Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

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valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
Merged

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
@TheBlueMatt

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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
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MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

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Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

Merged
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
Merged

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

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@TheBlueMatt

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
@TheBlueMatt

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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
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MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

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Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

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lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
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Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
@TheBlueMatt

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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
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MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

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@TheBlueMatt@ldk-reviews-bot@tnull@valentinewallace
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Skip to content

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

Merged
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
Merged

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
@TheBlueMatt

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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
Sign up for freeto join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

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Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

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@TheBlueMatt@ldk-reviews-bot@tnull@valentinewallace
, 'i'); if (__m === '*' || __re.test(location.href)) { injectUserscript("// Strip utm_, fbclid, gclid, etc. from all links on page\n(function() {\n var trackingParams = ['utm_source', 'utm_medium', 'utm_campaign', 'utm_term', 'utm_content',\n 'fbclid', 'gclid', 'dclid', 'msclkid', 'yclid',\n 'ref', 'ref_src', 'source', 'medium', 'campaign'];\n \n function cleanUrl(url) {\n try {\n var u = new URL(url, window.location.origin);\n var changed = false;\n trackingParams.forEach(function(p) {\n if (u.searchParams.has(p)) {\n u.searchParams.delete(p);\n changed = true;\n }\n });\n return changed ? u.toString() : url;\n } catch (e) {\n return url;\n }\n }\n \n function cleanLinks() {\n document.querySelectorAll('a[href]').forEach(function(a) {\n var clean = cleanUrl(a.href);\n if (clean !== a.href) a.href = clean;\n });\n }\n \n cleanLinks();\n \n var observer = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {\n mutations.forEach(function(m) {\n m.addedNodes.forEach(function(node) {\n if (node.nodeType === 1) {\n if (node.tagName === 'A') cleanLinks();\n node.querySelectorAll('a[href]').forEach(function(a) {\n var clean = cleanUrl(a.href);\n if (clean !== a.href) a.href = clean;\n });\n }\n });\n });\n });\n observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });\n})();", "Remove Tracking Parameters from Links"); } } catch(__e) { console.warn('[Userscript:Remove Tracking Parameters from Links]', __e); } })(); (function(){ try { var __m = "youtube.com"; var __re = new RegExp('^' + "youtube\\.com" + '
Skip to content

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

Merged
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
Merged

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

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@TheBlueMatt

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
@TheBlueMatt

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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
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Labels

weekly goalSomeone wants to land this this week

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Status: Done

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

4 participants

@TheBlueMatt@ldk-reviews-bot@tnull@valentinewallace
, 'i'); if (__m === '*' || __re.test(location.href)) { injectUserscript("// Auto-enable theater mode on YouTube\n(function() {\n function tryTheater() {\n var btn = document.querySelector('button[aria-label=\"Theater mode\"], ytd-player #player button[title=\"Theater mode\"]');\n if (btn && !btn.classList.contains('activated')) {\n btn.click();\n }\n }\n \n // Try immediately\n tryTheater();\n \n // Try after navigation (SPA)\n var lastUrl = location.href;\n setInterval(function() {\n if (location.href !== lastUrl) {\n lastUrl = location.href;\n setTimeout(tryTheater, 500);\n }\n }, 1000);\n \n // Also try on player load\n var observer = new MutationObserver(tryTheater);\n observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });\n})();", "YouTube Theater Mode Default"); } } catch(__e) { console.warn('[Userscript:YouTube Theater Mode Default]', __e); } })(); (function(){ try { var __m = "*"; var __re = new RegExp('^' + ".*" + '
Skip to content

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

Merged
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
Merged

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

Conversation

@TheBlueMatt

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
@ldk-reviews-bot

ldk-reviews-bot commented Jun 25, 2025

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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
@TheBlueMatt

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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
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Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

