Lightningnetwork.plus swap integration

[btweenthebars]

Based on discussion here.

The platform is very popular for increasing inbound capacity and onboard new node operators, however it's based on user communication and commitment with reputation system on top. clboss might be able to use it to discover new peers or even participate in swapping with other human nodes.

[ZmnSCPxj]

Have contacted LN+ dmins, they say they are planning an API. It seems at minimum we need to sign a message using C-Lightning signmessage to log in, will wait for details on getting swaps and so on.

At minimum we could scan through HTML, we already depend on libcurl here, but that is brittle since we do not control the server and the generated HTML may change in the future. And if they use JavaScript, well, that is even harder.

[btweenthebars]

HTML scanning is horrible, unless we have many devs to work on it full time and user has to upgrade the bot every time it breaks.

[ZmnSCPxj]

Eh, done it before, in a previous life before Bitcoin. Does not require that many devs actually, just bloody-mindedness, an unwillingness to give up on extracting the data, and a lot of swearing.

[ZmnSCPxj]

In the meantime.... a long time ago I had an idea for creating such cyclic superhubs without a central coordinator (as a central coordinator has the ability to censor, though the LN+ interface looks like it would be difficult to at least censor secretly i.e. yes it could censor but the censored node would be able to detect itself being censored).

Roughly the idea is:

• Have an incrementing number (start at 0).
• For every node on the network, hash the incrementing number concatenated with its node ID.
• Sort nodes according to their indexed hash.
• As long as the set of nodes is 6 or more:
  • Split the set of nodes in half (make a deterministic decision on how to split sets with odd cardinality).
  • Find which set our own node is in.
  • Keep that set and drop the other half.
• You now have a set of 3 to 5 nodes including your own node.
• Sort the set according to their indexed hash.
• The node after you in that set is your "next node" in a cyclic superhub. If you are the last, your "next node" is the first node in that set.
• If you already have a channel with your "next node" in the cyclic superhub, repeat this algorithm with the next higher incrementing number.

We could have CLBOSS set a node-level feature bit, and do an initial filter of all nodes, requiring that feature bit to be set. That way, CLBOSS nodes will try to form cyclic superhubs with each other. Note that the algorithm requires at least 3 such nodes on the network, though.

[niftynei]

dual-funded channels would let you create cycles that are balanced at start as well.