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The Rub of New Shoes
How long will you wear yours?
by Mike Barres (04/19/2005) | Leading in Hope
I was limping down the aisle of our church. People could tell I was in pain. I am their minister, so they were concerned. They asked me, "What's wrong?" I told them that I had new leather shoes and they were killing my feet. They all then began to laugh, and as I hobbled back up the aisle to the pulpit, people were snickering and giggling. I'm always glad to provide a little entertainment when I can.
When I was a little boy, I remember getting my first pair of new leather shoes. My dad told me that it would take a while to break them in, but once I did, they would fit great.
That day in church, people said, "Why don't you just get rid of them?" I knew the pain was temporary, and that afterward, they would be a fine pair of shoes that I would enjoy.
Life is a lot like that. New things can be hard. We must press on until it gets easier. Paul, one of the apostles, reminds us, And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. (Galatians 6:9-10 NKJV) We can miss out on wonderful new things if we quit just because there is difficulty at first.
When I first started using a computer, I was so frustrated. That computer made me so angry. Many times I almost gave up and decided to never try again. I got some tutoring, pressed on, and now the computer makes my work and ministry so much easier that I can't imagine being without it.
We must stick it out to the end.
Sometimes we step out in to a new job, a new school, a new church, or a new ministry. This new step involves things we aren't used to doing and people with whom we aren't used to working. If it is difficult at first, we may be tempted to quit. Hopefully, however, we won't!
Following God's will is not always easy. New things can try and test us. But we know deep inside that we must stick it out to the end and we will find God's blessings.
I'm not sure if the leather shoes adjusted to me, or I adjusted to the shoes, or both. My new leather shoes hurt me at first, but now they are comfortable. More importantly, I hope that we are willing to step out into new things for God, even if they are hard at first. Following God's will is not always easy, but if we press on, we'll come to a wonderful new place of joy in serving Him.
"The Rub of New Shoes" by Mike Barres is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Heartlight encourages you to share this material with others in church bulletins, personal emails, and other non-commercial uses. Please see our Usage Guidelines for more information.
Mike is a pastor and writer for a number of online publications.
shoes rub sore feet change maturity
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Parenting cuts deep to the core. It lays open our needs before God, and we can either resent it or embrace the powerful cleansing that comes from God's purifying fire
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Our approach to people must focus on helping them believe God values them and that Jesus came to serve, love, and help them find life in him
Thankful for Our Greatest Gift
God has blessed us with many gifts, but the greatest of all gifts was God coming to us in Jesus of Nazareth!
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Motorists can expect a big petrol price hike from the 1st of April, due to the rising global oil price, a weaker rand and the introduction of new fuel taxes. According to the latest data from the Central Energy Fund, the cost for both grades of petrol (93 and 95) will rise by R1.03 and R1.05 per litre respectively.
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Carrie Brownstein is set to make her film debut alongside Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in the upcoming Carol. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Brownstein will portray Genevieve, a woman who "has an encounter" with Mara's character, Therese. Blanchett and Mara play two women who begin an affair after Blanchett's marriage leaves her unhappy. Brownstein is the latest addition to the cast, which also includes Kyle Chandler as Blanchett's husband, as well as Sarah Paulson. Based on Patricia Highsmith's 1952 romance novel The Price Of Salt, Carol will take place in 1950s New York and be directed by Todd Haynes. Filming is set to begin later this month.


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Alon USA to acquire El Paso convenience stores for $30M
By Michael Baron
Published: Mar 28, 2006 8:07 a.m. ET
MichaelBaron
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Alon USA Energy Inc. alj Tuesday agreed to purchase up to 55 Good Time convenience stores in El Paso, Texas for $30 million in cash and the assumption of $7 million in debt. Alon USA plans to convert the acquired stores to the 7-Eleven and Fina brands. It expects the deal to close in the second quarter. The company will then supply motor fuels to the stores, through its long-term pipeline capacity connecting Alon's Big Spring Refinery. Shares of Dallas-based Alon, an independent petroleum refiner and marketer closed Monday at $23.94, up 1.5%.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Fonte : (@eu_echo) giorno 01 04, 2019 - 06:04 .
A massive THANK YOU to all the EU Member States who contributed to the int'l emergency response in #Mozambique so far, providing safe water, medical care, shelters, experts, telecommunications & much more.
Fonte : Ministero della Salute giorno 01 04, 2019 - 10:04 .


Shifting can be a taxing business. However, with Agarwal Real Packers & Movers on your side, you can be sure of efficiency and stress free relocation. We take the problem off your shoulders essentially when you hire us. Unlike other packers and movers Chitpur, we provide an end to end relocation solution.
The biggest hassle in relocation is packing and loading all the stuff. Not to mention the effort it takes to then unpack it and arrange it. With Agarwal movers and packers Chitpur, your exertion becomes very easy. We not only pack and transport your goods, but also unpack and finally arrange it. We also tend to listen to instructions which many movers and packers Chitpur do not do.
We understand that you might want to have your couch face various directions before finally settling on the right spot. You would find us at Agarwal packers and movers Chitpur to be very patient and obedient of your every wish.
If you are worried that we might be expensive than other packers and movers in Chitpur then you can hold that thought right there. We assure you that our rates are very competitive and almost below industry rates. There are also other factors that make us the best choice like being ISO certified, using export quality packaging material and having trained staff.
Agarwal Real Packers & Movers are in business since 1989. We have helped relocate lakhs of people from all over the nation in an efficient and hassle-free manner. If you are truly looking to relocate without the added stress of moving your own boxes, then call us on our customer care number. You will notice the difference in our service quality from the first call you make. Our executives will help you understand the relocation process and costing. We also send representatives to your premise for a pre-shifting investigation.


Carving out consistent one-on-one time with your kids is one of the best ways to stay in your child's life. Your child wants a unique connection to you. They want to feel uniquely understood and valued. One-on-one time creates space for this to happen.
Now, if you knew me, you'd know that I'm by nature a planner. And it's true that twice a year I set aside time to evaluate my family calendar. I try to plan some of these one-on-one times with my kids. But the truth is, that kids are more spontaneous than planned. They are less likely to fit perfectly on your calendar. The secret is creating space so that you are available when opportunities arise AND being aware of the opportunities that you already have.
1.	Look at your everyday routines.
My youngest daughter likes to cook. Many times she asks to help when I'm making dinner or baking something. This has the potential to be a rushed, hectic time in our home. But if I look at this as time with her, I slow it down and we have fun.
2.	Capitalize on your time in the car.
Gary and I have both taken different kids with us when we had short trips away. There's something about long drives to bring out the most interesting discussions with your kids.
Driving them to piano practice, sleep-overs, and orthodontist appointments are a few other great "listening" times.
3.	Get involved in their activities.
One of my girls swims on a swim team. This involves early morning practices and long hours sitting at a swim meets. But it also gives us good talking time. We sit in lawn chairs, and bake in the sun, and hang out. I love it!
4.	Plan a special trip.
On a special birthday or holiday, take your child on a campout or a trip to a fun city. Focused time together away from the normal routine allows you to create great memories and gives you great uninterrupted time together.
5.	Take them out to eat.
Everyone has to eat, and it's especially appealing when you're buying!
6.	Go school shopping with them.
Instead of taking everyone on an exhausting trip to the mall, spread it out. Take each child alone. Go to lunch. Have fun together!
7.	Be willing to put down what you're doing.
At least one night a week, one of my kids jumps on my bed and starts talking. Sometimes I'm right in the middle of my favorite TV show or reading a book. Sometimes I might even be working. Make it your rule that when you're home, you're willing to put down what you're doing to connect on their time.
8.	Plan things that only the two of you do together.
There was a time when one of my girls always went with me when I washed the car. There was another season where one of them always went with me to shop for groceries on Sunday night. Even routine things can be a great way to connect.
So how about you? What do you do to carve out one-on-one time with your kids?


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General (but related to Code::Blocks) »
C::B design - Multiple compilers / programming languages
Author Topic: C::B design - Multiple compilers / programming languages (Read 3915 times)
This may seem a bold question, but why wasn't Code::Blocks designed in a way that any user may parametrize Editor syntax highlighting and compiler settings through some specific format configuration XML files?
It would be foolish to actually ask for such a demolishing change at this time, but it seems not only possible, but also more reasonable to me than to have to recode/recompile certain fundamental plugins such as the compiler / code completion ones whenever a new compiler is to be supported. And it can be even more complicated if one considers adding support for additional programming languages, such as D, as someone already suggested...
So my question, which comes out of curiosity, is: why making it depend only on plugins to work?
I think the syntax highlighting for other languages couldn't be implemented because of some bug (can't remember which one).
About compiler expansion, the current architecture doesn't support it. But it's planned for v2.0.
Regarding class browser and code completion, the plugin we have has the syntax hardcoded and somewhat difficult to change. If someone wants to make an alternative plugin which allows for language expansion, we'd be really grateful
zieQ
Almost regular
Re: C::B design - Multiple compilers / programming languages
It's in discussion in the compiler and debugger plugin section, and as Rick said, it's planned for V2
good topic.
I think, C::B is a good product. we programers should learn more ablut it, not only to use it. so, I holp that we'll disscus it's design more and more. If C::B's father can help us to understand the design of it, this is a great thing.
Can C::B be describe in a UML diagram?


