Re: Universal Payment Channels

Xavier- In reference to sidechains, one could think of a channel as being
like a sidechain following this simple consensus protocol: "Every
transaction must be signed by both parties".

You could have other ways of deciding to consider a transaction valid, and
as long as the bank or blockchain backing the channel used these methods,
it would work.

For instance: "Every transaction must be signed by 90% of parties"
Or: "Every transaction must be signed by a validator chosen from among the
channel participants by this round-robin protocol"

Multi-participant channels didn't seem to present any advantages in my
use-case, so I didn't think about them much.

I think there are actually other projects that add more participants to a
channel, but I've forgotten which. I'm sure that there's interesting work
that can be done here.

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 11:46 AM, Jehan Tremback <jehan.tremback@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Stefan- UPC basically allows connectors to exchange notes that can prove
> to a ledger that they are entitled to collect a certain amount of money
> from one another. These notes can be exchanged between connectors without
> the ledger being involved. The only data that must be saved by the
> connector is the last valid note.
>
> I think that one could also build this type of functionality into ILP, as
> long as there is some way for connectors to exchange notes that prove that
> they are entitled to a certain payment. In UPC, this hinges on a "hold
> period" during which one node can prove the other is cheating.
>
> I think it's easiest to view ILP in the context of UPC- ILP is like a form
> of UPC where a new channel is opened for each transaction. Adding UPC-like
> scalability into ILP then becomes an exercise in determining how to avoid
> opening a new channel while maintaining security. It sounds like you guys
> are well on the way to doing that.
>
> Xavier- Interesting to read about the Digital Silk Road. I've run across
> it before, but have not been able to find much concrete protocol work. It
> sounds like they are talking about some combination of a payment channel
> system, and source routing (the entire route of a packet is sent with that
> packet). Althea (the incentivized mesh project that UPC is a part of) has
> similar goals, but is able to draw upon 20 years of technological advances
> in distributed routing and digital currencies.
>
> -Jehan
>