11
votes
Accepted
What criteria should be taken into account when selecting nodes to create new lightning channels with?
I agree with Alex Bosworth and I have pointed this out about one year ago when I have filed an issue about the strategy used by the LND autopilot which basically looks for nodes with a high channel ...
- 11.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to splice a new participant into a LN channel factory?
You are correct. It is not possible to get Diana into the Channel Factory without a transaction that closes and reopens with Diana.
Splicing-in and splicing-out as explained by Decker et al. in the ...
- 567
5
votes
Accepted
Can a miner open a Lightning channel with a coinbase output?
After thinking some more about it: it would be impractical to open a channel with a coinbase output.
For one, there is the maturation period for coinbase outputs. Since coinbase outputs can only be ...
- 71.6k
4
votes
When opening a LN channel using LND, what does 'push-amt' do?
The money now belongs to the counterparty in the channel you opened. In every one of your channels, whether you opened them or they were opened to you, "local balance" refers to your spendable/...
- 41
4
votes
Accepted
To create a channel on the Lightning Network, do you have to execute an actual transaction?
Yes, a channel opening involves creating and signing 3 transactions, and broadcasting just one.
The transaction to be broadcast funds the channel, and spends to a multisig output. It is signed by ...
- 2,501
4
votes
Accepted
Lightning network: Open a channel with a peer that is not a full node?
Whether you run a full node or a lightweight node is a first layer question. It is a question about how you keep track about what happens on the blockchain. And even though this is important for you, ...
- 639
4
votes
Accepted
how are lightning network payments instant and secure at the same time?
This is a very good question and I will give a quick summary of what is happening here. The longer version can be seen on my educational video on how to create payment channels starting at 33:41 (...
- 11.7k
4
votes
Accepted
How do I set the our_to_self_delay parameter?
In Lightning the to_self_delay parameter is influenced by your peer. When a node opens a channel to yours, they advertise the minimum they are going to accept.
On Core-Lightning you can set the ...
- 6,100
3
votes
How to fund a bidirectional payment channel?
First of all we should understand the difference between capacity of a channel and its balance.
The capacity is the amount of Bitcoin provided to that channel.
The balance encodes the amount of ...
- 11.7k
3
votes
Accepted
How to fund a bidirectional payment channel?
In your scenario you would like to create a payment channel with user 1 and 2 contributing (on-chain) and receiving (off-chain, in the payment channel) the following amounts:
User 1: 2 btc
User 2: 1 ...
- 2,501
3
votes
Accepted
Limits on lightning channels and payments
Stuff like this can usually be found in the lightning-rfc aka BOLT (basics of lightning technologies) which is the formal protocol specification.
Currently channel capacity can't succeed 1/6 of a ...
- 11.7k
3
votes
Accepted
Distinguishing Lightning channels on-chain
A lightning funding transaction is a P2WSH transaction, which appears on chain as paying to some random-looking script hash, but the redeemScript which can unlock and spend the money is not revealed ...
- 3,304
3
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to watch the chain to count the number of Lightning channels?
They can only be detected when force closed and there are still pending htlcs otherwise they look like a spend from a 2-2 multisig wallet. I've been told some people try to do chain analysis and ...
- 11.7k
3
votes
Accepted
Can Initial Channel Balances be figured out from the Funding Transaction?
A funding transaction is one where some money is paid into a P2WSH transaction output, where the redeeemScript is a 2-of-2 multisig between the two participants. No other information is provided.
...
- 3,304
3
votes
Accepted
Does segregated witness allow to securely create LN channel opening transactions?
Are these two problems effectively solved with segregated witness?
One is; one is not. Specifically:
(1) The anchor transation id required for the commitment input will only be known once the ...
- 11.6k
3
votes
How much Bitcoin is needed to start a Lightning node?
When you start using lightning, the minimum bitcoin you need is the cost of opening the channel + anything else you want in the channel.
The cost of opening the channel is equal to the fees you pay ...
- 71
3
votes
How to create bidirectional channels using LND?
It is bidirectional by default. In fact LND does not even allow for single-directional channels.
What you're experiencing though, is the drawback of having created a single-funded channel. That means,...
- 639
2
votes
Accepted
Opening Lightning network channel: who is paying?
Because a fee is part of a transaction, the fee must be paid by whichever party creates the funding transaction.
Don't think of it as paying a fee to open a channel, think of it as funding a channel ...
- 8,802
2
votes
Accepted
Possible to create 5+0$ founding transaction in Ligthning Network?
The current protocol implementations only allow one party to fund a channel.
If only one party funds the channel, then the first payments can only be sent from the funding party to the counterparty. ...
- 17.9k
2
votes
Accepted
Clarification of lightning network example (putting funds into lightning)
So in the first step you make a regular transaction from your address A to our common 2-2 address C, and I make a regular transaction from my address B to our common 2-2 address C?
Yes, although in ...
- 67.4k
2
votes
How do Lightning channels interact with the blockchain?
Does opening a channel mean that a 2-to-2 multisig address (3xxxx) is created?
Yes. But it's not always a 3... address. Such addresses must be segwit, and there are two types: nested (3... address) ...
- 67.4k
2
votes
Accepted
How do I prevent lnd from participating in new channels?
You can set the option --maxpendingchannels=0 to disallow peers to open channels to your node.
- 228
2
votes
how are lightning network payments instant and secure at the same time?
The "instant" payment of Lightning is only possible for already-established Lightning channels. New channels are subject to confirmation times like any other bitcoin transaction.
When a channel is ...
- 3,304
2
votes
Accepted
Would restricting channels to a maximum make LN more decentralized?
Short answer: Such rule would not change anything people could split their funds across several nodes similar to LNBIG.
- 11.7k
2
votes
How do I set up a long-lived lightning channel for accepting bitcoin donations?
In my opinion, this is an open problem, and in particular, it is a difficult answer to questions like: "What is a good node for your use case?"
In addition, there are questions like "To ...
- 1,323
2
votes
Accepted
What happens if channel opening transactions get stuck?
If we look at BOLT 02 funding_locked we can see that we have to differentiate between two cases.
the funding party "MUST wait until the funding transaction has reached minimum_depth before ...
- 11.7k
2
votes
I opened a channel and sent 1500 msats to my counterparty. Why can I still not receive anything?
This is an effect of the channel reserve.
The channel reserve is enforced to ensure each counterparty always has something to lose, if they were to try to cheat. By default, the channel reserve is 1% ...
- 101
1
vote
How to find out if LND opening pending channels has a confirmation onchain?
lncli pendingchannels gives a pendingChannelRespnse which might have the pending_open_channels parameter. This contains an array of PendingOpenChannel objects.
According to the documentation they ...
- 11.7k
1
vote
Accepted
Lightning, multiple channels to the same node
Not all implementations support multiple channels between two nodes. That is why I would advise against that practice. Also I do not really see an advantage of having two channels. We don't have ...
- 11.7k
1
vote
What criteria should be taken into account when selecting nodes to create new lightning channels with?
Here there are some properties:
Node reliability: On-line connected 24/7.
History: when the node came online for first time.
Routing: How many channels has the node.
Capacity: How much capacity can ...
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