[Lightning-dev] Why should funders always pay on-chain fees?

[Antoine Riard]

Hello Bastien,

I'm all in for a model where channel transactions are pre-signed with a
reasonable minimal relay fee and the adjustment is done by the closer. The
channel initiator shouldn't have to pay for channel-closing as it's somehow
a liquidity allocation decision ("My balance could be better allocated
elsewhere than in this channel").

That said, a channel closing might be triggered due to a security
mechanism, like a HTLC to timeout onchain. Thus a malicious counterparty
can easily loop a HTLC forwarding on an honest peer. Then not cancel it
on-time to force the honest counterparty to pay onchain fees to avoid a
offered HTLC not being claimed back on time.

AFAICT, this issue is not solved by anchor outputs. A way to decentivize
this kind of behavior from a malicious counterparty is an upfront payment
where the upholding HTLC fee * HTLC block-buffer-before-onchain is higher
than the cost of going onchain. It should cost higher for the counterparty
to withhold a HTLC than paying onchain-fees to close the channel.

Or can you think about another mitigation for the issue raised above ?

Antoine

Le lun. 5 oct. 2020 à 09:13, Bastien TEINTURIER via Lightning-dev <
lightning-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> a écrit :

> Good morning list,
>
> It seems to me that the "funder pays all the commit tx fees" rule exists
> solely for simplicity
> (which was totally reasonable). I haven't been able to find much
> discussion about this decision
> on the mailing list nor in the spec commits.
>
> At first glance, it's true that at the beginning of the channel lifetime,
> the funder should be
> responsible for the fee (it's his decision to open a channel after all).
> But as time goes by and
> both peers earn value from this channel, this rule becomes questionable.
> We've discovered since
> then that there is some risk associated with having pending HTLCs
> (flood-and-loot type of attacks,
> pinning, channel jamming, etc).
>
> I think that *in some cases*, fundees should be paying a portion of the
> commit-tx on-chain fees,
> otherwise we may end up with a web-of-trust network where channels would
> only exist between peers
> that trust each other, which is quite limiting (I'm hoping we can do
> better).
>
> Routing nodes may be at risk when they *receive* HTLCs. All the attacks
> that steal funds come from
> the fact that a routing node has paid downstream but cannot claim the
> upstream HTLCs (correct me
> if that's incorrect). Thus I'd like nodes to pay for the on-chain fees of
> the HTLCs they offer
> while they're pending in the commit-tx, regardless of whether they're
> funder or fundee.
>
> The simplest way to do this would be to deduce the HTLC cost (172 *
> feerate) from the offerer's
> main output (instead of the funder's main output, while keeping the base
> commit tx weight paid
> by the funder).
>
> A more extreme proposal would be to tie the *total* commit-tx fee to the
> channel usage:
>
> * if there are no pending HTLCs, the funder pays all the fee
> * if there are pending HTLCs, each node pays a proportion of the fee
> proportional to the number of
> HTLCs they offered. If Alice offered 1 HTLC and Bob offered 3 HTLCs, Bob
> pays 75% of the
> commit-tx fee and Alice pays 25%. When the HTLCs settle, the fee is
> redistributed.
>
> This model uses the on-chain fee as collateral for usage of the channel.
> If Alice wants to forward
> HTLCs through this channel (because she has something to gain - routing
> fees), she should be taking
> on some of the associated risk, not Bob. Bob will be taking the same risk
> downstream if he chooses
> to forward.
>
> I believe it also forces the fundee to care about on-chain feerates, which
> is a healthy incentive.
> It may create a feedback loop between on-chain feerates and routing fees,
> which I believe is also
> a good long-term thing (but it's hard to predict as there may be negative
> side-effects as well).
>
> What do you all think? Is this a terrible idea? Is it okay-ish, but not
> worth the additional
> complexity? Is it an amazing idea worth a lightning nobel? Please don't
> take any of my claims
> for granted and challenge them, there may be negative side-effects I'm
> completely missing, this is
> a fragile game of incentives...
>
> Side-note: don't forget to take into account that the fees for HTLC
> transactions (second-level txs)
> are always paid by the party that broadcasts them (which makes sense). I
> still think this is not
> enough and can even be abused by fundees in some setups.
>
> Thanks,
> Bastien
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