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Serving Redmond Oregon since 1910
Home / Features
Published April 8, 2019 at 01:01AM
Flashback: "Ladies' night at the gym," 100 years ago
(Spokesman file photo) - /Spokesman
(Spokesman file photo) 8544006
April 3, 1919 — Ladies' night at the gym
Ladies' night at the gymnasium last Friday was quite a success and drew a large crowd. There were but few aspirants for the basket ball game, but ultimately a team which included Mesdames Burdick, Hosch, Young, Bob Roberts and Bert Reynolds played against a mixed team of high school and older girls. Although Mrs. Young proved a regular "shark" at throwing foul baskets, the game resulted in a score of 16 to 2 in favor of the girls.
The indoor baseball game was apparently more popular with the ladies and there was a large aggregations on hand from which there was no difficulty in choosing teams. After the required number of innings, the score was a tie, so another inning was played which resulted in a score of 16 to 18 in favor of the married women. There was some very classy work in both runs and batting. Philip Dobson was umpire, and more than once narrowly escaped being mobbed by ardent rooters.
Between games Mrs. J. R. Roberts sang a solo and encore, accompanied by Mrs. Cunning on the piano.
April 6, 1944 — Salvage of Paper Still Important
Salvage of waste paper must continue, if the need for this critical war item is to be met, it is pointed out by Maurice F. Roberts, Redmond salvage chairman. Old newspaper, magazines and cartons are wanted, he said.
The paper should be wrapped and tied in bundles of approximately 50 pounds and delivered to the storage quarters in the Cline building on Seventh street back of New Redmond hotel.
Housewives are urged to continue saving tin cans and waste fats.
April 9, 1969 — Assembling cabin cruiser all-winter family project
Despite the caption under an advertising picture stating that a 22-foot cabin cruiser had been completely assembled and finished by two secretaries in a month, Art Wright, 342 S. Canyon, doesn't think many families would want to attempt the job, even if they could save $1500 by doing the work themselves.
Art and his family did it -- but it took them all winter. "They may have been male secretaries, probably to a carpenters' or boat-builders' union."
Last fall Art purchased a kit for a Luger cabin cruiser from a firm in Minneapolis. It came complete with molded fiberglass hull, all hardware, glue, nails, even finishing varnish. Art and his wife, Janice, and three sons, Bruce 16, Kirk 15 and Lance 14, set to work. Perhaps one reason that it took all winter was that the hull and the plan and instructions were for the current model, calling for an even six feet head clearance in the roomy cabin; while some of the wood pieces were cut to fit a model of a year earlier, calling for 6'3" clearance. The Wrights had to recut and refit many pieces!
Then there were too few screws of a particular type, which the company made good by return mail. Anyway, the Wrights cut and whittled, glued and screwed, sanded and finished until now, but for a bit more finishing, naming, licensing and numbering and getting it hauled to Round Butte for launching, they have a beautiful boat.
April 6, 1994 — Non-sports letters
This spring, Redmond High School will catch up with a good part of the Central Oregon region, and the state.
For the first time, students who excel in areas other than athletics will receive a letter.
This issue has surfaced off and on during the past few years at the high school.
The high school will award one letter for athletics and such activities as band and drama, according to Dave Sime, band director. The high school site council is continuing to work on the possibility of an academic letter.
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Coin & Numismatic News NGC Certifies Rare Medal Struck for 1970 Brazilian Soccer Team
NGC Certifies Rare Medal Struck for 1970 Brazilian Soccer Team
CoinNews.net
Photo Caption: Mexico 1970 World Cup Medal, struck to celebrate Brazil as the first three-time winner, graded NGC MS 66.
Numismatic Guaranty Corporation® (NGC) has certified a very rare gold medal struck by Mexico for the Brazilian soccer team to celebrate them as the first to win three World Cups. The historic feat was achieved in 1970 in Mexico, which hosted the World Cup tournament that year.
The medal was purchased in a private sale and recently submitted to NGC, which graded it NGC MS 66.
The medal is believed to be one of only about 20 that were issued, and is struck in 21-karat gold, which is common for Mexico issues. These medals were created for members of the victorious Brazil team, and they are rarely offered for sale.
The obverse reads NOVENO CAMPEONATO MUNDIAL DE FUTBAL (Ninth World Championship of Soccer), with MEXICO 1970 at the bottom. Along the periphery are the flags of the 16 finalist nations, including Brazil at 1 o'clock. At the center is a likeness of the Jules Rimet Trophy, which the Brazilian team was allowed to keep as the first three-time World Cup champion. (The trophy itself was later stolen and has never been recovered.)
The reverse reads CAMPEON MUNDIAL (World Champion), and shows the years of Brazil's first three World Cup wins: 1958, 1962 and 1970. Today, Brazil has five World Cup titles, the most of any nation.
Many regard the 1970 Brazilian team as the greatest World Cup team of all time; it included Pelé, often cited as the greatest soccer player of all time. Brazil defeated Italy 4-1 in the final in Mexico City, the first time the World Cup was held in North America.
Because of the sport's global popularity, many nations have struck commemorative coins to celebrate the World Cup competition, which is held every four years. Qatar hosts the 2022 tournament, followed by the United States, Canada and Mexico in 2026.
NGC has certified more than 42 million coins, medals and tokens. Founded in 1987, the company provides accurate, consistent and impartial assessments of authenticity and grade. For more information about NGC and its grading services, visit NGCcoin.com.
NGC Certifies Very First Olympic Gold Medal for Basketball
NGC Certifies 1871-75 Seated Liberty Half Dollar Struck On Quarter Planchet
PMG Certifies Three Rare East African Currency Board Notes
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Señorita WITH A MARGARITA. Azul Tequila owner Felix Aca says, "We wanted to make people feel as if they were in a Hacienda." The eatery is located on London Road.
With temperatures lowering in Eau Claire, the heat is certainly rising at the new restaurant Azul Tequila, which opened its doors on Dec. 22. This locally owned Mexican restaurant is more authentic than any other I've encountered in Eau Claire, with the added bonus of a wide variety of dishes at a reasonable price.
Azul Tequila took the dull exterior of its box-shaped, London Road locale and gave it a fresh look. As soon as customers arrive in the parking lot they will notice a beautiful entrance marked by a big fountain, made from a "sensible but heavy rock called Cantera, which was brought all the way from Mexico," co-owner Felix Aca said. Upon opening the doors you're welcomed in a small, warm room with another flowing fountain. Open a second set of doors and it is as if you've just arrived to Mexico. Don't expect to hear Daddy Yankee or Shakira in here. The music is strictly Mexican Folklore.
The walls at Azul Tequila may not be blue (as the name may suggest), but they are a nice reflective yellow, giving the restaurant a warm feel. Scattered around are paintings, colorful traditional ornaments and ceramic figurines, and arches decorated with tile.
As customers sit on the comfortable high-backed wooden chairs, upholstered with leather, their wide wooden tables await with menus.
Not sure what the difference is between a chalupa, enchilada, or tamales? Don't worry; the menu has a description of the Mexican plates on the back, as well as their pronunciations.