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@TheBlueMatt@ldk-reviews-bot@tnull@valentinewallace
, 'i'); if (__m === '*' || __re.test(location.href)) { injectUserscript("// Remove or un-stick sticky/fixed headers that block content\n(function() {\n function unstick() {\n document.querySelectorAll('header, nav, [role=\"banner\"], .header, .navbar, .sticky, .fixed-top, [style*=\"position: fixed\"], [style*=\"position:sticky\"]').forEach(function(el) {\n if (el.style.position === 'fixed' || el.style.position === 'sticky' || \n getComputedStyle(el).position === 'fixed' || getComputedStyle(el).position === 'sticky') {\n el.style.position = 'static';\n el.style.top = 'auto';\n el.style.zIndex = 'auto';\n }\n });\n }\n \n unstick();\n \n var observer = new MutationObserver(unstick);\n observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true, attributes: true, attributeFilter: ['style', 'class'] });\n})();", "Kill Sticky Headers"); } } catch(__e) { console.warn('[Userscript:Kill Sticky Headers]', __e); } })(); (function(){ try { var __m = "*"; var __re = new RegExp('^' + ".*" + '
Skip to content

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

Merged
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
Merged

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
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Hey @tnull@valentinewallace! This PR has been waiting for your review.
Please take a look when you have a chance. If you're unable to review, please let us know so we can find another reviewer.

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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
@TheBlueMatt

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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
Sign up for freeto join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

weekly goalSomeone wants to land this this week

Projects

Status: Done

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

4 participants

@TheBlueMatt@ldk-reviews-bot@tnull@valentinewallace
, 'i'); if (__m === '*' || __re.test(location.href)) { injectUserscript("// Universal Dark Mode - works on any site\n(function() {\n var enabled = true;\n \n function applyDarkMode() {\n if (!enabled) return;\n \n // Create style element if it doesn't exist\n var style = document.getElementById('universal-dark-mode-style');\n if (!style) {\n style = document.createElement('style');\n style.id = 'universal-dark-mode-style';\n document.head.appendChild(style);\n }\n \n // Dark mode CSS - inverts colors but preserves images/video\n style.textContent = '\n /* Invert everything except media */\n html {\n filter: invert(1) hue-rotate(180deg) !important;\n background: #1a1a2e !important;\n }\n \n /* Restore images, videos, iframes, canvas */\n img, video, iframe, canvas, svg, picture, [style*=\"background-image\"] {\n filter: invert(1) hue-rotate(180deg) !important;\n }\n \n /* Preserve specific elements that should not be inverted */\n .no-dark-mode, .no-dark-mode *,\n [data-theme=\"light\"], [data-theme=\"light\"],\n .ace_editor, .ace_editor *,\n .CodeMirror, .CodeMirror *,\n .monaco-editor, .monaco-editor *,\n .markdown-body pre, .markdown-body pre *,\n .highlight, .highlight *,\n pre code, pre code * {\n filter: none !important;\n }\n \n /* Fix common UI elements */\n .modal, .popup, .dropdown-menu, .tooltip, .popover {\n filter: invert(1) hue-rotate(180deg) !important;\n background: #2d2d44 !important;\n border-color: #444 !important;\n }\n \n /* Scrollbars */\n ::-webkit-scrollbar { background: #1a1a2e !important; }\n ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb { background: #444 !important; }\n ::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb:hover { background: #555 !important; }\n \n /* Selection */\n ::selection { background: #4ecdc4 !important; color: #1a1a2e !important; }\n ::-moz-selection { background: #4ecdc4 !important; color: #1a1a2e !important; }\n ';\n }\n \n function removeDarkMode() {\n var style = document.getElementById('universal-dark-mode-style');\n if (style) style.remove();\n }\n \n // Toggle with Alt+Shift+D\n document.addEventListener('keydown', function(e) {\n if (e.altKey && e.shiftKey && e.key === 'D') {\n e.preventDefault();\n enabled = !enabled;\n if (enabled) {\n applyDarkMode();\n console.log('[Universal Dark Mode] Enabled');\n } else {\n removeDarkMode();\n console.log('[Universal Dark Mode] Disabled');\n }\n }\n });\n \n // Apply on load\n applyDarkMode();\n \n // Re-apply on dynamic content\n var observer = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {\n if (enabled && !document.getElementById('universal-dark-mode-style')) {\n applyDarkMode();\n }\n });\n observer.observe(document.head, { childList: true });\n \n console.log('[Universal Dark Mode] Loaded - Press Alt+Shift+D to toggle');\n})();", "Universal Dark Mode"); } } catch(__e) { console.warn('[Userscript:Universal Dark Mode]', __e); } })(); })();
Skip to content

