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I am puzzled by one thorn it is intended to solve. In the case of merchant/customer interactions, the LN channel blocks customer funds from their balance, but
by espadrine 5y ago
I am puzzled by one thorn it is intended to solve.
In the case of merchant/customer interactions, the LN channel blocks customer funds from their balance, but they will never receive money from the merchant. So that balance will be sent to the merchant, payment by payment.
Not only does that block funds for the customer (which wants to reduce those, to avoid blocking too much, but that reduces the number of payments that can be made off-chain), but it also blocks the merchant’s reception of those payments: the merchant wants to be able to spend it soon, but it can only spend it on-chain.
That is compounded by the fact that most merchant/customer interactions are rare one-offs in the real world. I just don’t buy stamps every day.
LN channels are only most useful when the two parties exchange money bidirectionally on average.
- doomroot 5y agoIt’s an ongoing problem for sure, but the simple answer is users maintaining multiple well connected channels. It’s very common on lightning to pay liquidity providers to balance your channels to you. Lightning Labs has a service called loop where you can pay them an onchain transaction and it will make a lightning network payment to your channel for that amount, thus giving you more spend liquidity. Loop is sweet cause it does this in a non custodial way, look into it.