> It's definitelty not a leak for a sender to know how much their intended recipient received
It is. It's like the album store example: the buyer should know he paid, and get his receipt atomically, but if the money got split up between the clerk, the album's producer, and the artist, the buyer should not know that, nor the amounts they each received. That business is internal to the album store and is none of the buyer's business. Monero leaks that data and LN does not.
> Packets being encrypted isn't what I'm talking about. You actively route plaintext amounts through your channel partner.
It seems like you are saying the amount data is in plaintext because the routers can decrypt part of it. But that's false framing. If it was in plaintext, internet service providers could read it when they route the packet, and they cannot. The encryption of the packets is an important privacy protection. It is bad that the routers get to know partial amount info, but it is not true to say that info is in plaintext (i.e. available for all handlers to read, including ISPs) when in fact it is encrypted so that the routers can only read the part they route. (And even routers don't get to know the full amount.)
> meaningless things like fee amounts going on chain
It's not meaningless. Chainalysis cites it as critical data for fingerprinting wallets and they successfully arrest monero users as a result of the leaks they analyze. Denialism will get you nowhere good.
> and by ignoring all of lightning's glaring privacy issues
I do not ignore them. I talk about them on social media, I give presentations about them at bitcoin and monero conferences, I work on improving some of them myself, and I highlight the work being done by others to improve them. None of that is ignoring lightning's glaring privacy problems. I *do* say monero has glaring privacy problems too, including *worse* ones. But I don't want to get into what-about-ism. The fact that monero has problems too is no excuse for the ones we have in lightning. But be realistic: it's harder to trace lightning than monero when both are used carefully.
Super Testnet
npub1yx…c399s
2026-10-10 15:45:56 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…avun
Author Public Key
npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399sPublished at
2026-10-10 15:45:56 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "\u003e It's definitelty not a leak for a sender to know how much their intended recipient received\n\nIt is. It's like the album store example: the buyer should know he paid, and get his receipt atomically, but if the money got split up between the clerk, the album's producer, and the artist, the buyer should not know that, nor the amounts they each received. That business is internal to the album store and is none of the buyer's business. Monero leaks that data and LN does not.\n\n\u003e Packets being encrypted isn't what I'm talking about. You actively route plaintext amounts through your channel partner.\n\nIt seems like you are saying the amount data is in plaintext because the routers can decrypt part of it. But that's false framing. If it was in plaintext, internet service providers could read it when they route the packet, and they cannot. The encryption of the packets is an important privacy protection. It is bad that the routers get to know partial amount info, but it is not true to say that info is in plaintext (i.e. available for all handlers to read, including ISPs) when in fact it is encrypted so that the routers can only read the part they route. (And even routers don't get to know the full amount.)\n\n\u003e meaningless things like fee amounts going on chain\n\nIt's not meaningless. Chainalysis cites it as critical data for fingerprinting wallets and they successfully arrest monero users as a result of the leaks they analyze. Denialism will get you nowhere good.\n\n\u003e and by ignoring all of lightning's glaring privacy issues\n\nI do not ignore them. I talk about them on social media, I give presentations about them at bitcoin and monero conferences, I work on improving some of them myself, and I highlight the work being done by others to improve them. None of that is ignoring lightning's glaring privacy problems. I *do* say monero has glaring privacy problems too, including *worse* ones. But I don't want to get into what-about-ism. The fact that monero has problems too is no excuse for the ones we have in lightning. But be realistic: it's harder to trace lightning than monero when both are used carefully.",
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