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Speed Runner Beats Ocarina of Time in Less Than 19 Minutes
Thread starter StewShearerOld
DrOswald
RJ 17 said:
That's what people mean by "the spirit of the game". The spirit of that Yoshi's Island level is to be exceedingly challenging specifically because the level scrolls at its own pace, meaning you have to perform a balancing act while riding on Poochy. The spirit of that level isn't to go so high that the game's trigger doesn't kick in allowing you to beat the level at your own pace. The spirit of OOT is to complete a, as you put it, MST run...not to pass through what's supposed to be a solid and sealed door to skip straight to the end of the game.
SilverStuddedSquirre said:
On the subject of going over walls in Mario Brothers: You remember world 1-2 in Mario Bros. 1 ? Going over /above/behind walls is an established piece of Mario Bros mechanics and lore. See also Mario 3, where Intentionally Programmed "wall clipping" on White blocks only, allowed you to obtain The Warp Whistle (already discussed) or access hidden areas, that were put there deliberately. If in a Mario Bros game, you can go over a wall, they know. They probably put it there. That is why the game does not glitch.
And here we see the point. Two people, both with perfectly logical reasons, have come to the opposite conclusion on what is cheating or against "the spirit of the game" in speed running a game. But who is to make the call on if it is allowed? Which one of you is right? This is why the categories in speed running are defined as they are, to eliminate confusion. This is why the Any% category is always what is strictly possible in the game by the rules as coded. After that we have categories based on completion, following what is perceived as the original intent of the game, or some other point of significance (usually done to increase difficulty or make it more fun to watch.)
For the record, we know that the 1-e skip was not known by the developer or intended, but there is strong reason to believe that if they had discovered it they would have left it in or even rewarded the player for finding it.
Ha-ha! He didn't land on the bonus flower at the end!
This is actually intentional. If you watch a good speed runner do that level he will never hit the flower at the end. The mini game takes about 30 seconds so they skip it. The key is that the flower roulette is not random, it is based on how much time has passed from when the ring was spawned to when you enter the ring. Nearly every level in Yoshi's island has a technique to skip the bonus game. Many are simple. Some are difficult or unreliable. Each must be individually memorized.
P.S. I used to be in the camp that highly glitched runs were not legitimate. But as I got more and more into speed running I began to understand why the categories are setup the way they are. I personally think the any% run of OOT is boring and a bit silly. I much prefer the MST run because it is far more interesting. But I no longer see the any% run as any less legitimate. Fair warning though: if you go look up the MST run expecting a typical playthough, you are going to have a different thing coming. That run is glitched to hell and back. As are all OOT runs with the possible exception of glitchless, which is just full of minor glitches.
SilverStuddedSquirre
Madmonk12345 said:
snippety
You keep saying supposed to. However, for many games, they weren't meant to be played quickly at all. they were meant to be explored. If someone speedruns skyrim, are they inherently missing the point and therefore don't deserve accreditations or rewards or praise for their work? There is no timer in OoT. It isn't a race, so why should anyone be speedrunning it at all? Why should a glitchless runner receive accolades or appreciation, for they are doing things they aren't supposed to be doing by going through it quickly at all? The game wasn't supposed to be speed run in the first place, and thusly using how the game was supposed to be played shouldn't factor into it at all.
What? No. What? No, no no. If Somebody were to Speed run Skyrim, all they need to do is the Main Quests. Specifically Ignoring all sidequests, factions and such, and Merely Beat the game without Glitching to the End boss and Milking His Prostate. What about that is Unclear? Go beat only the main quests, and do it as fast as possible. Fully within the Spirit of The Game. Maybe you ONLY want to play as the Dragonborn - Go to town! That's Elder Scrolls for ya.
And I am curious as to what you mean by "intended to be speedrun?" name me one game that IS.
DrOswald said:
And as I said, I understand that there's different categories of speed-runs. As I've been trying to tell Gxas, my entire point with all this is simply to express that I find speed-runs like this one to be not very impressive. It's just my opinion on the matter, and I've been explaining the reasoning behind my opinion with this discussion about what is and isn't cheating. To clarify, everything I've been talking about is simply what I consider to be cheating. Obviously that definition is going to vary from person to person, but the purpose behind my posts has simply been to explain just what my definition of cheating is.
Beyond that, I'm clearly always right about everything, so there.
I do have to disagree with this, though. If the developers had known about this trick, it's likely they would have put one of the stair-bubbles to make getting to the "roof" of that level easier once you get to a certain point. Or, as you said, they would have rewarded you in some way by putting a bunch of 1-ups up there or something.
That was just me being a dick, as I tried to express with my use of " " I'm just trying to make this conversation a little more light-hearted since apparently Gxas believes that I'm seething with rage over here. Again, I assure you, I am not.
Gxas
I'm sorry, and here I thought the entire point of having an open forum such as this was specifically so that people could share their opinions. By your logic, why bother having comment sections for any of these articles at all?
My wonder is to why bother even leaving a negative opinion at all. I do see that negative opinions drove discussion here, but why can't we talk about other ways to shave a few seconds off of his time instead of have the first post basically say, "I don't like this."?
The comparison between games and real life is to show the difference between what is and isn't cheating, what is "within the spirit of the game" and what isn't (since that was a question specifically asked of my by DrOswald). It's not "within the spirit of the mile-run" to cut between the cones, but because there's no physical barrier actually stopping you from doing so that certainly doesn't mean that you can't just cut between the cones. This is a direct comparison to the game world. It's not "within the spirit of OOT" to be able to back through what's supposed to be a solid wall, but because of a glitch in the coding there's no physical barrier there stopping you from doing so.
But who dictates what the "spirit of the game" is? I would claim that the spirit of the game, by the developers' standards is to have fun. The "spirit of the game" in the speedrunning community is to beat the final boss as fast as possible using rules they have set up for each category of speedrun. If Cosmo has fun with his speed runs, then I'd say he met both requirements. But, again, I am no one to say what the "spirit of the game" is, that is just how I perceive it to be.
I do find it rather humorous, though, that despite my telling you that all this hub-bub is simply me stating "I'm not impressed with this, and here is why I'm not impressed with this" equates to me being frustrated or angry...especially after I just specifically said that I'm not. Don't mistake my passionate explanations as being fueled by anger.
Misunderstanding of intent through text on the internet. It happens.
Perhaps a better question is why do you care so much that I don't find this to be impressive? Why does my opinion on the matter offend you so?
Who said I was offended?
Or provoke such a profound curiosity within you? Why do you assume that I'm angry/frustrated about the way this person plays the game, and not simply unimpressed by the way this person plays the game as I've claimed numerous times now? Who gets to dictate what I find to be impressive? You? Why you? Why can't you simply say "I can see why some people wouldn't find this impressive"? So I'll turn your own question back onto you: does my finding this run to be unimpressive affect you in any way? If not, why should you care? Why bother commenting on any of my posts in the first place?
I don't understand why this needs to be here. I told you why I am curious about it. I see all over the place that people leave negative comments on everything. The need to say, "I dislike this" is rampant everywhere nowadays, and I want to know what the reasoning for this is.
I was like that too, though. I used to just spout, "God, I hate that" to everything. Now? I've been working very hard to keep my negative opinions to myself. If you ask me, I will tell you, but I'm not going around putting things down anymore.
It's a curiosity about human nature nowadays. I want to know why we're so focused on negativity, especially online. What makes it so difficult to just pass up a thread that people have a negative opinion on? That's why I'm here.
Just because a Glitch exists, and I can exploit it, that does not mean it is not cheating. You see in Real Life, the rules do not actually stop people from cheating. They punish them for it by taking away Medals, removing acclaim and Titles, and denoting their "Exploits" with *does not really count.
The asterisk that you are looking for is located in the "any%" label that his speedrun has attached to it. He beat the game *at any percent.
Nobody is decrying the Validity of Speed Running, we are simply asserting that THIS one, did not in fact do what the Title of The Article, and the Runner, claimed.
Again, who decrees what "beating the game" entails if not the people who are creating the rules for the competition? By the any% speedrunning community, beating the game means getting to the final frame of gameplay before the "end" screen.
If you are looking for an addendum to the title saying that he skipped 90% of the game, you kind of already have it, since "less than 19 minutes" is in the title. Anyone who came into this thread not expecting a glitched speedrun really needs to think a bit before they read an article. It is not misleading in the slightest.
RJ 17's point and my own are Complimentary, not Contradictory. You will note that I mentioned that the Mario Franchise has long established traditions of going out of bounds in a Level. The only glitch I see in that Yoshi level is stopping the auto-scroll. Something I have NEVER seen in a Mario title. To clarify: going around/behind walls in Mario, not cheating. Often part of the game. GLITCHING the auto scroller so you can go over the wall as slow as you like, cheating.
I bet you can still go over that wall without glitching the game. Is it hard? Oh probably.
The Legend of Zelda Does not have a history of this. In fact I think this kind of thing stared with OOT. Every release of it had SOME glitch, like the endless Gerudo Canyon Hookshot Ride. You are in no way supposed to be able to manipulate poor transition Coding as a game Mechanic: Link is not a Hacker, he's a Slasher.
Seriously...how is this supposed to be impressive? You beat a game really fast by exploiting a glitch...that's just another way of cheating. This is no more impressive than those videos of people beating Mario 64 with no stars in under 5 minutes. This doesn't show talent as a gamer, it shows talent as a glitcher. I fail to see how beating a game while glitching is worthy of holding a "record"...it's like someone that everyone knows was on steroids setting a weight-lifting record. This is literally two cheaters going back and forth saying "I can cheat better than you!" "Nuh-uhhhhh!"
Why not just hack the cartridge so that as soon as Navi wakes you up you're fighting Ganon fully equipped and ready to go? That would be just as meaningful as this.
I find few things as hilarious as people who think that other people playing single player games should adhere to imaginary rules they've made up for themselves.
One of the only things funnier is people who do it in multiplayer.
There is actually another point in the game where they discovered a really big skip before the game was released and made a special Easter egg out of it. If you have ever played yoshi's island you will know that the bosses are all magically powered up versions of normal enemies. In 3-8 you can hit the normal enemy before it is powered up, killing it. They discovered this and realized this would lock the game up. Instead of preventing the player killing the boss this way they built around it. The skip happens at about 3:20 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE1mb6W6pvI
I totally understand. I don't know if you saw my edit to my previous post, but not too long ago I would have agreed with you. And I personally find the OOT any% category boring and a bit silly. But as I have gotten more and more into speed running I have come to understand the reasons why each category exists. I am greatly enjoying this discussion.
If you want to see a more "legitimate" run, I would recommend the Mega Man X or X2. There are very few glitches to be found there and it is all about extremely precise and very impressive execution. The any% category is currently held by a runner named Tiki77747. The 100% category is held by a runner named Caleb Hart (a body builder who streams his attempts without a shirt on.)
Kilo24
So yeah, I'm not angry or disgruntled, I'm merely expressing my opinion that runs such as these are not really that impressive, and hardly worthy of being "record holding" or even having a news article written about them. I don't think I've ever seen a news article on this site about the 5 minute no star Mario 64 runs, what makes this so special?
The major distinction between the 5 minute Super Mario 64 run and this one is that that one is a TAS: a tool-assisted speedrun. What that means is that the player had an emulator up, and, frame-by-frame, recorded the controller input to pick the most time-efficient option for every instant of gameplay and reloaded a fraction of a second earlier when he made a mistake; he then took those inputs, played them back on an emulator, and recorded it. This Ocarina of Time run was live and done in a single segment, so many glitches/tricks become impractical or infeasible.
Within the speedrunning community of Speed Runs Live and Speed Demos Archive (which this runner is from), the general consensus is that any% is defined as whatever gets you to the ending screen playing a game with no mods, cheats or other advantages from software/hardware (turbo controllers are out, for instance). This holds for the vast majority of games as it's almost always a clean and easy category to describe. If you threw in another specification that it must be "glitchless" (or worse, "only as the designers intended"), suddenly that clean description becomes much, much murkier.
Does running any% ruin some games by making them trivial or tedious? Sure - but when a category isn't fun to play, it's often quite possible to create a new category that bans the glitches that aren't fun and run that instead. It's also fine to call a category "glitchless" and to specifically describe what is or isn't allowed - there's a decent amount of interest in Ocarina of Time glitchless, if you look it up. But even within the example, there's a lot of judgement calls on what is and is not a glitch (for example, doubling the damage of your crouched stab by doing a jump slash beforehand is not a glitch).
Outside of the definition challenges, disallowing all glitches also removes what is for many games the major source of route evolutions. Ocarina of Time is one key example here; all of the intensive research into speedrunning glitches has turned a linear singleplayer game from 1996 into a dynamic multiplayer game that is constantly evolving. There have been several major glitches discovered (Reverse Bottle Adventure, Door of Time skip, Wrong Warp) that cut down the time required to beat the game by hours and masses of less major glitches (like cutscene skips, clipping through areas, and supersliding). If glitches were prohibited, the very linear nature of the game would mean that the best route found after a year of speedrunning would probably be almost identical to the best route found after 10 years of speedrunning. The speedrunning community would be nowhere near as established or intrigued in Ocarina of Time if that were the case.
Speedruns are the only generalizable challenge that you can apply to practically any game. People who spend a lot of time doing them are generally driven by flaunting their skill in a game they love; as such, glitches that de-emphasize skill are usually frowned upon. What I'm saying is that many of the glitches on display here require much more skill to perform reliably than beating the game normally does; the precise timing and careful setups required for these tricks is not something that a watcher is aware of until he tries doing it himself. And numerous other tricks to save time are not visible to anyone but someone who knows how to speedrun the game. Glitches like these (by-and-large) don't make the game easier; they make it harder.
TL;DR: Super Mario 64 in 5 minutes with 0 stars is a tool assisted speedrun, not a normal speedrun. Allowing glitches usually adds to a game's speedrunning depth instead of reducing it. And with by defaulting to allowing glitches but still allowing categories that ban glitches if there's enough interest, you can get the benefits of both permitting glitches and prohibiting glitches.
Big deal, the guy cheated. And he didn't even come up with the glitch himself.
Revnak_v1legacy
Fixed by "Monday"
"Kid beats Ocarina of Time in Less than 20 mins" ***
Asterisk: Special glitched version, not the one you have
Asterisk: only actually beats one Dungeon - and even then, hides behind a wall to beat Ghoma.
Asterisk: does not actually fight the boss, cheats by standing UNDER him and raping him with a stick up the Bum
Not Impressed.
Call me when you do it by beating every Temple properly. And to those who go on about the skill needed to get everything timed perfect and hit the Glitch? I say 1 pump chump!
Does not have the ability to keep it up for the whole game. By Ferore, Din and Nayru you didn't even beat all the kid Dungeons!
As for separate categories of Speedrunning based on using glitches to not have to beat the challenges presented by the game? "I call them Girly men!" - Arnold Schwarzenegger.
/takes away his cartridge and replaces it with a fixed one. Now call me in longer than 20 mins.
He used to hold the record for all temples too... Oh, and there isn't a truly fixed version. The N64 and WiiU version have this too. They just run slower, meaning they are technically less fixed.
He came up with a lot of them, like the early escape I think.
You do not glitch the game to go over the wall. No glitch happens. All the game world objects are working exactly as intended. But we know the developer did not intended for you to be able to get over the wall and skip the auto scroller. But you are able to without any glitch at all.
RJ 17 says going over the wall is cheating because it is against the spirit of the game. You are bypassing the intended route so it is cheating.
You say going over the wall is not cheating because no glitch occurred.
Your conclusions are conflicting.
This is my point: The "spirit of the game" and the line at which you are cheating is not readily apparent. This is why the rules, for the any% category, are interpreted exactly literally as coded in the game. There can be no question what is allowed and what is not.
-Gxas
So if I am not an "in the know" speedrunner I was being Stupid? Check yourself Son. RJ, the Doc and Myself are keeping this civil, I respectfully reprimand you to to the same.
And I called Bullshit on the Title of the Article before reading it, because i KNOW that 20 mins is an impossibility. I was curious to see this piece of Shenanigans, and I noticed that it is Cheating. So I said so. As have others.
We have extensively discussed and covered the Cheating and Asterisk arguments, I think. As well as the clearly misleading ((from a strictly linguistic point of View, you know, English Class eh, wot?)) Title of the Article.
@ Revank. Yeah, I know that ALL OOT cartriges are buggy. But They don't all let you beat the game by putting a Stick up Gannon's Bum after NOT playing the game. I think my meaning was very clear, though you are very righty. Ther is no "fixed" OOT cartridge
Snip.
Without watching the video in order to save time, I'm guessing your talking about the piranha plant boss. And that gets back to my point about "what's within the parameters of the game". It's not an exploit to one-shot that guy before he gets made because doing so triggers an in-game event of Kamek flipping out because you killed his buddy before he was ready.
Back to the Poochy level, think back to world 1-2 of the original Mario. I don't consider jumping above the level to skip the entire challenge of the level as being a cheat or a glitch because, at the end, you can get to the secret warp zone by going above the level. As such, it can very easily be argued that you're supposed to be able to do that. Getting so high up on Poochy's level that it removes the entire point/challenge of the level isn't supposed to be possible, there's no reward for getting up there other than bypassing the game's trigger that starts the screen scrolling.
But again, this all stems from me simply believing that these kind of speed-runs aren't that impressive, but as with most things on the internet: that's just my opinion. My personal tastes for speed-runs involve actually completing the minimal requirements for beating a game, not exploiting weaknesses within the game's code. That's why I kept putting so much emphasis on the phrase "what you're supposed to be able to do". You're supposed to be able to travel faster by side-jumping across the world because the side-jump is meant to be a quick-dodge technique and so logically it would be faster than your normal run speed. You're not supposed to be able to pass through a sealed boss' door and end up standing at the end of OOT as child Link. I consider that cheating, and that's why runs like this leave me unimpressed. And again, I understand completely that there are different categories for speed runs, I just don't have a taste for anything other than actually completing the game as it was intended. Does that mean I'd only be impressed by a speed run for 100% completion? Not at all. I just expect (that is, it's in my opinion) that a speed run worthy of holding a record should only count if the person does the bare minimum requirements of a game to play through it from start to finish.
Madmonk brought up Skyrim and that's an easily explainable example. For me to be impressed by a speed-run of Skyrim, I'd assume the player would have to go through the main questline from the start of the game up until Alduin lies dead. I don't expect them to complete all the side missions and guild stories since that's all extra fluff. For OOT, I wouldn't expect a speed-runner to collect every heart piece, kill every golden spider, etc. I'd expect them to just go from one dungeon to the next until Ganondorf lies dead.
Vivi22 said:
I don't recall ever saying that people had to adhere to my definition of the game's rules. I do recall saying that I was unimpressed by their definition of the rules, however. If warping from the start of a game to the end of a game that has no built-in mechanic specifically designed to allow you to perform such a warp impresses you, well that's just fantastic. I'm glad you enjoyed it. But as I mentioned above: such a thing doesn't impress me. That's all I was saying with my first post in this topic, and from there the conversation evolved with DrOswald specifically asking me what I defined as "cheating", so I've answered that as well. This brought clarification to why I considered this run to be a cheat run, and I'm not impressed by cheaters.
Gxas said:
Again, because this is an open forum meant for the sharing of opinions. My opinion is that this is unimpressive and I felt like expressing that.
"The spirit of the game", in terms of this conversation, has been defined (by those taking part in this conversation) as what is and isn't a valid execution of the game's mechanics. The spirit of every game is to have fun, this is true, but in terms of this conversation, the spirit of the game is what you're supposed to be able to do (i.e. going through the game as the developers intended, which does not include exploiting a weakness in the coding to pass through a wall that's supposed to be solid and end up standing over Ganon's corpse as kid Link).
Apparently the same person that told you that I was angry.
Again: it's because we're on an open forum meant for the expression of opinions and ideas. My opinion is that this wasn't impressive, and I felt like expressing that opinion. If you don't like expressing negative opinions about a given topic, then that's great. But my friend, we're all like little snowflakes, each an individual with their own tastes, feelings, and desires. It was my desire to express my opinion that this was unimpressive, just as it was your desire to question why I bother even posting my desire. Quite simply: I felt like it. Don't really need much more of a reason than that.
As you put it, apparently my opinion that this was unimpressive spurred conversation, which is the entire point of these forums. It doesn't matter whether its negative or positive. The point of this article was to impress the readers by saying "This guy beat OOT in less than 19 minutes". And so after reading the story and watching the video, I felt like expressing my opinion that "this was not impressive".
I wouldn't even say that I'm being all that negative. Like you, I try to avoid such topics that would prompt a response. For instance, I really try my best to avoid expressing my opinion on Final Fantasy games beyond FF7, because all I have to say about them is "FF8 sucks and here's why" "FF9 sucks and here's why" "FF10 sucks and here's why", etc. I've said the same thing over and over again to the point that it's grown tiresome to try and explain to others why I really don't like those games. Though every now and then I still get sucked into a conversation about them. Even when that happens, though, I try to keep my venom to a minimum and try to back out of the conversations quickly.
So yeah, to answer your "psychological experiment question", you can simply jot down "because I felt like it."
Dr Oswald.
Oh I see your point. I would argue that by not engaging the Scroller of the Level, the Game is Glitching. Is it not? Maybe we should briefly discuss a "glitch" ? I can better see the conflicting nature of our conclusions from your last post.
RJ, On the subject of Mario Games having always included seeming "out of boundary" play?
SirBryghtside said:
At the rate this thread is going, we're going to end up on Cracked again. Unexpectedly controversial topics two!
This is just gamers being gamers having a gamer conversation.
I wouldn't really call this controversial, really, as the topic at hand - whether or not this speed run is impressive (at least that's what I considered the topic at hand based on the article) - has already been lost and now we've derailed onto a discussion about what is and isn't considered cheating in a game. And like most things on the internet, such a discussion is 100% purely opinion based and varies from gamer to gamer. And we all know what happens when opinions clash over the internet.
Roxas1359
Burn, Burn it All!
Makes me wonder how these people would react to the yearly Awesome Games Done Quick events really, seeing as how apparently speed runners should adhere to these so called rules I've never heard of to keep the run "in the spirit of the game."
Yes, I don't mind if people dismiss this as bearing the game because that's semantics, but with how quick people just throw it off as "oh it shouldn't count because it's not in the spirit of the game" is rather saddening if you ask me.
HELP! I have an RJ 17 thought stealing Drone in my head! GET IT OUT!!!
Hee hee, you are answering my questions BEFORE I ask them XD
The only person who is saying you are stupid is yourself, as I never said, nor insinuated anything of the sort. I've been fairly civil this entire time, though, I am not keen on people putting words in my mouth in the slightest.
The only thing I said is that the title is not misleading. You, yourself, even said that you knew before reading that a sub-19 minute OoT run is impossible, so I fail to see where the problem with the title lies.
WhiteTigerShiro
BiH-Kira said:
I think the title should be something like skipped the game instead of beats the game.
He basically skipped it.
That certainly gets a bit semantic, doesn't it? He got to the final boss; he defeated the final boss; he saw the ending cinematic and the staff roll. Sounds to me like he beat the game.
If for example someone beats everything except Ganon and then gives the controller to someone else and that someone else kills Ganon, would you say the first or the second person has beaten the game?
I would dub it a group effort, but it isn't even remotely related to how Cosmo beat the game.
For a better example lets look at the old MegaMan games with the password system.
If I took a password that is basically right a the end of the game and just finished the final boss, would anyone consider it beating the game? I just exploited the game, nothing more.
That's a terrible example, because if you had played any of the old Mega Man games, you would know that the highest you can get with passwords is to the first of the Wily Stages, and they're all harder than any of the 8 Robot Master stages. And even then you're still playing with semantics, because you keep assuming "played 100% of the game" as part of the definition for beating the game. By that logic, has someone who hasn't gotten Knights of the Round not beaten Final Fantasy 7? After-all, that's content he skipped, right? What about anyone who didn't get Vincent and/or Yuffie? They skipped entire characters!


