Responses Inline:

Would it make sense that, instead of sponsor vectors
> pointing to txids, they point to input outpoints?  E.g.:
>
> 1. Alice and Bob open a channel with funding transaction 0123...cdef,
>    output 0.
>
> 2. After a bunch of state updates, Alice unilaterally broadcasts a
>    commitment transaction, which has a minimal fee.
>
> 3. Bob doesn't immediately care whether or not Alice tried to close the
>    channel in the latest state---he just wants the commitment
>    transaction confirmed so that he either gets his money directly or he
>    can send any necessary penalty transactions.  So Bob broadcasts a
>    sponsor transaction with a vector of 0123...cdef:0
>
> 4. Miners can include that sponsor transaction in any block that has a
>    transaction with an input of 0123...cdef:0.  Otherwise the sponsor
>    transaction is consensus invalid.
>
> (Note: alternatively, sponsor vectors could point to either txids OR
> input outpoints.  This complicates the serialization of the vector but
> seems otherwise fine to me.)
>

*This seems like a fine suggestion and I think addresses Antoine's issue.*


*I think there are likely some cases where you do want TXID and not Output
(e.g., if you *

*are sponsoring a payment to your locktime'd cold storage wallet (no CPFP)
from an untrusted third party (no RBF), they can grift you into paying for
an unrelated payment). This isn't a concern when the root utxo is multisig
& you are a participant.*

*The serialization to support both, while slightly more complicated, can be
done in a manner that permits future extensibility as well if there are
other modes people require.*



>
> > If we want to solve the hard cases of pinning, I still think mempool
> > acceptance of a whole package only on the merits of feerate is the
> easiest
> > solution to reason on.
>
> I don't think package relay based only on feerate solves RBF transaction
> pinning (and maybe also doesn't solve ancestor/dependent limit pinning).
> Though, certainly, package relay has the major advantage over this
> proposal (IMO) in that it doesn't require any consensus changes.
> Package relay is also very nice for fixing other protocol rough edges
> that are needed anyway.
>
> -Dave
>

*I think it's important to keep in mind this is not a rival to package
relay; I think you also want package relay in addition to this, as they
solve different but related problems.*


*Where you might be able to simplify package relay with sponsors is by
doing a sponsor-only package relay, which is always limited to 2
transactions, 1 sponsor, 1 sponsoree. This would not have some of the
challenges with arbitrary-package package-relay, and would (at least from a
ux perspective) allow users to successfully get parents with insufficient
fee into the mempool.*