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MonitorEvents resolve outbound payment claims #4545

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valentinewallace wants to merge 19 commits intolightningdevkit:mainfrom
valentinewallace:2026-04-mon-resolves-outb-claims
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MonitorEvents resolve outbound payment claims #4545
valentinewallace wants to merge 19 commits intolightningdevkit:mainfrom
valentinewallace:2026-04-mon-resolves-outb-claims

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As part of #4482, we're looking into changing our architecture -- currently, the Channel{Manager} is responsible for managing the resolution of off-chain HTLCs, and the ChannelMonitor is responsible for them once they're on-chain. See the issue description but there's complexity that results from this design.

Quoting the issue, "Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them - adding a new MonitorEvent resolution path through a new method (rather than via ChannelMonitorUpdates)."

Here we begin resolving outbound payment claims via MonitorEvents, if persistent_monitor_events is enabled (it will only be enabled randomly in tests for now).

Based on #4491

Helps when debugging to know which variants failed.
Currently, the resolution of HTLCs (and decisions on when HTLCs can be
forwarded) is the responsibility of Channel objects (a part of ChannelManager)
until the channel is closed, and then the ChannelMonitor thereafter. This leads
to some complexity around race conditions for HTLCs right around channel
closure. Additionally, there is lots of complexity reconstructing the state of
all HTLCs in the ChannelManager deserialization/loading logic.

Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to
ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of
MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In
order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in
the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them.  This
simplify things - on restart instead of examining the set of HTLCs in monitors
we can simply replay all the pending MonitorEvents.

As a first step towards this, here we persist a flag in the ChannelManager and
ChannelMonitors indicating whether this new feature is enabled. It will be used
in upcoming commits to maintain compatibility and create an upgrade/downgrade
path between LDK versions.
Cleans up the next commit
This field will be deprecated in upcoming commits when we start persisting
MonitorEvent ids alongside the MonitorEvents.
Currently, the resolution of HTLCs (and decisions on when HTLCs can be
forwarded) is the responsibility of Channel objects (a part of ChannelManager)
until the channel is closed, and then the ChannelMonitor thereafter. This leads
to some complexity around race conditions for HTLCs right around channel
closure. Additionally, there is lots of complexity reconstructing the state of
all HTLCs in the ChannelManager deserialization/loading logic.

Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to
ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of
MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In
order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in
the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them.  This
simplify things - on restart instead of examining the set of HTLCs in monitors
we can simply replay all the pending MonitorEvents.

Here we add an as-yet-unused API to chain::Watch to allow the ChannelManager to
tell the a ChannelMonitor that a MonitorEvent has been irrevocably processed
and can be deleted.
Currently, the resolution of HTLCs (and decisions on when HTLCs can be
forwarded) is the responsibility of Channel objects (a part of ChannelManager)
until the channel is closed, and then the ChannelMonitor thereafter. This leads
to some complexity around race conditions for HTLCs right around channel
closure. Additionally, there is lots of complexity reconstructing the state of
all HTLCs in the ChannelManager deserialization/loading logic.

Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to
ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of
MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In
order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in
the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them.  This
simplify things - on restart instead of examining the set of HTLCs in monitors
we can simply replay all the pending MonitorEvents.

To allow the ChannelManager to ack specific monitor events once they are
resolved in upcoming commits, here we give each MonitorEvent a corresponding
unique id. It's implemented in such a way that we can delete legacy monitor
event code in the future when the new persistent monitor events flag is enabled
by default.
Currently, the resolution of HTLCs (and decisions on when HTLCs can be
forwarded) is the responsibility of Channel objects (a part of ChannelManager)
until the channel is closed, and then the ChannelMonitor thereafter. This leads
to some complexity around race conditions for HTLCs right around channel
closure. Additionally, there is lots of complexity reconstructing the state of
all HTLCs in the ChannelManager deserialization/loading logic.

Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to
ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of
MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In
order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in
the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them. This
will simplify things - on restart instead of examining the set of HTLCs in
monitors we can simply replay all the pending MonitorEvents.

Here for the purposes of merging initial support for persistent monitor events,
we ack each immediately after it is received/handled by the ChannelManager,
which is equivalent to the behavior we had prior to monitor events becoming
persistent.

In upcoming work, we'll want to have much more special handling for HTLCUpdate
monitor events in particular -- e.g. for outbound payment claim events, we
should only ACK the monitor event when the PaymentSent event is processed,
until that point we want it to keep being provided back to us on startup.

All the other monitor events are trivial to ACK, since they don't need to be
re-processed on startup.
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👋 Hi! I see this is a draft PR.
I'll wait to assign reviewers until you mark it as ready for review.
Just convert it out of draft status when you're ready for review!

@valentinewallace valentinewallace force-pushed the 2026-04-mon-resolves-outb-claims branch from c261d96 to feefde7 Compare April 7, 2026 18:20
@valentinewallace valentinewallace added blocked on dependent pr blocked on next release Should Wait Until Next Release To Land labels Apr 7, 2026
@valentinewallace valentinewallace self-assigned this Apr 7, 2026
@valentinewallace valentinewallace added this to the 0.4 milestone Apr 7, 2026
@valentinewallace valentinewallace force-pushed the 2026-04-mon-resolves-outb-claims branch 2 times, most recently from e4d4da8 to 025b52c Compare April 7, 2026 19:01
Currently, the resolution of HTLCs (and decisions on when HTLCs can be
forwarded) is the responsibility of Channel objects (a part of ChannelManager)
until the channel is closed, and then the ChannelMonitor thereafter. This leads
to some complexity around race conditions for HTLCs right around channel
closure. Additionally, there is lots of complexity reconstructing the state of
all HTLCs in the ChannelManager deserialization/loading logic.

Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to
ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of
MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In
order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in
the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them. This
will simplify things - on restart instead of examining the set of HTLCs in
monitors we can simply replay all the pending MonitorEvents.

Here we complete work that was built on recent prior commits and actually start
re-providing monitor events on startup if they went un-acked during runtime.
This isn't actually supported in prod yet, so this new code will run randomly
in tests, to ensure we still support the old paths.
And log them in check_added_monitors if it fails.
Will be used in upcoming commits when generating MonitorEvents.
Processing MonitorEvent::HTLCEvent causes the ChannelManager to call
claim_funds_internal, but it will currently pass in None for the
user_channel_id parameter. In upcoming commits when we begin generating monitor
events for off-chain HTLC claims as well as onchain, we'll want to start using
an accurate value instead.
Used in an upcoming commit to insert a pending payment if it's missing on
startup and we need to re-claim.
Used in an upcoming commit to generate an
EventCompletionAction::AckMonitorEvent.
In upcoming commits, we'll be generating monitor events for off-chain claims as
well as on-chain. As a small prefactor, calculate the from_onchain value rather
than hardcoding it to true.
If ChannelManager::persistent_monitor_events is enabled, we may want to avoid
acking a monitor event until after an Event is processed by the user. In
upcoming commits, we'll use this to ensure a MonitorEvent::HTLCEvent will keep
being re-provided back to us until after an Event::PaymentSent is processed.
Currently, the resolution of HTLCs (and decisions on when HTLCs can be
forwarded) is the responsibility of Channel objects (a part of ChannelManager)
until the channel is closed, and then the ChannelMonitor thereafter. This leads
to some complexity around race conditions for HTLCs right around channel
closure. Additionally, there is lots of complexity reconstructing the state of
all HTLCs in the ChannelManager deserialization/loading logic.

Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to
ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of
MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In
order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in
the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them. This
will simplify things - on restart instead of examining the set of HTLCs in
monitors we can simply replay all the pending MonitorEvents.

In recent work, we added support for keeping monitor events around until they
are explicitly acked by the ChannelManager, but would always ack monitor events
immediately, which preserved the previous behavior and didn't break any tests.

Up until this point, we only generated HTLC monitor events when a payment was
claimed/failed on-chain.

In this commit, we start generating persistent monitor events whenever a payment
is claimed *off*-chain, specifically when new latest holder commitment data is
provided to the monitor.

For the purpose of making incremental progress on this feature, these events
will be a no-op and/or continue to be acked immediately except in the narrow
case of an off-chain outbound payment claim. HTLC forward claim monitor events
will be a no-op, and on-chain outbound payment claim events continue to be
acked immediately.

Off-chain outbound payment claims, however, now have monitor events generated
for them that will not be acked by the ChannelManager until the PaymentSent
event is processed by the user. This also allows us to stop blocking the RAA
monitor update that removes the preimage, because the purpose of that behavior
was to ensure the user got a PaymentSent event and the monitor event now serves
that purpose instead.
This isn't a bug at the moment because a claim in this situation would already
be filtered out due to its inclusion in htlcs_resolved_to_user. However, when
we stop issuing ReleasePaymentComplete monitor updates for claims in upcoming
commits, HTLC claims will no longer be in htlcs_resolved_to_user when
get_onchain_failed_htlcs checks.
Currently, the resolution of HTLCs (and decisions on when HTLCs can be
forwarded) is the responsibility of Channel objects (a part of ChannelManager)
until the channel is closed, and then the ChannelMonitor thereafter. This leads
to some complexity around race conditions for HTLCs right around channel
closure. Additionally, there is lots of complexity reconstructing the state of
all HTLCs in the ChannelManager deserialization/loading logic.

Instead, we want to do all resolution in ChannelMonitors (in response to
ChannelMonitorUpdates) and pass them back to ChannelManager in the form of
MonitorEvents (similar to how HTLCs are resolved after channels are closed). In
order to have reliable resolution, we'll need to keep MonitorEvents around in
the ChannelMonitor until the ChannelManager has finished processing them. This
will simplify things - on restart instead of examining the set of HTLCs in
monitors we can simply replay all the pending MonitorEvents.

In recent work, we added support for keeping monitor events around until they
are explicitly acked by the ChannelManager, but would always ack monitor events
immediately, which preserved the previous behavior and didn't break any tests.

Here we start acking monitor events for on-chain HTLC claims when the user
processes the PaymentSent event, if the persistent_monitor_events feature is
enabled. This allows us to stop issuing ReleasePaymentComplete monitor updates
for onchain payment claims, because the purpose of that behavior is to ensure
we won't keep repeatedly issuing PaymentSent events, and the monitor event and
acking it on PaymentSent processing now serves that purpose instead.
@valentinewallace valentinewallace force-pushed the 2026-04-mon-resolves-outb-claims branch from 025b52c to 591144b Compare April 7, 2026 20:58
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