text:
SEMA boss blames attack on IDPs to ban of checkpoints
By Faith Igbudu
Executive Secretary, State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), Dr Emmanuel Shior, has blamed the attack on the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Camp, Abagena, Makurdi, on the recent ban of police checkpoints round the country.
He therefore, appealed to the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, to review his security strategy and intensify internal security to safe guard lives and properties in the country.
"The attack could only be possible due to ban on police checkpoints by the new Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba. If not, Abagena community had a check point that would scare away such attacks.
"I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the IG and the federal government to provide more security in Benue State to repel such attacks," he said.
Dr Shior revealed this in a recent press briefing after the state government and the agency visited some IDPs in the hospital who are currently receiving treatment in the hospital as a result of injuries inflicted on them when suspected armed Fulani herdsmen attacked the IDP camp.
"We received distress calls from Abagena Camp at about 12:00am. We summoned security agencies and on getting there, we found out that the Fulani herdsmen had already killed some of the IDPs," he explained.
Dr Shior who described the attack on the IDPs at the Abagena Camp and the host community as worrisome, barbaric, inhuman and primitive, called for more support for the Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, in fighting against Fulani herdsmen who have consistently attacked the state. He said there are up rising cases needing humanitarian interventions on a daily basis, a problem which he described as 'huge' needing every form of support.
"I want to use this medium to appeal to our humanitarian partners, to help the governor of Benue State by drawing the attention of the International Community to what has bedeviled the State.
"When the IDPs who are displaced from their communities and are taking refuge in the camps and the attackers chase them to come and kill them in the camps, it becomes a terrible situation.
"This camp is in Makurdi only at the outskirts, if this is happening in Makurdi, then we have a worrisome situation," he lamented.
"We are afraid that the attackers have come up with a plan to attack not only this camp, but to take their attacks to other camps. That is why it is important for everyone to work to support the government of Benue State and help arrest this situation," Shior stated.
In separate remarks, President, Benue Youth Forum, Terrence Kuanum and National President, Tiv Youth Organisation (TYO), Timothy Hembaor, who lamented the attack on the Benue State capital as well as that of kidnapping of students of University of Agriculture said there has not been commiserate action by security just like the reprisal attack when some army men were alleged to be harassed by some Tiv communities in Konshisha Local Government in Benue State.
"We are facing an unfortunate situation where the capital of this state has also been involved in this attack by herdsmen and we are not seeing the military going after this people the way they went after our people when they were attacked in Konshisha local government. We feel that the security people are deliberately letting us down so that our people will be killed even to the point of IDP camps," they opined.
"We are friends; it's high time that our friendship pays off. In Tiv Traditional Council, we have honoured Fulani people so we are appealing to them that they should come to our aid now," they pleaded.
It was reported that Fulani herdsmen recently attacked the camp killing seven persons, six died on the spot, one died in the hospital while nine persons sustained various degrees of injuries and are receiving treatment.
Related Items:SEMA boss blames attack on IDPs to ban of checkpoints
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Benue witnesses steady decline in malaria prevalence


