The more I think about this, it sounds like it’s down a similar path as what Lightning Labs is doing with autopilot in Lightning Terminal, but more distributed, which is great.

Plus Liquid, which tbh sounds like an arbitrary addon. Might as well also support other out of band payments between nodes with virtual channels.

031ef7d322

Yep, that's the idea. You don't give them any special powers, it's just a mutual agreement that is automated. Anyone is free to leave the pool at any time. The channels don't have to get closed either, they just become gateway channels from the perspective of the pool.

For peer swap or channel openings, for example, the node operator will get a notification and some reasonable time frame to complete it. But the moderator can't force the node to do anything.


Ok, so when you say the moderator initiates rebalances and sets fees, what you mean is they make recommendations for those. It’s up to the node to cooperate, and if they’re too unreliable they get removed (from the recommendation network, and possibly have channels closed). Is that accurate?

Perhaps it would be some kind of very limited scope macaroon. I don't know if you could rate limit queries so they can't make more than 1 query per hour.

There is no trust needed for the third party since the moderator only broadcasts "here's my recommendation" and has no power to make any direct changes. The nodes would have to voluntarily make any changes.

Or maybe I don't understand what is being entrusted when you say trusted third party.

You're certainly not trusting access to any funds, or allowing access to any of the server/hardware.

0207a984de

lightning

Lightning Network Moderated Node Pool

So the moderator has a macaroon (or equivalent) for each member node?

Seems like it has a lot of overlap with LSPs, but also depends on a trusted third party.