Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: [Lightning decentralisation] Routing around hubs
by
PrimeNumber7
on 10/09/2019, 02:37:08 UTC
I don't believe what you describe is reasonably possible. It is not possible to authoritatively rule out any given node being part of a specific "hub" because one entity could possibly be running multiple nodes. If enough people start intentionally routing payments around large "hubs", some entities will start forming multiple, smaller hubs, and limiting the number of open channels they will allow each of their nodes to connect to, that are intended to appear independent.

This would both increase fees, and decrease liquidity. When you decline to transact with particular entities, you have fewer remaining options, and when there are less service providers providing services to the same number of customers, prices will generally increase (supply goes down, and demand remains constant). If there is total LN liquidity of 100 BTC, but 30 BTC is tied up in large nodes that you want to avoid, the total network liquidity has dropped to 70 BTC, however you will also generally need to use longer routes than if you were allowing payments to be routed via a "hub", and there is a greater chance one or more leg of the route will lack liquidity.


how else could someone try to be dominate LN?

One could drive up the cost of being a liquidity provider. They could do this by opening channels to competing "hubs", and stop coorporating with the operator, causing them to close the channel, and pay for doing so in the form of tx fees.

This is probably another likely way:
Quote
using a strategy for causing valid routing to fail, where they make some trade-off that failing at one node within a route has an increased likelihood that a recalculated route will use more of their nodes?

Fees are already nearly zero, and I don't think many hub operators are making much money currently, so I don't think undercutting on fees is a realistic proposition.