> > > A crucial thing is that these hold fees don't need to be symmetric. A new > > node for example that opens a channel to a well-known, established > routing > > node will be forced to pay a hold fee, but won't see any traffic coming > in > > anymore if it announces a hold fee itself. Nodes will need to build a > > reputation before they're able to command hold fees. Similarly, routing > > nodes that have a strong relation may decide to not charge hold fees to > > each other at all. > > I can still establish channels to various low-reputation nodes, and then > use them to grief a high-reputation node. Not only do I get to jam up > the high-reputation channels, as a bonus I get the low-reputation nodes > to pay for it! >
So you're saying: ATTACKER --(no hold fee)--> LOW-REP --(hold fee)--> HIGH-REP If I were LOW-REP, I'd still charge an unknown node a hold fee. I would only waive the hold fee for high-reputation nodes. In that case, the attacker is still paying for the attack. I may be forced to take a small loss on the difference, but at least the larger part of the pain is felt by the attacker. The assumption is that this is sufficient enough to deter the attacker from even trying. > Operators of high reputation nodes can even make this profitable; doubly > so, since they eliminate the chance of any of those low-reputation nodes > every getting to be high reputation (and thus competing). > > AFAICT any scheme which penalizes the direct peer creates a bias against > forwarding unknown payments, thus is deanonymizing. > If you're an honest but unknown sender (initiating the payment) and you just pay the hold fee, I don't think there is a problem? The unknown forward will still be carried out by a high-rep node. Also need to keep in mind that the hold fee for quick happy flow payments is going to be tiny (for example when calculating back from a desired annual return on the staked channel capacity). And we can finally make these parasitic hodl invoice users pay for it! I guess your concern is with trying to become a routing node? If nobody knows you, you'll be forced to pay hold fees but can't attract traffic if you charge hold fees yourself. That indeed means that you'll need to be selective with whom you accept htlcs from. Put limits in place to control the expenditure. Successful forwards will earn a routing fee which could compensate for the loss in hold fees too. I think this mechanism can create interesting dynamics on the network and eventually reach an equilibrium that is still healthy in terms of decentralization and privacy. Joost
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