Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: [LN] What is revocation key? How does revocation works on bitcoin blockchain?
by
DannyHamilton
on 02/02/2018, 09:14:23 UTC
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If you remain online, and if the block chain is not saturated, however, the LN is quite safe to use.  
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I'm still getting up to speed on the technical details of exactly how LN works, but I thought...

1. Others will only be able to use your node as a route if your node is online.

2. It would be possible for your node to provide to a service ONLY your revocation keys for your open channels, and not ANY of your other private keys.  As such, that service would not be able to process any LN transactions on your behalf nor be able to spend any of your bitcoins.  However, if a counterparty to any of your channels were to broadcast a stale state, that service WOULD be able to use your revocation key to sign and publish a punishment transaction.  You'd have to trust that the service would not take the punishment bitcoins for themselves, but the very threat of the possibility that the service could do this should prevent the counterparty from ever publishing a stale state in the first place.

Am I mistaken about #2?