Hi ZmnSCPxj,
Thank you so much - Exactly what I needed! 😊 /Thomas ________________________________ From: ZmnSCPxj <zmnsc...@protonmail.com> Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2018 8:48:57 PM To: Thomas Steenholdt Cc: lightning-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Lightning-dev] High level fee mechanics Good morning Thomas, Sent with ProtonMail<https://protonmail.com> Secure Email. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On March 19, 2018 6:24 AM, Thomas Steenholdt <tsteenho...@cascadetechnologypartners.com> wrote: Hi, I've been trying to figure out the mechanics of Lightning fees, especially in the case of routed payments. Unfortunately, I haven't had any success in finding a high level description on the topic. I'm hoping somebody is able to point me in the right direction? BOLT spec https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc contains everything, but is very detailed and contains the topic in multiple places. Example: A multi-hop routed payment where A needs to pay D through B and C. Established channels are A -> B -> C -> D. What I'm looking for is a high level explanation of how fees are established, announced and ultimately claimed in a payment like this. Some of the questions that come to mind are: - Does A know ahead of time the fees on B and C, or only when trying to set up the payment? And how? Yes. Node gossip, the `channel_update` message in BOLT#7. This message, contains `fee_base_msat` and `fee_proportional_millionths`. For each channel, there are two `channel_update` messages, one from each direction. For example B<->C channel, B announces its fee for B->C transfers while C announnces its fee for C->B transfers. The A may have obsolete information about fees (e.g. B or C change their fee but their `channel_update` has not propagated to A yet). In this case, payment routing will fail, but the `channel_update` will also be sent as part of the error message returned by payment routing failure. - How does A know the amount of fees that need to be added to the payment to cover all fees? It computes it. If D is to be given a payment with value `msatoshi` then it computes first the C->D fee, which is the C->D `fee_base_msat` + (C->D `fee_proportion_millionts` * `msatoshi` / 1,000,000). Add that to `msatoshi` and that is the payment that needs to reach C, so A computes the payment from B->C similarly, except the `msatoshi` is replaced with the payment that should reach C. Then A knows how much it has to give to B. - Is D aware of the full amount including fees or is that somehow hidden? No. D is only aware of how much C offers it. - How are the fees actually claimed (who ends up paying whom)? A offer B a value that is higher than what A instruct B to forward to C. The difference is the fee. Since the highest value is at the source A, A is the one, who ends up paying the entire fee. Regards, ZmnSCPxj
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