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Client-side of static invoice server #3618

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As part of being an async recipient, we need to interactively build an offer and static invoice with an always-online node that will serve static invoices on our behalf in response to invoice requests from payers.

While users could build this invoice manually, the plan is for LDK to automatically build it for them using onion messages. See this doc for more details on the protocol. Here we implement the client side of the linked protocol.

See lightning/bolts#1149 for more information on async payments.

We need to add a Vec to the config as part of async receive support, see
upcoming commits. The vec will contain blinded paths to reach an always-online
node that will serve static invoices on our behalf. None of those things
implement Copy so remove support for the trait.
The new utility will be used in upcoming commits as part of supporting static
invoice server.
We're about to add more onion message types, so this pre-emptively DRYs the code to
extract the expected message context taken from the blinded path.
We need to include static invoices in the public API as part of the onion
messages we're adding for static invoice server support. Utilities to create
these static invoices and other parts of the async receive API will remain
cfg-gated for now. Generally, we can't totally avoid exposing half baked async
receive support in the public API because OnionMessenger is parameterized by an
async payments message handler, which can't be cfg-gated easily.
In future commits, as part of being an async recipient, we will interactively
build an offer and static invoice with an always-online node that will serve
static invoices on our behalf. Once the offer is built and the static invoice
is confirmed as persisted by the server, we will use this struct to cache the
offer in ChannelManager.
As part of being an async recipient, we need to support interactively building
an offer and static invoice with an always-online node that will serve static
invoices on our behalf.

Add a config field containing blinded message paths that async recipients can
use to request blinded paths that will be included in their offer. Payers will
forward invoice requests over the paths returned by the server, and receive a
static invoice in response if the recipient is offline.
Because async recipients are not online to respond to invoice requests,
the plan is for another node on the network that is always-online to serve
static invoices on their behalf.

The protocol is as follows:
- Recipient is configured with blinded message paths to reach the static invoice
  server
- On startup, recipient requests blinded message paths for inclusion in their
  offer from the static invoice server over the configured paths
- Server replies with offer paths for the recipient
- Recipient builds their offer using these paths and the corresponding static
  invoice and replies with the invoice
- Server persists the invoice and confirms that they've persisted it, causing
  the recipient to cache the interactively built offer for use

At pay-time, the payer sends an invoice request to the static invoice server,
who replies with the static invoice after forwarding the invreq to the
recipient (to give them a chance to provide a fresh invoice in case they're
online).

Here we add the requisite trait methods and onion messages to support this
protocol.
As an async recipient, we need to interactively build a static invoice that an
always-online node will serve to payers on our behalf.

At the start of this process, we send a request for paths to include in our
offer to the always-online node on startup and refresh the cached offer when it
expires.
As an async recipient, we need to interactively build a static invoice that an
always-online node will serve to payers on our behalf.

As part of this process, the static invoice server sends us blinded message
paths to include in our offer so they'll receive invoice requests from senders
trying to pay us while we're offline. On receipt of these paths, create an
offer and static invoice and send the invoice back to the server so they can
provide the invoice to payers.
As an async recipient, we need to interactively build a static invoice that an
always-online node will serve on our behalf.

Once this invoice is built and persisted by the static invoice server, they
will send us a confirmation onion message. At this time, cache the
corresponding offer and mark it as ready to receive async payments.
Over the past several commits we've implemented interactively building an async
receive offer with a static invoice server that will service invoice requests
on our behalf as an async recipient.

Here we add an API to retrieve this resulting offer so we can receive payments
when we're offline.
@valentinewallace
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Will go through the commits in a bit more detail before taking this out of draft, but conceptual feedback or feedback on the protocol itself is welcome, or the way the code is organized overall. It does add a significant amount of code to ChannelManager currently.

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Hmmm, I wonder if we shouldn't allow the client to cache N offers rather than only 1. I worry a bit about the privacy implications of having One Offer that gets reused across different contexts.

///
/// [`StaticInvoice`]: crate::offers::static_invoice::StaticInvoice
/// [`InvoiceRequest`]: crate::offers::invoice_request::InvoiceRequest
offer: Offer,
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Not sure I understand why this has to be here explicitly? Doesn't the StaticInvoice contain the Offer('s fields) in it?

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As implemented, the async recipient will never cache the StaticInvoice themselves. The recipient creates the invoice, sends it to the server, and includes the Offer in the reply path to cache once the invoice is confirmed as persisted. I think the google doc is out of date here, sorry.

This made sense to me while implementing because we don't want to cache the offer until it's confirmed as persisted by the server and I couldn't think of a reason why the client would need to have to the static invoice.

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Oh, sorry, I misread which context this was (don't we need a context for sending the static invoice to the server? I guess that's a separate PR), this makes sense.

@valentinewallace
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Hmmm, I wonder if we shouldn't allow the client to cache N offers rather than only 1. I worry a bit about the privacy implications of having One Offer that gets reused across different contexts.

I think that makes sense, so they would interactively build and cache a few and then randomly(?) return one of them on get_cached_async_receive_offer?

It seems reasonable to save for follow-up although I could adapt the AsyncReceiveOffer cache struct serialization for this now.

Comment on lines +12709 to +12714
// Expire the offer at the same time as the static invoice so we automatically refresh both
// at the same time.
let offer_and_invoice_absolute_expiry = Duration::from_secs(core::cmp::min(
offer_paths_absolute_expiry.as_secs(),
duration_since_epoch.saturating_add(STATIC_INVOICE_DEFAULT_RELATIVE_EXPIRY).as_secs()
));
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One thing I want to address eventually (but maybe not in this PR) is that right now we cap the expiry of our offer/static invoice at 2 weeks, which doesn't work well for the "offer in Twitter bio" use case. Probably we can add something to UserConfig for this, and expose a method for users to proactively rotate their offer if it never expires?

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I wonder if for that we shouldn't try to come up with a scheme to allow the offer to last longer than the static invoice? I mean ideally an offer lasts at least a few years, but it kinda could cause you just care about the storage server being reliable, you don't care much about the static invoice.

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That makes sense. We could include another set of long-lived paths in the OfferPaths message that allows the recipient to refresh their invoice later while keeping the same offer [paths].

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I mean maybe the OffersPath paths should just be super long-lived? I don't see a strong reason to have some concept of long-lived paths?

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TheBlueMatt commented Feb 25, 2025

I think that makes sense, so they would interactively build and cache a few and then randomly(?) return one of them on get_cached_async_receive_offer?

Yea, I dunno what to do for the fetch'er, maybe we just expose the whole list?

It seems reasonable to save for follow-up although I could adapt the AsyncReceiveOffer cache struct serialization for this now.

Makes sense, tho I imagine it would be a rather trivial diff, no?

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2 participants