From rusty at blockstream.com  Wed Oct 10 00:37:24 2018
From: rusty at blockstream.com (Rusty Russell)
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2018 11:07:24 +1030
Subject: [Lightning-dev] RouteBoost: Adding 'r=' fields to BOLT 11
	invoices to flag capacity
In-Reply-To: <CAMXsxZNz2sJ=4PYn=15Cgmtnc4DxTa9HW+U2U5pN=QA1_OQr4g@mail.gmail.com>
References: <877ejg9avy.fsf@rustcorp.com.au>
	<504b31cc-fcb9-f433-32e9-00de9456461b@mattcorallo.com>
	<87r2h1m318.fsf@rustcorp.com.au>
	<CAMXsxZNz2sJ=4PYn=15Cgmtnc4DxTa9HW+U2U5pN=QA1_OQr4g@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <87pnwiljqz.fsf@rustcorp.com.au>

Pierre <pm+lists at acinq.fr> writes:
>> But there's no reason to believe that the invoicer has more knowledge about all but the last hop.
>
> I disagree: there is a good chance that the receiver is a 24/7 running
> merchant/website, with a full up-to-date view of the network, whereas
> the payer is most likely a mobile wallet with less
> accurate/partial/out of date information.
>
> At least this is what we are seeing on the current mainnet. Routing
> table sync is hard on mobile clients, and I think that it makes sense
> that receivers "help" senders, after all incentives are aligned.

Good qualification; I agree.  Certainly if the payer knows its
information is less reliable it should prefer the provided route.

Cheers,
Rusty.