What is Nostr?
nick / Nick Slaney
npub18ps…v73m
2023-04-04 22:09:29
in reply to nevent1q…l33j

nick on Nostr: I worry that this is an understated risk in lightning for routing nodes. I’m not ...

I worry that this is an understated risk in lightning for routing nodes. I’m not even sure if lnd exposes this as an option at channel open.

Shorter timeouts on HTLCs means that if you route an htlc that is a large % of a channel, you could be putting that amount at risk.

If you go down while an HTLC you are forwarding is pending, you could end up missing the preimage. If you don’t come back in time, you could find yourself in a situation where your outbound HTLC has been claimed by one peer via preimage and your inbound htlc has been claimed by the other via the CLTV timeout.

In effect, you would have unintentionally donated your money for the benefit of the original payment sender :)

It’s a really terrible outcome that folks have come to expect to be able to send their full channel balance as a single HTLC for channels between routing nodes. Not only should you never commit your full balance in a single HTLC for DoS reasons but you really, really, really need to set your max-in-flight well under 50% for network-wide privacy!
Author Public Key
npub18psflzah8gjq54t4zyjhezghzg9pvpjhm894f4yex9wpl79t3uxq03v73m