Hi Igor, Thanks for sharing about what it's technically possible to do for a full-node on phone, specially with regards to lower grade devices. I do see 2 limitations for sleeping nodes: - a lightning specific one, i.e you need to process block data real-time in case of incoming HTLC you need to claim on chain or a HTLC timeout. There is a bunch of timelocks implications in LN, with regards to CSV, CLTV_DELTA, incoming policy, outgoing policy, ... and you can't really afford to be late without loosing a payment. I don't see timelocks being increase, that would hinder liquidity. - a p2p bandwidth concern, even if this new class of nodes turn as public ones, they would still have a heavy sync period due to be fallen-behind during the day, so you would have huge bandwidth spikes every a timezone falls asleep and a risk of choking upload links of stable full-nodes. I think assume-utxo may be interesting in the future in case of long-fork detection, you may be able to download a utxo-set on the fly, and fall-back to a full-node. But that would be only an emergency measure, not a regular cost on the backbone network. Antoine Le jeu. 7 mai 2020 à 12:41, Igor Cota a écrit : > Hi Antoine et al, > > Maybe I'm completely wrong, missing some numbers, and it's maybe fine to >> just rely on few thousands of full-node operators being nice and servicing >> friendly millions of LN mobiles clients. But just in case it may be good to >> consider a reasonable alternative. >> > > >> So you may want to separate control/data plane, get filters from CDN and >> headers as check-and-control directly from the backbone network. "Hybrid" >> models should clearly be explored. > > > For some months now I've been exploring the feasibility of running full > nodes on everyday phones [1]. One of my first thoughts was how to avoid the > phones mooching off the network. Obviously due to battery, storage and > bandwidth constraints it is not reasonable to expect pocket full nodes to > serve blocks during day time. > > Huge exception to this is the time we are asleep and our phones are > connected to wifi and charging. IMO this is a huge untapped resource that > would allow mobile nodes to earn their keep. If we limit full node > operation to sleepy night time the only constraining resource is storage: > 512 gb of internal storage in phones is quite rare, probably about $100 for > an SD card with full archival node capacity but phones with memory card > slots rarer still - no one is going to bother. > > So depending on their storage capacity phone nodes could decide to store > and serve just a randomly selected range of blocks during their nighttime > operation. With trivial changes to P2P they could advertise the blocks they > are able to serve. > If there comes a time that normal full nodes feel DoS'ed they can > challenge such nodes to produce the blocks they advertise and ban them as > moochers if they fail to do so. Others may elect to be more charitable and > serve everyone. > > These types of nodes would truly be part-timing since they only carry a > subset of the blockchain and work while their operator is asleep. Probably > should be called part-time or Sleeper Nodes™. > > They could be user friendly as well, with Assume UTXO they could be > bootstrapped quickly and while they do the IBD in the background instead of > traditional pruning they can keep the randomly assigned bit of blockchain > to later serve the network. > > Save for the elderly, all the people I know could run such a node, and I > don't live in a first world country. > > There is also the feel-good kumbaya aspect of American phone nodes serving > the African continent while the Americans are asleep, Africans and > Europeans serving the Asians in kind. By plugging in our phones and going > to sleep we could blanket the whole world in (somewhat) full nodes! > > Cheers, > Igor > > [1] https://icota.github.io/ > > On Tue, 5 May 2020 at 12:18, Antoine Riard > wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> (cross-posting as it's really both layers concerned) >> >> Ongoing advancement of BIP 157 implementation in Core maybe the >> opportunity to reflect on the future of light client protocols and use this >> knowledge to make better-informed decisions about what kind of >> infrastructure is needed to support mobile clients at large scale. >> >> Trust-minimization of Bitcoin security model has always relied first and >> above on running a full-node. This current paradigm may be shifted by LN >> where fast, affordable, confidential, censorship-resistant payment services >> may attract a lot of adoption without users running a full-node. Assuming a >> user adoption path where a full-node is required to benefit for LN may >> deprive a lot of users, especially those who are already denied a real >> financial infrastructure access. It doesn't mean we shouldn't foster node >> adoption when people are able to do so, and having a LN wallet maybe even a >> first-step to it. >> >> Designing a mobile-first LN experience opens its own gap of challenges >> especially in terms of security and privacy. The problem can be scoped as >> how to build a scalable, secure, private chain access backend for millions >> of LN clients ? >> >> Light client protocols for LN exist (either BIP157 or Electrum are used), >> although their privacy and security guarantees with regards to >> implementation on the client-side may still be an object of concern >> (aggressive tx-rebroadcast, sybillable outbound peer selection, trusted fee >> estimation). That said, one of the bottlenecks is likely the number of >> full-nodes being willingly to dedicate resources to serve those clients. >> It's not about _which_ protocol is deployed but more about _incentives_ for >> node operators to dedicate long-term resources to client they have lower >> reasons to care about otherwise. >> >> Even with cheaper, more efficient protocols like BIP 157, you may have a >> huge discrepancy between what is asked and what is offered. Assuming 10M >> light clients [0] each of them consuming ~100MB/month for filters/headers, >> that means you're asking 1PB/month of traffic to the backbone network. If >> you assume 10K public nodes, like today, assuming _all_ of them opt-in to >> signal BIP 157, that's an increase of 100GB/month for each. Which is >> consequent with regards to the estimated cost of 350GB/month for running an >> actual public node. Widening full-node adoption, specially in term of >> geographic distribution means as much as we can to bound its operational >> cost. >> >> Obviously, deployment of more efficient tx-relay protocol like Erlay >> will free up some resources but it maybe wiser to dedicate them to increase >> health and security of the backbone network like deploying more outbound >> connections. >> >> Unless your light client protocol is so ridiculous cheap to rely on >> niceness of a subset of node operators offering free resources, it won't >> scale. And it's likely you will always have a ratio disequilibrium between >> numbers of clients and numbers of full-node, even worst their growth rate >> won't be the same, first ones are so much easier to setup. >> >> It doesn't mean servicing filters for free won't work for now, numbers of >> BIP157 clients is still pretty low, but what is worrying is wallet vendors >> building such chain access backend, hitting a bandwidth scalability wall >> few years from now instead of pursuing better solutions. And if this >> happen, maybe suddenly, isn't the quick fix going to be to rely on >> centralized services, so much easier to deploy ? >> >> Of course, it may be brought that actually current full-node operators >> don't get anything back from servicing blocks, transactions, addresses... >> It may be replied that you have an indirect incentive to participate in >> network relay and therefore guarantee censorship-resistance, instead of >> directly connecting to miners. You do have today ways to select your >> resources exposure like pruning, block-only or being private but the wider >> point is the current (non?)-incentives model seems to work for the base >> layer. For light clients data, are node operators going to be satisfied to >> serve this new *class* of traffic en masse ? >> >> This doesn't mean you won't find BIP157 servers, ready to serve you with >> unlimited credit, but it's more likely their intentions maybe not aligned, >> like spying on your transaction broadcast or block fetched. And you do want >> peer diversity to avoid every BIP157 servers being on few ASNs for >> fault-tolerance. Do people expect a scenario a la Cloudflare, where >> everyone connections is to far or less the same set of entities ? >> >> Moreover, the LN security model diverges hugely from basic on-chain >> transactions. Worst-case attack on-chain a malicious light client server >> showing a longest, invalid, PoW-signed chain to double-spend the user. On >> LN, the *liveliness* requirement means the entity owning your view of the >> chain can lie to you on whether your channel has been spent by a revoked >> commitment, the real tip of the blockchain or even dry-up block >> announcement to trigger unexpected behavior in the client logic. A >> malicious light client server may just drop any filters/utxos spends, what >> your LN client should do in this case ? [1] >> >> Therefore, you may want to introduce monetary compensation in exchange of >> servicing filters. Light client not dedicating resources to maintain the >> network but free-riding on it, you may use their micro-payment capabilities >> to price chain access resources [3]. This proposition may suit within the >> watchtower paradigm, where another entity is delegated some part of >> protocol execution, alleviating client onliness requirement. It needs >> further analysis but how your funds may be compromised by a watchtower are >> likely to be the same scenario that how a chain validation provider can >> compromise you. That said, how do you avoid such "chain access" market >> turning as an oligopoly is an open question. You may "bind" them to >> internet topology or ask for fidelity bonds and create some kind of >> scarcity but still... >> >> Maybe I'm completely wrong, missing some numbers, and it's maybe fine to >> just rely on few thousands of full-node operators being nice and servicing >> friendly millions of LN mobiles clients. But just in case it may be good to >> consider a reasonable alternative. >> >> Thanks Gleb for many points exposed here but all mistakes are my own. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Antoine >> >> [0] UTXO set size may be a bottleneck, but still if you have 2 channels >> by clients that's 20M utxos, just roughly ~x3 than today. >> >> [1] And committing filters as part of headers may not solve everything as >> an attacker can just delay or slow announcements to you, so you still need >> network access to at least one honest node. >> >> [2] It maybe argue that distinction client-vs-peer doesn't hold because >> you may start as a client and start synchronizing the chain, relaying >> blocks, etc. AFAIK, there is no such hybrid implementation and that's not >> what you want to run in a mobile. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Lightning-dev mailing list >> Lightning-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/lightning-dev >> > > > -- > *Igor Cota* > Codex Apertus Ltd >