob have an open channel, and for simplicity sake, say the average TX fee necessary to close a channel is 0.001 btc.

If Alice has a balance of 0.0015 and spends 0.006, it would not make sense for Bob to broadcast the penalty transaction because the transaction fee would be more than the additional amount he will receive. If Alice spends her balance down to a small number of sats, she could delay the closing of the channel even though she is basically owed nothing.

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Quote from: PrimeNumber7 on April 26, 2020, 11:25:10 PM

Also if bob has three open LN channels, if he has a receiving capacity of 1 BTC on channel A, someone trying to send coin via channel A will not necessarily know what other channels he has open, and a transaction getting declined would only reflect the balance on the channel with the smaller sending capacity. Or the computer behind one of the other channels might be down temporarily.

I was referring to something else, to ensure someone does not find out my balance within a certain channel. Guess I wrote wrong, sorry.

Let's say I open a payment channel with godaddy (first thing that came to mind)
I deposit 0.1BTC and godaddy 0BTC.
Now you (for example) can connect to my payment channel (they are public and also total balance is too) and you try to send godaddy bogus payment of 0.05BTC. You get invalid hash (because you can do that when off-chain). That means I have at least 0.05BTC. Then try 0.07-8-9... and finnaly you find out (with 99% certainty) that my balance is 0.1BTC

It is about one's balance in each channel, true, I could have 100 open channels at a given time... but some might not appreciate that info to be that accessible

Quote from: PrimeNumber7 on April 26, 2020, 11:25:10 PM

What the authors in the paper also describe is also expensive. To make 50k 'hops' in the LN network, it would cost ~$3-4 assuming 1 sat/hop, this is not much money, but in order to meaningful information, you would need to determine the balance of LN channels many times per day.

From what I understood you can also use "made-up"/bogus transaction hashes and you base the next move on the error receives (as I said above). So could also be free

Quote from: DaveF on April 27, 2020, 07:11:47 AM

Unless I am missing something, which is possible, when network utilization is low like it is now it will work. Once it gets busy it's going to be useless since if 100s or 1000s of transactions are happening per minute by the time you get the data and parse the data the data might have changed.

Now that channels can stay unused for weeks at a time it's a different story.

The idea was to identify someone`s "stake" in a channel.
Routing a payment through node A to node B in order to find out node A's balance.

Topic: The Lightning Network FAQ - page 66. (Read 33852 times)