1.5 KiB
BDS-01
One-directional channels
draft mandatory author:brqgoo
This BDS defines BitsApp channels to operate one-way-only for the interactivity benefits.
Rationale
Building a lightning client is challenging. What is more challenging is building a non-interactive lightning client. Due to the interactive nature of lightning, clients face two main challenges:
Uptime monitoring
Clients must remain online to monitor the network for channel breaches and act accordingly when needed. Running uptime software is unlikely for non-interactive clients such as mobile wallets and web clients.
Channel backups
Lightning clients must back up old channel states to be able to broadcast penalty transactions in case of a breach. Channel backup size grows in proportion to the number of payments. This is a huge drawback for web clients that have limited IndexedDB resources.
Specification
BDS-01 proposes to establish BitsApp a send-only lightning wallet and restrict the receiving part on-chain. A send-only lightning design makes payment channels operate one-way-only, making previous channel states in favor of the user at all times. This way, users don't need to back-up old channel states as they are all in their favor. The most favorable outcome for the channel partner (LSP) is to broadcast the latest-state-only. For the same reasons, users don't need to make periodic penalty checks with the bitcoin network and remain offline for a long period.