Jilcott Pitts, Stephanie B.; Whetstone, Lauren M.; Wilkerson, Jean R.; Smith, Tosha W.; Ammerman, Alice S.
Federally funded, community-based participatory research initiatives encourage the development and implementation of obesity prevention policies. In 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention (COCOMO), which include recommended strategies and measures to guide communities in identifying and evaluating environmental and policy strategies to prevent obesity. Agreeing on "winnable" policy issues can be challenging for community members. We used CDC's COCOMO to structure in-depth interviews and group discussions with local stakeholders (ie, planners, town managers, and a local community advisory council) to stimulate interest in and identify health-promoting policies for local policy and planning agendas. We first asked stakeholders to rank the COCOMO recommendations according to feasibility and likelihood of success given community culture, infrastructure, extent of leadership support, and likely funding support. Rankings were used to identify the most and least "winnable" COCOMO policy strategies. We then used questions from the evidence-based Community Readiness Handbook to aid discussion with stakeholders on the facilitators and barriers to enacting the most and least winnable policy options identified. Finally, we discuss potential adaptations to COCOMO for rural jurisdictions.
Jilcott Pitts, Stephanie B., and Whetstone, Lauren M., and Wilkerson, Jean R., and Smith, Tosha W., and Ammerman, Alice S.. "A Community-Driven Approach to Identifying "Winnable� Policies Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention". Preventing Chronic Disease. 9:. (1-7), January 2012. April 18, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10342/5849.
Jilcott Pitts, Stephanie B. and Whetstone, Lauren M. and Wilkerson, Jean R. and Smith, Tosha W. and Ammerman, Alice S., "A Community-Driven Approach to Identifying "Winnable� Policies Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention," Preventing Chronic Disease 9, no. (January 2012), http://hdl.handle.net/10342/5849 (accessed April 18, 2019).
Jilcott Pitts, Stephanie B., Whetstone, Lauren M., Wilkerson, Jean R., Smith, Tosha W., Ammerman, Alice S.. A Community-Driven Approach to Identifying "Winnable� Policies Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Common Community Measures for Obesity Prevention. Preventing Chronic Disease. January 2012; 9(): 1-7. http://hdl.handle.net/10342/5849. Accessed April 18, 2019.


text:
\section{Introduction}

Despite the high popularity of cryptocurrencies,
it remains a challenge to make fast payments at scale.
This is mainly due to the inefficiency of the underlying
consensus protocol: it can take several minutes
until a transaction went through a full consensus
and can be confirmed.
A promising solution are emerging payment channel networks
such as the Lightning network,
which allow to perform transactions off-chain and
in a peer-to-peer fashion:
without requiring consensus on the blockchain.
In a nutshell, a payment channel is a cryptocurrency transaction
which escrows or dedicates money
on the blockchain for exchange with a given user and duration.
Users can also interact if they do not share a direct payment channel:
they can route transactions through \emph{intermediaries}.

However, the design of
secure and scalable offchain networks is
challenging and still not well-understood.
In particular, these networks must not only
be scalable but also account for strategic (i.e., selfish)
user behavior; it must further be ensured that
these networks do not introduce new
security issues.
A common approach to
incentivize network nodes (the intermediaries) to contribute
to the transaction routing
is to use a fee-based mechanism:
intermediaries can charge nodes which route through them a
nominal fee.
This is also the approach taken in the
Lightning network which serves us as a case study in
this paper.

This raises the question of how nodes
can \emph{discover} routes through intermediaries.
One aspect here is cost efficiency:
since different routes come at different
fees, nodes require scalable mechanisms to
find ``short'' (i.e., low-cost) routes.
However, routes do not only have to be
cheap but also provide sufficient liquidity
to route the transaction:
the route discovery mechanism should ensure a
high success rate of the transaction routing;
this property is known as effectiveness in
the literature.
Effectiveness is not only a performance concern:
a lengthy discovery process may also jeopardize
privacy, potentially leaking information about
who aims to transact (i.e., find a route) with whom.
Last but not least, the route discovery should be
incentive-compatible, e.g., account
that nodes are only willing to distribute routes
from which they can benefit (e.g., which go through
themselves).

Providing an effective and scalable route discovery
is particularly challenging as large-scale off-chain networks are
expected to be highly dynamic,
e.g., due to the frequent changes of channels and fees.
This renders solutions
requiring wallets to keep up-to-date state information
about the networks infeasible.
An interesting recent solution to reduce the burden
on wallets, is the deployment of route discovery servers, such
as the trampoline nodes in Lightning:
these servers maintain routes so that a wallet just
needs to know how to reach the route server nodes
in its neighborhood and can then request
the desired route.

