lightning-dev
SegWit and LN
Posted on: January 2, 2018 13:53 UTC
The question being asked is regarding the necessity of SegWit for LN.
The user is trying to understand why SegWit is important in creating and updating unconfirmed commitment transactions. They are questioning if they are missing something as they don't see the relevance of SegWit in this scenario.To answer the question, SegWit is important for Lightning Network (LN) because it helps to increase the block size limit without a hard fork. This allows more transactions to be processed within each block and reduces the transaction fees. In terms of LN, SegWit is required for the funding transaction to be confirmed. Once confirmed, unconfirmed commitment transactions can then be safely created and updated. This is because SegWit enables the use of transaction malleability fixes such as the Witness ID (WID), which prevents an attacker from changing the transaction ID of a payment channel opening transaction.Therefore, SegWit is an essential component for the proper functioning of LN. It helps to increase the block size limit, reduce transaction fees, and prevent transaction malleability attacks.