Latency and Privacy in Lightning

The discussion revolves around enhancing privacy within the Lightning Network, particularly focusing on implementing recommendations for handling single-HTLC (Hashed Time-Locked Contracts) payments with a view to improving privacy measures. A proposal has been made and is now accessible through a pull request at GitHub, aiming to integrate these privacy-enhancing recommendations into the BOLTs (Basis of Lightning Technology standards). The conversation highlights a need for timing-based scoring mechanisms to accommodate MPP (Multi-Path Payments) timeout considerations, which would inherently include handling for single-HTLC payments.

A point of clarification was sought regarding BOLT 12, specifically about the necessity for the introduction point to eliminate attribution data. This query stems from an understanding that attributable failures, when used in conjunction with blinded paths, are designed to prevent the sender from gaining insights about the path's characteristics, such as its length or the timing of individual hops. It's suggested that this mechanism ensures the sender perceives the blinded path as a singular, undivided hop, thus preserving the privacy of the route. There is an indication that perhaps these aspects should be more clearly articulated in an existing pull request, found at GitHub, to ensure there's no ambiguity about how privacy is maintained through the process. This part of the dialogue underscores the importance of clarity and precision in documenting how privacy features function within the Lightning Network's protocols, especially concerning blinded paths and the handling of payment failures in a way that safeguards users' data.