3.14 Splicing & Taproot Channels (Lightning, Upgraded)
Resizing channels without closing them and the next generation of channel constructions.
Splicing & Taproot Channels (Lightning, Upgraded)
Until recently, if you wanted to top up a Lightning channel or partially withdraw from it, your only option was to close the channel (paying on-chain fees) and open a new one (paying on-chain fees again). Annoying and expensive.
Until recently, if you wanted to top up a Lightning channel or partially withdraw from it, your only option was to close the channel (paying on-chain fees) and open a new one (paying on-chain fees again). Annoying and expensive.
Splicing fixes this. In one on-chain transaction you can add funds to or remove funds from an existing channel without ever closing it. Phoenix Wallet has already shipped this to ordinary users, and the rest of the Lightning ecosystem is catching up.
Taproot channels are the other big upgrade in flight. They take advantage of the Taproot soft fork so that Lightning openings and closings look identical to ordinary Taproot payments on the blockchain. That's a huge privacy and fungibility win — outsiders can no longer tell which on-chain activity is Lightning-related.
Both upgrades are rolling out across the major Lightning implementations (LDK, Core Lightning, LND, Eclair) through 2024–2026. End users mostly just need to keep their wallet apps up to date.