Lightning Pool: A Non-Custodial Channel Lease Marketplace

[Olaoluwa Osuntokun]

Hi y'all,

We've recently released a new system which may be of interest to this list,
Lightning Pool [1]. Alongside a working client [2], we've also released a
white paper which goes deeper into the architecture of the system.

Pool builds on some earlier ideas that were tossed around the ML concerning
creating a market for dual-funding channels for the network (though the concept
itself pre-dates those posts). Rather than target dual-funded channels, we
focus on the current uni-directional channels, and allow users to buy+sell what
we call a "channel lease" that packages up inbound (and also potentially
outbound via side-car channels!) liquidity paying out a premium for a fixed
duration.

Live testnet+mainnet markets were also released today, giving routing nodes a
new stable revenue source, and allowing those that need inbound to bootstrap
their new Lightning Service a new automated way to do so.

This is just our first alpha release which contains some limits/simplifications
in the system itself. We plan to continue to iterate on the system to implement
new things like streaming interest payments, and the version of side-car
channels (buy a channel for a 3rd party) described in the paper amongst many
other things.

[1]: https://lightning.engineering/posts/2020-11-02-pool-deep-dive/
[2]: https://github.com/lightninglabs/pool
[3]: https://lightning.engineering/lightning-pool-whitepaper.pdf