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c-lighning's user has the option of funding a private channel with fundchannel's announce=false flag. The user, such as myself, executes fundchannel and, provided that the fee was sufficient, soon has a channel at their disposal. How does the process look on the other side?

  1. Is the request to open a private channel logged in .lightning/bitcoin/log of the other party? If so what level of logging is required? Would anybody be kind enough to paste an example from their .lightning/bitcoin/log?
  2. Is fundchannel_complete or open_channel used to complete the creation of the channel in the case that the other party agrees on creating a private channel.
  3. Can monitoring the content of .lightning/bitcoin/log be the basis of Bitcoin's censorship through the attempt to limit private channel creation to only whitelisted parties or to only those that are not blacklisted. Let's say that a law is passed that says that the operators of routing nodes have a legal obligation to store their logs and provide law enforcement with access to such logs. Opening private channels to the sanctioned entities or the non-whitelisted entities is punished. The aim of such a law would be to restrict the usage of c-lightning to custodial wallets.
  4. Do top-capacity routing nodes automate the process of agreeing on the channel opening to them? If so what are the most commonly used solutions/scripts/plugins for this purpose?
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I believe the concerns of the authors are addressed in this answer. Here is anyway, to their request, an adaptation of the answer to the application from this question.

I think you are conflating logging with the ability of taking part, or not, in the Lightning Network protocol. One can always refuse the establishment of a channel to their node, as much as they can refuse a handshake, refuse to advertize a way to reach them through the internet, or refuse to set up a computer connected to the internet in the first place.

  1. Yes it is. I'm pretty sure you'll at least have a line at info level. You'll have more details about the process at lower logging levels, of course.
  2. You are mentionning RPC commands. If your node is listening, reachable and advertized a mean to reach it then you do not need to execute any command for another node to establish a channel to it.
  3. That sounds overly convoluted, to say the least. Why would one use the logs to attempt that? In any case, you may of course be coerced into refusing the establishment of a channel to you, as much as you may be coerced to not use Lightning, or Bitcoin.
  4. Most nodes on the network enforce a minimum channel capacity.
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  • Thank you, especially your answer to 2. does make clear to me what happens on the other side. A newbie like myself runs only a non-routing node but knowing at a high level what happens in routing nodes helps to understand the censorship-resistance of lightning.
    – John Smith
    Apr 23, 2022 at 15:00

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