Meeting Notes

From February 5th, 2020

Embedding data in Lightning Network payments

Recent protocol changes - specifically in BOLT 04 - made it easier to append arbitrary data in payments on the Lightning Network. Specifically hop_data was deprecated in favor of the much more flexible hop_payload.

Pull requests have already been merged in all of the major node implementations:

• lnd:
  • “Allow custom data fields in the htlc payload”
• eclair:
  • “Variable-length onion payloads”
  • “Activate support for variable-length onion”
• c-lightning:
  • “Variable hop payload size for sphinx”

So what is this used for now and can/will be used for in the future?

• Multi-path payments - Splitting a lightning payment into multiple paths that sum to the desired total payment amount at the final receiver.
• End-to-end, onion encrypted chat - Proof of concept chat app based on Lightning Network named “WhatsAt”.

Turbo Channels

TODO

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