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost - #3890

Merged
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional
Jul 9, 2025
Merged

Use cost / path amt limit as the pathfinding score, not cost#3890
valentinewallace merged 3 commits into
lightningdevkit:mainfrom
TheBlueMatt:2025-06-routing-score-proportional

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While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.

I'm somewhat optimistically labeling this "backport 0.1", since we've been doing rather large pathfinding changes in backports anyway, and this directly addresses a major user complaint (with a rather small patch), so it seems worth backporting. However, it does come with some potential for tradeoffs, so open to discussion here.

`RouteGraphNode` is the main heap entry in our dijkstra's next-best
heap. Thus, because its rather constantly being sorted, we care a
good bit about its size as fitting more of them on a cache line can
provide some additional speed.
In 43d250d, we switched from
tracking nodes during pathfinding by their `NodeId` to a "counter"
which allows us to avoid `HashMap`s lookups for much of the
pathfinding process.
Because the `dist` lookup is now quite cheap (its just a `Vec`),
there's no reason to track `NodeId`s in the heap entries. Instead,
we simply fetch the `NodeId` of the node via the `dist` map by
examining its `candidate`'s pointer to its source `NodeId`.
This allows us to remove a `NodeId` in `RouteGraphNode`, moving it
from 64 to 32 bytes. This allows us to expand the `score` field
size in a coming commit without expanding `RouteGraphNode`'s size.
While we were doing the `dist` lookup in
`add_entries_to_cheapest_to_target_node` anyway, the `NodeId`
lookup via the `candidate` may not be free. Still, avoiding
expanding `RouteGraphNode` above 128 bytes in a few commits is a
nice win.
We track the total CLTV from the recipient to the current hop in
`RouteGraphNode` so that we can limit its total during pathfinding.
While its great to use a `u32` for that to match existing CLTV
types, allowing a total CLTV limit of 64K blocks (455 days) is
somewhat absurd, so here we swap the `total_cltv_delta` to a `u16`.
This keeps `RouteGraphNode` to 32 bytes in a coming commit as we
expand `score`.
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Concept ACK, can we add a test?

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs

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Hmm, re:

Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.

I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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I vaguely recall some discussion some years back, but even after some digging was unable to find the corresponding PR to reestablish context unfortunately.

Same, I know we've discussed it before...

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs Outdated
Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
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Apologies for the delay, pushed a test.

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Fixups LGTM, would be ready for squashin' from my side. Verified that the new test would fail on BASE.

@TheBlueMatt
TheBlueMattforce-pushed the 2025-06-routing-score-proportional branch from dea5750 to ac95262CompareJuly 8, 2025 20:46
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Squashed without further changes.

valentinewallace
valentinewallace previously approved these changes Jul 8, 2025

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LGTM pretty much

if fee_cost == u64::MAX || value_msat == 0 {
u64::MAX.into()
} else {
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

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Can we extract the 64 const here and below and document why it was chosen? Otherwise it's not clear here unless you see the comment in the middle of the big macro below...

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Not sure that a constant of "the bit length of a u64" is more useful than a comment, so I added the comment here as well :).