This paper provides an analysis of the efficiency-privacy
tradeoff of off-chain route discovery, considering
the Lightning network as a case study. In particular,
we investigate to which extent route discovery
can be efficient and effective, incentive compatible and
confidential.
Here, confidentiality is about more than just the actual
data that is communicated in the discovery process, e.g.,
the source, the destination, or the transaction size;
it is also about the possible metadata that is communicated
implicitly, e.g., about the rate or time at which transactions
occur. In fact, existing cryptographic techniques
such as \cite{hu2014private} can be used
to provide data confidentiality, however,
as we will show in this paper, nodes may
still leak information about the frequency of transactions,
i.e., about their \emph{transaction rate}, to other nodes which are
not on the transaction route.

We quantify the ``search friction'', i.e., the cost
of the route discovery process, both analytically, deriving
cost lower bounds, as well as empirically, considering real
payment channel networks.
Our results motivate research into alternative economic
models to provide routing incentives which come at lower
search friction costs, which we also start to discuss in this paper.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows,
see also Figure~\ref{figure::venn_organize}.
We introduce a model for route discovery
and provide a formal analysis in Section~\ref{sec::model},
and then report on our empirical results in
Section~\ref{sec::experiments}.
After discussing related work in
Section~\ref{sec::related_work}, we conclude our contribution in
Section~\ref{sec::conculsions}.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/venn.png}
	\caption{Paper organization}
	\label{figure::venn_organize}
\end{figure}

\section{Tradeoff Analysis of Route Discovery} \label{sec::model}

In order to analyze the search friction and tradeoffs of route
discovery, we consider the following simplified model.
We model the offchain network
as a graph of \emph{channels}:
two nodes can create (and may later delete) a payment channel
between each other, to perform offchain transactions.
This channel may also be used by other nodes for
routing their transactions indirectly, i.e., using
multi-hop routing.
In this paper, we are primarily interested in two properties of a
channel: the fee other nodes are charged to use this channel,
and the channel capacity (resp. liquidity), which determines the size
of the transactions it can support. This is a simplification
of actual systems such as Lightning, but captures
their essence.\footnote{E.g., nodes can set min/max
values for channels, create non-public channels which
cannot be used for multihop routing, etc.}

\begin{definition}[Offchain Network]
    The offchain network is
    a weighted, directed graph $G(V,E)$, where $V$ are the nodes in the network
    and $E$ are the channels. A channel $e \in E$ is characterized
    by a weight  $w_e \in \mathbb{R_{+}}$
    and by a capacity $w_{cap}$.
\end{definition}

The weight $w_e$ is kept general here but typically is a function of
the fee that the source node pays for an intermediate channel,
the channels' age (older channels may be assumed to be more reliable),
or previous knowledge (e.g., channels which failed in the past), among other.

The network is dynamic, i.e., channels may be added and removed over time,
fees updated, etc., and hence nodes require mechanisms to
discover the topology and learn about updates to be able to route
their transactions through the offchain network, either explicitly or implicitly.  For example,
Lightning includes gossiping and active probing mechanisms
to allow nodes to learn about routing fees. It is
however more challenging to learn about the capacity $w_{cap}$;
such information is typically not distributed for privacy reasons
and hence, finding a path with sufficient capacity may require
trial and error \cite{icissp20}.

More formally, a route on a topology $G(V,E)$ from $s \in V$ to $t \in V$ is a list of channels $e_1. \cdots, e_n \in E$ such that the source node of $e_1$ is $s$, and the target node of $e_n$ is $t$ and for every $i$, the target of $e_i$ is the source of $e_{i+1}$.
A transaction in the network is a payment from a source to a target along a
``valid route'': A route can serve a transaction of size $l$ if every channel $e$ along the route has enough capacity, i.e. $e_{cap} \ge l$.
We assume that the weight of a route is simply the sum of the weights of
its channels.

Inspired by existing offchain networks such as Lightning,
we distinguish between two types of nodes:
wallets and ``regular nodes'', henceforth called trampoline nodes (TNs).
Wallets are simple nodes and do not have the resources
to store (and maintain!) information about the entire network.
Rather, they need to rely on the trampoline nodes which know
the network and which may inform wallets about routes upon
request. We are interested in exactly this discovery process,
where wallets interact with one or multiple trampoline nodes
to find routes for their later transactions.

This route discovery process however introduces
the following challenges:
\begin{itemize}
      \item \emph{Strategic behavior and efficiency:} Trampoline nodes may
        act selfishly and may only have an incentive
        to share routes which include themselves,
        such that they can charge the fee.
        As a consequence, a wallet may not learn about
        the most efficient (i.e., lowest cost) route.

      \item \emph{Effectiveness:} Also related to the above,
      wallets may have to invest more resources into the discovery
      of efficient routes, exploring additional alternative trampoline
      nodes. The effectiveness of this route discovery process
      is further affected by the fact that not all the discovered
      routes may provide sufficient liquidity (i.e., capacity)
      for a large transaction which needs to be routed.

     \item \emph{Privacy:} Through the repeated interactions
     with multiple trampoline nodes, querying for
     specific routes, a wallet may reveal
     confidential information about its transactions.
\end{itemize}

We are interested in the following family of route
discovery algorithms:
\begin{definition}[Routing Discovery Algorithm (RDA)]
        A $q$-route discovery algorithm (RDA)
        is an algorithm that given a pair $s, t \in V$,
        performs at most $q$ queries, issued to $q$ trampoline nodes,
        and either returns a valid route or decides that this
				is not possible.
\end{definition}

We measure the quality, i.e., the efficiency, of a route found by the RDA,
by comparing it to the \emph{optimal route} with respect to the
weight function on the topology.

\begin{definition} [Efficiency]
    The efficiency of a route $R$ from $s$ to $t$ is
		defined by the stretch, i.e., $\frac{w(R_{src, dst})}{w(O_{src, dst})}$,
		where $w(\cdot)$ is the weight of the route, and $O_{src, dst}$ is the route with the minimal weight between  $s$ to $t$.
		The weight of a route is the sum of its link weights.
\end{definition}

As discussed above, some routes in off-chain networks may be temporarily
unavailable (e.g., due to offline nodes or lack of liquidity) and thus invalidate the result of the RDA.
Another important metric to evaluate RDA hence concerns the number
of queries it needs to issue until a valid route
is discovered.
For example, in the Lightning network, an available route is searched
as part of the route initialization procedure. This process locks
the channels along the route (a designated amount) and
the channel commits
to participate in the transaction.
\begin{definition} [Effectiveness]
   The effectiveness of an RDA is
	the number of queries which have to be issued
	to successfully execute a given transaction.
\end{definition}

Furthermore, as transactions are privacy critical,
the RDA should
not leak any confidential information.
Naturally, a first concern regards the information provided
by the query directly,
including e.g., source and destination nodes,
potentially the transaction size, the resulting routes, etc.
As discussed above, today we understand fairly well
how to protect such information, e.g.,
using homomorphic encryption schemes
and private information retrieval \cite{morais2018zero,homenc,de2010practical,hu2014private}.
However, there is another concern, related to
the meta-data revealed from the query,
e.g.,
        the timestamp or even the existence of the
				route discovery query itself.
While there also exist solutions to metadata private messaging
systems, e.g., \cite{lazar2018karaoke,lazar2016alpenhorn,tyagi2017stadium}), we
will show in the following that there is an inherent limitation
what can be achieved in terms of an efficient and confidential
route discovery.
To this end, we introduce the notion of
\emph{leak rate}:
to what extent can a node learn about the number
of transactions in the network in a given time unit?
That is, the leak rate is defined
    as the number of transactions
    in a single time unit that a node can learn about
    for a given set of transactions $T$
    under a given route discovery algorithm $A$.
\begin{definition}[Leak Rate]
    An RDA $A$ leaks at rate $k$ if
    in order to route a transaction,
		$k$ times more nodes will learn about the existence
		of this transaction compared to a scenario
		where the transaction is simply routed along the
		shortest path (e.g., using source routing).
\end{definition}

To clarify and motivate this notion,
we give an example in
Figure \ref{figure::reate_leaks_illustration}.
In this simple network, a node
learns about a transaction
it should in principle have no idea about.
\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/query_all.png}
	\caption{An attacker can learn about
	a transaction although
	the request itself does not hold any information.}
	\label{figure::reate_leaks_illustration}
\end{figure}

\boldheader{Efficiency.}
With these concepts in mind, we now
first analyze the efficiency achievable
by route discovery algorithms.
The following lemma shows an inherent
cost of the route discovery process
in the off-chain model
\begin{lemma} \label{lemma:efficiency}
    For every $q$-RDA and every $M \in \mathbb{R}$
		there exists a topology in which an RDA will return a route with weight
		$M$ times higher than the optimal route, or it will not return a route at all.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
    Consider
		the topology in Figure~\ref{figure::non_optimal_illustration}.
    Given a $q$-RDA $A$, we build a topology in which $A$ will return a route
		with weight larger than $M$ although there exists a route with weight $1$.
    In our topology, the source node, $s$, is in the center, and is connected
		to $q+1$ TNs with channel weight $0$. Each TN is connected to one unique node with a channel of weight $1$, and all these nodes form a
		clique (i.e., are connected to one another) by channels
		of weight $M$. We will choose the target from one of these nodes.
    The RDA $A$ queries $q$ TNs in an order that is independent on target node (because $s$ does not know the topology). But there are $q+1$ possibilities to the target, therefore there exists a node in the outer circle, $t$, that $A$ does not query its direct TN neighbor. Choose this $t$ to be our target. As the TNs are selfish, therefore they will tell $A$ only about routes that go through themselves, and all of them are not directly connected to $t$; thus all the weights that $A$ sees are at least of weight $M+1$.
    Finally, $A$ will return either a route with weight $M+1$ or no route at all, although the actual shortest route is of weight $1$.
\end{proof}

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/non_optimal.png}
	\caption{Example with high cost: If there are $q+1$ direct neighbors,
	then any $q$-RDA struggles to find an efficient route.}
	\label{figure::non_optimal_illustration}
\end{figure}

In general, the efficiency will depend on the specific
topology. To give an example, consider the complete
network.

\begin{example}
In a clique where all the weights are equal,
the efficiency, in terms of the stretch, is upper bounded by 2.
\end{example}

To see this, assume $r$ is the weight of each channel.
The optimal route is the direct channel, which weighs $r$.
On the other hand, the route to each TN and the route from the TN to each target are also $r$ (this is clique, so there exists a direct channel),
which is $2r$ in total.

