[Lightning-dev] Proposal for rendez-vous routing

Rusty Russell rusty at rustcorp.com.au
Mon Nov 5 00:26:06 UTC 2018


CJP <cjp at ultimatestunts.nl> writes:
>> Looking through BOLT 4, the text assumes inherently that source
>> routing is done, and even has a shared secret between hop and
>> source.  However, it may be possible in rendezvous routing to simply
>> provide the blinding key (while hiding everything beyond the first
>> hop on the destination half of the route).
>
> Sounds like it makes sense; I need to look into it.

Here's my attempt to design a "merchant forward" service using stuff we
have today.

Alice wants to remain anonymous, even from the lightning network.  Bob's
node offers a forwarding service.  Alice pays Bob (base + percentage?),
gives a path Bob->Alice, and Bob gives Alice a short-channel-id
(BobAliceSCID) and privkey to use (BobAliceSecretKey).  Anything sent
from Bob to this short channel id and pubkey is in fact forwarded via a
new HTLC to Alice.

Alice identity BobAliceKey to create an invoice, with a route-hint to
say pubkey=Bob, short_channel_id=BobAliceSCID.  Alice can sign
that invoice, and Bob can decode the incoming payment, from which it
creates a new HTLC to pay Alice.  The payer doesn't even know this
arrangement exists: it looks exactly like Alice has a private channel
with Bob.

The minor downside: because we conflate invoice keys (Alice needs) and
onion keys (Bob needs), Bob can now issue invoices as Alice.  It's not
very useful, since Alice won't honor them, but it is an argument for
a separate invoice key in future.

Cheers,
Rusty.


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