🚴Fiber Dev Log 22 🚴
We're getting v0.7.0 ready, with one-way channels and trampoline routing. Here's a quick look at what's new in Fiber over the past two weeks:
Trampoline routing payments are now merged and coming in the next release.
Instead of calculating the entire payment route upfront, senders only need to reach a trampoline node. From there, the rest of the route is carried hop-by-hop inside an inner onion. The receiver only sees their own payment — nothing about the path it took.
The result is simpler routing, better privacy, and fewer failure points as the network scales.
Path finding got faster. We discovered that path finding was slowed down by repeated pubkey comparisons. Each comparison triggered expensive serialization work, and since routing checks many channels, this overhead added up quickly.
By switching to map-based lookups and storing already-serialized pubkeys, we replaces the sequential iteration with map indexing. The result: 10x faster with map indexing, plus 2x faster with serialized pubkey storage.
For a deeper dive into all the changes and fixes, take a look at the full dev log: 
GitHub
Fiber Dev Log 2026-02-06 · nervosnetwork/fiber · Discussion #1104
Updates Features Trampoline routing payment (merged, upcoming release) Fiber has added support for trampoline routing payment. The implementation i...
## Why Layer 1 Isn't Enough
We all love Layer 1 blockchains like Bitcoin or CKB for their security, but let's be honest: they aren't exactly built for speed.
Every transaction has to be shouted out to the entire world and written down by thousands of nodes. On CKB, you're waiting about 8 seconds for a block; on Bitcoin, it's 10 minutes! Plus, the fees can get nasty if you're just trying to buy a coffee. ☕️
So how to fix this?
## Lightning Network 101
The Lightning Network is a scalable, low-fee, and instant micro-payment solution for P2P payments.
The secret sauce isn't actually new. Even Satoshi Nakamoto hinted at this "high-frequency" magic in an early email:
"Intermediate transactions do not need to be broadcast. Only the final outcome gets recorded by the network."
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Imagine you and a friend want to trade money back and forth quickly:
1. Opening the Channel: You both put some money into a pot and sign a Funding Tx. This goes on the blockchain (L1).
2. The Fun Part (Off-Chain): Now that the channel is open, you can send money back and forth a million times instantly! You just update the balance sheet between you two (using HTLCs and signatures). No one else needs to know, and no blockchain fees are paid yet.
3. Closing the Channel: When you're done, you agree on the final balance, sign a Shutdown Tx, and tell the blockchain.
Everything in the middle? That's off-chain magic. ✨
## The Power of the Network
Now, if Fiber was just about paying your direct neighbor, it would be boring. The real power comes from the Network.
This means Alice can pay Bob even if there's no direct channel between them. The payment can travel through one or more intermediate nodes. As long as there is a path with enough liquidity, the payment will reach its destination instantly.
All data is wrapped in Onion Packets (yes, like layers of an onion). The nodes in the middle serve as couriers, but they are blindfolded:
- They don't know who sent the money.
- They don't know who is receiving it.
- They only know "pass this to the next guy."
They simply follow a basic rule: they forward the Hash Time Lock, and if the payment succeeds, they earn a tiny fee for their trouble. Easy peasy.
## The Not-So-Easy Part 😅
While the idea is simple, building it is... well, an engineering adventure. We're dealing with cryptography, heavy concurrency, routing algorithms, and a whole jungle of edge cases. But hey, that's what makes it fun!
We've poured the last two years into building Fiber, and I'm proud to say it’s finally GA-ready.
If you want to geek out on the details, check these out:
- Mastering the Lightning Network (
