I really thought we had seen the bottom of Bitcoiners making irrational and stupid arguments against improvements to Bitcoin, to paint themselves as some kind of righteous underground fighting the -against corruption and incompetence from within.
Boy was I wrong.
So, some things to explain first. With Lightning channels, you need to decide your fee level for a close one-way transaction ahead of time. Since the actual UTXO is multisig, both parties in the channel must sign the transactions used by each side to unilaterally close the channel ahead of time. All of Lightning's security is based on having these. If you ever had to use one, say because your contact is uncooperative, you can't count on them to definitely resign at a higher rate if you needed it.
This caused problems when unilateral tariffs closed. If fees were high and have come down since you opened your channel, you will pay money that you did not need. If the fees were low and going up, you cannot guarantee that your channel will close in time. You can't Refund Fees (RBF) because your agent has to sign it, and you can't use Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) because the returns all of yours is locked, so there will be no valid charges. until after the first transaction actually commits and several blocks pass.
Because of this, anchor products were created. They were special products that exist without timelocks for the sole purpose of being able to spend in a child transaction to beat the cost of Lightning transactions. These added more capital inefficiencies though, which required a relatively small amount of satoshis to be used to create these products.
Add short-term anchors, building on the v3 transaction relay and packet relay (providing transactions in the mempool as groups). The idea is to produce a value of 0 to be consumed with OP_TRUE (meaning anyone can consume it). Actions that have a fee rate of 0, and include a short-term anchor, will be entered in the mempool As far as child trading costs a long-term anchor product with an appropriate tax rate.
This allows Lightning channels to sign one-sided closing contracts at no cost, and anyone who needs to use them can simply spend the unsustainable anchor output to whatever fee level is necessary at the time his position. This greatly simplifies Lightning closing transactions, and removes the capital inefficiencies of existing anchor products. That's an added bonus anyone they can block trading with an unstable anchor, not just the owners of the channel (or other contract).
The ephemeral anchor never creates the 0 UTXO value in the UTXO set, because it is only forwarded together with a transaction that consumes it immediately in the same block.
So why is this a problem? Or attack? I have no idea, it's an incredible simplification that a second layer protocol, or contract built on Bitcoin in general, that uses pre-signed transactions will benefit greatly from it. It does not cause bloat of the UTXO set, because as the name suggests, the results used are long-term. Of course they are not created permanently.
The only arguments I've seen are “spam!” Or “Key developers are removing the dust cap!” (Minimum value trading products must be banned, and they don't remove it for anything but short-term anchors, which must be consumed immediately by a child to be sent back).
I think we are at a stage where we have to seriously consider when it is time to reject criticism or complaints about a technical subject in this area. Or where legitimate objections cease to be so, and become irrational and ignorant crusades against or for personalities instead of rational criticism. Because this backlash against short-term anchors is undoubtedly the last.
All reasonable criticism should be welcomed in an open source protocol like Bitcoin, but it's time to stop irrational tribal humor with no logical basis as if it equates to valid criticism. No, it's a complete waste of time and a denial of service attack against the Bitcoin development process.
This article is a Take. The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
