Re: [bitcoin-dev] What Lightning Is

[Hector Chu <hectorchu@gmail.com>]

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Tom, my understanding is that the money that is debited from a payment hub
is simultaneously credited from either another payment hub or the person
making the payment, so that the net funds flow at a payment hub always sums
to zero. So no, there is no credit advanced by the payment hub to anyone.

Given Mark's previous answer of using CPFP and other tricks to pay for the
Bitcoin transaction fees, we can assume that Bitcoin fees do not play a
part in the payment channel balances.

So, the interesting question is what are the costs of running a payment
hub? The tx fees that a payment hub would have to pay to settle its Bitcoin
transactions would be passed on as a cost to the clients of the payment
hub. Also there is a cost to locking up funds in a payment channel (time
value of money). The lost interest or opportunity cost on those funds would
need to be paid for by its clients as well. And don't forget normal running
costs such as networking and electricity.

On 9 August 2015 at 22:27, Tom Harding via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> On Aug 9, 2015 11:54 AM, "Mark Friedenbach" <mark@friedenbach.org> wrote:
>
> > On the contrary the funds were advanced by the hub on the creation of
> the channel. There is no credit involved.
>
> That's a chuckle.
>
> As I said, nothing requires the hub to advance anything, and if it does,
> Bob can expect to pay for it.
>
> We'll see whether hubs assess a fee for depositing funds, whether the fee
> depends on the amount deposited, and whether it depends on the amount of
> time it stays there.
>
> I predict "all of the above." There is a name for these kinds of fees.
> Can you guess it?
>
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