Trimmed HTLC
Trimmed HTLCs are forwardable LN payments that are below a channel’s economic limit for being resolved onchain. Instead, a commitment transaction that goes onchain pays the value of all trimmed HTLCs to transaction fees.
Different channels may have different limits for uneconomical outputs, so a trimmed HTLC in one channel may be a regular HTLC in another channel. That means trimmed HTLCs are constructed, used, and resolved the same way as regular HTLCs for most purposes.
If trimmed HTLCs weren’t allowed, the minimum value a channel could send, accept, or forward would be the amount it considered to be economic onchain, which can easily be thousands of sats. Trimmed HTLCs allow channels to forward very small payments.
Unfortunately, trimmed HTLCs come with risks and can create incentive
problems. A malicious party can destroy part of a channel’s value using
trimmed HTLCs or use trimmed HTLCs they have no intention of resolving
to get their counterparty to pay part of a channel’s transaction fees.
Suggested alternatives have included destroying trimmed
HTLC value by [paying it to an OP_RETURN output or using a
probabilistic payment when trimming is necessary.
Primary code and documentation
Optech newsletter and website mentions
2024
- Continued discussion about placing trimmed HTLC value in ephemeral anchor outputs
- Discussion about placing trimmed HTLC value in ephemeral anchor outputs and consequences for MEV
2023
See also
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