[Lightning-dev] channel rebalancing support kind of exists already?

Aleksej aleksej at spidermail.tk
Tue Feb 6 17:19:14 UTC 2018


Hi
Yeah, you can always refund your channels thorugh other channels.
I don't think however that it would be usually necessary to balance
funds on the channel to be equal.
I always assumed that a typical user would have perhaps one channel
where he receives funds (employer) and others for spending (stores).
In order to refund them, he would simply spend funds thorugh channels
that are more unbalanced in direction where the user is "owned" coins.
And of course, the other way around, employer would be able to pay the
employee throgh channels he has with stores where he owns the money.
In conclusion, I don't think rebalnacing would need to be a sperate
transaction.
This could simply be done automatically when the user sends or receives
his usual transactions.
I am not sure about all the diffuclties regarding routing in LN.
Hopefully all of this can be done safely, reliably and quickly.
Best regards,
Aleksej
On Tue, 2018-02-06 at 18:53 +0200, Robert Olsson wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Let's say Bob opens a channel to Alice for 2BTC
> Carol then opens a channel to Bob for 2BTC.
> Alice and Carol are already connected to Others (and/or eachother
> even)
> The network and channel balances will look like this:
> 
> Alice 0--2 Bob 0--2 Carol
>   |                   |
>   +----- OTHERS ------+ 
> 
> Bob for some reason wants the channels to be balanced, so he has some
> better redundancy and it looks better.
> 
> So hypothetically Bob solves this by paying himself an invoice of
> 1BTC and making sure the route goes out thru Alice and comes back via
> Carol. Bob pays fees so he isn't ashamed if it disturbs the other
> balances in the network. Should he care?
>  
> Alice 1--1 Bob 1--1 Carol
>   |                   |
>   +----- OTHERS ------+ 
> 
> Now Bob has two nice balanced channels, meaning he has better
> connectivity in both directions.
> 
> Doesn't the protocol already support that kind of solutions, and all
> we need is a function in the CLI allowing Bob to pay to himself, and
> specify which two channels he would like to balance?
> 
> Maybe even make it automatically balance.
> 
> Is this a good idea of something to support, and/or Is there a risk
> the entire network will start doing this and it will start
> oscillating?
> 
> Best regards
> Robert Olsson
> 
> 
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