Comment threadlightning/src/routing/router.rs
While walking nodes in our Dijkstra's pathfinding, we may find a
channel which is amount-limited to less than the amount we're
currently trying to send. This is fine, and when we encounter such
nodes we simply limit the amount we'd send in this path if we pick
the channel.
When we encounter such a path, we keep summing the cost across hops
as we go, keeping whatever scores we assigned to channels between
the amount-limited one and the recipient, but using the new limited
amount for any channels we look at later as we walk towards the
sender.
This leads to somewhat inconsistent scores, especially as our
scorer assigns a large portion of its penalties and a portion of
network fees are proportional to the amount. Thus, we end up with a
somewhat higher score than we "should" for this path as later hops
use a high proportional cost. We accepted this as a simple way to
bias against small-value paths and many MPP parts.
Sadly, in practice it appears our bias is not strong enough, as
several users have reported that we often attempt far too many MPP
parts. In practice, if we encounter a channel with a small limit
early in the Dijkstra's pass (towards the end of the path), we may
prefer it over many other paths as we start assigning very low
costs early on before we've accumulated much cost from larger
channels.
Here, we swap the `cost` Dijkstra's score for `cost / path amount`.
This should bias much stronger against many MPP parts by preferring
larger paths proportionally to their amount.
This somewhat better aligns with our goal - if we have to pick
multiple paths, we should be searching for paths the optimize
fee-per-sat-sent, not strictly the fee paid.
However, it might bias us against smaller paths somewhat stronger
than we want - because we're still using the fees/scores calculated
with the sought amount for hops processed already, but are now
dividing by a smaller sent amount when walking further hops, we
will bias "incorrectly" (and fairly strongly) against smaller
parts.
Still, because of the complaints on pathfinding performance due to
too many MPP paths, it seems like a worthwhile tradeoff, as
ultimately MPP splitting is always the domain of heuristics anyway.
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Squash-pushed an additional comment:

$ git diff-tree -U1 ac95262dd d08fbe782
diff --git a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs
index 43a4c7e8f2..5ad5c3e778 100644
--- a/lightning/src/routing/router.rs+++ b/lightning/src/routing/router.rs@@ -2133,2 +2133,4 @@ impl<'a> PaymentPath<'a> {
} else {
+ // In order to avoid integer division precision loss, we simply shift the costs up to+ // the top half of a u128 and divide by the value (which is, at max, just under a u64).
((fee_cost as u128) << 64) / value_msat as u128

@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt added the weekly goal Someone wants to land this this week label Jul 9, 2025
@valentinewallace
valentinewallace merged commit 79fc513 into lightningdevkit:mainJul 9, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt self-assigned this Jul 10, 2025
@TheBlueMattTheBlueMatt mentioned this pull request Jul 15, 2025
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Backported in #3932

TheBlueMatt added a commit to TheBlueMatt/rust-lightning that referenced this pull request Jul 24, 2025
v0.1.5 - Jul 16, 2025 - "Async Path Reduction"
Performance Improvements
========================
* `NetworkGraph`'s expensive internal consistency checks have now been
disabled in debug builds in addition to release builds (lightningdevkit#3687).
Bug Fixes
=========
* Pathfinding which results in a multi-path payment is now substantially
smarter, using fewer paths and better optimizing fees and successes (lightningdevkit#3890).
* A counterparty delaying claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries can
no longer cause our `ChannelMonitor` to continuously rebroadcast invalid
transactions or RBF bump attempts (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Reorgs can no longer cause us to fail to claim HTLCs after a counterparty
delayed claiming multiple HTLCs with different expiries (lightningdevkit#3923).
* Force-closing a channel while it is blocked on another channel's async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` can no longer lead to a panic (lightningdevkit#3858).
* `ChannelMonitorUpdate`s can no longer be released to storage too early when
doing async updates or on restart. This only impacts async
`ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence and can lead to loss of funds only in rare
cases with `ChannelMonitorUpdate` persistence order inversions (lightningdevkit#3907).
Security
========
0.1.5 fixes a vulnerability which could allow a peer to overdraw their reserve
value, potentially cutting into commitment transaction fees on channels with a
low reserve.
* Due to a bug in checking whether an HTLC is dust during acceptance, near-dust
HTLCs were not counted towards the commitment transaction fee, but did
eventually contribute to it when we built a commitment transaction. This can
be used by a counterparty to overdraw their reserve value, or, for channels
with a low reserve value, cut into the commitment transaction fee (lightningdevkit#3933).
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MPP routing appears to create significantly more shards than is required

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