pull down to refresh
34 sats \ 2 replies \ @pillar 23h \ parent \ on: How to create a private Lightning Network bitcoin_beginners
Theoretically, it can be. And practically, there probably is. There are many situations where this could make sense. For instance, big exchanges that support lightning would probably benefit from having a private LN among themselves to clear transfers between each other without "amateur" nodes in between (and also potentially keeping info private).
But the reality is there is no way to be sure if this is the case. If there's a subnet that is not connected to the "main" net, taking into account all the benefits that would derive from merging into it, it's probably because the operators have a strong incentive to keep things private and away from the public. In which case, we wouldn't know they exist, right?
You can also use decoy nodes, like Bitrefill is doing.
You put a public node as a front-runner with a bunch of big fat public channels and also you can let other small nodes to connect but you can filter them out.
Then behind that front-node you have a bunch of other private nodes, connected to this public node with a big fat private channel, that can be even a 0-conf channel, so no trace on the blockchain.
Then you create a "private" ring with many other "private" (unannounced) nodes interconnected with multiple private channels, moving funds between them. This could act as a "subnet" or a hidden lightning network that nobody knows about it.
I remember some years ago the SBW wallet dev, Anton, was proposing a kind of "private routing" using the Immortan LN implementation. Will be interesting if it could be taken over and have a finished protocol.
I think also with some trampoline routing you can do this, like Electrum is doing.
reply
I think you are mixing up hosted channels (virtual, no chain footprint) and 0-conf channels (node giving you the ability to spend/receive before channel opening tx has the first confirmation)
I think there is a decent size of huge channels connecting some of the bigger players that might be unannounced (priv channels), but not necessarily completely cut of from the rest of the network. There is very little upside for doing that unless you have a completely closed ecosystem, which is hardly ever the case.
What you call decoy nodes are also very practical for various reasons, first of all plebs will give you lots of capacity due to the brand name and you can make sure you are well connected within the network, but you want to keep the node doing any kind of business activity separate so you don't have routing revenue etc polluting your accounting books, you just do one (or two just in case) priv channels to your routing node from the business node and do the actual payments from there.
reply