As the guy who made the spec that Zeus Pay is using to enable async payments, I support Mutiny's decision. I think disabling payments to destinations that are known to use hodl invoices is the right move for mobile nodes until some method for mobile nodes to safely pay them is discovered.
Right now a mobile node cannot safely pay a hodl invoice without risking an expensive force closure. But this also exposes a griefing vulnerability that mobile nodes are susceptible to. Nodes simply cannot tell the difference between a hodl invoice and a normal invoice. But if they do pay a hodl invoice, and then go offline for more than a day, they are likely to get force closed, which costs them money.
Since these "dangerous payments" are indistinguishable from safe ones, it is easy to grief someone if you suspect they are running a mobile node and are`on a regular zapper: get them to zap you, hodl their payment for about 10 hours or so, and then settle it. There's a good chance you'll put them in a force closure state at no cost to you. Which means *all* mobile nodes are dangerous to use for zapping right now. You can easily get burned.
I am grateful that Zeus exposed this problem and I look forward to thinking of more/better mitigations than trying to block all hodl invoices whack-a-mole style. That might work fine in a non-hostile environment, but I suspect we're heading into dangerous waters on lightning. Here there be trolls. Watch yourself.
View quoted note →
Thread
Login to reply