Feed for tag: channel_announcement
Lack of capacity field in channel_announcment

A discussion started recently regarding the lack of channel capacity information in the Channel_announcement message.

channel_announcement is a gossip message in the Lightning protocol that contains information regarding the ownership of a channel. It links an on chain Bitcoin key to a Lightning node key. Currently the message does not include any information about the channel capacity, for which wallets have to search through the blockchain and that becomes tedious for mobile and light wallets, as they have to send a request to a block explorer API to get the capacity. Not having the capacity greatly decreases the routing success rates as you maybe trying to send 10 BTC through a channel that can handle a maximum of 1 BTC.