What Happened to LN Hosted Channels?
940 sats \ 5 comments \ @OT 29 Nov 2023 bitcoin
What happened to hosted channels? I'm interested to know more about why there seems to be so much more attention on Ecash.
Fiatjaf & Anton K have both been very critical of lightning recently. They both had worked on hosted channels in SBW & OBW and it seems both have pretty much given up on lighting.
Doing my own research I found this 2 year old podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6YWywUzx9rpJVVJ61hvpN8?si=2qjPevbhTRmWvAvn9yh_oQ comparing the two but it seems Ecash & Fedimint (soon) have stolen all the interest in this semi custodial solution.
It seems these solutions have a lot in common. Both can:
  • open a wallet without having any bitcoin to start with.
  • depend on a back end LSP
  • are relatively private
  • be rugged by their host/issuer/federation
The main differences I've found are:
  • that one has an advantage in that it holds the bearer asset (hosted channels).
  • one can hold invoices for much longer periods (Ecash/Fedimint).
  • perhaps privacy might also favor Ecash.
What else am I missing here? Is there another reason why these 2 well respected devs have given up on Lightning & Hosted Channels?
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142 sats \ 0 replies \ @TonyGiorgio 29 Nov 2023
Much more private for one, the other is multisig federation is way better than trusting one individual.
It's also way more versatile in various applications that deal with blinded signatures, and has a growing community of developers that work on it. As you noted, hosted channels are not actively being worked on.
Better tech, better privacy, less trusted, growing community, active development.
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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @Gar 29 Nov 2023
Anyone have another link to the podcast? No spotify over here.
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @OT OP 29 Nov 2023
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Krv 7 Dec 2023
Perhaps I due to my lack of knowledge, but to me hosted channels seem like a great tool. Users can fund their wallets without an on-chain fee, which could be prohibitively expensive at times. It's not a solid as on-chain security, but there are ways to make the risks very low.
One use case: there's a way to use this mechanism to connect a Lightning network node on Liquid with other channels on the main chain. If I were to guess, i imagine all these tools can be complementary to each other. Perhaps if fees go really crazy in the future, there will be more incentive for developing these things.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT OP 7 Dec 2023
I like them too. It's a shame that SBW & OBW have stopped working on it. I think if they kept at it for a few more years it would have gotten more adoption, especially now we're in a high fee environment.
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