Lightning Network developers have identified a new network bug

Article Reading Time:
2 minutes.

The error can lead to payment routing failures without specifying the reason for the occurrence.

Unlike the underlying Bitcoin blockchain networklayer, where thousands of node operators verify transactions, Lightning Network payments can involve as few as two people. Network users purposefully sacrifice some security in exchange for higher speeds and lower fees.

Lightning Network payments may failIt's unfortunate if something goes wrong at any stage of processes involving multiple signatures. For example, the final recipient may refuse to release a proof of receipt of the payment, or a Lightning Network node may go offline.

The network developers found out:payment routing failure occurs without attribution, which means that payers do not receive information about what happened. Either the error message was corrupted on its way back to the sender or was never received. Transaction participants may continue to try to use the faulty node without even realizing there is a problem.

As a possible solution to the problem, the Lightning Network developers are offering several solutions for community discussion.

In the version of the Dutch specialist LightningJoost Jager Labs proposes adding timestamps to messages that nodes send back to the transaction sender. One label will represent the time when the node received the transaction, and the other will represent the time when the node forwarded the transaction to the next process. Both labels will give senders an idea of ​​which channels are slower to transmit transactions and allow them to avoid them in the future.

Australian programmer and developerLightning Rusty Russell proposed an alternative solution where each routing node would be paid one satoshi even if the transaction failed. In this way, payment senders will be able to understand which routing node has failed by comparing the number of Satoshi sent with the number of Satoshi received back. The Satoshi counting method will work even if the error message is corrupted or was not delivered.

In October, the founder of the Turkish blockchain company Bitmatrix, Burak Keceli, decided to check
the boundaries of the possible.He performed a transaction that was difficult for the Lightning Network, which disabled most of the network nodes. The transaction was a multi-signature payment consisting of 998 keys with 999 possible.