Lightning Network May Have A Channel Jamming Problem

The below is a direct excerpt of Martys Bent Issue # 1253: “Channel jamming research study you should read.” Sign up for the newsletter here.Channel jamming makes forwarding payments near impossiblefrom Antoine Riard and Gleb NaumenkoHeres a great website from Antoine Riard and Gleb Naumenko that breaks down the channel jamming issue on the Lightning Network. I highly suggest you freaks examine it out if you want to get a better understanding of one of the larger attack vectors of the Lightning Network and how designers are thinking of it. In other words, a channel jamming attack is a denial-of-service attack that enables a dubious actor or stars to avoid routing nodes from forwarding payments within a channel. Increasing the amount of unsuccessful payments and reducing the reliability of the lightning network overall in the process. Not ideal, but absolutely possible at the moment.This may not make you feel terrific, however it is the truth we find ourselves in today. While lots of see incredible pledge in the Lightning Network, myself consisted of, it is also important that we be in advance with its imperfections so that we can try to repair them as we construct out the network. Trying to pretend they do not exist wont be helpful in the long run. This is why were incredibly fortunate that smart individuals like Riard and Naumenko, among numerous others, are out there doing extremely important research study, evaluating and conceptualizing to find methods these problems can be solved.On this website youll be able to read into a few of the proposed services that exist for the channel jamming issue, that include altering the channel structure by using a tree of commitments, actively resisting an attack as its happening by opening other channels (does not appear perfect), and the concept of bucketing various slots throughout big and small denomination of sats, isolating channels of a particular size. It doesnt appear like theres consensus on whether or not any of these options are practical or perfect at scale. This website is a terrific jumping off point to stoke conversation amongst users and developers alike who would like to solve this issue. More awareness leads to more minds thinking of these problems and thats a good thing in the long run.Kudos to Riard, Naumenko and every other designer working to fix these issues. The work that they are doing is really important and might prove to make humankind more complimentary and the world a better place in our lifetime.Onward!