Den Yellek on Nostr: I trying to understand lightning privacy more. When I provide someone with a ...
I trying to understand lightning privacy more.
When I provide someone with a lightning invoice do I not reveal to them my lightning node?
And then if I have even been sent sats from a KYC exchange or have otherwise linked my lightning node to myself for example through displaying a LNURL am I not doxed? Not just the current transaction but all future invoices can be linked to me?
From a node ID I can see all channels as well as a list of any closed channels and see all of the on chain BTC associated with that and follow their flows on the base chain.
Is my understanding correct and if so that makes lightning seem problematic to me for privacy.
--
Before posting the above I read through some of your other comments. Is the point I am missing that the node ID in the invoice could be set up to just forward the payment to someone else? Is there a special way to create an invoice that does this?
>90% of the time it's going to be the real destination
You don't know that
By default, surveillance has to deal with this heuristic: the sender doesn't know if the recipient's invoice uses a trampoline node or not. So he doesn't know if the pubkey in the invoice even belongs to the recipient.
In monero, the sender DOES know that information. The pubkey in a monero address always belongs to the recipient.
In monero, surveillance is possible by default
In lightning, it's not
Published at
2025-05-01 08:21:15Event JSON
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"pubkey": "cab4d11105b869f4092570c21beb8689cf521b73a502da8cc21d3269e69a4c09",
"created_at": 1746087675,
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"content": "I trying to understand lightning privacy more.\nWhen I provide someone with a lightning invoice do I not reveal to them my lightning node?\nAnd then if I have even been sent sats from a KYC exchange or have otherwise linked my lightning node to myself for example through displaying a LNURL am I not doxed? Not just the current transaction but all future invoices can be linked to me?\nFrom a node ID I can see all channels as well as a list of any closed channels and see all of the on chain BTC associated with that and follow their flows on the base chain.\n\nIs my understanding correct and if so that makes lightning seem problematic to me for privacy. \n\n--\nBefore posting the above I read through some of your other comments. Is the point I am missing that the node ID in the invoice could be set up to just forward the payment to someone else? Is there a special way to create an invoice that does this? \n\nnostr:nevent1qqsydeyeldqvx0qmdfa2nccpydqf0dx2gprjk3h7p5r4g3qgg488ydcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgszrqlfgavys8g0zf8mmy79dn92ghn723wwawx49py0nqjn7jtmjagrqsqqqqqpr5nf8s\n\n",
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