Watchtowers monitor Lightning Network channels for fraudulent closes where one party broadcasts an outdated channel state.
Questions tagged [watchtower]
13 questions
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Does eltoo require trusting watchtowers not to close channels?
The way Lightning Network works now, watchtowers maintain a list of penalty transactions to broadcast in case one party attempts to close a channel with an outdated channel state. The watchtower cannot on its own initiate the closing of a…
Vojtěch Strnad
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How do "trustless third-party watchers" work in Lightning Network?
The main point with LN is the need to monitor the blockchain. The reason for this is to detect if the counterparty misbehaves by publishing an old channel state to the blockchain. For a node running on a server, that is not a big problem since it is…
Luca Matteis
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What is the November 2022 bug in LND, what caused it and what would prevent a similar bug in future?
LND users are being asked as of November 2022 (as they were in October 2022) to urgently update their Lightning node software due to a bug in LND/btcd (alternative Bitcoin implementation in Go). What is the bug and what caused it? Who will it impact…
Michael Folkson
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What are some of the pitfalls and limitations of Bitcoin Lightning Network Watchtowers?
From my general understanding watchtowers, just watches the bitcoin lightning channels and makes sure no one is submitting a old payment channel transactions. What are some of the pitfalls and limitations of these watchtowers?
Patoshi パトシ
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What are Bitcoin Lightning Watchtowers exactly doing for the network and users?
I'm still learning about Bitcoin lightning and learned about watchtowers. What are they doing exactly for the network and its users?
Patoshi パトシ
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Is eltoo more memory efficient for watchtowers?
I vaguely remember a paper which stated that in their current implementation, lightning watchtowers require a lot of memory because they need to store information about (a penalty TX for) every balance change that happens on a channel they watch.…
Hare Brained Brian
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Network of 3rd-parties to monitor for Lightning Network theft transactions
Whenever the balance of a Lightning channel is updated, the counterparties must revoke the Commitment Transaction reflecting the channel's earlier balance, and sign a new Commitment Transaction with the new balance. If the counterparty attempts to…
Nimrand
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What is the current status of watchtower implementations in October 2022? Are they mature, widely in use?
One way of protecting yourself against losing money as a result of bugs and crashes in your Lightning node implementation software (e.g. the recent LND bug) is to run a watchtower yourself or employ an external watchtower. A watchtower can broadcast…
Michael Folkson
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What is the October 2022 bug in LND, what caused it and what would prevent a similar bug in future?
LND users are being asked as of October 2022 to urgently update their Lightning node software due to a bug in LND/btcd (alternative Bitcoin implementation in Go). What is the bug and what caused it? Who will it impact and will they potentially lose…
Michael Folkson
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What if all nodes on the lightning network were watchtowers by default?
What would be the costs for forcing every node on the lightning network to provide watchtower services by default so that the burden is shared by other users maintaining the default and with consideration for relative value across the second-layer…
Auriol
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Why is the privacy for using watch tower services increased with unpredictable commitment tx ids?
In the open channel message in BOLT 02 the following statement is written about the various basepoints.
The various _basepoint fields are used to derive unique keys as described in BOLT #3 for each commitment transaction. Varying these keys…
Rene Pickhardt
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Watchtower limitations and possible solutions so far in 2021-Nov?
Having read a bit more about the Lightning network. The capacity of the lightning network seems to ride on the "trust" of the counterparty you are opening a channel with along with the additional layer of trusting a watchtower to keep your funds…
Patoshi パトシ
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How much do Bitcoin Lightning Network Watchtowers make in fees to justify their 24/7 server uptime costs?
I understand that a watchtower service for the Bitcoin lightning network requires fees to do their job. How much is this fee to justify a 24/7 server uptime cost? Can one use the bitcoin lightning network without watchtowers to avoid this fee?
Patoshi パトシ
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