I really thought we had seen the bottom in terms of Bitcoiners making irrational and ridiculous arguments against improvements to Bitcoin, in order to paint themselves as some sort of righteous underdog fighting corruption and incompetence from within.
Boy was I wrong.
So, a few things to explain first. With Lightning Channels, you have to determine your fee rate for a one-sided closing transaction in advance. Since the actual UTXO is multi-signature, both ends of the channel have to sign the transactions used by either side to unilaterally close the channel in advance. All of Lightning’s security depends on the presence of these elements. If you need to use one, for example because your counterparty is uncooperative, you can’t exactly rely on them to resign at a higher fee rate if you need to.
This led to problems during unilateral toll closures. If your fees have been high and falling since you opened your channel, you’re paying money you don’t need. If the fees are low and rise, you cannot guarantee that your channel will be closed in time. You can’t Redeem Fees (RBF) because your counterparty needs to sign, and you can’t use Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) because all your outputs are time-bound, so any spending on them won’t be valid until after The first transaction is actually confirmed and multiple blocks are passed.
For this reason, binding outputs were created. They were special outputs that existed without time locks for the sole purpose of being able to spend in a sub-transaction to increase the fast close transaction fee. This has added further capital inefficiency, requiring a significant amount of satoshi to be used to create these outputs.
Insert temporary anchors, based on v3 transaction paging and packet paging (paging transactions in the memory pool as chunks). The idea is to have outputs with a value of 0 that are spendable with OP_TRUE (meaning anyone can spend them). Transactions that have a fee rate of 0, and include an ephemeral anchor, will be posted in the memory pool as long as There is a subtransaction that spends the output of the temporary anchor at an appropriate fee rate.
This allows Lightning channels to sign unilateral closing transactions with no fees, and anyone who needs to use them can simply spend the temporary installation output to determine the required fee rate at that time. This greatly simplifies quick close transactions, eliminating capital inefficiencies for existing anchor outputs. An added bonus is that anyone Fees can be charged for a transaction with an ephemeral anchor, not just channel owners (or other contracts).
The temporary anchor never creates the value 0 UTXO in the UTXO block, because it will only be posted with the transaction it spends immediately in the same block.
So why is this a problem? Or attack? I had no idea, it’s an amazing simplification that any layer 2 protocol, or Bitcoin-based contract in general, that uses pre-signed transactions would benefit greatly from it. It doesn’t cause any bloat in the UTXO range, because just like the name, the outputs used are fleeting. They are not actually created permanently.
The only arguments I’ve seen are “Spam!” Or “Core developers are removing the dust limit!” (Constraints on minimum-valued transaction outputs should be migrated, and they don’t remove them for anything but temporary anchors, which He should The child must spend it immediately to be deported).
I think we’ve reached a point where we have to seriously consider when it’s time to dismiss criticism or complaints surrounding artistic subject matter in this area. Or where legitimate criticism ceases to exist, and becomes irrational and illogical crusades against or for characters rather than rational criticism. Because this backlash against ephemeral anchors is undoubtedly the latter.
All rational criticism should be welcomed in an open source protocol like Bitcoin, but it’s time to stop mocking irrational tribalism with no logical basis as if it were equivalent to legitimate cash. This is not the case, it is just a waste of time and a denial of service attack against the Bitcoin optimization process.
This article is a takes. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.