Good morning aj, > > Basically, the intuition "small decrease in `htlc_max_msat` == small > > decrease in payment volume" inherently assumes that HTLC sizes have a flat > > distribution across all possible sizes. > > > The intuition is really the other way around: if you want a stable, > decentralised network, then you need the driving decision on routing to > be something other than just "who's cheaper by 0.0001%" -- otherwise > everyone just chooses the same route at all times (which becomes > centralised towards the single provider who can best monetise forwarding > via something other than fees), and probably that route quickly becomes > unusable due to being drained (which isn't stable).
All monetisation is fee-based; the question is who pays the fees. Certainly gossiped feerates will work less effectively if fees are paid via another mechanism. In particular, discussing with actual forwarding node operators reveals that most of them think that CLBOSS undercuts fees too much searching a short-term profit, quickly depleting its usable liquidity in the long term. In short, they want CLBOSS modified to raise fees and preserve the liquidity supply. This suggests to me that channel saturation due to being cheaper by 0.0001% is not something that will occur often, as most operators will settle to a feerate that maximizes their earnings per unit liquidity they can provide, not trying to undercut everyone. In particular, the fact that rebalancing already exists as part of the network protocol means that anyone trying to undercut will find their liquidity being bought out by more patient operators, who are willing to sacrifice short-term profits for long-term consistent earnings. In short, the market will fix itself once we have more rational automated actors in place (i.e. not CLBOSS). Indeed, price signals are always places where you should pay attention to whether you need more of a good or not. But maybe I am just modelling everything incorrectly. Certainly the fact that fees can be paid by somebody else other than senders can make gossiped feerates (which are the sender-paid feerates) less effective. Regards, ZmnSCPxj _______________________________________________ Lightning-dev mailing list Lightning-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/lightning-dev
