Lightning Latch

Lightning Latch

Commerceblock has released a new atomic swap protocol for use with statechains on their Mercury Layer protocol. The HSM server has introduced functionality to support atomically swapping two statechains, as well as enforcing an atomic exchange of a statechain for a Lightning payment.

Possibilities

This scheme is a far cry from the originally posited interaction between statechains and Lightning channels, stacking one on top of the other, but even as a simple starting point this presents functional utility for existing Lightning users. Rebalancing channels is a necessary thing for many nodes, if the capacity is entirely pushed to one side or the other the utility of that channel is limited for routing payments. Many businesses and users have started experimenting with using Liquid as a mechanism for this due to on-chain fees rising and making swaps into and out of the Lightning Network more expensive.