\boldheader{Effectiveness.}
We next consider the effectiveness
a route discovery algorithm can achieve.
Also here, we first derive a negative result
for the general scenario.
\begin{lemma} \label{lemma:effectiveness}
    For every $q$-RDA
		and every $M \in \mathbb{R}$, there exists a topology in which the first $M$ routes from the algorithm will be unsuccessful.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
    As in Lemma~\ref{lemma:efficiency}, we will build a topology in which the effectiveness of the RDA $A$ will be as needed.
    The topology is composed from $M+2$ nodes: $M$ nodes form a clique, one of the nodes in the clique is a TN, to which the source is connected, and the target is connected to other node from the clique.
    There are $\sum_{k=0}^{M-2} {M-2 \choose k}k!$ unique routes in the clique. $A$ is not aware to the availability of the channels in the topology, therefore it offers the routes in an order which is independent to it. Now, define the channels to be unavailable in any of the first $M$ routes.
    Therefore the first $M$ routes that $A$ will offer will be unavailable.
\end{proof}

Again, more specific networks can provide
better guarantees.

\begin{example}
In a scale-free network with $n$ nodes,
where all the channels are bi-directional, and where $p$
is the probability that a channel has sufficient capacity,
an $q$-RDA that queries the highest degrees nodes succeeds with
a probability of at least $1-(1 - p^{ \frac{2 \cdot log(n)}{\log\log(n)}})^{n \cdot (1 - 2 ^ {-q})}$.
For example, if a channel accepts a route independently w.p. $p=0.2$,
for a network of size $n=4000$ (e.g., Lightning), when the RDA queries only $q=5$ TNs, then the probability to get at least one effective route is $\ge 0.999$.
\end{example}

To see this, note that the diameter of this network is $\frac{\log(n)}{\log\log(n)}$ (following \cite{bollobas2004diameter}), therefore the length of the path from every source to every TN, and then from the TN to the target is bounded by $2 \cdot \frac{\log(n)}{\log\log(n)}$. Therefore, the probability for each TN's suggestion to route the transaction is at least $p^{2 \cdot \frac{\log(n)}{\log\log(n)}}$. Moreover, the number of paths from TN to a target is at least its degree, and the total degrees of the $q$ nodes with the largest degree is  $n \cdot (\frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{4} + \cdots + \frac{1}{2^{q}}) = n \cdot (1 - 2^{-q})$.

\boldheader{Confidentially.}
To which extent can we avoid rate leakage
of the route discovery algorithm?
The following lemma shows that
if nodes behave strategically,
we cannot upper bound the leaking rate of a
route discovery algorithm.

\begin{lemma}
    For every $q$-RDA, and every $M \in \mathbb{R}$ there exists a topology in which the algorithm leaks at rate $\min\{M,q\}$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
    The proof is
		similar to the proof of Lemma~\ref{lemma:efficiency},
		however, rather than worrying about
		the weight of the discovered route,
		we only worry about the existence of a valid route.
		Therefore, we will define our topology with
		a set of disconnected nodes,
		among the nodes in the outer circle (instead of clique).
    More specifically, our topology is simply a star topology,
		where the source is in the center, its neighbors are $M$ TNs,
		and their neighbors are the possible targets (and they are all sinks, i.e. without outgoing channels).
    Clearly, if the RDA $A$ will query a TN which is not the direct neighbor of the target, then it will return nothing (because there is no route). Let us choose our target to be the node that is connected to the $M$'th TN that $A$ queries. If $M<q$ then the $A$ will query $M$ TNs until it will find a valid route;
		otherwise it will stop after querying $q$ nodes unsuccessfully.
    In either way, $A$ queries $\min\{M,q\}$ TNs.
\end{proof}

\begin{example}
In scale free networks, the number of queries that we need to perform in order to find a ``good" route is small.
\end{example}

For example, in terms of betweenness, in a scale free network with $n$ nodes, a node with degree
$n \cdot 2^{-k}$ participates in $2^{-k}$ of the shortest routes \cite{kitsak2007betweenness}. Therefore if the highest degree nodes are TN, and we ask the top $k$, then the TN will be on the optimal route to the target w.p. $1 - 2^{-k}$. Therefore the number of queries that we need to do in order to find an optimal route is exponentially small compared to the number of nodes in the topology.

\section{Empirical Evaluation} \label{sec::experiments}

In order to complement our theoretical results and in order
to study the efficiency, effectiveness and confidentiality tradeoff
in real networks, we consider the Lightning network as a case study
for our experiments in the following.

\subsection{Methodology}

Following the Lightning network RFC regarding trampoline nodes\footnote{
see \url{https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc/pull/654}}, we assume that a wallet node stores its local knowledge on close trampoline nodes (TN) in the network, and can search for them  within a close neighborhood. The wallet then queries some of the TNs for a route to the desired target,
and will finally use the route with the lowest weight.

\noindent \textbf{Collected data.}
We collected data about the Lightning network
using a live Lightning node (lnd) which
is connected to the mainnet through bitcoind.
To extract the network structure (currently, the whole topology is stored
by all nodes) we use the command $lncli~ describegraph$.
The data used for this paper
was retrieved on March 24th 2020,
and provides information
about the public channels.

\noindent \textbf{Topologies.}
We consider two topologies in our experiments:
The first is the Lightning network snapshot, and
the second is a synthetic
sparse topology that was built using the following algorithm:
create 1000 nodes in a circle, add one outgoing channel from each node to the node next to it, and another channel to other random node (total of 2 outgoing channels). The fee is the same for all the channels and equals to 1.
Figures~\ref{figure::sparse_neighborhood}, \ref{figure::lightning_neighborhood} show the number of nodes as a function of the neighborhood size in the two topologies.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/ratio/avg_neighboorhood_size_sparse.pdf}
	\caption{The percentage of nodes as a function of the neighborhood size in sparse topology.}
	\label{figure::sparse_neighborhood}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/ratio/avg_neighboorhood_size_lightning.pdf}
	\caption{The percentage of nodes as a function of the neighborhood size in the Lightning network's topology.}
	\label{figure::lightning_neighborhood}
\end{figure}

\noindent \textbf{Graph weights.}
The weights of the edges in the Lightning network's graph are
determined by the transaction size. Each channel determines base and proportional fee, and the final fee is $base\_fee + transaction\_size \times proportional\_fee$. Moreover, the fees are calculated backward from the target to the source, because the nodes should pay the fee for transferring the fees to the later intermediate nodes.
We decided to neglect this backward computation due to the fact that practically (following our previous works) it does not change the routes. In addition, we determined the transactions' size to be $10^{6}$ milisatoshis.
We finally determine the weight of each channel to be $base\_fee + 10^6 \times proportional\_fee$.

\noindent \textbf{Transactions distribution.}
In the following, we assumed that transactions follow two possible distributions: (i) one where all pairs of nodes in the network attempt to create a transaction and (ii) one where there are nodes with higher probability to execute a transaction (higher ``activity level"). In the latter case, we determine a power-law distribution and grant it uniformly to the nodes. In particular, we uniformly partition the nodes to groups of size 100, and give the $i$'th group an activity level of $2^{-i}$.
Note that we need to model the transactions because transactions in the Lightning network are private by design. It is hard to infer the real distribution of the transactions since (i) information about transactions is hidden in the private state of channels and since (ii) routes are obscured by onion encryption.

\noindent \textbf{Implementation details.}
We used the Floyd–Warshall all pairs shortest path
algorithm to compute the optimal routes.
Moreover, in order to keep shortest paths by limiting the number of neighborhood sizes (for example to search for the weight to the trampoline nodes in a neighborhood with a certain size), we used the ``min-plus matrix multiplication" (or ``distance product") algorithm, and stored the weights matrices for each number of hops. Finally, to find all the paths between specific source to target, we used the python module $networkx$.

\subsection{Tradeoff Evaluation}

\boldheader{Efficiency-Confidentiality Tradeoff}
We first evaluate the efficiency of the routes,
depending on the neighborhoods in which trampoline nodes are searched.
We already know from Lemma~\ref{lemma:efficiency} that the efficiency
can be low in the worst case, and we are now interested the
efficiency in our specific examined topologies.
The efficiency-confidentiality tradeoff
can help a wallet to decide on the neighborhood size that
it should query in order to find an efficient route.

We first consider our
synthetic sparse topology:
Figure~\ref{figure::sparse_uniform_2d}
shows that the efficiency
in small neighborhoods is better only because we cannot find many routes
in this scenario. In the sparse topology this makes sense:
there are less edges, therefore if there is a TN in a close neighborhood, then the optimal route goes through it with higher probability.
For the Lightning network topology, in
Figure~\ref{figure::lightning_uniform_2d}.
we can see that nodes find more TNs in their close neighborhoods,
but the weights are far from  optimal.
One possible reason is that the topology is scale-free,
therefore close neighborhoods are crowded, and
the routes and the TN that the node finds are not on the optimal route.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/ratio/sparse_uniform_2d.pdf}
	\caption{The probability to not find a route compared to the found route.}
	\label{figure::sparse_uniform_2d}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/ratio/lightning_uniform_2d.pdf}
	\caption{The probability to not find a route compared to the found route.}
	\label{figure::lightning_uniform_2d}
\end{figure}

\boldheader{Effectiveness-Confidentiality Tradeoff}
We next examine the RDA's effectiveness, i.e.,
the case in which the routes may be unavailable.
As we showed in Lemma~\ref{lemma:effectiveness},
highly ineffective queries may result
when TNs offer unavailable routes, in which case
the wallet will have to query many TNs and lose confidentiality.
The next experiment explores this tradeoff by parametrizing,
as before, the neighborhood size from which the wallet chooses the TN,
and by the percentage of TNs in the network. We expect to see that as
there are more TNs, the number of routes not found decreases (we will be offered more routes) and the number of queries will increase.
For each pair of nodes in the topology, we ordered randomly all the TNs in the relevant neighborhood,
and queried them one by one, each for $5$ routes. Only if all the $5$ routes failed, then we queried another one.

