About reaching "OPEN" FSM state

Hello friends. My question is:

When the channel FSM reaches the OPEN state, this means: “TX included in at least one block” or "included in at least one block plus X blocks to be considered “confirmed” ?

Just in case, what is the typical count of blocks to wait in AE to consider a TX “confirmed”?

Kind regards, Hernan

Hi @hernandp

From documentation:

A block height timer is started and it ends after minimum_depth + 1 confirmations. Default value for it is 4, so 5 blocks need to be mined. As a result, each party will receive two kinds of confirmation.

Then the documentation goes specifying that when Alice’s FSM detects reaching the height needed, it sends to her a own_funding_locked info. After Bob’s FSM reports to her that it had seen the height it is waiting, Alice will receive another info: funding_locked. Note that different FSMs might be setup for waiting different heights and this is OK. Only after both FSMs are happy with chain height, they enter the open state.

As per documentation, the minimum_depth is defined at connection opening time and it is individual per participant. Depending on the amount dedicated to the channel, I would expect using different minimum depths. The smaller the minimum_depth, the higher the chance it could end up in a fork. On the other hand - the higher minimum_depth adds more fork-safety for partitcipants. The minimum_depth could go as low as 0 meaning participants would wait only for inclusion in a single micro block - this will make opening the state channel quite fast (a matter of seconds, really) but this is the most risky approach.

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