Eclair v0.11.0: Official Bolt 12 Support, Splicing, Liquidity Ads & On-The-Fly Funding Prototypes

• The release introduces official support for Bolt 12 offers and advances liquidity management capabilities, including splicing, liquidity ads, and on-the-fly funding.
• Additionally, it incorporates numerous performance enhancements, expanded configuration options, and resolves minor bugs.
• Notably, Eclair v0.11.0 also stops accepting channels that don't support anchor outputs and updates minimal dependency on Bitcoin Core to v27.2.

"We're still actively working with other implementations to finalize the specification for some of these experimental features. You should only activate them if you know what you're doing, and are ready to handle backwards-incompatible changes," was stated in the release notes.

What's new

• Official support for Bolt 12. This release contains full support for Bolt 12 payments.
  • Generating a Bolt 12 offer is more complex due to the use of blinded paths which ensure that your identity remains confidential during payment receipts.

"We haven't yet figured out how to create default blinded paths that work for any topology, so instead of providing unsafe defaults, we let node operators dynamically configure their blinded paths using plugins. The bolt 12 tipjar plugin is a good example of how to configure your node," said the developers.

• Splicing prototype for private channels. Improved ACINQ implementation of splicing by relying on the official quiescence feature and adding RBF support.

"We're still using experimental feature bits and messages in this release, as we're missing support for splicing on public channels and are waiting for other implementations to be ready for cross-compatibility tests. We hope that splicing will officially be supported in the next release. Meanwhile, you can experiment with splicing between eclair nodes on unannounced channels."

• Liquidity ads prototype. Liquidity ads empower nodes to sell their liquidity in a trustless and decentralized way. Each node advertises the rates at which they are willing to sell their liquidity, allowing buyers to connect with sellers offering favorable rates.

"The liquidity ads specification is still under review and will likely change. This feature isn't meant to be used on mainnet yet and is thus disabled by default."

• On-the-fly funding prototype. v0.11 implements a protocol to negotiate on-the-fly liquidity purchases when receiving payments, using experimental BOLT features like splicing and liquidity ads. This protocol is used in production in the latest version of Phoenix wallet.

"This isn't meant to be activated by default on eclair nodes, but if you want to run an LSP for mobile wallets, you may be interested in this feature. This is still experimental at this point and is waiting for other implementations, so use at your own risk!"

• Updated minimal version of Bitcoin Core to v27.2. The latest version of Eclair requires Bitcoin Core 27.2, which introduces CoinGrinder, a new coin selection algorithm that reduces on-chain transaction costs when feerates are high. Newer Bitcoin Core versions may be used but haven't been thoroughly tested.
• Incoming obsolete channels will be rejected. "Eclair will not allow remote peers to open new static_remote_key channels. These channels are obsolete, node operators should use option_anchors channels now. Existing static_remote_key channels will continue to work."
• HTLC endorsement for channel jamming. Channel jamming mitigations now propose using local per-node reputation. Nodes relay an "endorsement" field on payments as per bLIP 4. Eclair now implements bLIP 4 to enable future network-wide reputation experiments.
• API changes:
  • channelstats now takes optional parameters --count and --skip to control pagination. By default, it will return the first 10 entries.
  • createinvoice now takes an optional --privateChannelIds parameter that can be used to add routing hints through private channels.
  • nodes allows filtering nodes that offer liquidity ads.
  • rbfsplice lets any channel participant RBF the current unconfirmed splice transaction.
• Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes. This release includes performance improvements to RPC calls made to bitcoind, especially when many channels are force-closed.
  • This version also updates secp256k1 library to the 0.6.0 release.

Full release notes for this version are available here.

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