Some LN Nodes without any connection address? \ stacker news ~lightning

Some LN Nodes without any connection address?

1607 sats \ 4 comments \ @nullcount 27 Mar lightning

I've found a few interesting nodes.

Here's one without any Tor or IPv4/IPv6 address to connect to: https://amboss.space/node/03ecd3e00d2a32bc8e550b81f98f58956492118d5cc930c71073f6b8790d1ef0b7

Here's a node with a 127.0.0.1 (localhost) address: https://amboss.space/node/0201be5b63e839fc57c66c7ab21dcea3aa79001de132f29ade96a0c2d6680c8eaf

At time of writing, both nodes have at least one public open channel, and they appear to be online (last_update is within 24hrs).

Is this a bug? How did these updates get propagated by LN Gossip? How do their channel peers communicate? How are these nodes able to communicate with the rest of the LN without any public connection address posted?

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158 sats \ 0 replies \ @RocketNode 27 Mar

Nodes do not have to publish/announce an URI. There are a few nodes that don’t want anyone to peer with them (ie Binance).

118 sats \ 0 replies \ @endothermicdev 27 Mar

I love this gossip deep dive you're doing. Another question is "what is the role of the address in the node announcement?" Is it needed for public channels?

I would argue its role is to allow other nodes to find and connect to you for the first time. I would prefer to have a separate peer message to provide an inbound connection address privately to your peer - this would be an unsigned message, unlike the node announcement. I think this makes sense as public gossip is mostly public data about nodes and channel topology while channel activity is all private between two peers. Better for reliability, privacy, and latency if these public and private connection addresses aren't necessarily the same.

63 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 27 Mar

Very interesting indeed. I think were initiated as private nodes (not announced), but somehow they got connected to a public node opening a public channel. If in their ln config have not indicated a public IP, only that local 127.0.0.1 is what was broadcast into the gossip.

Are kind of dead nodes.

113 sats \ 0 replies \ @Hakuna 30 Mar

Binance's node doesn't look dead to me mate. It's a feature, they just go unannounced and hence have a sort of a white-list approach to only tell you their details by opening a peer-connection to you (or by getting in touch).

This way you can gatekeep 100% who opens to you, avoiding the usual way of just upping your min-capacity