lightning-dev

Combined summary - HTLC output aggregation as a mitigation for tx recycling, jamming, and on-chain efficiency (covenants)

Combined summary - HTLC output aggregation as a mitigation for tx recycling, jamming, and on-chain efficiency (covenants)

The exchange between Antoine and Johan delves into the complexities of Bitcoin's Lightning Network and proposed improvements to ensure its security and scalability.

Antoine introduces concerns regarding a new covenant mechanism designed for aggregating Hashed Timelock Contracts (HTLCs) and the potential vulnerabilities it could introduce, such as replacement cycling attacks where a malicious actor could exploit partial preimage reveals to perform an off-chain double-spend attack. To address this, Antoine suggests a sliding delay for HTLC timelocks based on block feerate and highlights additional challenges with witness size in taproot-enabled environments.

Antoine also responds to a request for concrete examples about exploiting vulnerabilities related to broadcasting a revoked state within Eltoo protocol proposals. This communication underscores the importance of managing the complexity that comes with an exponential increase in combinations efficiently, which is pivotal for maintaining robust systems like Eltoo.

Furthermore, Antoine discusses the technical aspects of the Lightning Network, focusing on transaction recycling attacks enabled by changes to anchor channel types. These changes allow the addition of inputs to increase fees without invalidating signatures, a vulnerability not present in legacy channels. Antoine proposes using covenants to manage aggregated HTLC claims and segregate them into separate outputs to counteract this issue. He explores the implications of long-term payment throughput limits posed by protocol restrictions and suggests using sliding windows to manage claim periods for HTLCs, requiring off-chain consensus on feerate thresholds. The potential of Point Time-Locked Contracts (PTLCs) to maintain a near-constant size for offered HTLCs is also considered.

Finally, Antoine contemplates how covenant mechanisms could be applied to payment pools' withdrawal phases, involving many participants and non-competing transactions. He addresses the complexity of activating multiple covenants in Bitcoin's conservative system and the unresolved game-theory implications of 'malicious' Layer 2 contracts. Antoine raises questions regarding advanced cryptosystems and their ability to scale Lightning Network payment throughput by decoupling off-chain payments from on-chain witness size requirements, ensuring security is not compromised. This discussion reflects ongoing efforts to balance innovation and security in cryptocurrency transaction systems.

For more technical specifics and debate, readers are encouraged to refer to the detailed thread on the Linux Foundation mailing list provided in the email: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-December/022191.html.

Discussion History

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October 26, 2023 16:52 UTC
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