I really thought we had hit rock bottom in terms of Bitcoiners making irrational and ridiculous arguments against improvements to bitcoin, to present themselves as some kind of righteous underdog fighting corruption and incompetence from within.
Wow, I was wrong.
So, a few things to explain first. With Lightning channels, you must decide in advance your fee for a one-sided closing transaction. Because the actual UTXO is multi-signature, both parties in the channel must sign the transactions that each party uses to unilaterally close the channel in advance. All of Lightning's security relies on having these. If you ever need to use one, say because your counterparty isn't cooperative, you can't exactly count on them to give up one with a higher rate if you need it.
This caused problems during unilateral rate closures. If the rates were high and dropped since you opened your channel, you pay money you didn't need. If the rates were low and went up, you cannot guarantee that your channel will close on time. You can't replace by fee (RBF) because your counterpart needs to sign, and you can't use Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) because all your outputs are time-locked, so it won't be valid to spend them. until after the first transaction actually commits and several blocks pass.
Because of this, anchor outlets were created. They were special exits that exist without time locks for the sole purpose of being able to spend on a secondary transaction to increase the Lightning closing transaction fee. However, this added more capital inefficiency, requiring the use of a non-negligible amount of satoshis to create these products.
Enter ephemeral anchors, based on v3 transaction relaying and packet relaying (relaying transactions in the mempool as groups). The idea is to have an output of value 0 that can be spent with OP_TRUE (meaning anyone can spend it). Transactions that have a fee of 0 and include an ephemeral anchor will be retransmitted in the mempool. while there is a secondary transaction that spends the ephemeral anchor output with an appropriate fee.
This allows Lightning channels to sign unilateral closing transactions without fees, and anyone who needs to use them can simply spend the ephemeral anchor output to set any fees required at that time. This greatly simplifies Lightning closing transactions and eliminates the capital inefficiencies of existing anchor products. An additional advantage is that someone You can increase the fee for a transaction with an ephemeral anchor, not just the channel (or other contract) owners.
The ephemeral anchor doesn't even create the 0 UTXO value in the UTXO pool, because it will only be transmitted along with a transaction that spends it instantly in the same block.
So why is this a problem? Or an attack? I have no idea, it's an amazing simplification that essentially any second layer protocol, or contract built on bitcoin in general, that uses pre-signed transactions will greatly benefit from. It does not cause bloat in the UTXO array because, as the name implies, the outputs used are ephemeral. In reality, they are not created permanently.
The only arguments I've seen are “spam!” Or “Core developers are removing the dust limit!” (A restriction must be passed on the results of minimum value transactions, and they are not removing it for anything more than ephemeral anchors, which has to be spent immediately by a child to be broadcast).
I think we're at a point where we need to seriously consider when it's time to dismiss criticism or complaints about technical issues in this space. Or where legitimate criticism ceases to be legitimate and becomes irrational and illogical crusades against or in favor of personalities instead of reasoned criticism. Because this reaction against ephemeral anchors is undoubtedly the latest.
All rational criticism should be welcomed in an open source protocol like bitcoin, but it's time to stop pandering to irrational tribalism with no logical basis as if it were equivalent to legitimate criticism. It is not, it is pure waste of time and a Denial of Service attack against the bitcoin improvement process.
This article is a Carry. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of btc Inc or bitcoin Magazine.