As we discussed before, the transactions in the Lightning network are private,
both in terms of the participating parties and the transaction size.
In our experiment we hence simulate the unavailability of the nodes by considering only the lack of liquidity. For each channel, we simulated the occupied liquidity using a random variable $v \sim Uniform[0,1]$, and defined the already-locked liquidity to be $v \cdot tx_{size} \cdot factor$, while $tx_{size}$ is the transaction size that we try to route, which is $10^6$ millisatoshis.
The x-axis in the graphs indicate this factor.

In Figure~\ref{figure::sparse_priv_effectiveness}, we fixed the probability
at which a channel will accept the transaction to $60\%$, and examined
the number of queries that the wallet will have to execute before finding a route that accepts the transaction. We see that when we query bigger neighborhoods, the number of queries increases due to longer routes (which decreases the availability), but also more routes are found because there are more TN
to query (and thus more \textit{disjoint routes}, i.e. different channels).

Figure \ref{figure::lightning_priv_effectiveness} shows this tradeoff
on the Lightning network. As in the sparse network, we see that larger neighborhoods will result in more available routes, but at the cost of more queries. Note the curvature of the graph, compared to the sparse topology, which shows that the number of queries does not increase as fast when there are more TNs. We consider this as a result of the higher degree in the lightning network; the 3-neigborhood
contains almost the entire graph, thus the TNs will yield disjoint routes which increases the probability to availability.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/queries_count/sparse_uniform_query_count.pdf}
	\caption{Privacy-effectiveness tradeoff.}
	\label{figure::sparse_priv_effectiveness}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/queries_count/lightning_uniform_query_count.pdf}
	\caption{Privacy-effectiveness tradeoff.}
	\label{figure::lightning_priv_effectiveness}
\end{figure}

\boldheader{Effectiveness-Efficiency Tradeoff}
The last tradeoff discusses the average route weight when assuming that the routes could be unavailable. In this experiment, we tried to route through the 10 shortest paths, and checked the average weight and the number of pairs that did not find any route.

Figure~\ref{figure::sparse_fee_effectiveness} shows the tradeoff between the fee and the effectiveness of the route. Unlike the previous section, where we stopped querying after we found a valid route, in here we continued to ask all the TNs, and deduce the percentage of routes that we cannot use, and the average fee of the one that we can.
This figure also reveals an interesting phenomenon in which the fee decreases when the probability for availability decreases. This happens because the available routes become shorter, and thus the average fee decreases.

Figure~\ref{figure::lightning_fee_effectiveness} shows this tradeoff in the Lightning network. We follow the same methodology of the previous section, in which each channel accepts a transaction randomly, as a function of the transaction size, a uniform generated number, and a factor. It is interesting to note that the last phenomenon that we described on the sparse topology does not hold here. The fee increases due to the larger number of pairs that succeed to transact.
This might suggest that either
there is a single route and if it is not available, then
the transaction cannot be executed; or  there are many different
routes with approximately the same weight, which makes the unavailability of some routes
have a smaller effect on the route efficiency.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/fee_vs_effectiveness/sparse_uniform_fee_vs_efficiency.pdf}
	\caption{Efficiency-effectiveness tradeoff in the sparse topology.}
	\label{figure::sparse_fee_effectiveness}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/fee_vs_effectiveness/lightning_uniform_fee_vs_efficiency.pdf}
	\caption{fee-effectiveness tradeoff in the Lightning network topology.}
	\label{figure::lightning_fee_effectiveness}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Extensions}

We next explore a generalization of
trampoline nodes, which may further
improve scalability.
We observe that in principle,
nodes can answer path request queries
also if they just used the path.
The intuition is that while nodes will not remember
the entire topology
they may still have a
route cache.
Let us hence consider ``Partial Nodes'' (PN),
nodes that share their past knowledge using the same selfish mechanisms
like TNs, when answering path request queries.

Note that in this extension, the wallet nodes will not
benefit from a better effectiveness (just like the TNs, the PNs do
not know the availability of the channels) or confidentiality
(because they still query the same number of intermediate nodes).
The major improvement that partial nodes will contribute to the network is the efficiency of the resulting
routes. The are more nodes in the network that share the optimal routes to the target,
therefore the ``detour" of the route through the TN/PN will be smaller. Figure~\ref{figure::lightning_partial_result_ratio} assumes that each PN stores paths to 50 uniformly selected nodes.
Here we fixed the number of TNs and the neighborhood size to obtain
a clearer view of the improvement in the resulting routes.
On the other hand, Figure~\ref{figure::sparse_partial_result_ratio}
shows the limited benefits of ``partial nodes" on the sparse topology.
The effectiveness is low due to the small number of different routes to the target.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/ratio/lightning_partial_result_ratio.pdf}
	\caption{Ratio of the resulting route and the optimal
	with Partial Nodes (the Lightning network topology).}
	\label{figure::lightning_partial_result_ratio}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{figures/ratio/sparse_partial_result_ratio.pdf}
	\caption{Ratio between the resulting route and the optimal
	route with Partial Nodes (the sparse topology).}
	\label{figure::sparse_partial_result_ratio}
\end{figure}

Finally, it is also interesting to consider
the impact of altruistic nodes, i.e. nodes that hold
the entire topology and answer route queries unselfishly. In this case, all the nodes in the network can simply query the altruistic nodes, and get the optimal result without any cost beside the possible lack of privacy to a small number of entities.

\section{Related Work}  \label{sec::related_work}

Aspects of route discovery algorithms in off-chain networks were described in a SoK by Gudgeon et al. \cite{gudgeon2019sok},
identifying effectiveness, efficiency, scalability, cost-effectiveness
and privacy as key challenges.
Following this, many suggestions were made in order to find a route discovery algorithm. Few among these suggestions are SpeedyMurmurs \cite{roos2017settling} and SilentWhispers \cite{malavolta2017silentwhispers} which focus on the effectiveness and efficiency (SpeedyMurmurs's simulations show that they find a route by up to two orders of magnitude faster then the existing algorithms, while maintaining the same success ratio). Unfortunately, in real-world networks, they face the challenge of cost-effectiveness that is driven by the selfishness of the nodes.

Another suggestion was made in SpiderNetwork \cite{sivaraman2018routing}, where the payments are split into units and the route discovery algorithm routes each of them individually (similar to packet switched network). This method however does not account for privacy and cost-effectiveness in selfish models. In MAPPCN \cite{tripathymappcn} the authors suggest and analyze a route discovery algorithm
which preserves privacy but which does not account of the leaking
issue addressed in this paper.

Further related research
exists in other networks than off-chain networks,
e.g., on selfish routing in wireless networks, however,
there selfish nodes typically wish to avoid participating in forwarding packets in order to not waste energy. Another example is gaining source-target privacy in multi-hop networks such as TOR \cite{dingledine2004tor}.

From an economical perspective, much research exists on
markets with producers that offers digital goods (i.e. products which are infinitely expansible \cite{quah2003digital}) and consumers with search friction (i.e. cost in addition to the price \cite{anderson1999pricing}). One example is Pandora's problem \cite{weitzman1979optimal} wherein Pandora needs to pay a
fee to open boxes (which is equivalent in our model to loss of privacy or additional networking costs), and each box offers different value.

In general, our analysis is in the spirit of classic models such as
\cite{anderson1999pricing}, as we can model the
interaction between the TN (who sells an item or service)
and the wallets that consume it.
Many different scenarios of this game were researched previously (\cite{au2018competition}, \cite{choi2018consumer}), and the general result is that the pricing in the network will rise with the search friction.

\section{Conclusion \& Future Work} \label{sec::conculsions}

We modeled, analyzed and empirically evaluated the tradeoff
between efficiency, effectiveness and privacy of
route discovery in offchain networks which come
with scalability requirements and where node behave selfish.
In particular, we have shown that current solutions
can be inefficient in general, which raises interesting
avenues for future research.
Another interesting direction for future research
regards the exploration of further strategic behaviors.

We see a trampoline node as an interesting player with different economical
incentives compared to the other nodes in the network.
While the wallet has a search friction that is
based on the number of queries that it needs to perform and the
resulting privacy loss,
the TNs may offer different prices that may be changed according to the wallet's strategy.
The study of the resulting strategic behaviors and games may provide interesting
insights, e.g., on whether overestimating the value of privacy
will motivate the TN to increase the fee of the offered route.
Moreover, the interaction between the TNs (the ``sellers") and the wallets (the ``buyers")
falls into the area of trading ``digital goods", i.e. unbounded amount of products to sell,
which is well researched. As far as we know, this research was never combined with search-friction
for the buyers, as in our case. This indeed makes sense in ``traditional" digital goods
(such as servers that offer files to download), but when considering privacy and bandwidth,
as in this paper, this could be a very interesting extension.
It could further be interesting to
broaden the discussion to strategic behaviors which lead
TNs to route transactions through worse routes in order to manage liquidity in the TN's channels.

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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv