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Watching a tutorial on how the Lightning Network works. Is it possible that only one party puts in money in the founding address / transaction?
Possible to create 5+0$ founding transaction in Ligthning Network?
Answers
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The current protocol implementations only allow one party to fund a channel.
If only one party funds the channel, then the first payments can only be sent from the funding party to the counterparty. After that, subsequent payments could go both directions (until the entire channel balance rests with one party, at that point transactions could again only flow in one direction. It is not possible to have 'debt' in a channel).
The current protocol actually only has one party putting in the funds. – Andrew Chow – 2017-12-31T22:13:15.973
@AndrewChow oh! I actually wasn't aware of that, thanks. As I understand, it is technically possible to have both parties fund the channel, is there a reason this isn't included in the current protocol implementation? – chytrik – 2017-12-31T23:03:41.337
It is technically possible, and there really isn't anything stopping people from doing that. The restriction is only for simplicity and easier use for the first version of the protocol. – Andrew Chow – 2018-01-01T02:45:02.447