{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1sgs97fe0n9wehe6zw7drcxdz4cy9yt9pfqjv8gasz5jlk4zezc0quppx3c","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1sgs97fe0n9wehe6zw7drcxdz4cy9yt9pfqjv8gasz5jlk4zezc0quppx3c","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2021-07-05\n📝 Original message:If only one could prove that he won’t get into a boating accident.\n\ne\n\n\u003e On Jul 5, 2021, at 16:26, ZmnSCPxj via bitcoin-dev \u003cbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\u003e \n\u003e Good morning Billy,\n\u003e \n\u003e\u003e I wonder if there would be some way to include the ability to prove balances held on the lightning network, but I suspect that isn't generally possible. \n\u003e \n\u003e Thinking about this in terms of economic logic:\n\u003e \n\u003e Every channel is anchored onchain, and that anchor (the funding txout) is proof of the existence, and size, of the channel.\n\u003e \n\u003e The two participants in the channel can sign a plaintext containing their node pubkeys and how much each owns.\n\u003e One of the participants should provably be the custodian.\n\u003e \n\u003e * If the counterparty is a true third party, it has no incentive to lie about its money.\n\u003e  * Especially if the counterparty is *another* custodian who wants proof-of-reserves, it has every incentive to overreport, but then the first party will refuse to sign.\n\u003e    It has a disincentive to underreport, and would itself refuse to sign a dishonest report that assigns more funds to the first party.\n\u003e    The only case that would be acceptable to both custodians would be to honestly report their holdings in the Lightning channel.\n\u003e * If the counterparty is a sockpuppet of the custodian, then the entire channel is owned by the custodian and it would be fairly dumb of he custodian to claim to have less funds than the entire channel.\n\u003e \n\u003e Perhaps a more practical problem is that Lightning channel states change fairly quickly, and there are possible race conditions, due to network latency (remember, both nodes need to sign, meaning both of them need to communicate with each other, thus hit by network latency and other race conditions) where a custodian Lightning node is unable to \"freeze\" a snapshot of its current state and make an atomic proof-of-reserves of *all* channels.\n\u003e \n\u003e Regards,\n\u003e ZmnSCPxj\n\u003e _______________________________________________\n\u003e bitcoin-dev mailing list\n\u003e bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\n\u003e https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev"}